Introduction
Technological innovation (especially “project administration software program”) has been and will keep on to be an essential part of undertaking administration discussion and follow. This is justified. The appropriate venture administration software that is applied correctly can have important, optimistic effects on an group. Nonetheless, the incorrect software, or software executed inadequately can pull an organization down.
In our encounter, we have noticed businesses wrestle with the proper implementation of the right software. Numerous instances we uncover this stems from a minimal or misunderstood view of the purpose of technologies in the very first location. For case in point, organizations may possibly seem for a tool that can just “plan projects”, or they merely do not consider by means of the broader, strategic objective that the technological innovation must provide. This leads to deciding on the mistaken technological innovation or not utilizing it in a way that supplies the most worth for the group.
The purpose of this white paper is to provide a new standpoint on five major reasons of technology (and task management application in particular) in undertaking administration.
These purposes arrive from lessons discovered in the aviation field. The aviation discipline is comparable to venture administration in the perception that it seeks to develop predictable, effective results in an exercise with inherent threat. It utilizes technology seriously to satisfy that goal. By learning the part of engineering in aviation, we can derive the significant and related needs that technology should serve in venture management. In so doing, we can also boost the strategic use of technological innovation to assistance our organization’s strategic targets, wants, and procedures.
Function one: Situational Awareness
Some of the most essential aviation technologies, this sort of as the ILS (instrument landing program), glass panel displays, and GPS (global positioning technique) are targeted on situational consciousness: letting the pilot know at every single instant where the plane is headed, how it is oriented, how higher it is, in which it demands to go, how it is doing, or a amount of other items of data.
Venture administration engineering is no different. project management course needs to provide situational consciousness of every project’s predicament, exactly where they are headed, how they are performing, and how they need to move forward. It also needs to give consciousness of the predicament of an organization’s whole venture “portfolio.” If you can’t utilize your technologies to know the recent circumstance of your projects, you are not employing technologies effectively.
The “recent project scenario” may be different relying on your firm and its distinct processes and targets. It could indicate the position of the undertaking schedules, the high quality of the deliverables, the present degree of risk, the satisfaction of the customers, or the point out of the price range or profit figures.
It may possibly imply how existing source utilization will impact the task, what problems have arisen that would derail the task, or what has slipped through the cracks.
The critical issue is to usually be informed of the undertaking predicament so that you can make smart, well timed, effectively-informed conclusions.
You can factor this into your venture administration technologies implementation by doing the subsequent:
Recognize the crucial info that you want to maintain situational consciousness.
Make certain that your undertaking administration software device(s) can keep track of and give this info.
Practice your staff on delivering this information in the device.
Function 2: Decision Creating
In aviation, pilots have to be able to make quick selections employing correct information. For case in point, a pilot wants to know precisely what is improper with the aircraft to make a excellent decision on up coming measures. They want to know how much fuel is remaining to make a choice on weather conditions avoidance.
Likewise, managers want to have correct data to make choices in task management. They want to know what is incorrect with a project so they can make a great choice on subsequent measures. They need to have to know resource availability to prioritize endeavours and choose instructions. In a lot of businesses, this type of details is not commonly available, possibly because the correct toolset is not in location or the toolset has not been implemented in a way that supports this strategic objective.
More than 10 a long time in the past there was a venture supervisor situation that was held by the writer of this whitepaper. Every single week, the undertaking management team would devote hours (actually) compiling long position studies for administration. They would require to monitor down the status of every thing and document them, together with a host of other information. Is it good to have this information compiled? Sure. But it confident is a resource-intensive way of doing it that could be substituted with excellent technologies and good process. Was the data efficiently and utilized? That was unclear.
Inquire yourself, what is the details you require to make great conclusions? What problems does your business routinely encounter? Do you have real-time perception into individuals difficulties? Do you have all of this information readily offered at all instances? If not, make a professional-active energy to use procedure and technology to enable your choice making to be significantly much more correct, informed, and powerful.
In get to make selections, two issues have to arise:
The data necessary to make conclusions have to be compiled.
The info required to make choices must be conveniently offered.
Project management software technologies suits into this broader function, but once again you need to have to make certain that:
You know what details you need to have.
Your undertaking management computer software technology is capable of compiling the data you want to make choices.
The info in your task management software program technological innovation is usually commonly obtainable.
Your staff is educated on how to properly compile the proper data into the instrument so that you can retrieve it to make conclusions.
Purpose three: Automation of Routine Tasks
A current article in an aviation periodical referred to a certain modern airliner as a 650,000 pound personal computer. There is a lot of engineering in cockpits nowadays and a lot of it automates program jobs for pilots. For illustration, pilots can use automatic motor management methods that eliminate the want for the pilots to manage the particular thrust ranges, temperatures, and other engine parameters checklists are automated alerts (notifications) are automatic and so forth.
This automation does a few things:
It minimizes the threat of human error (i.e. somebody helps make a error although following a unexciting, schedule method).
It frees up the assets (aka pilots) for much more important issues.
It permits much more responsibilities to be attained in the identical volume of time with less men and women (a third pilot is no longer essential).
There are several, numerous routine tasks carried out in undertaking management which consider an enormous amount of time. Each and every firm has routine tasks that it has to do to be operational. Occasionally it is inconceivable how several countless hours are spent on mundane routines. This may only be since it is far more cozy and straightforward to do factors the same way that we are used to doing them. Some that occur to head contain the notification of functions, the reporting of position, locating out if some thing is carried out or not, obtaining a doc, routing incoming requests for operate, filling out and disseminating kinds, and amassing time.
