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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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:

• What is the issue?
• What is the impact?
• What is the severity?
• When was it documented?
• Who owns the issue?
• What is the current status?
• When was it resolved and closed?
• What was the final outcome?

Download one of these sample Issue Tracking Template for an example.

• Issue Tracking Template (Adobe PDF)
• Issue Tracking Template (Microsoft Excel)

Take Aways

Here are a few take aways for you, if you feel like you are being managed by issues:

1. Download the sample issue tracking sheet.
2. Fill in issues for your current project. Does each have an owner?
3. What are the most severe issues? How will you work through them?

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Essential Project Management Dashboards

You are fully equipped for your project. You have your project schedule, your risk assessment, your issues list, project budget, and communication plan. But what do you communicate to your project sponsor or other stakeholders? Many project managers will communicate only the project schedule, but there are so many other perspectives to present to your stakeholders.

Another twist: when you are just starting to gain control of your project, your manager assigns you another one, and another, and another. How do you keep up with all of the changes that are going on in your projects?

Both of these problems can be solved by creating and maintaining project dashboards. Project dashboards help keep you focused on what is important about your projects and allows you to communicate at the right level of detail to those who have an interest in it.

There are two main kinds of dashboards to consider: 1) a project dashboard; and 2) a project portfolio dashboard.

Project Dashboard

A project dashboard is for a single project. It provides a complete picture of your project from a variety of perspectives, including schedule, budget, risk, and issues. Each of these areas should be easy to view quickly for areas of concern. Red, yellow, and green light indicators are common on dashboards, allowing the eye to quickly find issues for further exploration and explanation.

Sample Project Dashboard: Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Word

Project Portfolio Dashboard

A project portfolio dashboard may be used for communicating multiple projects at the same time. It may be used by individuals who are managing several projects or by a department manager who's team has multiple projects. It contains less detail than the individual project dashboard, but communicates similar indicators, lined up for a quick scan across multiple projects.

Sample Project Portfolio Dashboard: Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Excel

Take Aways

If you don't use a project dashboard, download the samples here and adapt them for your own use. Remember, keep it high level, but make sure that unmitigated risks and issues stand out clearly.

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