How Do We Lead Project Activities to Keep on Track?
The doing part of a project is the implementation of actions and task planning and includes reporting of achievements. The desired output of this stage is therefore an implemented project plan that closely follows the schedule of tasks and completes the activities.
You may want to test the robustness of the changes and tasks you propose by discussing them with relevant stakeholders before they are implemented. This can help to decrease the likelihood of issues occurring when you move into carrying out the complete tasks. It is useful to build rapport and trust with those affected by the change to help the implementation go smoothly. You can refer to the project brief to identify stakeholders, their interests and their power, this will help with what, when and how you should communicate with them during project implementation.
Once you start implementing the early tasks, make sure you assess them to ensure they have been done to an acceptable standard. This process can be done in continuous cycles (PDCA – plan, do, check, act) until the whole task or activity is implemented. Milestones and checkpoints are there to celebrate achievements and check progress.
Let’s not underestimated the job in keeping activities on track, we must consider managing the tasks but leading people, see the video for an explanation.