A Project Management methodology is a series of phases, actions and tasks that needs to be followed in order to deliver projects successfully. However one of the major issues many companies experience is that once they have selected a project management methodology that suites their needs, they do not know how to implement the methodology successfully.
In order to implement a project management methodology successfully, you need to follow just 5 steps. These are:
Create an implementation plan
Customize the methodology for every project
Train all stakeholders on how to use the methodology
Constantly make sure everyone follow the methodology
Improve the methodology on an ongoing basis
The first thing to do in order to ensure that you implement the project management methodology successfully is to create a proper implementation plan. Take into consideration every action you need to do in order to complete the five steps listed above. Once you have done the plan, make sure you work the plan.
Not all projects are the same and because of these differences, you must be able to customize and adapt your methodology to such an extent that it fits the project. As long as you ensure that your overall methodology includes everything that may ever be needed by your projects, taking away from this methodology to fit your current projects should be easy.
One of the major failures in implementing any methodology is that the stakeholders are not communicated to as to the new methodology. You must train everyone that will use the methodology on the actual methodology and how to use it. Also remember that as new members join the team, that they are also in their induction trained on your methodology.
In order to ensure long term success of the methodology, you must through regular project management meetings and other methods of communication ensure that all stakeholders follow the newly implemented methodology. It may in the beginning require more effort to get all stakeholders to buy into the methodology, but once they start seeing the benefits, they will more easily adopt the methodology.
Lastly, a methodology should never be a cast-in-concrete thing, because as times change, so will your requirements and the methodology must be reviewed regularly to ensure that it is optimized and improved on an ongoing basis. A lot of feedback that may come from project management, not project feedback, sessions should provide input into improving the methodology.
If you follow these 5 steps and constantly improve and then re-implement your methodology, you should in no time have a very successful methodology that should be adopted by everyone in your team and organization.
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