How to keep your eyes on your projects
No project is going as was planned because there are some unexpected events happening during the project which delay the project and take it out of the track, here are some actions you as a project manager MUST do throughout the project repetitively to keep your eyes on the project and do immediate actions if things are not going on track:-
1- Project Meetings: regardless this project meeting is daily like agile recommends or weekly depending on the project status but it must exist and practiced because during this project meeting you are listening to your team and their issues or complaints and it is your and only your responsibility to resolve such issues. Without having this project meeting issues will stay out there becoming bigger until become disasters which you might not be able to resolve.
2- Individual Interview with them team: you can’t imagine how such practice will tell you about the hidden facts of the project where those facts can’t be told in the project team meeting, apart from this it gives the team member more confidence and it encourages him/her to contact you anytime and just speak up.
3- Encourage Contribution for Issues / Risks logging: you can’t see all risks / issues yourself so make sure that you encourage people to contribute with you to share risks /issues from their perspective but determine who / what / when to log an issue / risk, that is very important to keep you risk register or issue log consistent and accurate.
4- Timely Completion on Timesheets and Tasks: make sure that everyone in the team is updating his/her timesheet and tasks log, in this way you will have exact real status on the progress which will tell you early enough if there is any delay so you can contact that team member and try to know the reason behind the delay because he/she might need a support or training, on the other hand timesheet is very important for the payroll department.
5- Weekly Status Report: weekly status report is stating the progress achieved in the past week and how it is going to affect plans next week if there is any delay or priorities changes also it documents the dependencies on other parties and how this will affect the ongoing activities, in this way of reporting you are setting the expectations for the higher management and putting all stakeholders on the same page on weekly basis.
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