SPECIFIC WEEKLY JOBS

There are two specific jobs that should form part of every project manager's week. These are Monday morning project planning meetings and producing a project status report last thing on Friday. These were described in detail in Chapters 7 and 8 respectively. We summarize them again here.

Monday morning planning meetings

Planning meetings should be held as close to the beginning of the week as possible. Their aim is to agree what proportion of the project schedule each person is going to bite off that week. Delays, people absences and unforeseen things occurring on projects can all be dealt with at this meeting. The project manager can use the PC-based model of his project to make sensible decisions about how to deal with unexpected events.

Friday project status report

The status report should be done last thing on Friday and the report itself, or versions of it, delivered to the customer, management and the project team. Where the Monday project meeting sets targets, the Friday status report records results.

These results should also be recorded in the actual schedule and effort columns of the project Gantt chart or on an estimating score card.