PM Digest: Managing Project Issues

Issues come up in all projects. Some projects seem to attract more than others because of complexity, skill sets, and expectations of project sponsors. Knowing this, it is especially important that you manage issues before they manage you.

Issue management is an important part of any project. If you manage issues well, your projects are much more likely to be successful. If your project issues are unmanaged, there is a very high probability that your project will be late, not meet the required scope, or be over budget.

There are 3 important activities for issue management:

Issue tracking - Because of its importance in providing an early warning to project problems, issue management should be a centerpiece of all of your project team meetings. In this setting, encourage team members to raise issues and capture them in a comprehensive list of issues.
Assigning owners - Each issue should be assigned an owner. The owner is responsible for clarifying the issue, investigating how to resolve it, and following through to close the issue. In your list of issues, track the name of the owner and any clarifications on what it means to own the selected issue.
Follow-through - As the project manager, you will need to follow up with issue owners on a periodic basis to obtain status and remind the owners of their responsibilities. For issues that are not severe, you may be able to wait for your team meeting. For those that have a major impact on the project, individual follow up is especially important.

Issues may be tracked in a spreadsheet. A quick glance at the issue list should reveal answers to the following questions: