“The project is not working! We will communicate on the progress when it is OK.” Here's what we still hear all too often in the hallways. And this is especially what we must continue to do to be sure to miss the subject.
In the following lines, you will discover the ingredients for a modern, transparent and effective point of advancement (and therefore methods to succeed in your project management).
Strengthen your progress monitoring: this is the key message. This may seem simplistic as a lever for success, and nevertheless, maintaining these points correctly can make all the difference between the success and the failure of the project. Good news: it doesn't have to be complicated!
What are the common mistakes and areas to watch out for? How do you animate this process to make it both a simple and engaging ritual? We have grouped and commented on 12 best practices and feedback from PMO/CIOs. In summary, we will see how to help you move your project forward effectively.
Each project requires regular synchronizations where stakeholders meet to discuss goals, quality, milestones, tasks, and work progress.
In addition to the well-animated reporting function to the various bodies concerned, this progress point will also fulfill the role of aligning the teams involved.
Having progress information isolated from its context does not allow project stakeholders to orient themselves, and therefore to decide with discernment in the complexity.
A reminder, to be effective The three ingredients of a project progress point are:
1 ️ ※ The quick reminder of scoping (why do we do it? On what perimeter? etc.)
2 ️ — The status of progress (progress, focus, decisions to be taken, etc.)
3 ️ 803 And the time reminder (what awaits us?)
La proper collection and transmission of this information are one of the keys to the success of this process. By recalling the context and the timeline, we promote everyone's ability to find their way around. Indeed, we need to have at the same time all of the above ingredients, but also the context of these data, in order to understand the real level of progress of the project.
We are here for a single objective: formalize a progress report, not discuss it. Consider emergency room triage. No surgery in the hallway please!
Too often, we see projects of sizes that are not planned and documented in detail. The assignment of a project action, milestones and tasks is sometimes arbitrary, which makes it project monitoring difficult.
Each project manager generally has their own method for reporting progress points. In a big team, this lack of uniformity creates confusion among managers, who do not benefit from the same work patterns.
Many major projects do not use a real project management tool for effective monitoring.
Project progress points are moments of truth compared to the initial projection, to the achievement of results, and make everyone's good cooperation visible - or not! Tensions there are legitimate and frequent.
Indeed, employees are potentially called upon to be accountable and to commit to an objective and to new key results. Obtaining individual and collective commitment sustainable is a modern challenge for any transversal project manager who is sometimes confronted with ill will or even bad faith.
However, the trend towards the generalization of the use of project collaboration platforms has made the possible disengagement of some more visible. In this context, your role is to recall the framework, roles and responsibilities of each person.
If you notice that a situation of this type occurs frequently, first discuss with the person concerned based on concrete observations. Talk to him about your general needs in your role and then make a clear request. Listen carefully to the answers, the expressed needs. In the event of a proven blockage, formalize the dispute. One A call to the sponsor may be necessary. A reminder: cooperation cannot be decreed!
Without judging this tendency to a form of disengagement observed in many large companies, in your role as project manager, you must nevertheless take it into account in order to remain in a form of discernment.
Only meet when there is no other practical way to achieve your goals in a project.
Beyond the “social” interest for a team, which can be treated in a space other than that of the project progress point, it is not always justifiable to bring people together physically simply to share their status or provide information on tasks.
One way or the other, monitor the frequency of meetings in a project. Their abuse or lack of them can be detrimental to productivity.
It is the employees and their good relationships who drive forward and transform, beyond monitoring the tasks and the tools put in place.
The challenge is indeed to disseminate and maintain a culture of co-responsibility: team spirit, in short. To achieve this, go so far as to modify the definition of the evaluation and remuneration grid if necessary. Objectify the fact that cooperation is also evaluated in the project group relationship. #TeamSpirit
Stop being taken aback because you don't have the right information. By using the right tool, you will have access to all the decisions to be made and key histories to be made.
With Airsaas, we created a platform to simplify governance for you (listing the decisions to be taken, Copil view, etc.)
