Closing Perspective

"This section looked at five tools that you and your team can use before and during a project to help prevent a runaway project. These tools are common, ordinary, simple tools that have been tested under fire and produce consistent, successful results. Projects get in trouble when project managers and project sponsors do not use these tools, either because they lack knowledge or experience; or they deliberately circumvent the processes because they believe the tools are a waste of time. Ironically, the latter situation tends to occur when projects start to fall behind and the project management team looks to ‘cut corners’ to get back on track. They bypass the very tools that will help them get back on track!”

"Though there are many, many more tools and processes to help you manage your project, we chose these five because they are easy to use, cost nothing to implement, and are very effective. Requirements management helps you keep track when requirements start to change or additional requirements creep into the project. Having a single, easy-to-read chart of requirements and how they trace back to the business goal and the supporting testing keeps the extended project team focused. Change management allows you to control changes to your project and put the deliberate decision to make the change into the hands of the appropriate decision maker. Failure to manage change is the number one killer of projects. Risk management allows you to take a holistic view of your project and the external forces that may affect it. Proactive risk management with good risk mitigation strategies helps keep you from being surprised by some external factor. Issue management gives you a proactive approach to handling those items that could force change if left unattended. Finally, acceptance management provides a formal process to approve work as it happens. It mitigates the ‘big bang’ acceptance or acceptance indifference.”