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Why Project Coaching May Be Right For You

A project coach works with the project manager and project team to guide, counsel, advise and coach them through the many processes within the management of the project. They are generally not required on a full-time basis, except in the very early stages of the project.

A good project coach will ensure that the organization’s project is completed on time, on budget and meets all stakeholder requirements. The coach will work with the project manager and project team to ensure that the project is properly scoped out from the very beginning or can help projects get back on track if their overall goals and deliverables have been significantly changed.

A project coach will guide the organization towards formation of the project team, ensuring that team dynamics are well managed, issues of conflict are understood and resolved quickly and the team gets on to the task of managing the project. The team development process includes:

• Agreement on project team roles
• Agreement on each project team member responsibilities
• Documentation of roles & responsibilities to ensure that all team members understand their role and what is expected of them to ensure project success
• Establishment of operating rules to ensure all meetings are managed on track

• Defines all partner roles and responsibilities
• Defines how meetings will be managed
• Determines their involvement in the development of the project scope
• Agrees on how they will input into the project plan

The project coach will oversee the development of the project’s Project Scope Statement, which is the most important document produced by the project team. It provides a documented basis upon which future project decisions are based. As well, it confirms and clarifies a common understanding of project scope among all stakeholders. The Project Scope Statement forms the foundation between the project team, the project customers and the project sponsor, by identifying both the project deliverables and the major milestones. Finally, the Scope Statement is the criteria used to determine if the project has been completed successfully.

• Project Goal
  
• Strategic Alignment of the Project
  
• Project Deliverables
  
• In and Out of Scope Elements
  
• Project Process Flowchart
  
• Project Assumptions
  
• Project Constraints
  
• Project Structure
  

• Identifying all activities and related tasks required to successfully meet all of the project deliverables.
  
• Identifying the resource name(s) or departments and/or vendors responsible for completing each identified task.
  
• Estimating the duration of each task.
  
• Identifying the dependencies between each task.
  
• Identifying the project milestones. These represent those key tasks, whose dates, once established, cannot be moved without incurring possible project delay.
  
• Inputting the project plan into MS® Project to enable easy on-going project tracking.
  
• Allocating costs to each project task.
  
• Reviewing and modifying the critical path to ensure the project can be completed within the project time constraint.
  
• Crashing the project in order to identify how the project can be completed sooner.

To reduce the likelihood of encountering crisis situations on a project or managing in a crisis mode, a project coach will require the project team to conduct a Risk Assessment for the project to proactively identify and examine all risks that might prevent project success. Using a risk assessment process, the project coach will help the project team to identify those activities or tasks that, if put in place, will reduce risk likelihood or will help to manage the risk, should it occur.

Project change is inevitable. It originates because of a schedule or budget slippage, change in customer or sponsor requirements, changes in project deliverables, etc. A project coach will help the project team to develop a project change management process that will ensure that changes are managed as soon as they occur and that project integrity is maintained.

• Project team meetings to be conducted regularly and the project team will conduct a review of tasks and budgets.
  
• Various reporting mechanisms are put in place to ensure that the sponsor, management and the project team are kept informed of project status throughout the life of the project. When kept informed, sponsors and management will tend to be less intrusive on the project.
  
• Various reporting mechanisms are put in place to ensure that the stakeholders and customers are kept informed of project status. Many projects fail because the original customer/user requirements differ from the end product delivered. In these instances, communication between project start and finish has generally been nil or minimal.
  
• Critical reports for the project manager and project team to review on a regular basis is a review of what work has been planned vs. what work has actually been completed and what has been planned vs. what budget has actually been spent. This regular review will ensure that issues are properly managed and the need for change requests is minimized.

When all project deliverables have been met, the project is concluded and therefore closed. At this point, the project coach will guide the project team towards a complete evaluation of the successes and failures of the project so that the team can retain lessons learned for future reference.

• A closeout report will be developed to record all relevant issues. This report should be archived together with the original project scope statement, project plan, risk assessment, change requests, and any other project documents relevant to this project. These documents will become the historical database of project knowledge within the organization. This historical database of information will help future, similar projects, to get up and running quickly.
  
• The project manager should complete an evaluation of the project team members. This report is generally provided to the sponsor and to the functional managers of the project team members. It is generally included as part of the review of the employee's overall job performance.