Key stakeholders always want to know how specific projects are progressing and how successful finished projects were from start to finish. The project review is one of the most effective ways to add transparency to the process and let everyone, from stakeholders to employees, know how projects are progressing.
But the project review process can be a time-consuming and manually intensive exercise. Automating and optimizing project reviews should be essential steps for any team looking to get the most from their efforts.
What is the project review process?
The project review process is the system and workflow by which a project management team evaluates and audits existing and completed projects.
A project review provides an overview of the status of your project across three levels of detail, writes Henrico Dolfing, CIO at PwC Switzerland:
- First, the review should reveal whether you’ll successfully deliver the project, taking into account scope, time, budget, and quality.
- Second, it should determine when you can consider the project you’re delivering (the actual product or service) successful and by what metrics. That could be uptime, customer satisfaction scores, or user adoption.
- Third, it should assess whether and to what degree the project delivers on the business’s financial or strategic goals.
A project review doesn’t have to wait until the end completion of a project, either. It can happen at any time, says Dolfing, “although it has very limited value at the start of a project.”
What are the benefits of the project review process?
There are many reasons to complete a project review. If you’re still in the middle of the project, a review will help you understand the status of it, the information or resources you need to complete it successfully, and the likelihood you’ll meet initial timescales and budget restrictions.
At the end of a project, a detailed project review will help you understand where you succeeded and where you made mistakes, if any. If errors did occur, identifying and evaluating them will make sure you learn the necessary lessons going forward.
Ultimately, a project review improves the odds that future projects succeed. Carrying out a review at the end of every project is a great way to instill and foster a culture of continuous improvement, writes Sanjay Murthi, president of maintenance management software developer SMGlobal.
“Post project reviews typically involve the project team and major stakeholders meeting together and reviewing what went well and what went badly during the project,” he explains. “This input can help participants make the right decisions and plans so that the next project runs better. It can also help clear up misunderstandings and other issues.”
Why is Jotform ideal for project reviews?
If you’re serious about learning from previous projects, it’s essential to treat the project review process the same as you treat any other part of the project management process, writes consultant George Pitagorsky, author of The Zen Approach to Project Management. That means creating “policies, procedures and guidelines that recognize the phases of the review process — initiation, research, and report.”
Jotform is one of the best tools to put such procedures in place. Jotform’s project management form templates make it easy to collect information for the project review process, and you can collect, view, and manage all of that data in a single, shareable database using Jotform Tables. You can even customize Tables and sort your data into different project management views like Calendar and Cards.
Jotform’s approval templates let busy project managers take things to the next level by automating much of the project review and approval process. There are several templated approval flows you can start using immediately to streamline the process and make sure work automatically moves to different stakeholders as you complete the project review process. Improving your project review process has never been easier.
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
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