Organizing a Project Review Team

Program Management may choose to organize a project review team when planning a review for larger projects. The team approach works especially well when several project teams are involved in a large project.

Program Management may use a variety of tactics in organizing a project review team. For instance, functional discipline groups can be created: one for development, one for testing, one for user education, and one for program management. Another example of a project review team is a multifunctional group comprised of members from each functional discipline, based on the particular development process phases.

Project Review Preparation

Upon its organization, a project review team should meet separately, prior to the actual review meetings. The product team leads and managers should also attend this preliminary review team meeting to determine the project review schedule and goals. During this preliminary meeting, the attendees should identify all groups and individuals needed for the actual project review.

Gathering Information

In gathering information for a project review team, the entire project team responds by e-mail with comments about the project's strengths and weaknesses, and also with improvement suggestions for the next milestone or release. The project review team should concurrently interview team members in preparation for one or more project review meetings.

Analyzing

The project review team should ensure that all pertinent information generated before and during the project review is gathered and analyzed.

Developing Recommendations

To develop recommendations, the project review team should prioritize each action item and issue identified as a strength or weakness based upon its effectiveness at reaching the project team's goals. Such resulting recommendations should focus only on high-priority items and issues.

Problems, items, and issues that pose project weaknesses should be studied carefully. If best practices exist to address such weaknesses, the project review team should list these best practices as recommended solutions. For problems with no known best-practice solution, the project review team should determine alternatives for solving the problems.

Presenting and Reviewing Recommendations

As a final step in the preliminary review process, the project review team should present a summary of all findings and recommendations to the management and project teams. All additions, revisions, and corrections should be recorded for inclusion in the project's final report. The project team as a whole should select the recommendation or recommendations to be accepted to implement in the development process for the next milestone or release.