Have you ever had the feeling that your projects are becoming more and more difficult to complete and status review meetings which used to be a pleasant exchange of highs and lows are now focused on ironing out problems and complaints? In fact, when you look at your dashboard, are all of your projects struggling to meet their deadlines? You pride yourself on running a well-oiled machine but lately it feels as though someone has put a spanner in the works and your project management is not as well managed as it used to be.

What has caused these changes and how can you correct them so as your precision project engineering plan is back on track and running even better? Read on as we rewind and go back to basics.

Many hands make light work
Looking back on a succession of completed projects, I knew that I was always fortunate enough to be surrounded by a great team. I constantly reminded my staff to keep a detailed record of their technical skills, knowledge of standards and methodologies and their communication ('soft' skills).

I also had a good job rotation policy in place which lessened the likelihood of attrition. However, as time went by projects seemed to increase and my resources were becoming stretched. The team were forced to work longer hours in order to complete tighter project demands which left little time for professional development as a team. This had the draining effect of sapping the motivation. I, as project manager was constantly stressed as it was my responsibility to fulfil these projects but I was concerned that there was very little I could do to address the lack of support I was giving my team. I had to change my persona from one of caring, empathetic, being a good listener and problem solver, motivator, encourager and mentor to one of a cold hearted project grinder.

I knew that this could not continue and as we were working under so much pressure there was the looming danger that we would end up scraping each other off the ceiling! I came to the conclusion that more projects needed more hands on board as it was the only way to balance out the workload. This took off the pressure and allowed us to have more time for professional development, it also gave me more time to mingle with the team and keep their spirits lifted.

A time to reflect
Thinking back, I can recall the days when I had solid methodologies and processes in place which gave me the freedom to analyse work practices and adjust them to make continual improvements in terms of time management, technologies, risk management etc. They also enabled me to record, study and put in place practices which worked well. I also had processes in place for software development and testing. All in all, my project management regime revolved around review and feedback.

As the conveyor belt of projects kept coming my way, there was very little time for reflecting and learning from the past. The team was pre-occupied with time schedules and we were meeting less and less for group reviews, phase/project reviews and individual reviews. It was frustrating to have to cut corners and reduce the amount of time spent analysing the performance of each individual before releasing him from the project. Collecting data had become lapse so learning from our successes and failures had decreased.

This system had to be reversed. I began to make project recording and reflecting a dedicated part of my life. Now I have all of the information I need to ensure that the mistakes of the past never resurface in the future.

As the projects started to grow in size, so did the organizations that we were working for. However, the communication network became too intricate and it was difficult to know who was communicating with whom, how often and in what format. As projects increased, so did the stakeholders and the different modes of communication became even more confusing. I knew from this chaos that I should have defined key communication processes. When the communication network started growing, I should have used a record and review mechanism so as I could evaluate effectiveness or non-effectiveness and modified accordingly. I have now taken effective measures to rectify this matter and am continually working on ways to improve communication both within and outside an organization.

I always had a watertight monitoring system in place which alerted me of any deviations and improvements, it also helped me to benefit from things that I had learnt whilst working with an organisation. By monitoring, I was able to ascertain if the project was performing well and if I had got my priorities right or if they needed to been adjusted in any way. However, as projects grew in size, my system quickly became unreliable. I have now made changes to allow for this increase in scale and have set specific review periods where I can sit down with my team and assess the way that we are performing and look into more efficient ways of monitoring procedures.

Lessons to be learned
I am a firm believer in recording every step of the way so as I can learn from past mistakes and benefit from best practises. Project failures made me aware of potential risks and I was able to stop them from happening again. All of the team now have project time allocated into their schedules so as we can all learn from past mistakes and continuing to improve with our best practises.