Jobs and IT are sometimes in tension. To move issues forward calmly, a pragmatic solution is to offer a consolidated view via a platform, a shared workflow. allowing stakeholders to be brought together around the same tool, understandable to all. The dashboard: it is around this view that you will meet every X weeks to review progress! #CollaboratifByDesign
Weather, progress, focus, decisions to take... Have you entered all of this information? Instead of writing a report, automate the sending of an email in a short and accurate format, once a week so as not to be overwhelmed by information. #WeeklyEmails
Remember how we did it before: “I copy/paste the project details from the scoping sheet, collect the remaining efforts on Jira, send a message to Teams to get the status of progress, milestones...” STOP!
Create projects on AirSaaS, define priorities in the steering committee, and receive all progress information directly on your synchronized communication channels, such as Microsoft Teams.
AirSaaS connects to the most popular tools on the market (Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana...) to provide essential information for macro management of your activities. #SmartSync
Conduct formal reviews of progress against the plan at critical points identified in the project plan when major milestones are completed. During milestones.
Don't drown your teams and contacts under a Gantt chart to track the progress of tasks. #ThinkJalon
You cannot follow a progress of what you have not established! Good goals are realistic, clear, and measurable. Regardless of your choice of method (OKR, SMART, SMAC...), write an outline of your project goals, then review them to see if they meet the requirements.
Be careful though: there's no need to measure everything. Not everything is KPIable or RoisAble.
Remember: no project starts if the objectives are not clearly established! #KPI
75% of the neuroreceptors in the brain are dedicated to the processing of visual and spatial information. Source: Dan Roam, Convince in two strokes of a pencil
Agile, lean, and design have this common root: make an objective, a process and a result more visible, clearer.
And in project management, there are many solutions: kanban, project poster, mindmapping, platform with a top-notch visual interface... You can keep your colleagues up to date with progress updates thanks to attractive and effective visual management. For example, thanks to the project weather attribute.
Remember: it is very motivating for a team to visualize the goals and KPIs they helped to establish as well as the progress made (or not) towards these goals. #SimplifierPourAmplifier
The Directorates-General having understood that the three-year project cycles no longer work and that it will be necessary to prioritize continuously. They are increasingly seeking to understand the reality of the progress of work in project management.
Using a dedicated platform, only one entry of the progress will be necessary. And several filters later, your updates and the various progress states pre-recorded in the menu will be ready to be multiplied to the various players, in the form of a flash report, for example. #ProduceOnceDisplayEverywhere
Example of use in reporting:
During discussions on the progress of the various subjects, Factualize ! Ask each person toTo support your opinions with facts by illustrating them with a concrete example.
The aim is to keep a team focused on making good decisions based on facts.
And don't forget to stay flexible...
Proposing project progress involves constantly zooming in/out of zooming in on the data, facilitate the orientation of everyone in the ongoing transformation.
Problem: when you have a lot of construction sites the report very quickly becomes illegible...
Draw critical project paths to define a suitable and coherent road map. It will allow you to provide visibility on current actions, past and future, as well as to monitor the health status of progress. The path to each goal and to the end result.
Microproject, transversal, corporate project, “POC”, sandbox project... strategic, legal, management, department...We mix post-it notes!
And above all, we risk getting cannon syndrome for the fly. That is to say taking the heavy artillery out of your project management... for nothing.
Without losing sight The fundamentals of a progress point: an update on progress. It is important for the project manager to adapt his action and his tools to the type of project being monitored.
On this theme, discover for example the definition/ Classification of Frédéric Navarro four times CIO and now independent project director at ESINFO. Excerpt from episode 28 of CIO Revolution, the Podcast produced by AirSaaS.
In a constant dialogue with all business departments he categorized each project using 4 different levels (strategic, legal, management, department project). Depending on the progress of each, the set is re-prioritized for specific progress points each month!
Needs, different stages of progress, resources, skills required, etc. the project is then presented in all these aspects. The various business departments are intervening gradually to discuss the responsibilities they would have under this project as well as its availability.
Based on around fifty projects carried out by the IT department, 3 or 4 are level 1, considered major, will be regularly discussed by the IT department with the management. 5 or 6 will be level 2 and then each direction and/or department will have a certain number of small missions, small subjects to deal with. In general, the definition/reclassification process is something quick if done in this manner.
Are your progress points on track? It's time to revisit a classic, and update your vision ofproject risk analysis.
