Project Managment - Best Practices

In the last article we discussed in general the challenges faced in Project Management. In general there are lot more challenges we face than mentioned. Let's first discuss the best practices in Project Management before we end up with more challenges.

Best practices followed in software project management to maintain a well-orchestrated team to create and claim sustainable values. The points mentioned here are not in any order of priority.

1. Customer Focus
When you encourage the team, definitely they will put in great efforts to come out with an excellent product that delights the customer. At the same time, you need to make sure that the team understands the pains of the customer and also the impact of bad products on the brand name of the organization.

As this is a primary concern of any organization, you need to work on this activity constantly and continuously throughout the execution of the project. This helps you to sustain the relationship with the customer and also get repeated orders. Needless to mention about the good will and the references you get, when you delight the customer.

Moral: Customers is the real boss; you need to keep him happy

2. Recognition
Nothing can motivate the developers to a great extent as recognizing the great piece of work done by them. When you recognize their work, they feel honored and important. It also brings in a feeling of belongingness and great satisfaction to the developers.

The project managers can use email facilities and team meetings as effective tools to recognize people. You can send out an appreciation mail or praise the developer in the team meetings, which are within your scope. When you couple this with the recognition awards of the organization, it can do wonders as recognitions improve the performance of the individual as well as the team.

Moral: Recognition is the greatest motivator

3. Communicating the Project Plan
Communicating the project plan to all the team members is as important as creating the project plan. You need to keep the team well informed about the plan so that they can visualize the bigger picture.

Moral: Understanding the plan is the first step towards delivering a quality product

4. Strategy
You need to devise a good strategy to successfully implement the various aspects of the project plan. You might have derived a good plan, but still, if your strategy is poor, it can yield disastrous results. You as a project manager need to liaise with the architects and senior developers while framing major strategies.

Moral: Strategy can mar or improve the effectiveness of a plan

5. Suitable Methodology
It is highly important that you need to be careful while choosing a proper methodology for the project execution. A process life cycle, which is an excellent fit for a project in one area or domain, may not fit in other domains or areas.

Moral: One manager's food is another manager's poison

6. Business Functionality
You need to ensure a good understanding of business functionality among the project team. With all the technical knowledge in this world, one may not be able to beat a person who has good functional knowledge. That explains the importance of having good functional knowledge among the team. You as a project manager need to ensure that the due diligence documents are constantly updated to reflect the knowledge gained during project execution.

Moral: Knowledge is power

7. Project Review Meetings
A weekly/fortnightly Project Review Meeting is very much required for a project. Besides helping to keep track of the project execution, it helps in keeping the team focused. It makes each and every member of the team know what is happening in the other part of the project, which is required to understand and visualize the project in bigger picture. You can share
all the important and significant organizational changes/initiatives in the meeting. You need to ensure that action items are noted and recorded in the Minutes of Meeting (MOM) document and tracked to closure. If you look at this meeting as more of information sharing and execution point of view, rather than as a statutory requirement to comply with Quality Management
System (QMS), you can benefit more out of it.

Moral: A map is of no use if you do not know where you are

8. One-on-One Meetings
Unlike the Project Review Meetings mandated by the QMS of the organizations, a one-on-one is very special in its kind. The purpose of one-on-one meeting is to create a continuous learning environment, which is very much essential in the software industry. One-on-one meetings build
trust between the project manager and the team members. Since it is on a one-on-one basis, the chances are more for the team members to freely share their views, discuss issues, and express concerns in an open manner. You can understand the concerns of the team members and resolve them at an early stage through these meetings.

You can effectively use these meetings to groom and mould the team. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to do a formal annual appraisal and give the review feedback, the project manager can take the one-on-one meeting as an opportunity to give informal feedback to the team members about their strengths and possible areas of improvement. Since it is not a formal appraisal, chances are very high that the team members will respond to the feedback in a more positive way and would discuss with keen interest to improve their strengths or overcome the shortcomings. On the other hand, it provides the project manager an ample opportunity to assess and gauge the team members at work on a periodic basis and encourage them to learn or improve continuously. It is human psychology to work more to achieve a goal when there is a sense of urgency. For instance, the students at college study with all sincerity just before the examinations. As it is true at work places too, you can utilize the one-on-one meetings to create the sense of urgency. You can set short-term goals to team members in one of these meetings and evaluate the progress in the subsequent meetings. You can also use these meetings as an opportunity to drive the organizational changes, though that is not the main purpose. The success of a one-on-one lies entirely on the way it is conducted. You need to conduct it in a totally informal and friendly manner, of course without losing the focus. Care should be taken to make sure that no unrealistic promises are made to the team members to fulfill their aspirations. You can conduct these meetings regularly once in a month on convenient days when you are free from your routine activities.

Moral: Run as fast as you can, just to stay in place.

9. T-Cons
In this industry, often we work with people who are geographically apart. At times emails create two islands of people communicating over a sea of misunderstanding. This, besides distracting the environment, creates an unhealthy atmosphere. Teleconferences (T-Cons) between onsite and offshore parties help eliminate most of these communication problems. You can use T-Cons to communicate effectively with your customer and build mutual trust with them. It is a good practice to include the entire team in T-Cons whenever possible. This brings all the team members to the same level and also, helps you to groom the team indirectly in communication
skills. You should prepare the MOMs at the end of every call and send it to all the participants to ensure that every issue is understood in a proper way and track the issues to closure. As a thumb rule, one should not get onto emails unless otherwise warranted.

Moral: Voice is better than text

10. Encourage Finding Bugs
You need to encourage your team members to find as many defects as possible in the work products. Earlier they find, the cheaper it is to fix. Concerns regarding linking of defects and performance appraisals are to be removed as otherwise the team members might hide the bugs.

Moral: A stitch in time saves nine