This week, we expand on project management in the IT service industry. Successful project management defines the vision for the project and ensures each person that plays a role is aligned in goals, expectations and outcomes. 

In last week’s White Board Wednesday video, Brian and Mike spoke high level on project management! They expand on the tenets of project management that NETRIO utilizes that has proved successful for the company.

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NETRIO’s 8 Tenets of IT Project Management 

1. Project Initiation

During project initiation, there are many steps to take to identify how the project will operate. While there are several bullet points to complete in this first step, each is incredibly important in the overall success of the project. The timeline of project initiation is 2-4 days. In some cases, this can be done more efficiently, while other projects may extend past 4 days. Regardless of timeline, do not rush this step.  

• Establish overall goals and objectives
• Identify roles and responsibilities
• Scope of the project
• Pinpoint the project deliverables 
• Establish an Initial project schedule
• Estimate the project timeline
• Discuss the financial analysis 
• Complete your project charter 

2. Planning the Project

Once you have defined the bullets from project initiation, it is time to start planning the project. During this step, you will make important decisions like team members who will be on the project, refining cost and continue to refine the detailed schedule. 

• Refine the scope
• Team selection, replace role with name
• Defining resource requirements
• Refine costs
• Establish detailed schedule after tasks and dependencies 
• Risk planning 
• Implementing Quality assurance

3. Execution

After the initial planning phase, it is time to begin executing. This tenet is where you will put the rubber to the road and begin really executing what was outline in tenets one and two. 

• Managing people on the project
• Adhering to the schedule
• Coordinating resources according to how the project is going 
• Conducting weekly or bi-weekly meetings with the chosen team 
• Implement cursory tasks reviews

4. Resource Leveling and Control

As you begin executing the project, there will be ongoing things that need to be done in order for the success to continue. Those steps include:

• Measuring ongoing activity
• Performance to budget analysis
• Performance to schedule analysis 
• Adjusting based on tenets one through three

5. Documentation

According to Simpli Learn, documentation must lay the foundation for quality, traceability, and history for both the individual document and for the complete project documentation. It is also essential that the documentation is well arranged, easy to read, and adequate.

6. Risk Management

ProjectManagement.com states, “Project risk management is the process of identifying, analyzing and then responding to any risk that arises over the life cycle of a project to help the project remain on track and meet its goal.” However, it is not only reactionary. That is why Risk Management is also part of tenet one. During this step, you will:

• Assess tasks and risks
• From there, how do we manage that?

7. Communication

We all know communication is vital to the success of any partnership, but it is a non-negotiable on projects. Good communication will allow the project to flow smoothly, keep everyone aligned on progress and ensure timely deliverables. At NETRIO, we used Microsoft Teams for internal and external communication. 

8. Hand Off to Long Term Support

Now that tenets one through seven are completed, it is time to hand off the project to the team that will maintain the ongoing support. The goal of any project at NETRIO is to complete a project and handoff is a supportable state. The steps we use for project management ensure each project handed off is successful and ready to move on. It is also important to not that steps four through seven can be repeated continuously throughout the project and are critical to success. 

This blog post is part of NETRIO’s weekly White Board Wednesday series. Follow along on Linkedin and YouTube each week as Brian and Mike discuss use cases, new technology, and trends. The goal is to provide insights for enterprise customers and channel partners, trying to solve complex problems using technology.