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7 Project Checklist Points For Successful In Project

7 Project Checklist Points For Successful In Project

Project management requires extensive planning & accuracy to meet the stated business goals. So every project manager should have a project checklist points for getting success in project management.

Stakeholders & project sponsors are focused on the ROI.

It is the beloved project manager who is tasked to guarantee deliverables meet business objectives, top ROI $$ along with utmost efficiency and productivity.

Efficiency โ€“ to be able to charge more, increase revenue and or profits with less

Productivity โ€“ get more done with less

And Orangescrum is right at the heart of โ€œALL of the aboveโ€.

Improve remote collaboration with Orangescrum

Get more done with Orangescrum

 

Here is a quick project management checklist for project managers to excel at their role and consistently meet the organizationโ€™s strategic and tactical objectives at all levels.

1. Identify & Know your Stakeholders

Savvy project managers are well aware of the role of their project stakeholders.

Identifying, understanding and knowing them early on is crucial to the projectโ€™s success.

Make no mistake to accept the fact that โ€“

โ€œEach stakeholder has their own goals, motives & expectations from the endeavor thatโ€™s about to beginโ€.

As a project manager you must know that and plan to accommodate those expectations as long as they contribute to the projectโ€™s overall mission and end goal.

At the same time, make no bones about setting the right expectations of which of their objectives will and will not be met by the project at hand.

Set up interviews & requirements review sessions to get an in-depth view of where they are coming from what are their prime motivators.

You will be in a better position to get their skin in the game โ€“ โ€œsuccess of your projectโ€.

2. Take Requirements Gathering Seriously

Irrespective of a zillion strong mentions, some project managers still end up messing their requirements gathering process.

Requirement gathering is what makes or breaks your project.

Be very detailed in your approach and spend considerable time and honest efforts to this crucial project management activity.

  • Meet with all stakeholders
  • Capture requirements
  • Review them with the project team as much as possible
  • Set follow up and Q&A sessions with your stakeholders
  • Ensure assumptions are listed, understood and agreed
  • Set a deadline by which updates or changes to the requirements will be accepted
  • Layout the expected results, quantity, quality, timeline & costs

Pro-Tip: Set up a โ€œRequirements Gathering task groupโ€ within your project in Orangescrum and list out all associated activities as tasks, subtasks and checklists. Assign to the stakeholders as well where needed. So they know how detailed and serious you are plus everything is easily tracked and traceable if needed J

3. Finalize the Scope โ€“ The Project Bible

Well, you have come this far โ€“ met your stakeholders, understood their objectives, and reviewed the requirementsโ€ฆ

So, its time now to get to the dotted line!

Scope a.k.a the project bible is one the most critical success factors. Many donโ€™t realize it, but thatโ€™s another story.

The point is not to use it as a whip. Rather separate the real thing from the clutter. Get to the crux of whatโ€™s important. Eliminate all โ€œme tooโ€ and โ€œnice to have or I want to haveโ€ type requests.

As simple as that!

A well-defined and signed scope will provides extreme clarity of

  • Associated risks & assumptions
  • End to end project requirements
  • The ONE GOAL that must be met
  • The Change Management process
  • Project milestones & duration

Pro-Tip โ€“ Enable workflow with relevant status to track the life cycle of scope from gathering to approved!

4. Host the Kick- off meeting

Bringing the team together is very important. The earlier, the better!

Kick-off meetings are great ice-breakers for all involved in the project.

The team gets to meet and greet the project sponsor, key stakeholders and hear straight from the horseโ€™s mouth on the significance, expectations and vision for the project.

Allow for enough team interaction so that they can get their question answered.

Demonstrate value that the projects adds to their job, role and learning objectives. Answer whatโ€™s in it for me (WIFM) upfront.

Project kick-off meetings enable

  • Teams to know each other
  • Meet & greet with the stakeholders
  • Understand the project goal
  • Clarity of roles and responsibilities
  • Q&A sessions for the team to understand all aspects of the project better

5. Execute the Project Plan

Note, project plans are not meant to be just on paper. They must work in real life scenarios and get the work done.

Hence pay special attention to some of the key attributes of a successful project plan:

  • Well-defined tasks and milestone breakdown
  • Clear timelines, estimated hours, assignee
  • Systematic task classification with custom task types and labels
  • Enable project visualization in custom views for clarity and smooth execution
  • Sequence or flow of tasks are clear
  • No confusion around what to execute next and when

Pro-Tip: Project plans in Orangescrum help achieve all of the above plus you can reuse them for similar projects.

6. Centralize all Communication

Project execution leads to numerous multiple channels, with information in different formats at different frequencies and the volume is just unmanageable.

Donโ€™t let that happen to your team!

Make a robust communication plan and share with the team.

Ensure the team knows when to contact whom, how on what media or platform.

A well-defined RACI would come in handy & reduce unwanted information overload.

Access to critical project information when required is important too. And then you need to ensure team members with the right authorization only access them.

Implementing a project management and collaboration software is recommended:

  • Enable automatic reminders, alerts and email notifications
  • Daily check-ins and stand up meetings are interactive and efficient
  • Comments, replies and information exchange happens over a single platform
  • Precious time is saved from shuffling across multiple apps
  • Teams know what to access, when, where and how
  • Proper role based permissions are configured

Pro-Tip: User role management, daily catch-up, GDrive & Dropbox integrations along with custom reminders and status updates are integral to Orangescrum.

7. Track and Report Project Status

Monitoring project performance regularly and reviewing it with the team and stakeholders is a must.

Agree on the reports and metrics that will be tracked for the project and the frequency at which they will be reported.

Maintaining efficiency and productivity is crucial to keep the project on track.

Hence, real time reports to track

  • Planned vs actual hours
  • Task progress, # of tasks completed
  • Overdue tasks
  • Resource Utilization
  • Pending tasks
  • Project overview
  • Billable vs Non-billable hours

When you have visibility to the above aspects, you are well equipped to steer your project away from unwanted delays.

Timely reviews enable proactive identification of bottlenecks & course corrections.

Also, as a project manager you are able to keep your stakeholders engaged, get their attention when required and drive decisions in the interest of the project.

Conclusion

The 7 point checklist cover the broad practical aspects of project management.

The objective is to enable project managers to establish an effective model that is adept in handling the real world elements of project management right from

 

The success lies in putting a scalable system in place that allows for easy integration and alignment of our people and processes.

The easier for your resources to adopt a process, closer you are to project success.

Basically, project teams would be more inclined to contribute towards the project goal when you take away the administrative hassles from their work.

And over a period of time, the process becomes an inherent part and teams find it easier to follow it and deliver efficiently.

Orangescrum project management tool ensures you are able to initiate, plan, execute, monitor and improve your project teamโ€™s performance and delivery.

What is the current project model or checklist you rely on?

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