4 Tips That Can Help Your Business Better Manage IT Projects

Have you ever tried to manage a major IT project yourself? If you have, you know that it’s a huge time sink and that there’s a lot involved with the process. We’ll discuss four of the best ways that you can save time and resources while managing your latest technology implementation project.

Understand the Needs of Your Organization
What does the project do for your business? For example, are you implementing a new infrastructure design that makes data more easily accessed by your users? Maybe you found a better email system that you want to use over your old one. Or, maybe you understand that the cloud is the future of your business and you need to migrate all of your data. Whatever the project is, make sure that you know exactly what you hope to gain from it.

You want to ask yourself how the change benefits anyone else involved, too. Will it help your employees better fulfill their duties? Will it make your services more readily accessible to anyone who buys from you? Basically, you need to understand if it’s something that will be mutually beneficial for everyone involved. If it’s not, then why are you doing it in the first place?

Budget for Unexpected Circumstances
When you’re implementing a project, you have to follow the guidelines stated in the project’s budget. However, this isn’t always possible, as unexpected circumstances would lead you to repeat certain tasks, which naturally leads to wasted assets and wasted time. Furthermore, changes in the price of resources and labor could affect the timeline of a project. Suppliers may not be able to meet obligations, or prices may skyrocket to break your budget.

Basically, you should ask yourself what could go wrong when you begin implementing a new IT solution, and ensure that time is allowed just in case something happens which is out of your control. If you do this, the worst-case scenario is that your project is completed on-time and on-budget. If it’s finished as intended, however, you have a lot of extra time and capital to spend on other tasks following the implementation.

Find Ways to Judge Success
Key performance indicators should be a well-known part of your project implementation process. KPIs are what show how well your process works, and they can make or break the project implementation process in both the present and future. If you keep track of metrics like these, you can use them for future projects to make changes accordingly. Here are some of the KPIs that you should consider.

• Actual cost
• Cost Variance
• Earned Value
• Planned Value
• Return on Investment

Keep Everyone Informed
A project management team is generally made up of highly-skilled, specialized workers who are working together toward a common goal. Anyone involved in the project management process needs to stay in touch with the progress being made toward that goal so as to make sure that tasks aren’t done more than once. Most importantly, though, is that it’s important these tasks get completed properly so that they don’t need to be done more than once.

You can keep track of all tasks and resources assigned to a project through the implementation of project management software. It creates a single point of contact for all resources involved so that they can keep track of all progress made. It’s just one of the ways that project management solutions can help you keep your projects on-track and on-budget.

All of this might sound like a bit much, which is why we recommend that you go through an outsourced IT provider like Directive for your IT project management needs. To learn more, reach out to us at 607.433.2200.