What strategies do you use for managing project progress? How do you face up to reality, especially when things go awry? Here are a few tips that I’ve acquired over the years.
Managing Project Progress
Tracking and managing project progress is crucial to project success. If you don’t do it, you won’t know where you’re at or when you’re going to arrive at your destination.
Therefore, managing project progress needs both discipline and strong organization skills. You need to be clear about what’s happening. And you require facts about project progress.
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. – Henry Ford
Measuring Progress
Some project managers measure progress simply by asking the project team, “How’s it going?” And of course, the reply, “Fine.” Is it heck! In my experience, you have to see the completed deliverables. As I’ve said before, I prefer to report progress like this: not started, started, completed.
What does 25% complete really mean? Clearly, it’s subjective and not likely to tell you whether the task will be completed on time. In other words, it’s a pretty meaningless bit of information.
People are more likely to tell you what they think you’d like to hear, not what you need to know.
So, get out of the office and meet the team.
