IT Project Management Tips

Tips on IT Project Management:

1.Do the right project. Using benefit cost analysis or ROI, and looking at opportunity cost, look at the project that gives you the biggest value for your effort and is most aligned with your company’s strategy, moving you in the direction you want to go.

2.Define scope clearly and precisely.

3.Plan the whole project. Make a plan for each of the nine areas.

4.Do good architecture. Work with words and pictures to bring people with different perspectives onto the same page, contributing to and committed to the project.

5.Get the right team. Using the WBS, define the skills needed, and get people with those skills. Be honest about gaps, and close them by taking time to learn to get it done right.

6.Get the expertise you need. Know that being expert in one area means not being expert in other areas—sometimes closely related disciplines. Recognize that project, being unique work; require learning from and collaborating with experts. Remember, hiring experts you can work with is less expensive than not hiring experts you can work with.

7.Scope. After defining scope clearly, teach the cost of changes to reduce change requests, and then manage all changes, adding to the project only when it is essential.

8.Time and cost. Use unbiased, accurate estimation techniques. Set up systems to gather, track, and analyze time and cost information, so you can keep them under control.

9.Quality. Focus on quality at all three levels to ensure value. At the technical level, trace requirements and design checking and testing throughout the project to reduce errors. Then design a test bed, and implement the tests. At the project level, work to prevent error, then find and eliminate the errors that slipped through. Do as much testing as you can as early as you can. Allow time for rework and retesting to ensure you’ve eliminated errors without letting new ones creep in. At the business level, include customers in testing, and remember that the goals are customer delight and added value.

10.Risk. Plan for uncertainty; prepare for the unexpected. Perform risk management with your team every week of the project.

11.Human Resources. Help each team member step up in self-management and technical expertise. Then teach them to work together, until you have a great team of great people.

12.Procurement. Get the supplies and resources you need. If your project involves contracts, be sure to keep the contracts in alignment with project value and specifications, not just generally associated with goals and work.

13.Communications. Have a communications plan, and follow it so that you are in touch with all stakeholders throughout the project. Make sure everyone knows what they need to know to make decisions and get work done. Analyze status information to create status reports. Be prompt and decisive.

14.Integration. Constantly direct corrective action. Evaluate all events that could change the project schedule, and all scope change requests. Review the effects of any change on all nine areas before making a decision, and then implement a revised plan with rebaselining.

15.Use a life cycle. At a minimum, put a gate at the beginning to clearly launch the project, and then a gate after planning, a gate after doing, and a gate after following through.

16.Every gate is a real evaluation. Bring every deliverable—part of the product, product documentation, technical documents, the project plan and supporting documents—up to specification. If a project can’t deliver value, be willing to cancel it.

17.Use feedback at all four levels. Teach workers to stay in lane and on schedule; ensure delivery of milestones; manage project risk; and manage project change. Watch out for continuing problems that indicate a serious planning error, such as lack of attention to one of the nine areas or a poor architectural decision.

18.Focus on scope and quality. Get it all done, and get each piece done right.

19.Deliver customer delight. Seek to exceed customer expectations while leaving customers delighted with every encounter with your team. Use every success and every error as a chance to learn to do a better job.

20.Remember ROI and lessons learned. Compare actual ROI to planned ROI, so you can be honest about the degree of your success. Compile project historical information and lessons learned to make future projects easier.

Benefits of learning about IT project management:

1)The ability to make comparisons of the status of multiple projects and budgets.

2)The ability to make better resource allocation decisions by providing a complete picture of where people are deployed, track time and where their time is already accounted for/allocated for ongoing or future projects.

3)Provide a mechanism to generate projects metrics, measure results and optimize product development processes.

4)all of which reinforce greater accountability, operational efficiencies and facilitates better project planning by having business intelligence at management’s fingertips.