Project Management: What Often Gets Overlooked or Forgotten?

By Erin McCabe :

Establishing and carrying out a process for project implementations within any organization is crucial to ensuring the success of the project’s outcomes.

There are plenty of certifications out there that can help members of an organization become familiar with various project management methodologies, such as the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body pf Knowledge (PMBOK), the Waterfall approach, Agile project management, and others. These methodologies all rely on many similar elements, but they have been tailored to work better within specific industries and certain project types.

As much as project managers can be experts in their preferred methodology, sometimes it can be difficult to ensure every piece of the project management puzzle is accounted for when actually carrying out the project plan. No matter how long you have been a project manager, it can still be easy to forget or neglect important aspects of the process, especially if the project is moving along well with hardly any issues.

Lost in the process

When asked about what elements of the project management process often get neglected or forgotten about, our practitioners at Barrington had some great insights.

“Every PM will say PLANNING, and of course that means UX Design,” says Senior Consultant Jennifer Burkitt . “Strangely, that can often be overlooked.”

She added that it means project managers should really understand what the goal or outcomes of the project should be, and that without considerable planning up front, you can get a ballooning effect.

This ballooning effect is also known as “scope creep,” another thing Jen says that can happen where is no contingency for it in place within the project charter.

“I think contingency is a key component to managing efficient projects and considering where those ballooning areas are most likely to occur,” she says.?“For instance, post launch maintenance is something that can be easily overlooked at the onset of any project or product launch. Most products/projects require follow up or updates etc. in order for it to remain relevant.”

Associate Partner and Healthcare Co-lead Richard Herritt, PMP agrees with Jen and says that scope creep can increase the amount of effort necessary to obtain agreement or signoffs on deliverables as the design or content of said deliverables weren’t agreed to in advance.

“A Deliverable Expectation Document (DED) is a great tool for finalizing, AND getting agreement on, the template/content/scope of a deliverable document before anything is even written or produced,” he says.

Don’t forget to wrap it up

Another area within the project management process that may often get overlooked, according to Associate Partner Nadia Dajani, P.Eng, PMP , is the project close-out process and making sure to review lessons learned or complete a retrospective once the final deliverables have been met.

“Oftentimes wrapping up a project gets consumed by finalizing deliverables and sign offs that it can be easy to skip out the lessons learned step, which is very important in continuous improvement and ensuring the next project can be even better.”

Richard adds that once a project is already “complete,” it can be harder to obtain resource engagement to perform this close-out process.

“[Completing] lessons learned activities throughout the project rather than at the end tends to be more effective, but [they are] rarely implemented,” he says.

Final thoughts

Really, it all comes down to what Jen said initially: planning. While it may not necessarily always prevent scope creep, proper planning can go a long way to making sure all the puzzle pieces get put into place at the outset of the project, including the drafting of a Deliverable Expectations Document and a plan for ensuring that project close-out activities like lessons learned or retrospective meetings are performed.

What is something that you think is often neglected or forgotten when it comes to the project management process??Do you agree with us?

Please share your thoughts!

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