Project Monitoring — maximize the odds of success
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” — Mike Tyson.
Isn’t that the fate of every project without a proper project monitoring & control process? A building under construction, computer software, or a vaccine under development, you name the project and they get punched in the face — over, and over, and over — all the time.
Projects are like a high-velocity moving car, everything is fun and fresh until it crashes. When a car driver meets an accident, we get a terrible sight — mangled metals on the road, fumes coming out of the engines, and worst — people get hurt.
Projects too, if not monitored properly, can take ugly turns when it hits escalations — can result in loss of revenue, missed opportunities, burnout, or demotivation for stakeholders, and worst — it can delay or decelerate the growth of other interdependent projects. This is where project monitoring enters the scene.
Project monitoring helps you be prepared for escalations to maximize the odds of any project success. Read this insight to further get a good grip on what is project monitoring — the why & the how behind it. Also, don’t miss the excellent PRO-ject monitoring tool we share at the end :)
What is project monitoring?
Technically, project monitoring kicks in once the project is under execution i.e., teams have already brainstormed, planned the project roadmap , and are now executing the plans. Project monitoring is an umbrella term for tracking project KPIs , sticking to the schedule, avoiding north of the allocated budget, foreseeing & ensuring that escalations are addressed, implementing best practices, and maintaining good quality standards for a brilliant overall outcome.
It may sound overwhelming at times for an individual or a team to discharge all these duties — but we have got amazing digital tools to simplify the entire project monitoring & control process and do all the heavy lifting for you.
Why is project monitoring important?
Can we answer how far we have come if we don’t know a starting point?
Can we say how close we are to the destination if we don’t have a final goal in mind?
How do we even know whether we are in red or green if no goals are set?
A PMI report says, not defining achievable milestones or objectives is the reason why most projects fail.
Project monitoring is a critical need as it:
- helps us measure progress against the set objectives & goals — scope, functionality, usability, quality, timeline, performance, budget, & other key performance metrics
- helps organizations & teams be more resilient to escalations, minimizes risks & setbacks
- ensures the mental well-being of all the involved stakeholders, avoids burnouts & breakdowns, improves accountability, and maximizes productivity levels
- improves the flow of projects , enhances the overall visibility of the project
- helps thrive by identifying & dropping the redundant features or parts of a project, and by coming up with innovative new offerings & functionalities
How do we embrace project monitoring & control in every project?
Orgs today prefer going the agile way when it comes to new product development or a new project. Most of these are sprint-based Scrum or flow-based Kanban projects. But there are legacy projects and products — call them elephants — as they are too huge to adapt to agile methodologies in a month or year. These elephants continue to work with old methodologies like the waterfall model. At the core, how we implement project monitoring & control is highly dependent on the type of project — agile or waterfall, after all, the devil is in the details. But every project monitoring & control process has a similar high-level implementation flow:
First, thoroughly understand the project monitoring process & your duties!
This is highly critical to efficiently & effectively discharge your project monitoring duties. A Project monitoring & control process involves tracking key performance indicators and metrics — budget, timeline, deliverables, and quality. So, it is helpful to sulk in the scope of the project to every last cell of your brain. It also involves ensuring proper communication within the team for mitigating conflicts. PM&C demands great decision-making skills when it comes to routing away from planned project trajectory due to unforeseen risks, shifts in strategy, or change requests. Decision-making skills are also helpful to capitalize on newly identified opportunities.
Next, you can work on implementing project monitoring & control processes and best practices.
PM&C baseline & Project lifecycle management (PLM)
In line with the scope, schedule, available resources, budget, and expected risks identified during the PLM – outline the project and break it down into deliverable subtasks, and milestones.
Establish KPIs — assign them to stakeholders
In continuation of the last stage, identify KPIs and assign them to your project mates who would be accountable/answerable for individual/set of KPIs.
Monitor the progress, change requests, variances, and re-plan
You need to keep an eagle’s eye on the progress made within the set schedule, budget & scope constraints. Keep an eye out for incoming change requests, and prioritize them to minimize the impact on the project. Lookout for any deviations from the set milestones/deliverables, identify quick fixes or re-plan.
Quality Control
Adhering to the set goals is one thing, delighting end-users with quality products and services is whole together a different joy. But if you fail to meet the minimum quality standards — what use is the product? During the PLM strategy, the team would have benchmarked quality standards and best practices. A good PM&C process would always integrate the quality standards & benchmarks as metrics to evaluate progress. This would ensure the outcome meets the expectations of all stakeholders.
Effective Communication
As the project progress and change requests or challenges start uncovering their face, team members may often get into conflict. It’s the responsibility of the PM&C process team to ensure that all the team members are aligned with the final goal and that there are no conflicts within them. Effective communication can play a pivotal role here. Ensure that there is no communication gap between individuals & teams.
Reporting
As an extension of ‘ effective communication ’, PM&C teams also need to prepare regular reports to keep all the stakeholders updated and aligned with the project status. If any change request or escalation results in a major shift of strategy or timeline — it needs to be reflected in these reports. This helps minimize conflicts in the future between the stakeholders and ensures smooth collaboration.
ONES.com— The PROject monitoring tool your team needs to succeed
It would be an understatement to say thatONES.com does all the heavy lifting for you & helps you implement an effective & efficient project monitoring & control process at your org — because ONES.com’s suite of solutions does so much more!
ONES.com… who?
ONES.com is an all-in-one , end-to-end software management platform for teams as small as 10 or as large as 1000+ members. It avails 3 project management products via Cloud or On-premise deployment:
From planning roadmaps, milestones, and sprints to aligning the entire team to the project objectives, visualizing the overall workflow, and team & individual engagement — ONES Project helps you keep things sharp, well-organized, and on track — always!
Activity is not progressing. Validation is a must. With ONES TestCase , you can easily track project requirements, gain real-time visibility into the QA process, and accordingly plan fixes for any ambiguities that you may identify. Release products with minimum bugs and high adherence to quality standards & benchmarks set for the project.
Wiki is another feather in ONES.com hat — with wiki various project stakeholders can collaborate together in real-time. They can create & edit project documentation, requirements checklists, and mind maps, create project knowledgebase, brainstorm ideas, etc. Wiki helps align the entire team to a single objective and minimizes any internal miscommunications.
And the crazy thing… ONES.com comes with a free trial for you to check if this suits your needs. We have a very high percentage of happy enterprise & SME customers.
Cheers to building new solutions and exciting projects!
Originally published at https://blog.ones.com on December 7, 2022.
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