How do you ensure your project stays on track?

It's important to remain optimistic and, at the same time, address the brutal facts, like our resources, bandwidth, abilities, and so on. If we create overambitious scopes that no one knows how to fulfill, the project is dead even before it begins.

By clearly defining the scope of the banking product, you establish a solid foundation for successful development, implementation, and ongoing management. It involves outlining the boundaries, objectives, features, and functionalities of the product. This process helps ensure that the development team and stakeholders have a clear understanding of what the product will include and what it will not. Key elements to consider defining the scope are: Objectives and Goals: Features and Functionalities: User Roles: Platform and Devices: Compliance and Security: Integration: Data Management: Scalability and Performance: User Experience (UX) and Design: Testing and Quality Assurance: Timeline and Milestones: Budget and Resources: Risk Management:

The scope document of the project should also include below to avoid any ambiguity later. -In scope (what is included) -Out scope (what is excluded) Stakeholders should agree with the scope document - signed and distributed to ensure clear communication and agreement.

1.To keep the project on track, establish clear goals, and create a detailed WBS of all works with milestones. 2.Communication in between the team and stakeholders is essential to avoid unwanted delays in projects. 3.Monitoring the progress regularly on a daily and weekly basis. Monitoring the KPI is very critical to get the project updates.This will help to identify and address the issues promptly.

Regular and structured review with every team is utmost important to keep the project on track. With the help of project planning tool, identify each delivery and keep a record of free floats. There is famous saying, even 100% precisely planned delivery can get delayed. So keep free floats and keep an internal target with the team against commitment with client. Likely slipping activity, must be brought to the daily radar. Reach out responsible team and understand their bottlenecks to address them. Escalate until it is clearly addressed

As people are typically working on multiple projects at a time that are different stages and differ in scope with stakeholders across departments, it is imperative to have collaborative schedules & timelines to keep track of things. Some tools I have used for project scheduling and tracking are: - Asana - Trello - Monday - Wrike - good old fashioned google sheets & excel I’m personally a fan of color coded Gantt charts.

Jira is a popular project management tool that can be used for scheduling and tracking tasks. To create a schedule in Jira, you typically use a combination of features such as Epics, Stories, Tasks, and Sprints. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create a schedule in Jira: 1. Create a Project: 2. Define Epics, Stories, and Tasks: 3. Prioritize and Estimate: 4. Create Versions or Sprints: 5. Set Due Dates: 6. Create a Gantt Chart (Optional): 7. Monitor Progress: 8. Generate Reports: 9. Iterate and Adjust: 10. Collaborate and Communicate:

A realistic schedule should include few key elements. -Lag should not be used to move an activity to a favorable date. -hard constraints should not be used on your projects as it violates activity relationships. -Schedule should be baselined after any agreed changes in the plan -it should be in accordance with DCMA 14-point assessment

We call this 'transparent autopiloting'. A plane's autopilot identifies thousands of pieces of data and then decides on the best way to deal with the situation the plane is in. If we can do the same in projects, with open and honest transparency driving the momentum, then everyone is aware of the situation and can input to the safe conclusion of the project

Every project is unique so is the tracking mechanism but it largely depends on - what are your project KPI's. Your keep eye on those KPI to track your project progress. CPI, SPI, EV, %completion, NM, ITD, ETC are of main KPI's. -Comparing plan vs actual vs earned -Identifying cost and schedule variances -Tracking CPI & SPI, sometimes TCPI (value of remaining work vs amount of remaining funds) -Tracking your BAC vs EAC and remaining funds (ETC) -Tracking critical path of your project -Tracking near critical activities (activity which are not critical but can become critical if not monitored) -Analyzing spent trend and cash flow (cash in-flow & cash out-flow) -Check your project margin and contingency -Upto date risk register

This is one of top most priority for Project Manager to deliver on time. Keep interim milestones to check the quality of every delivery to verify it goes on right track against what is required. Scope, quality plan, design standard and manufacturing standards are consistently monitored and take clear action even if that entire product to be scrapped

I’ve often seen projects fail or have chaos ensue simply because of a lack of communication- and not communicating the right information to the right stakeholders. Whatever makes sense for your org, I think have a status report owner who can share out a link to key updates for all relevant stakeholders on a weekly basis is necessary. Additionally if there is a space like a monthly performance meeting where more detailed updates can be shared with a broader group so everyone understands the “why”, the impact and the status - it will help get everyone more excited and on board with completing the project and contributing.

What is being described is a bottom-up deductive logic. Agree first principles, work to the end. There is another top-down empirical logic approach: the Partner who knows client, topic, geography, competition, sketches the answer stating the assumptions that are used. The team is run by an engagement manager, the most senior full-time person on the project. Team Morning check-in, Evening check-out. They seek to validate or disprove the assumptions . If incorrect, the plan adapts to the new. It is overseen by the Partner, who keeps an eye on team and individual progress. Regular feedback throughout helps people learn from eachother. At the end, people that are most familiar with the work present it to the client, with the Partner there.

Most of the time the projects goes south pertains to the quality of manpower involved. To know is not the same as “Not knowing”. External consultants need time to grasp the intricacies of the project, requirement’s and hence, has to work in close partnership with the organization SMEs. Lastly, we can manage the drivers what we can control. We can plan for what we know and for what we do not, we have the buffer planned from a resourcing/timing aspect which is very essential from a planning scenario.

Break a large project down into smaller ones. Ask small yet specific questions starting with Why, What, When, Where, Who, and How... questions that can be answered quickly. Use follow-up questions to deep-dive rather than addressing only what's visible on the surface. Always remember, the aim is to move the project closer to completion, not to push the ball in someone else's court.

Using project management tools to regulate the tracks, Period meeting with team to measure the progress, joint monitoring with respective staff in site and taking corrective measures in areas where it needs improvement.