Project Visibility a Key to Business Success
The collaborative nature of any project requires that all information pertaining to that project needs to be integrated and visible to all project stakeholders. These include company executives, senior management, the project team, and all external stakeholders. Project visibility requires that clear definitions of the scope of project deliverables, project risk, budgeted, actual, and forecast costs, revenue and project key dates are communicated and integrated into a single business system as a source of relevant reporting.
How Project Visibility Reduces Risks
Project visibility enables insight into the health of a project at any given point in time and as such provides a basis on which appropriate actions and decisions can be made to address concerns and issues before they present any major risks.
In the context of overall management of a project portfolio, visibility facilitates the executive decision making process by providing accurate information and a realistic perspective of the projects that are being executed within an organization. With the executive core responsibility being to accomplish organizational objectives, decisions as to which projects should be continued or which are no longer in line with a company’s strategy can be better determined.
Impact of Access to Key Information
Accessible, pertinent and accurate project reporting requirements in respect of scope, schedule and costs provide a means that gives a clear understanding of the impact of any risk to the company project portfolio. This in turn allows for educated decision-making in determining and prioritizing funding and the allocation or reallocation of resources for both existing and potential new projects. Decision making that is relevant to an enterprise’s overall objectives focuses on the right projects in a portfolio and ensures both individual project and business success.
Project portfolio and project visibility needs to extend to both project managers and project team members. A clear understanding of the company and project objectives enables members of the project team to take ownership of a project and to be more effective. This is particularly important when these resources are involved with more than one project and need to be able to prioritize workload. For the project manager, timely access to relevant data through dashboards and other real-time visibility tools is key to successful project implementation and decision making. Studies have shown that when there is clear communication and visibility with respect to the scope of the project deliverables, project risk, costs and scheduling constraints, common errors that cost time and money decrease significantly.
You’ve just uncovered the importance of project visibility, which is vital to project success. However, visibility is only a piece of the project puzzle.