Sometimes, depending on the size and visibility of the project, there is a tendency to want to cut some corners on. This may come about due to pure laziness. Or maybe it comes as a directive or request from your executive management. However it evolves, it can be a slippery slope and it can cause big problems on your project. You may have to ‘scale’ your best practices for the project depending on its size and budget, but it’s never a good idea to skip key activities altogether – even if you’re being told to do this by superiors. If the directive to cut corners is coming from above, you may need to educate them on the risks that are invited into the project by eliminating key best practices steps along the way.
At any rate, it’s important to pay attention to detail no matter how big or small the project is. And, given that thought, I’ve outlined four poor decisions you could make on your project just to save time or money – these could come back to haunt you in a big way later in the project. They are:
Skipping key up front planning documents
What you or your customer may consider time wasters are actually building blocks to good project documentation and understanding. Even if the customer isn’t paying for the early planning documents some of them still should be created – especially ones like the Communications Plan, the Risk Plan, and the Change Control Document outlining how project changes and change orders will be handled. Creation and signoff of these plans at the beginning of the project will ensure everyone understands how to handle these issues and processes when they come up and customer satisfaction will be higher as a result.
Not putting together a detailed master schedule
This should be done even for the smaller projects. A detailed project schedule created and distributed early in the project provides the customer and project team with a solid understanding of the tasks, goals, level of effort, and timeframe for the project. Even if the project is extremely simple and you never update it after the first creation, it will still help your project team and customer – and you – far more than you realize.
Not creating a requirements traceability matrix
Thorough requirements documentation with a matrix to trace the requirements through the design and development of the solution will help ensure that key requirements aren’t missed in the process. With a requirements traceability matrix, you’ll be able to document how and where each customer requirement is met in the solution.
Skipping risk identification and management
Failure to plan is planning to fail. We’ve all hear that, right? Well, it’s true…and if you fail to proactively identify potential risks that may affect your project then there’s no way you’ll be prepared to react when one of them hits. And, believe me, it’s highly likely that at least one of them WILL hit. When was the last time that you managed a project and everything – I mean EVERYTHING – went according to plan? Nothing was late, the budget was perfect, all 3rd party vendors delivered as expected, the customer requirements were right on the mark, etc.