In the Chapter of Project Management escalation is a dirty lesson. Experienced Project Managers hate escalation to hear. They know how to avoid this. I have more then 12 years experience in IT. I worked for various corporates starting from mid-level to large scale industries. But nearly in every organization I found escalation. Not only to small scale organizations but also escalation is open to level companies. Truly speaking yet we have all that processes using which we can avoid escalation. But it depends up on Project Management Skills how Project Manager manage the flow. Make sure if we will follow correct processes to execute our job escalation will never hit us.
There are several causes those creates escalation. Software development is a never ending process. It’s a royal job. Don’t be in hurry, Do cool divide the project works to phase by phase. Keep remember requirements never going to end. So, “How to avoid escalation?”, “What are the processes we need to follow?” during a project development. Let us discuss one by one in below paragraphs.
Always accept requirements with written proofs
As I told above Software Development is a never ending process. Customer can change his/her requirements at any point of time. So before decide a time-line or project plan make sure all the requirement details you received from your Customer in format of an email or signed documents. This activity helps to save us from UN-planned additional requirements. During the initial phase of a project there are many things which even Customer don’t expect to face. During real-time when those things come Customer think to add those features. While for you this is a phase II item.
Before send the Estimation take Approval from Experts
Missing Deadline is a high level of escalation. Generally we miss deadline because of wrong planning. Before send Estimation & Deadline take approval from experts. Always keep buffer time in hand. In case of any thing will go wrong buffer time can save you. From my personal experience I can suggest during you prepare the estimation analyze the resources well. Know their capabilities & planned leaves in advance. Never prepare an estimation by thinking we will work late night to complete this. This creates problem in real-time.
Give priority to Employee Satisfaction
Many time it was found to achieve deadline we put pressure on employees to work late night. It is OK if the employee not rendered his regular duty. But after regular duty if you are pressurizing your employee to work late night in long run it creates UN-favorable conditions. During you prepare resource planning think well about the Skills & Capability of the resources you are going to use in your project. To have a successful organization employee satisfaction matters.
Proper Time Management & Correct Decision Making
Time management is a key pillar or successful project management. Who knows how to manage time no body in the world can defeat him. To be a ideal project manager give priority to successful time management. Prepare planning & choose the tasks in priority basis. To know more on Time Management you can refer our release Time Management is the first stair to your Success.
On the way of Time Management, Correct Decision making helps to save time. Be a quick decision maker. While working in a team during a decision if required you can also take the help of your team members.
Follow process oriented Development Guidelines
During you develop a Software always follow processes. For an example if more then one developers are working in your project always use code repository. It helps to protect code loss & saves time from code merging. While doing testing list out the issue in a formatted way. Here you can refer any on-line tools like JIRA or you can even maintain the list in MS-Excel. During issue fixation after verification from QA team update the sheet & share it with Customer.
Like the above there are some key points by following them we can avoid escalation in Project Management. I am grateful to you for you time you shared to read the above. From your experience if you have any inputs addition to the above please feel free to share a comment. We welcome your experiences.
