WHETHER YOU ARE the project manager or a team member, projects seem to have a never-ending flood of documents, paperwork, and e-mails connected with them. It has been stated that project managers spend up to 70 percent of their time communicating with project team members [“Project Team Communications:The Grease, the Glue and the … Gum?” PM Network, May 1999]. Obviously, interactive personal communications are necessary and important. The communications I'm focusing on here apply to document and status distribution. In my experiences, leading and working on projects, the three most common communication problems have been:
Timeliness. Getting the message out at the right time
Information integrity. Ensuring that team members get the correct information
Distribution. Ensuring that all team members get or have access to the information.
Projects in every industry generate a certain amount of documentation. In software development projects, there are requirements documents, specifications documents, architectural documents, design documents, test plans, test cases, project plans, publications plans, status reports, defect reports, and so on. At the speed that we are required to complete projects, it becomes a real nightmare to ensure that all team members and departments receive all these documents and are kept “in the loop.” One solution is to use a central website for collecting and distributing all of this information.
Exhibit 1. The title section provides immediate recognition of when the page was last updated. Also, key project items are available through the links for action items and the calendar.
Exhibit 2. The project documents section stores all documentation prepared during the project. The date and version number of each document is shown.
The Goals. Projects need a place where all project information can be found. The goals for this repository are simple: Provide a single location for project information for project team members, and provide a central point for disseminating project status information to management. A website on a company intranet can be the perfect solution. Website creation and maintenance is easy with tools such as Microsoft FrontPage®. Also, most project planning tools, such as Microsoft Project®, easily allow project status information to be translated into website (HTML) format. An intranet site works because it is secure (within the company) and all (even remote or off-site) employees have access to it. Let's look at how a project website could be structured.
Website Design. Exhibit 1 shows the components of a sample webpage title section. It is very important to include a line stating the date that the page was last updated. This instantly tells project team members if something has been updated or added since the last time they checked the site. Most webpage creation tools have an automatic feature to handle this so that you don't have to update it manually.
The “Features” link produces a brief listing of the basic components of what the project is doing or building. This is usually created at the beginning of a project and not modified unless the requirements change.
The “Risks” link displays a list of all of the risks that the project team has identified. It clearly shows which risks have been successfully mitigated and which are critical “red flags,” and is updated after every team status meeting (usually weekly).
The “Action Items” link shows the list of all action items for the project. The list shows which items have been closed and who is responsible for each open item, along with an expected completion date. This list is updated after each team status meeting.
The “Calendar” link shows the meeting schedule for the next two months. It lists dates, times, meeting purpose, and location. This information is updated as needed and at least monthly.
The “Project Documents” section includes everything documented for the project. The list in Exhibit 2 is customized for a software development project, but the general design could be modified for any industry.
The “Project Plan” link displays a PDF version of the official project plan. This provides a way for everyone to view the plan without needing the specific project-planning tool loaded on his or her PC. This PDF file is updated each week after the project plan is updated with task actuals.
The other listed documents contain three important elements: version number, version date, and approval (or sign-off) date. All of these documents are in PDF format for easy viewing.
The final section of the site is updated weekly, as the project plan is updated with task actuals (see Exhibit 3). So that previous reports are always available, the reports posted here should not be removed. Each week, a new row is simply added to the top of the table for the new reports.
The “Project Plan Status” report is a summary view of the project plan. The fields displayed include the summary level name, baselined finish date, scheduled finish date, actual finish date, finish variance, and percent complete.
The “Plan Statistics” report provides more analysis of the project plan. This includes cost vs. budget, tasks actually finished vs. tasks to be completed, milestone statistics, and change requests (and impact) information.
The “Progress” report lists the tasks that were accomplished during the week, tasks that are ongoing, and tasks that are lagging behind. It includes variance information and the owner for each task.
The “Defect Statistics” report is added once a project moves into the testing phase. This report shows defect statistics in table and graph form.
The “Meeting Minutes” link displays the minutes for the status meeting held during that week. If other meetings (such as document reviews) were held during the week, links also are added for those minutes.
Interactive Additions. To help the project website be more interactive, consider adding ways for team members to interact with the data presented. Some examples:
Include a link that creates an e-mail message so that team members can submit updates to risks or action items, or submit new ones.
Allow team members to access a form for submitting comments on project documents (when they are in the review process). The form could submit the comment to the list of all review comments from the team. The entire list should be available for review at any time on the site. This capability allows reviews to be conducted and resolved quickly.
Consider storing lessons-learned data from all projects in a format where team members and project managers can use a search form to find relevant data.
Develop an electronic method for collecting project task actuals, and collect this data through the website.
The “Master” Website. The design presented earlier is for an individual project website. Most companies have multiple projects running at the same time. A master project management website can be created to house all projects for the business unit or entire enterprise. This way, there is truly one place to go for project information.
Links can be created for each project that will point to other websites, such as described in Exhibit 4. Having a master site provides a central place for providing templates, tools, and links to project management sites on the web. The “Historical Projects Information” link can provide a list of completed projects and access to their websites. Lessons-learned meeting minutes should be added to the websites of all completed projects for easy access.
Exhibit 3. The reports section holds status reports historically so that the current records can be viewed and also the older reports.
Exhibit 4. The master project management website can contain links to each project as well as links to corporate tools and templates.
THE CREATION OF A PROJECT website can significantly improve project communications. As more companies implement project offices, providing and maintaining project websites will become a corporate standard. ■
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Don Sikes, PMP, is an application development project manager in Information Technology at TXU Business Services. He has extensive project and implementation management experience from the healthcare, transportation, e-commerce, and energy industries.