Holistic Project Management Approach

What is this "Holistic Project Management" ?

There is a structured, methodical approach to project management. That's the usual way!

Road less traveled approach to project management is always Holistic way. Here it is more about personal touch, management based on common sense, ethics, values and an involved and passionate approach from a PM.

Common sense is what they don't teach you anywhere. It comes from within. Each and every aspect of project management, involves taking a decision and no tool in the world can replace your common sense.

Ethics in dealing with every stakeholder, transparency in each and every communication is something customers expect by default.

Understanding the values, tradition and being sensitive to the culture of working environment can reap lot of rewards in terms of execution of the project. An example could be to plan for local holidays well in advance so last minute changes to the schedule can be avoided. Most commonly overlooked item is the weekends. It never gets considered and most of schedule slippages are adjusted by making people work on weekends.

Involving team members in decision making, participative interactions in all forms of project execution will ensure project’ shared vision is spread across each and every member of the team.

When the team is united, individuals are motivated and passionate about achieving the project’ goals, nothing could prevent the project success.

Unhappy mind never gets things right and never does things right. There will be re-work. Better to concentrate on issues affecting team members' focus in achieving things rather than planning for re-work. Re-work is an added cost to a company and affects the profitability of a business unit/organization.

Personal touch on all these factors influence the team’ intangible asset – minds of the stakeholders to automatically work towards achieving things.

Tools do help a PM, but a simple pen and paper would do most of the day to day activities. Tools take up lot of time and effort. Most of the reports go unnoticed unless a proper review happens. Being lean helps achieve more.

Always on top of the situations, events, things that could trigger a variation will yield planned results.

Some of the things that seem to help on a daily basis are:
- checking some reliable weather forecast
- checking daily news and happenings on the state – political, economical changes
- checking on news about contagious diseases around the town, so your team is appraised of. Worst case, you can plan buffers for members’ absence due to this.
- checking on civic works, traffic updates so one of your key resource can be instructed to plan his travel accordingly at least on a crucial delivery day
- checking upfront about leave plans whenever holidays/festive season comes. Members do plan out and combine holidays and that could affect the schedule.

Considering the above factors in all phases of Project Management can lend to a holistic approach to achieving things more….

We will see few more of this later…..

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