Project Management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing and monitoring the work of a group or a team to achieve specific set of goals and meet specific success criterion. In the software industry, it has become a challenging need to execute the tasks by sealing all the gaps and eventualities. Bullet proof project management is the concept of sealing all the gaps in the execution trends and pre-identifying the strategies to prevent failures on execution.
There are 10 ways to Bullet proof the Project Management aspects,
Spend sufficient time in Requirement Analysis
It is always a better choice to spend time on analyzing the requirements so that all the gaps are sealed in the initial phase. It would impact heavily on the costing and time-line if the gaps are not sealed on the analysis phase.
Use Prototyping before designing
Prototyping provides the complete layout at the initial stage which will solve all the ambiguities about the application to avoid last minute surprises. There are lot many tools are available in the market where you can drag and drop the UI artifacts to form the layouts and get it confirmed.
Break Projects in to Checkpoints and Phases
It’s better to create break down structure for the work to make sure that the checkpoints or milestones are created based on the tasks being identified. This would bring down the ambiguity on the completion time and paves way for the quick turn-around time.
Create Room for Knowledge Sharing
The key aspect is to identify the right resource for completing the milestones and tasks. It is always better to keep the project independent as we may unsure about the availability of the resources. All the resources need to share the work and interchange their skill-sets so that the project is not stopped even if the critical resource is not available.
Using Collaborative Project Management Software
There are still companies that manage projects with spreadsheets. Some even use monolithic project management software that resides on a single workstation that a project administrator painstaking updates daily. But projects are never sequential in their communications or their workflows, so the software tracking projects shouldn’t be, either. Today, projects can to be run in a collaborative environment with a project management solution that runs in the cloud. Each project staff member can update his/her task status in real time, giving visibility of current project work to others who are on the project team.
Developing a Comprehensive QA and test plan
It’s better to create a comprehensive test plan and the release can be planned only if it passes the critical cases. The test cases can be automated and ensured that the quality is maintained through the releases.
Continuous Monitoring
The project progress needs to be continuously monitored and updated to the stakeholders in case if there is any delay is speculated. This can be achieved in Stand-ups through-out and the retrospective on every release.
Documentation and Recording the Conversation
It’s a temptation to skimp on documentation while working on the project where deadlines get tight. The Documentation plays a key role in referencing and any team can plunge in to action if the documents are projected correctly.
Conduct a post-project assessment
Even successful projects come with their share of road bumps along the way. Once the project completes, get the project team together to go over what went well and not so well. Then, take what you learn and apply it to the next project. Your project execution will improve.
Celebrate!
Project work is hard and relentless. Once a major phase of a project completes — or the entire project completes — take time to celebrate the victory with your staff at lunch or dinner or with an office celebration. People need to celebrate their successes so they can be ready for the next project they’re going to succeed at.