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What does the automation of project reviews provide?
Many factors determine the effectiveness and efficiency of the Project Management Office. In many companies, PMO employees have developed workflows that allow them to create periodic reports showing the current status of projects (or entire project portfolios) and present them to the company’s management. Although only sometimes, in relatively many cases, this involves a whole list of problems.
To ensure that the reality does not involve only the sheer complications of managed projects, it is worthwhile to take an interest in automating project reviews and, thus, some of the PMO’s tasks.
Advantages of automated project reviews
The enormous benefits of automating project review processes include significant convenience and time savings. This is especially true for PMO staff, who can devote more time to analytical work and support Project Managers by automating some of the tasks. In addition, the company’s management board is provided with real-time access to clear and easy-to-interpret reports on the current situation of individual projects or within project portfolios.
Additionally, the automated system serves as a ‘discipline’ for Project Managers, ensuring timely data updates. Implementing such software creates a shared database of information, including historical review data, and instills confidence in the Management Board by providing a clear track record of how projects have evolved over time.
The result of the above benefits and the experience gained on successfully implemented projects will be the establishment of standards for reporting project statuses, thanks to which each successive initiative will be easy to monitor and complete successfully. The company’s management can easily exercise control over ongoing projects (individual or within project portfolios) without randomly questioning the Managers and Managers responsible for running them.
4 critical steps of the automated project review process:
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PMO’S DEFINITION IN THE SYSTEM OF THE REVIEW DATE FOR SPECIFIC PROJECTS (OR FOR WHEN PROJECT MANAGERS ARE TO UPDATE THEIR PROJECT INFORMATION IN THE SYSTEM).
Different project review dates can be saved for different project portfolios. At the same time, each Project Manager receives an email notification that their project has been selected for review. A counter on the project’s readable dashboard informs the Project Manager daily how many days are left until the upcoming design review.
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COMPLETING THE FORM WITH THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE PROJECT
In this format, several things are completed automatically. Several of them, such as describing the current status of the project condition, schedule, budget, and project risks, require a brief comment from the Project Manager. In addition, there is a field in the system format where the Project Manager can list the decisions the company’s management needs to make on the project. After filling out all the fields in the format, the Project Manager pushes the “Ready for Review” button. Then, the PMO staff is informed that the Manager has filled out all the information and reports, “I am ready for review.” PMO staff can see which Project Managers have reported ready and which still need to do so.
In the screen below from the FlexiProject system, to the left of the project name, a green checkmark shows which projects have been completed and are ready for review.
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PMO VERIFIES THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THE REVIEW FORMATS
When in doubt, the office refines the descriptions with the Project Managers and informs the Board members that they can review the company’s project situation after ensuring everything is ready. The Board of Directors can see which projects are going well and which need intervention or decisions. If a board member needs more information than what is presented on the main screen, he can go into the system to review the tab for a specific project. He can record his decisions in the “Board decisions” field.
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PRESERVATION OF THE FORMAT IN THE SYSTEM AFTER THE PROJECT REVIEW IS CLOSED
Accessing historical reviews from within each project makes it easy to see what Project Managers have communicated in the past, what decisions were made, and to what extent they were implemented. The following screen from the program shows access to four historical project reviews for the project “Implementation of an IT system for management reporting.”
AUTHOR
Włodzimierz Makowski
CEO FlexiProject
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