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The Busy Person's Project Management Book
Chapter 7 - Well how did you go?
So you've planned, tracked, reported and managed the changes to your project. You and the team have just implemented the changes that your project was developing. Congratulations!
However, your project is not quite over yet.
Just as after our journey, we tend to reminisce and perhaps bore our friends with videos and photos of our favourite places, there are a few important post-project activities that you and the team need to complete.
In this chapter, we'll discuss the stabilisation process, the post-implementation review and the planning of any additional development on your product.
Project stabilisation
Once your project has implemented the changes or new product that it was developing, there is typically a period of time where the team will be required to support the use of the product or changes in procedures.
As shown in Figure 24, you and the team would normally be required to provide two important post-project services during this period.
Defect Repair
It is rare that you and team will manage to deliver a perfect outcome. Let's face it - developing a new product or set of procedures is very different to what we are used to doing and is often very complex. So making some mistakes is to be expected. As people start using your new product or procedures, they will find errors or defects or problems. As these problems are raised with you and the team, you should record what the problem is, who raised it and how you are going to fix them. You will find that many of the problems can be corrected quickly and depending on resources, you should implement the problem fix immediately keeping a track of the effort required to implement the fix. In some cases, the effort required to fix the problem could be major. In these cases, you should leave these until you have started planning future development or enhancements (see later in this chapter);
Consulting
The other service that you and the team will have to provide for people using your project's outcomes will be providing advice and consultancy. Some of the issues raised with your team will not be errors in the product itself but rather mis-understandings resulting from ineffective education and documentation on how to use the new product or service changes. In most cases, you'll be able to answer these questions over the phone. As with defects, you and the team should record who called, what was the problem, how long did it take you to resolve the query and are there any follow-up actions required?
Depending on the size of the changes that your project has implemented, the project stabilisation period would generally range from 1 week to a month.
Post-implementation Review
As shown in Figure 24, the new product or service should eventually become relatively stable and established as part of the way of doing things. Once you notice that the level of defects and consultancy are dropping, you and the team should begin planning to conduct a formalised review of how well your project went.
Whereas in your travels, the evaluation of how your journey went tends to be informal and ad-hoc, in project work, it is very important to review and document the successes and failures in your project.
Fig. 24 - Project stabilisation pattern
The conduct of a Post-implementation Review or PIR (for those who like acronyms) is a normal project management activity. It serves a number of purposes:
- it measures success
Your organisation would have invested your time and, in many projects, substantial investment in equipment to run the project. It is important for the team to determine how well the project met its Business Case (particularly the objectives, costs and any benefits that the team and sponsor identified at the beginning). If you planned and managed your project as we've described in this book, you should have a Business Case that can be the basis for the review. In general, the process would involve a series of interviews and, if appropriate, surveys of the people impacted by the project;
- it provides a vehicle for learning and sharing
You and your team will have learnt many things throughout your project. It is important that, before you all move back to other work, you should have a chance to stop and document the things that you picked up on the way. Typically, you would be interested in how well your estimates were made, what risks occurred and what other factors did you miss. By writing these down, you can give other teams about to undertake other projects a chance to avoid your mistakes and gain from your successes;
- it marks the end of the project
This is a personal factor. In many cases, the team will experience a feeling of anti-climax after the project has implemented the changes. This feeling is to be expected after all the hard work and sweat and tears that you and the team would have put into the project. The conduct of a Post-implementation Review provides a good psychological end to the project as the team will have a clear picture of how well they really did.
In a PIR, there are two things that you are reviewing. The first is the product and the second is the process. In reviewing the product, you would focus on things such as whether the product met the clients' and sponsor's requirements; how well has it been accepted by the people impacted by the changes and how well is it running in the business place. The form in Figure 25 could be used as a basis for surveying the various users of the product.
Fig. 25 - Post-implementation Review form - Product
The review of the process is really about how well did you manage the project. This component of the review would focus on your estimates, risk management, change management, communication with stakeholders and so on. The form in Figure 26 provides some of the factors that you and the team should review in this area.
Fig. 26 - Post-implementation Review form - Process
You should discuss these areas with all key stakeholders and users of your project's product. The results of these surveys should be documented and summarised and given to your project sponsor.
The results of the PIR would also be stored with your project's Business Case for access by other project teams. Once this is completed, you have a couple of final tasks to undertake.
The first is to organise another activity - the post-project CELEBRATION.
