Agility is a key ingredient for success in the modern business landscape. For the banking and financial services sector, efficient project management is essential for planning, monitoring, and implementation of projects to ensure on time, and within budget delivery of the project goals. Projects within this sector can range from digital transformation and automation to migration efforts. Effective project management is crucial for ensuring value delivery for all stakeholders. This article will highlight some best practices to ensure agile and efficient project delivery.
A Top-down Approach to Project Management
An enterprise-wide project management mindset is important, and it must be inculcated from the top leadership downwards. Senior leadership buy in, and support of the project management effort will go a long way to drive an agile mindset within the organization. Project managers who have the right skillsets and training must influence their teams to adopt best practice methods.
Clearly Defined Deliverables (Project Goals and Objectives)
All stakeholders must understand and agree on what the project is supposed to accomplish. All stakeholders in the project management effort must discuss and agree on the scope, process, timeline, and pricing to avoid any misunderstandings and scope creep.
Detailed Project Plan
The project manager must outline the tasks that needs to be completed and assign responsibility for each one. Project timelines, milestones, tasks, and resources must be mapped out at the beginning of the project. This will help to assign resources efficiently, monitor the project schedule and budget, and provide team members with a transparent understanding of what they need to do, and when.
Clear and Consistent Communication
Regular communication with all stakeholders including project team and clients is crucial. Honest and transparent communication with team members and clients will ensure in clear understanding of the project progress, challenges, milestones, and achievements. Here are some simple communication strategies:
- Regular meetings (weekly/monthly)
- A communication tool for streamlining the process
- Communication across all channels in case of issue/priority task
Effective Risk Management
Enterprises today operate in a heightened risk environment and projects are susceptible to a variety of risks that can jeopardize timelines, increase budgets, impact project performance, and reduce productivity. These risks can include resource, cost, scope, operational risks, market factors, and technology. Risk management tools can be a valuable asset for large organizations managing process-driven projects. The team must have a risk management plan in place. They must identify potential risks and establish the strategy to mitigate them. A very common risk that teams must deal with is scope creep or additional tasks being added to the scope that jeopardizes the project timelines and budgets. The team must ensure that clients and stakeholders fully understand the implications of making changes.
Progress Monitoring
The team must keep track of the project’s progress and adjust processes as required to stay on track. Project tracking is the act of monitoring the progress of the project against the project plan. Project KPIs (key performance indicators) are evaluated to understand if corrective actions are required to protect project outcomes. The key project metrics to track include:
- Schedule Variance
- Cost Variance
- Earned Value
- Resource Utilization Rate
People Management
People are an organization’s most valuable asset. And this holds true for project teams as well. Communication, collaboration, teamwork, and autonomy are important elements in driving project delivery. Managers must ensure the team works well together and provide the resources and support they need to optimize their productivity and creativity. Effective resource allocation to match people to tasks that they have the skills to complete is also critical. Giving team members autonomy in the workplace, rather than micromanaging their every move, is a good idea. And it is important to recognize and celebrate milestones and successes throughout the project. This helps to keep the team motivated and engaged and can help build momentum towards achieving the project goals.
Roles and Responsibilities
The roles and responsibilities of each team member must be clearly defined. This helps to ensure that everyone understands their role in the project and the contribution they need to make. This will prevent confusion and conflict among team members. A RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) matrix is a simple planning chart that allows project managers to assign responsibilities of all stakeholders for the project.
Regular Retrospective Meetings
Project success demands transparency, and the perfect way to ensure that transparency is to hold regular retrospective meetings. A final review once the sprint/project is complete will ensure that all goals have been met. Key takeaways must be documented and shared with the team to improve future project delivery.
Here are two key tips that will help streamline these meetings:
- Focus on the positives: It’s important that the team stay motivated when executing a project and what better way to do that than through encouragement? It is a good idea to try to highlight two positives for every negative during a retrospective meeting.
- Consistency: Retrospective meetings must not be an inconvenience for the team. The meetings must be structured and scheduled to take place at the same time and day of the week.
Effective project management is crucial for driving successful project delivery. But managing a project with multiple moving parts can seem like a daunting task. Project managers and teams need to put in place a structured plan and processes to ensure successful delivery. Automated project management platforms coupled with experienced resources are invaluable for ensuring efficiency and successful project delivery.
