4.1 Best Practices for the Project Management Workflow

The purpose of the Project Management workflow is to ensure the successful management of your project team s efforts. During the Transition phase the Project Management workflow focuses on several activities, including:

• Managing your development team s efforts

• Risk identification and management

• Project assessment

• Updating your project schedule, estimate, and plan

• Managing your relationship with your project stakeholders

• Managing your relationship with vendors and contractors

• Navigating the political waters of your organization

During the Production phase your project management efforts revolve around the management of your operations and support staff as well as your configuration and change control efforts. You may find that you need to lobby for support to begin work on a new release of your system or even to begin work on a related system. People management issues are still relevant, such as career management efforts as well as training and education efforts for your staff. Remember, many activities performed by information technology (IT) staff are not performed within the scope of the development of a system, activities that still need to be managed.

Although project management has been covered in each volume of this four book series, there are still two major topics that have yet to be addressed: best practices for learning from your experiences and best practices for recovering from (near) disasters.