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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Another Project Goes Live


As many of you know I manage IT projects. While I don't work in an IT department, I still have to manage many of the issues that involve technology. One of the challenges I have had with my current project is getting everybody to agree on and put status updates to the Project Issues List.

A project issues list is key tool to track issues as they arise during and after implementation. If you aren't using one you are setting yourself up to fail.

The issues list should contain:

* A description of the issue

* The person responsible for resolving the issue

* When the issue was opened

* When the issues is expected to resolved

* Notes regarding the ongoing status of the issue

Remember in project management, "what is not in writing has not been said".

Keep and issues list and update it regularly. Finally, negotiate expected resolution dates with those that are responsible for resolving the issues.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think that working on project issues list is enough for PM to gather all threats to his project. I find talking (even watercooler chit chat) with team members as very valuable sorce of additional information about projects.

People often tell you things they don't consider as an issue but since you manage whole project and you're able to connect all the dots you can indentify them as issues.

Another thing is what you do with issues list. As far as it's a container with some information which isn't used everyday it doesn't bring much value. That's why PM should use some risk management technique which squeezes significantly mroe value from this kind of input.

Anonymous said...

Great comment. I never meant to imply that the issues list is the be all end all. It is just one of the many tools in the project manager's tool box.