TIPS FOR MANAGING PROJECT ISSUES
By Marc Hirshfield, Practice Director
One of the most tedious and time consuming exercises to manage is the infamous issues log. Management
of issues on projects is probably the most time consuming and laborious activities the project team will need
to deal with. Typically most project managers utilize a standard MS Excel® Spreadsheet to manage
their issues. The spreadsheet is typically broken down into a series of categories to help drive
escalation, prioritization and management of project issues. Most projects should have a weekly meeting
in which they review the project issues and provide updates to the project manager with status. Although
the management of issues is a fairly straight forward activity, it is surprising as to how often this activity
can make or break your project, especially when trying to drive a strict project timeline.
Leverage the following tips when managing your project:
Prioritize and categorize issues as critical, high, medium and low.
- Critical issues must be resolved prior to going live (showstoppers).
- High issues are not showstoppers, but as the critical list works is way down, high issues should be
next in the “pecking order” to be resolved. If these issues are not resolved by the go-live,
they should be resolved within a 15-30 day window to support application rollout, etc.
- Medium issues: Moderate impact to end-user or support. An issue which can be resolved post-live.
- Low issues: Minimal if no impact to end-user or support. An issue which can be resolved post-live.
Enhancement requests: It is important to identify enhancement requests as a separate category so these
items do not become integrated with the other issues. An enhancement request by definition should only be
functionality that is above and beyond the contracted or base functionality within the application. This does
not mean a critical issue can not be an enhancement request, but it is important to separate these items in
order to maintain clear communication.
Date: Set a deadline for completion. Although the reality of setting dates is difficult, it is
important to set a deadline and try to stick with it. It is also a good idea to categorize between
customer or vendor responsibility. This helps drive ownership and responsibility between parties when
applicable.
Owner: Probably the most important tip to manage. Every issue must have an owner and that owner
must take responsibility for driving and updating the issue.
Categorize Modules: If the project implementation has modules, it is important to break the modules
down. For example; results, orders, clinical documentation, POE, Revenue Management, etc.
The key to success in managing issues lies in being organized, consistent and frankly tough on your project
team to drive them to full closure. There are many ways to categorize, organize and manage issues.
The most important message to deliver is ownership. As the project manager, you are not responsible for
resolving the issue, but for making sure the issue is resolved! Leverage working with your team and
delegate accordingly. It is important to make sure the team takes accountability and responsibility
collectively in resolving issues. If not, you will be left with a project plan that can not be reached
because of an insurmountable amount of issues still outstanding in which your team has left you with the
bag!
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VCS PMO METHODOLOGY
So what does the VCS PMO Methodology have the others do not? Simple, it is value add to our project
management service offering at no extra charge. As part of the VCS Project Management service offering,
we share access to our Project Management Methodology. The VCS PMO methodology provides templates broken
down into four primary phases. These phases include, Project Initiation, Project Planning,
Project Execution and Control, and Project Close and Contract Close. Each phase provides a
comprehensive framework which provides a simple and easy to read description for each activity, ready to
populate industry specific templates and a separate area documenting industry experience and knowledge in easy
to read and straight forward terms.
PMI ®
The VCS PMO Methodology also follows the framework and principals of the Project Management Institute
(PMI®). This will be extremely beneficial to your titled project managers or leads looking to spring
board their education and decrease their learning curve with the PMP® certification. Many of the
terms, templates and examples leverage the framework and teachings of PMI®.
Here are a just a few examples of standard templates available within the VCS PMO Methodology:
- Project Charter
- Project Profile Document (“one stop shopping” for all your project information).
- Communication Documentation
- Standard Status Reports
- Standard Agenda Templates
- Standard Minutes Templates
- Standard Budgets
- Acceptance Forms
- Quality Checkpoint Templates
- Project Executive Dashboard
- Standard Issues Log
- Standard Risk Log
- Communication Matrix
- Project Calendar
- Cause and Effect Diagrams (Fishbone Diagram)
If you would like to see a demo, please contact us at
vcs@getvitalized.com today!
MESSAGE FROM MARC
Hello and welcome to the third edition of the PMO Newsletter. This coming April 2006, the VCS PMO will have
its first year anniversary! The practice has continued to grow strong by maintaining our core value of
providing fundamentally strong and sound project management to our customers. Our latest edition to the
PMO team is Lisa Simon. Lisa has 17 years in the healthcare industry, master’s degrees in business
and information systems and is currently supporting one of our customers on an Eclipsys SCM® 3.05 to 4.0
upgrade. We are very excited to have her join our team. Lisa is just another example of how the
VCS PMO is growing to meet the demands of qualified project management in our industry.
This past quarter we introduced several new and exciting changes to the practice, including our fully
developed web based VCS PMO Methodology. If you are interested in seeing the fundamentals in managing a
project from initiation through closure fully laid out in a web based format, you definitely need to check
out this tool! The practice is also now partnering with Villanova University® to provide VCS Project
Managers certification and PMP® continuing education credits (CEUs). All the project managers at
VCS are either PMI® certified or within our career management program towards certification. The
introduction of the Villanova University Certification Program affords our PM’s the ability to stay
abreast of the latest and greatest within the growing new career path of project management. This
additional level of certification and education for our PM’s ultimately helps increase our performance,
level of service and support to our customers. We are thrilled about this new program at VCS and will be
sharing more information in future newsletters to report feedback on possible expansion of similar programs
into our customer base.
Hopefully you will find the articles in our newsletter interesting and educational on many different
levels. If there are specific topic you would like to see addressed, please don’t hesitate to
contact us at vcs@getvitalized.com . As always, if you are
interested in learning more about our project management services, tools or just want to chat, please feel
free to contact me at mhirshfield@getvitalized.com. We
wish you a productive quarter and best of luck on your current project initiatives.