Best way to deliver successful project in IT
Successful delivering of any project is the key goal for any project. If we think about successful delivery of a project then we can easily say that only a successful management team can deliver the successful project. But even after 100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart) of years since project management comes into picture, it’s a big question mark that the ratio of successful project delivery is less than 50%. In todays article we will discuss about what is the best way to deliver a successful project.
By going through this article we will also be able to know that what could be the ideal way manage a project so that we can deliver project for what we have committed. We will also see what are the things we should do to get a successful take off.
In order to make it concise, I have devided into 10 easy steps. If we keep these things in your mind while starting a project, I hope that’s very much assure you that you are going to deliver a successful project. Also this is a part of effective management. Here its notable that these 10 points that we have covered by keeping in mind that why mostly projects got fail or what are the key causes that lead a project to failure.
Below are the key item of a project plan. You might have some question in your mind about project plan like
‘Why Project Plan is required for a project? This is not the task for which we get paid from client still why we should go ahead and look in that direction.’
To answer such questions
Yes, its right that client never pays for Project Plan but by doing so we have some great benefits:
- Anticipate the problem that might come
- Reduce resource wastage
- Successful delivery with control
- Focus on end product
- Priorities the things based on available resources
Now we will see the mantras for successful delivery of project:
- Finalize the requirement—The first step of any project should be that we should be crystal clear that what is our goal. And what are the specific things that we are going to release under this version. This way we are creating a boundary for release. If we keep things open then we can’t control project that it will be within time and with selected resources.
- Deliverables? – From the first step we are clear that what are the functionality that we have to achieve. Here we will clear that what are all deliverables to client like source code, hosting, documentation, training , deployment support etc. Don’t let this part opened otherwise it might be a point of dissatisfaction from customer. So be clear about your deliverables.
- Resources – Under this section we have to understand what are all resources we have. It has two part i) Resources from client: Budget, Time, Nature to help ii) Technical Resource: Do we have all resources, how can we utilize these resources to meet with clients expectation. In case you see any problem to achieve the target with existing resource then sit with your client and discuss with him/her. That would be one major key of successful delivery.
- Estimate – By keeping clients requirement in mind we should devide our project in to chunks it will give us ease to provide estimate of each chunk and calculation of each would be final estimate. Based on this estimate you can manage yourself either meet with client expectation or discuss about current version.
- Define Delivery Strategy: Under this step just divide the phased delivery like design would be ready by this, these modules would be by this and so on. That way you would be able to prioritise the things early based on their significance.
- Risk Log: There are several kind of risk like client is not responding, keeps on changing requirement, adjustment of delay, misunderstood of requirement etc.. .We must maintain a log of such things that should be open for your team as well as client so that we can easily relate it with project progress. There should be some process to handle it.
- Costing: Costing is one of the key component that must be clear for the project you are doing. Because at the end of the project Client and Company both should be in win win situation. If you are following the path written above you would be easily able to expect costing that you are seeing and you can try to sync with clients budget as well. It should contain margin as well.
- Team Identification including your stackholder: Before starting your project you must identify the people that you are going to involve for this project. This is required in order to keep project goal in mind. This group also include your client stack holder and the one to whome you can communicate in case of anything not working as expected.
- Progress Control : You should have a system through which you can control progress. It could be done by review progress as well as testing of existing
- Testing and Closure: As soon as we get the releases from team we must have some test cases written and those application should be able to pass those test cases. It is very much required to validate before we send application for client review. Also once the project is got finished we should take a signed document from client for successful delivery. It will give confidence at both side.
At the end I will see that we can add N numbers of more ethics, condition, scenarios but we should also remember that if we will go dipper and dipper in the management then it could be a headache in itself and that wouldn’t work for successful delivery.
Chandra Shekhar
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