Anywise recently set on a course of recognition and accreditation for the company and its staff and as a result was awarded a Silver Corporate Membership to the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM). Through this process I was offered the opportunity to complete a Certificate IV in Project Management through Scope Training.
I'm an organised person and love writing lists - so I thought I had the whole project management thing covered. However the coursework in the Certificate IV covered a broad range of topics including stakeholder management, scope, time, cost, quality, communication, human resource management and risk management.
It was interesting to relate the theory back to real work examples and reflect on what things have been done well and what has been done poorly in previous work projects.
In one particular workplace the project team was enthusiastic and very passionate. These are things that most workplaces would dream about. However without appropriate project management and leadership, this often led to the group picking up ideas and running with them without adequate planning and failing to set clear objectives. With no way to measure success of interventions and no plan for communication and monitoring, momentum tends to slow. Other areas of work get busy and the project gets lost.
In another workplace, planning and communication was always first on the agenda and decisions were always reached in a democratic manner. There’s a lot to be said about the benefits of collaborative decision making, however in this particular situation, there was no leader to make the final call and progress often stalled. You know things are not going well when staff return from maternity leave and the team is still discussing the same things.
Success appears to come from striking that balance. Clear objectives, clear roles for team members. Spend enough time assessing risk as forward thinking and planning can save a lot of time and money down the track. Regular monitoring is also key in order to keep steering the project in the right direction. Being flexible and adaptable is also important.
With the availability of sophisticated project management platforms such as Mavenlink, it provides such easy access to project information it is almost impossible not to monitor progress.
Click here to read more about the suite of tools used by Anywise.