The correct task administration computer software technology can automate the routine things that your firm does. This has similar positive aspects for task administration:
It lowers the threat of human mistake in your processes.
It frees up assets to do more crucial factors (these kinds of as billable perform or getting perform off a person else’s plate).
It makes it simpler to perform the process (considerably less ability is necessary to execute it).
It makes it possible for a lot more responsibilities to be attained in the same volume of time with fewer individuals.
If you employ or use engineering without possessing this broader goal in head, you will not be utilizing your technological innovation properly. In fact, you may be just swapping 1 resource out for yet another with out a web reward.
What are ways that engineering in task management can automate program duties?
Taking status inputs (this kind of as a team member entering % complete) and immediately rolling that up into project-level standing.
Automatically notifying crucial staff when an problem has arisen.
Centralizing all data so that there is 1 place to find it.
Immediately routing incoming requests so that the proper individual can see and react to it.
Gathering time described details and automatically generating studies on true time usage.
Instantly aggregating all undertaking ideas and schedules into helpful resource utilization views and reports.
Instantly producing new tasks from templates that stick to a pre-defined route and eradicate the need to have to re-create that route.
Automating the technology of proposals and other templated files.
What this seems like for your firm will be distinct simply because you have distinct strategic objectives, different procedures, and diverse actions that consume up a great deal of your staff’s time.
The position is to recognize the purpose of technological innovation so that you can use it strategically to attain a certain purpose.
As with other needs, you need to have to take professional-energetic action to satisfy this function by making sure:
You know which responsibilities are schedule and time-intensive in your group.
Your task management software instrument(s) can automate individuals schedule duties.
Your venture administration software program instruments(s) are set up properly to automate people program duties.
Goal 4: Assist for Standardized Processes
Standardized processes are a massive component of the aviation world and a massive explanation why it has had good results at producing predictable, successful results in a risky setting. In aviation, technological innovation supports the standardized procedure surroundings. Technology is not carried out simply because it would be amazing or neat. It is strategically applied to assistance the standardized procedures. For case in point, component of the takeoff checks approach is to verify that the appropriate runway is programmed into the flight management laptop. Well, in many systems, the appropriate runway is exhibited correct where the pilot needs to see it to comprehensive this standard approach. It is also common treatment that when an aircraft is descending in clouds in the direction of a runway that they can’t continue beneath a particular altitude unless the runway environment is in sight. Technological innovation supports this procedure by displaying the least altitude and alerting the pilots if they go underneath it.
Engineering in project administration tends to be divided from the purpose of supporting standardized processes. We may have a process, but we might also be seeking for a “scheduling resource.” In other words and phrases, we appear at them in a different way, but the two go hand in hand. A single of the primary needs of technology need to be to support the standardized processes of an group. Why is a standardized approach crucial? Since you can not have a predictable (requested) result if you have a random method. The process must be standardized and purchased.
Technological innovation need to support us implement, sustain, and improve standardized processes throughout the group. Illustrations include on the internet checklists and templates, exception reporting of items exterior the process (aka alerts), and workflow automation that follows a specific process. These kinds of issues assistance the strategic method and the all round purpose of applying strategic objectives.
Your undertaking administration software program device(s) ought to fulfill this elementary goal as nicely. You also require to consider the following professional-active methods:
Make certain that your processes are documented accurately.
Ensure that your venture administration software instrument(s) support your procedures.
Make sure that your team understands how to control the approach in the device.
Make sure that your crew is qualified on executing the procedure inside of the tool.
Function 5: Insight into Trends, Issues, and Functionality
In aviation, there are techniques and even businesses in area to mine data and determine trends and likely potential hazards. Is there a pattern of particular mistakes that pilots are creating that require to be tackled by means of education? Is there an unusual spike in routine maintenance anomalies for a particular aircraft?
This is usually the furthest point from the head of a task supervisor. We are so active with the day to day that we can not (or will not) consider the time to search at issues like tendencies and likely difficulties. Even so, that is part of our task. Issues and risks are always lurking and will strike when we least anticipate it.
This is exactly where technological innovation will come in to perform. As in aviation, technological innovation can make it easier to do this. The right engineering will aid us operate reviews, look at data exceptions, and provide related sights into our project administration environments.
There are two factors here value mentioning:
When you decide on engineering, you should preserve this goal in thoughts. How effortless is it to mine for numerous types of info?
We must be experts at speedily drilling into info and extracting helpful information.
Conclusion
Corporations continue to wrestle with possibly inadequate task management computer software resources or venture management application equipment that are not applied properly. The objective of this paper was to assist corporations realize the broader reasons of technologies in venture management by hunting at classes from the aviation area. By carrying out so, companies can expand their perspective and professional-actively apply these reasons in their personal task management environments, thus making a toolset that ever more supports the strategic aims, needs, and procedures of the business.
Want to Find out Much more?
Pay a visit to the “Flying into Task Administration” website at [http://www.flyingintoprojectmanagement.com] for much more insight, lessons, and dialogue on what project administration can find out from aviation to produce predictable results and control danger.
About the Writer
Mark Kenny is an aviation fanatic and task management practitioner. He retains a non-public pilot’s license with an instrument ranking, about two hundred hours of flying time, and practically selected aviation as his occupation. Mr. Kenny has also spent more than fifteen years operating in task management in various capacities. He received a Certificate in Task Management by means of the College of Washington, held venture administration roles in the production, large-tech, and healthcare industries, and is at the moment the President of Crew Interactions, Inc., which develops EnterPlicity.
