Key steps to getting your IT project back on track

From my experience, which has mainly been on tech projects, projects go off track for just a handful of primary reasons. There are many little deviations, but it still comes down to just a few. This is applicable to projects in about any industry or genre. This handful of reasons includes:

• Requirements changing drastically
• Budget getting way out of whack
• Deadlines being missed on a frequent basis
• Funding gets pulled
• Chosen solution has glitches or doesn’t fit the need correctly

I realize this list can go on and on, but again I’m just listing some of the most common setbacks I’ve witnessed on projects. Based on this list above, three key steps will help to get your misaligned projects back on track:

Get a better grip on project financials. Too many times, on larger projects, project managers let weeks go by without looking at the financial health of the project. Even if you are forced to do it monthly by your controller or CFO, that's still too long.

The project manager must be looking at the health of the project budget and financial forecast weekly in order to keep it under control and to have time to react to budget issues before it's too late to do any good. A 10 percent budget overrun is far easier to fix than a 50 percent budget overrun. Never let it go too long and it will never become unfixable.

Meet more often. Project managers are often prone to allowing too much time between critical status calls or internal team meetings. Both must happen weekly. Why? Because it's all about engagement, participation, ownership and accountability.

Weekly meetings keep the project manager, team and customer informed and on the same page. Weekly meetings keep the team focused on the project and their assigned tasks, breeding accountability and ownership. And weekly meetings keep the communication flowing and the customer confidence high that the job is getting done and getting done right. Issues arise without notice or mention and fall through the cracks when meetings are cancelled or spaced too far apart.

Improve your status reporting process. Many times we are just going through the motions when reporting status on our projects. All a lot of status reports cover is, “What happened last week,” “what's in process now,” and “what's coming up.” That takes five minutes and is nowhere near enough information. Where is the budget health? Where is the resource forecast? What about change orders, issues lists, a risk log and status, and any red lights on the project?

The status report should be a dashboard of the health of the project suitable for the team, the customer and senior management. One great report should provide key information for all important stakeholders.

Summary

I'm not saying for certain that any one or even all three of these will cure whatever is ailing your project, but they will help if they are things you aren't currently practicing. These three things are definitely part of project management best practices — at least they are for me, and they work.

What about you? What works on your projects? What ongoing best practices help keep your projects out of the mud or help get them unstuck if problems arise along the way?