Project Management Tools and Resources
Conservative estimates consistently put project failure rates above fifty percent. More than half of projects started fail to meet the organization's objectives. Project Managers can certainly do with some assistance. In what areas specifically do they need help the most?
Common causes of project failure are:
(See, for example, studies by the Standish Group, Gartner, Carnegie Mellon University and PMI.)
How successful are the projects you manage or contribute to? Here are some things you can do and project tools and resources you can use to improve your chances of success.
From the outset, seek out and adopt a committed project sponsor who can overcome organizational roadblocks on your project. Find out who your project’s stakeholders are and communicate with them regularly. Our project management guide will help you identify your key project stakeholders and compile a stakeholder communication plan.
Prevent errors and misunderstanding from propagating throughout your project. Decide the project phases for your project and the key go/no go decision points. What are the expected project outputs for each phase and what are the quality criteria that need to be passed before moving on to the next phase? Check out our project management guide to find out more about project phases and quality reviews.
Divide and allocate project tasks clearly and keep on top of your project schedule. Communicate regularly project progress to all project team members and the governing committee. Our project management tracking tool Project Master will help you schedule and track tasks and create automated project progress reports for all of your key stakeholders.
Stop your project from blowing out by keeping a firm control on proposed project changes. And don’t let an unforeseen event sink your project. Find out what risks can threaten your project and build a risk mitigation strategy into your project plan. Likewise, keep on top of all of your project issues before they get out of hand. To find out more about project change control, risk management and issues management, check out our project management guide. For ready to go change control, risk and issues registers, download our project management tool Project Master.
Use the right project documents for the right purpose, without letting your project drown in a sea of documentation. Whether you are running a large-, medium- or small-sized project, decide from the start which project documents your project needs to generate. Our project management guide explains the purpose of the most common project documents and contains reusable samples ready for you to customize for your specific purpose. If you are running training projects, use the specialist document templates and guides contained in our Training Projects Template Pack.
In order to clarify business owner and other project stakeholder expectations, you will have defined the measures of success of your project even before your project began. Now that your project is completed, you will need to report the success of your project using the previously agreed success criteria. Our Project Scorecard will help you define in measurable terms your success criteria and then compute and report on one summary page how your project performed.
Every project is a valuable learning experience for everyone involved in the project. Successful project managers work hard to get feedback from project team members and the other stakeholders. From this they discover what went well and what did not go so well. These lessons can then be applied to the next project. Our project management guide provides some useful tips on how to conduct a project post-implementation review and contains customizable survey forms that you can use on your project.
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The project management software tools and templates in this section will help you manage your projects successfully. Resources include a practical project management guide, project planning and performance monitoring software and project document templates.
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Whether you are new to project management or have already been involved in a number of projects previously, this no-nonsense introductory guide will help you get the most from projects. It will introduce you to every aspect of project management, including initiating projects, project methods and principles, managing stakeholders, risks, issues and changes, conducting reviews and leading a high performance project team, and more. You will quickly get a grasp of the complexity of project management and its terminology with this easy to read guide.
Project Master is an easy to learn yet versatile project management software tool. Based on Microsoft Excel, it will manage your project schedule, milestones, costs, changes, risks and issues all in one spreadsheet. Gantt charts are created automatically, along with a variety of other reports and charts. Reports and charts update automatically and can be printed at the click of a button. You can now keep your project sponsor and project team updated anywhere and anytime without the need for a dedicated and expensive project tracking tool.
Successful projects begin with a succinct definition of what the project is about - a definition that all major stakeholders can agree with. This template will help you clarify and agree the project's objectives, basic approach, what is within and out of scope, project deliverables, roles, resources, risks and milestones. Your project is then ready for handover to the Project Manager for a flying start. The Template and Guide are packaged as two separate files.
How is your project performing? Use this automated template to monitor and report project results to your project team and project sponsor. Project performance is calculated in five key result areas; cost, delivery, effort, scope and team satisfaction. The Scorecard displays results visually on a single page summary sheet and is suitable for projects of all types and sizes. 
Manage your training program design, development and delivery through all phases of your project with this comprehensive set of tools, templates and guides. This pack will save you valuable time and will get you up and running as quickly and easily as possible. The 12 fully customizable templates cover the following project areas:
