Project management tips for information technology organizations

Project management tips for information technology organizations

Correct application of project management principles and methods is key to ensure adequate development output in the IT industry.

You may have a team of highly skilled, dedicated developers but without an environment and organization scheme that supports their work, project development is likely be to be hampered by issues that cannot be corrected by even the best self-governing teams.

Project management training has become essential in contemporary business practice. The ease with which staff can be trained through online or virtual training courses leaves few

excuses not to ensure business practice is informed with the latest in project management theory.

Below, we’re going to detail just a few project management best-practices that can help streamline your development process and make project management a little bit easier:

Set Goals Every project needs to begin with a set of goals to be achieved.

These goals must be aligned with the expectations of clients and end-users. After the initial planning phase, it is the duty of project managers to constantly seek feedback from stakeholders to ensure these goals are being met through each iteration.

Consumer demands are subject to change however, so there’s always a chance that the goals set out during the initial planning phase will be markedly different from development goals near the end of a project life cycle.

Project managers will need to mediate shifting goals and development. Refusing to welcome change will result in a product that is no longer useful to end-users. Implementing every change demanded by stakeholders however, will delay development and may lead to a project failing entirely.

Evaluate every phase Software development generally has 4 phases of development: initiation, planning, execution and closing. Each of these phases needs to be scrutinized after completion. Every deliverable of the respective phase must be evaluated and documented.

Rigorous and continuous testing throughout a project’s development cycle can help prevent inefficient development processes and improve development speed.

If you’re working within an agile framework or similar project management methodology, evaluation procedures are often ‘built in’ to the development process, with project managers encouraged to solicit developer feedback and routinely improve future iterations.

Keep communication clear One of the most important roles of a project manager, and primary concern of many project management methodologies, is keeping internal communications transparent, clear and open at all times.

You’ll need to create a consistent communication plan and stick to it throughout development. This can be a challenging process as it encompasses documentation, development feedback, stakeholder management and more.

Project management methodologies such as PRINCE2, as well as most agile methods, dedicate a large portion of their training programs to helping project managers and business owners understand just how important communication is to project development and how to successfully implement an effective communication scheme.

Understand what it means to be agile Agile project development methodology helps software developers adapt their methods over time to better suit the pace and precision demanded by contemporary business practice.

Agile methods autonomously detect and solve errors in development, helping businesses ensure that their projects are developed quickly and deliver quality products to end-users.

Agile focuses on delivering end-to-end complete products through each development iteration (as opposed to a single product lumped together at the end of development).

Developing software in this manner allows for each component to undergo testing and evaluation, fixing errors as quickly as they are discovered to improve future development.

An added benefit of agile method is their emphasis on communication. If you choose not to adopt a fully agile approach, you can still learn a lesson or two by observing how integral communications are to the agile development process.

Be flexible The success of many IT organizations often hinge on their ability to adapt to changing market conditions and consumer demands, without compromising on project goals.

Striking a balance between self-managing teams and managerial oversight is a delicate task. Excessive micro-management can bog down development in redundant and unproductive documentation procedures. It’s important to give development teams autonomy in how they complete tasks in response to emerging conditions but this risks changing he entire project road map.

Balancing flexibility and practicality is a challenge for even the most seasoned project managers, with adequate training and the implementation of just a few project management best-practices however, the process can become much less difficulty and risky.

If you’d like to learn just how project manager achieve this feat, make sure to check out the Whatisprince2 blog for helpful tips and tricks.