Well it is that time of year, the chance to reflect on the year that has passed and to look forward to the challenges and opportunities of the one ahead.
We live in interesting times as the Chinese would say, however it need not be the reason to hunker down and simply hope to weather the storm, far better to set an ambitious course and resolve to work towards achieving new objectives.
The New Year invariably gives us the opportunity to consider and embrace changes in our personal lives, why not the same for our working professional life too?
So how can exploiting the potential of Project Server help us to change for the better? Here are five suggestions as to how.
1. Transparency and Accountability
Bbeing able to demonstrate progress and status is a persistent issue and in the current climate an ever more pressing requirement. Project Server can both automate the process and provide information in suitable formats to varying audiences on demand and in real time. This facility alleviates the Project Manager from the persistent chore of having to produce a plethora of management reports in a variety of formats. Recipients can be assured that what they are viewing is current and not out of date information and that it suits their information needs.
2. Consistency
Common contributors to project failure are poor planning and unrealistic timelines – by leveraging the facility of Enterprise Project Types (EPT’s) in Project Server project plans be created more swiftly and consistently and can be assured of employing “best practise” approaches to planning and scheduling as determined by the organisation. Maturing as a project organisation can be a slow process, EPT’s can help support this process by providing a more mature and proven approach to planning and managing projects.
3. Benchmarking
Being able to quickly easily and consistently compare performance across projects on a series of established metrics can allow you to identify those Project Managers who are under or out performing their peers, this can be an early indicator of issues or an opportunity to share expertise and knowledge amongst Project Managers to the benefit of the entire organisation. Project Management has continuous improvement as one of its key cornerstones, why not be more pro-active in identifying areas for improvement sooner rather than later.
4. Estimating performance
How good are you at estimating, is it something you try to avoid or don’t fully understand? Is it an area where you could improve? How do you go about compiling estimates and what exactly do you estimate when it comes to planning a project? A whole pile of questions for you there. Most people are intimidated by estimating, they can feel that they are being asked to commit to something that they do not fully appreciate or understand and that any estimate they provide will be used as a stick to beat them with. Estimating is not and never will be an exact science; there are invariably too many variables in any project for the prospect of estimating to 100% accuracy to be realistic. You can however aspire to improving your margin of error on estimates, this will require you to have an estimate in the first place and to then record actuals and compare them against the original estimate or baseline. If you perform this discipline for any sustained period of time you are likely to unearth some trends or obvious anomalies that can quickly be addressed and will hopefully contribute to more successful or realistic projects in future.
5. Budget setting and monitoring.
This is a particular area of interest to me as a result of my career experience in being involved in managing significant capital projects. If you are not already tracking costs and performance against budget you can be missing a trick and in all probability you will find yourself being required to do so before too long. In the current economic climate and with senior management being held ever more accountable for their decisions being able to display prudent allocation and management of valuable financial resources is likely to become a more common requirement. Project Server can help you assign costs to your projects, primarily reflecting the costs of human resources deployed in your projects and to then monitor expenditure compared to budget, highlighting any variances that may arise.
If you adopt one, some or all of these approaches you will probably realise improved performance from your projects. Hopefully such changes will be for the better and will contribute to your own continuous improvement and that of your organisation.
