In this week's lecture, Dr. Simon talks about several tools and techniques for project plan execution, such as general management skills, a work authorization system, and status review meetings. As I have yet to have any real industry experience, I am curious to know if anyone has personal experience with the project plan execution process. More specifically, have any of these execution techniques worked particularly well for you and your project team? Have any not worked out well?
I have a couple of years of experience in working with multiple teams (my work place utilizes a matrix type organization where I am usually working 2 or 3 product development teams at a given time). The best project managers I've seen always have the action items of each area of the project listed out and any items that should be paid close attention to within the next few months on the radar. The weekly team meetings are a good time to go over any issues with items like prototyping or sourcing that can add to a lead time where the PM will go through each of the team sections with an open discussion for anyone to pitch in. One big stand out that a good project manager is able to do is forecast any issues or areas that can cause trouble for later design reviews in the project such as document requirements that impact later reviews that should be started earlier than planned in the procedures. Another important aspect of project management is understanding who in R&D, RAQA, Marketing, Sales, etc. is the subject matter expert in that realm that can leverage their knowledge when the project team may either have some newer hires in the company or recently had one of their team members leave the business.
Being a BME student and working under a professor in a lab, it is very important to execute a plan for the project.I have previously also worked under various other managers but for me discussing the outline of the project having a clear view of the goals which needs to be achieved and also some of the difficulties which will arise as the project progresses are very important. comparing the outcome of the project with other similar studies or even a brief outline of what are the deliverables of the project is very noticeable. Communication between the various people in the field is very important such as what the previous comment has mentioned such as R and D, Marketing and sales and also advertisements. A project plan execution is only successful if there are multiple pit-holes which can be addressed by the manager as well as the team and also the reproducibility of the outcomes are consistent.
