One of the most important tasks of any project manager is the management of unforeseen problems and issues that arise during the project life cycle. Issue management and tracking is another integral part of the project management discipline. Overview of Issues ManagementIt is also important to understand that issue tracking is not the same as identifying and tracking risks. Risks deal with events in terms of their future effect on a project. Issues are about current problems that are occurring and need to be dealt with immediately. In the Project Professional client, the Issues module can be used to capture items not identified as task assignments in projects. Project team members can participate in issue discussion together with project managers, resource managers, and team leads. This enables project managers or others responsible for issue resolution to determine the best strategy to deal with any issues before they become major problems. Issue Tracking Using Project ServerYour project teams can create and track issues that arise throughout the project life cycle by using the Issues module. Issues can be associated with projects, tasks, documents, and other issues. Summary of newly assigned issues appear on team members' home pages. You can also configure email notifications to alert you when issues have been opened, assigned to you, or updated. Depending on the actions taken to resolve issues, they can be flagged as active, closed, or postponed. TIP Before you can create and track issues, a web server running WSS must be set up and configured properly for Project Server 2003 and a site must be created, manually or automatically, for your project on this server. Depending on the permissions settings associated with your role in the organization, you may be able to view, open, edit, or close issues or customize a project's issue form. For example, as a project manager, you typically can add additional fields or attributes to all project issues or define new issue views. Viewing and Creating Issues in Project ProfessionalIn the Project Professional client, select Collaborate, Issues from the menu. When issue items are created, project managers can specify for each issue item the following default attributes:
As previously discussed, you can associate issues with documents, projects, tasks, and risks, as well as with other issues. This can be an efficient way of integrating all the issues, documents, reports, graphics, risks, and so forth for easy navigation and browsing.
PAGE 462. |