8 Best Practices for a Successful Project Implementation
Effective project management is often the secret to any agency’s success, more so than sheer creative brilliance. With the right amount of planning, implementation, and monitoring, you have the opportunity to complete a project on time, within budget, and with high-quality results, instead of ending up with a project that is anything but those. There are so many reasons why a project might fail — setting up unrealistic expectations, poor methodology and requirements, inadequate resources, poor project management, untrained team members, and so on. However, these things can be avoided by adopting effective practices and project management techniques which will help to establish a clear understanding of expectations and processes among all the people on board.
Let’s look at some essential and best practices for product management and implementation.
Start with a clear project scope
The project scope is the primary deliverable from the planning process, and it describes all the aspects of the project.
It is all exciting and fresh when starting working on a new project and getting carried away with the ideas. Although creating adaptable plans-that can be readily changed and adjusted is always good, starting a project without a clear vision can lead to unexpected difficulties. You and your team should invest your time in gathering information, assigning tasks to specific people, and having a good overview of your resources. The result should be a well-rounded project plan with a clear scope, steps, implementation process, and a well-defined target.
Put everything on a timeline
So now that you have a clearly defined project scope and an idea of what you want to achieve and what you need to do to get there, all you need to do is to place all the tasks on a timeline and make sure that each person is on board with the plan.
A timeline will give you a bird’s-eye view of your entire project and resources. On top of that, having a visual understanding of all the steps and tasks needed to be completed can help you figure out if you have set overly optimistic deployment dates. This can keep both you and your team grounded and focused on delivering results by realistic schedules.
Don’t try to stick to the timeline too rigorously. Make changes and adapt when something comes up.
Prepare for risks
As we know, changes can happen at any time. Maybe your stakeholders changed their mind regarding some features, or when you researched deeper, you found out something is not as simple as you expected. However, you can always have a basic plan for managing these changes. You have to set some expectations on how the team should manage unexpected issues, scope change, risks, quality, communication, and so on. On some level, this can be prevented from going haywire by planning for blockers proactively and by ensuring that the project team has a common understanding of how to deal with issues if things go south.
Implement while monitoring the metrics
Once the project has been planned according to its scope and goals, the implementation phase can begin. In theory, since you have already agreed on your project scope and you have a basic backup plan if something doesn’t work, the only thing remaining is to implement your plan and processes efficiently. As a manager, there are a few things you should keep an eye on.
- Check the project timeline on a regular basis in order to determine how your team is progressing.
-Keep your timeline updated and make sure that you and your team are still focused on the plan. If the situation has changed, you should determine the critical path for continuing and look for ways to accelerate the activities to get you back on track.
-Monitor your resources. Determine whether the project will be completed within the original effort, cost, and duration estimates. If not so, be proactive, and make smart business decisions that could potentially make the project more effective.
Emphasize the project’s “purpose”
Focusing on each project’s purpose is crucial in an agency setting. If the employee doesn’t know how his work contributes to the project’s or the business’ success, it can lead to long-term demotivation and dissatisfaction. As E&Y’s study reveals, purpose-driven organizations boast higher employee satisfaction, better quality products, and greater customer loyalty. Share results — current or expected — with team members.
Keeping an eye on the quality
Getting a project done on time and under budget is not enough. You need to make sure that you deliver a quality product on top of everything else. Quality means making sure that you build what you said you would and that you do it as efficiently as you can. And that means trying not to make too many mistakes and always keeping your project on track to deliver the expected results.
Communicate with your team
Always check-in with the team responsible for the project. Have regular meetings, one-on-one, department wise to be up to date with each and every member of the team. Having daily stand-ups is proven to be a great practice when it comes to project success. Ask teams to share if they are facing any problems with the tasks, resources or timeline. Keep in mind to not over-exhaust the team.
Conduct Regular Client Status Meetings
Conduct regular client status meetings. Ideally, you need to be held at least once a week to keep everyone engaged and on the same page. Unless you check-in regularly, you might not know if the client is truly satisfied or not. When the client is in the loop the whole way through, feels like you are communicating everything, and feels like you have their best interests in mind, they are rarely unhappy.
Correct implementation of project plans is the difference between a successful organization and an unsuccessful one. Remember, don’t be afraid to think outside the box and motivate your team while you go. Celebrate important milestones and keep things flowing smoothly.
