Is your Project Healthy?

How many of you have done at least one of the things in last two years?

1. Join Gym ( and hopefully went at least one day 🙂 )
2. Jogging/Walking
3. Yoga
4. Attend Health Camp
5. Switch to healthy diet

Probably most of the PEOPLE would answer YES!!!
Why??
A few years ago, one would invest in health insurance so that it will help when one is not well, today one invests in health itself.
While such changes have already happened mostly in our personal lives, in the context of Project Management – still many projects get caught after they become UNWELL

1. Delayed deliveries
2. Project delivered with defects
3. Delivered in time but cost overrun etc.

How good is your Projects Health?
Today it is vital that projects need to be monitored for all key Health Parameters like above using the correct project management methodologies like

1. Pro-active Financial Planning: Plan not only your activities but also your budgets. Allocate budget to different activities.
2. Resource Planning/Forecasting: Estimate the hours/materials required to complete the milestones. Allocate the resources as per the need.
3. Easy Monitoring of the plan: While allocation mat is an easier thing, more difficult one is effectively monitoring the plan. You should be able to monitor the activities progress on daily basis. Also, are enough resources available to achieve the future milestones of the project?
4. Quality Management: Quality in project delivered has two steps
   1. Quality Assurance – good processes/reviews etc. to ensure that defect does not come at all.
   2. Quality Control – defect has come but can it be identified before delivery? Earlier it is identified lower the cost of rectifying the defect.
5. Earned Value Management System(EVMS) for Cost and Schedule overrun: Earned value method effectively helps you to identify
   1. Schedule Variance.
   2. Cost Variance.
   3. Estimated Cost to close the project
   4. Estimated Time to close the project
6. Project Risks: Identify the potential risks and adopt the correct strategy.
   1. Mitigation Plan
   2. Avoid the Risk.
   3. Transfer the Risk

Standalone tools like Microsoft Project file/Excel files cannot achieve these goals.
Enterprise Project Management tools are required to keep the Project Healthy.
Choose the tool which can do the following

1. Deliverable Planning
2. Activity Planning
3. Financial Planning – Budgets
4. Financial Planning – Revenue
5. Resource Estimation
6. Resource Allocation
7. Activity and Resource Tracking
8. Budget Control
9. Risk Management
10. Actual Status/Dates Monitoring
11. Actual Expenses Tracking
12. Planned vs. Actual Invoicing

While there may be some tools which do them partially, Let’s remember that all of the above are required for ‘Balance Diet’.
Let’s make all of our Projects Healthy!!!

Chandrashekhar

The author of this article is Chandrashekhar who works as Project Management domain expert in ProductDossier. He is an engineering graduate from IIT and attended management program from IIM. He also has certifications in ISO Audit and Business Process Management. He has more than 15-year experience in Enterprise Project Management, Product Management, and Quality Management areas.