Last Updated on:
It’s tempting to believe that making major changes to the way we manage projects will have a major impact on outcomes, but major changes take time, they meet with resistance from those involved (either outwardly or by the more insidious lack of enthusiasm). Sometimes making minor changes that face less resistance can result in better productivity.
Let’s take a look at some of these minor changes that can more quickly unlock efficiencies and improve productivity.
You can successfully improve project reporting by gaining a deeper understanding of the data and metrics that you already have available, and using this data more effectively to improve efficiency and quality of delivery across your projects. Robust data analytics will elevate your project management capabilities to a higher level by enabling you to better understand project performance, improve decision-making and help you transform project-related data into actionable insights.
All too often projects are completed that aren’t fit for purpose and the cause is often a lack of stakeholder engagement. However, it’s possible to significantly boost stakeholder engagement within a project management environment by focusing on the core project management skills. Let’s take a closer look…
Develop clear, concise communication channels between stakeholders and project teams to facilitate requirements gathering sessions, workshops, and meetings to ensure that stakeholders’ needs and expectations are properly understood and documented accurately. On agile projects encourage open and honest communication between everyone involved in the project so that needs and expectations are regularly discussed and deliverables adapted to meet evolving requirements.
Depending on the project the key data that will be used for decision making will be different but make sure to analyse all the available data as well as business processes, performance metrics, market trends and customer feedback etc. These will all provide valuable insights and data-driven recommendations that support a better final outcome rather than relying on assumptions, bias or opinion.
Ensure that project initiatives and deliverables align with your organisation’s strategic goals and priorities. Through business impact assessments and feasibility studies you will be able to assess the viability and potential impact of proposed projects and major organizational change.
By demonstrating how project outcomes contribute to achieving business objectives you will be able to better define project scope. It is well known that scope creep is a major cause of project failure, especially in terms of time and budget over-runs.
If you can’t se the wood for the tress then benchmarking can help identify why a project team has been missing targets. Here are three ways to conduct benchmarking:
First, identify key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the project’s goals. These might be hitting milestones, budget use (obvious but often ignored), resource allocation, quality metrics, customer satisfaction.
By comparing the project team’s performance against industry benchmarks and historical data from similar projects within the organisation you should be able to pinpoint areas where the team is falling short of targets.
By evaluating the project team’s processes and workflows, again against their best practice or benchmarks from market leading organisations in the industry you should be able to identify areas for process improvement and optimisation so that the team achieve targets more often. Clearly this is easier in theory than in practice but identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks can be the best way to start improving productivity on a project.
Too often the “lessons learned” process at the end of a project is a rushed process – why rush a process that could help improve future outcomes? It really doesn’t make sense so take the time to gather valuable insights from previous projects. That way you can identify recurring problems and avoid the pitfalls that resulted in missing targets in previous projects.
Encourage input from your project team and listen to their feedback but, at the same time, don’t let new projects get dragged down the same old routes that have caused projects to fail in the past. Encourage innovative thinking, listen to the quiet and diverse voices – they really may have something important to say
When productivity is below what you expect of experienced project teams, there should be a clear explanation. Are good people underperforming because they are stretched too thin or have become de-motivated for whatever reason? Have teams become stuck in a rut? Seek out the problems causing reduced productivity. They are sometimes easy to fix, but the issues won’t be fixed if you ignore them.
Be proactive in changing processes, shifting mindsets, and encouraging innovative thoughts. Sticking to the same processes will rarely boost productivity and almost never maximise return on investment. Taking a calculated risk, on the other hand, may result in more successful outcomes for your projects and your business.
