Insurance Projects Failure – Our top Nine Lessons
In our Project Management Pitfall post last week we discussed Project Management Pitfall #8 – Not Having a Pilot Phase. We described the concept of a pilot phase and why it is important. We stressed that it is a test or a trial to validate that the planned system works as intended. It is used to check that the proposed project supports your processes and is aimed to answer some basic questions about the proposed system. This week is our last in a series of nine posts and we finish on the issue of an incomplete sign off.
Project Management Pitfall #9. Having an Incomplete Sign-off Process
Keeping a close eye on quality, costs and all the other issues that we have discussed in this series of posts is no mean task. However, they are all vital for a successful project manager and are all vital to the success of any IT project. It’s also equally important to decide when the project should end and who should sign off each stage.This is where good project management comes in. From the outset you need to establish who has the authority to sign off the various stages. This might be a team member, the project manager, a senior manager from the stakeholder group or the project champion owner. Make sure you establish this up front with absolute clarity.
It is a good idea to handle the project sign-off as if you are preparing for a day in court. Make sure that you get real signatures and real paper from each stakeholder and from your project champion. Finally, after you have a signature from the project champion or senior management, copy it, distribute it to the team, congratulate them, celebrate the completion if you have a small budget for it, and be sure to file the paperwork according to your businesses file retention policies.
It is a good idea to implement a form project sign-off sheet and include critical project details, such as: project name, project manager, start and completion dates, project duration, project sponsor, goals, deliverables, team members, internal department affected and clients.
Benefits of a formal sign off process
We always recommend a formal project sign off process. Project sign-off officially ends the project and helps ensure you finish well with no loose ends and that the project is brought to an orderly and agreed close.
How JMR Consulting UK Ltd can Help
Here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd, we have worked very successfully with some of our major clients to deliver fairly complex business projects and we are experts in robust project management disciplines. We promote the use of project management best practices on all our projects. If you want advice or help with your projects or project tools and software, please contact us. To find out more about how we can help you with project management, please get in touch by using the contact form, sending an email to info@jmruk.com or calling us on 0845 052 0900.
Tags: project management, project management lessons, project management pitfall