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Six Tips for Finishing Projects

July 6, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices

Six Tips for Finishing Projects
By Chris Young

Sometimes, the hardest part of a project is closing it down! As a project manager it is easy to become focused on the goals of the project and emotionally engaged with the team and stakeholders, such that it is tempting to allow the project to continue on to deliver “additional” value. “If only we had a little more time we could achieve so much more…”

If you are a project manager, then it is extremely important that you retain clarity as to your goals and objectives. In almost all cases, this should be the delivery of the project scope, within a specified time period and budget. Allowing a project to “run on”, no matter how good the intention, is a fundamental failure in project governance.

A project is an investment of a company’s resources, in terms of people and money, which needs to have a predictable outcome. The business case is built on the assumption that a certain investment will deliver a specific return. Once a project is completed the organisation may decide to invest further resources to achieve additional outcomes, however this decision needs to be made with a full understanding of the costs and impacts along with the alternative investment opportunities that exist.

So, how then do you ensure your project achieves a graceful and timely completion?

  1. Stick to the plan. Keep track of key milestones and ensure everyone on the team stays focussed, especially during the latter stages of the project.

  2. Make sure you have a plan…

  3. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Keep reminding the team and key stakeholders of the project’s timeline and budget and how the project is tracking against plan.

  4. Keep in mind the Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule). Sometimes, achieving a key portion of a deliverable can achieve most of the desired outcome, so look for opportunities to sign off deliverables and avoid unnecessary effort.

  5. Ensure that change management principles are adhered to. Any changes, particularly additions, to scope or complexity must be transparent to the key stakeholders. Avoid “scope creep” at all cost.

  6. Monitor resource usage closely and manage it pro-actively. Ensure resources are planned to migrate off the project at the appropriate times and actively increase resources if required to ensure delivery dates are met.

Ultimately, the success of your project and of yourself as a Project Manager, will be measured by how effectively you delivered against the scope of your project and whether it was delivered on time and on budget. This is the key to “Exceptional Project Management”.

Christopher Young is a senior consultant and executive coach with a broad knowledge and experience in financial services, project and change management, personal empowerment and information technology. His areas of focus include developing highly successful leaders, creating high-performance teams and implementing best practices in process improvement, project management and software development process.

White Water Consulting ( http://www.whitewater.com.au ) is one of Australia’s leading project management consulting firms, specialising in exceptional delivery of projects for the Financial Services market.

Achievement Coaching and Consulting ( http://achievementcoaching.com.au ) assists professionals to reach their individual goals of enhanced business performance and personal satisfaction.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 and is filed under Project Management Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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