Assigning Ownership in Your Project

Have you ever learned a lesson the hard way?  Those lessons seem to stick, and I’d like to share one of my own, courtesy of the first project I ever managed.  They don’t teach this stuff in textbooks – or if they do, they don’t highlight it enough.

I was managing the install of a large HIS.  My project plan was in good shape, I had all the major teams created, departmental liaisons were established, and we were rolling.  We were about to positively alter the workflow of every department in the hospital, replacing nearly all the legacy systems.  Months into the project, the training phase was about to begin.  The training leader was now ready to review all the modified policies and work them into her training curriculum.  We had liaisons.  Surely they knew that they needed to modify their policies by this time.  Well, apparently they didn’t.  One quick meeting and we recognized that there had not been a single point of contact from the project team assigned to ensure everyone understood the task of “Revise policies” – and more importantly, to ensure that they were all completed in a consistent, hospital-accepted fashion.  And who would have known that policy revisions have to go through a committee that only meets every other month (and just met the prior week.)

Here’s where my big lesson came in – the part that added pain to the learning experience.  Since I had failed to assign anyone as the point person, and now everyone was too busy to take on this task, I learned that the Project Manager (me) gets to absorb the unassigned duties. 

I spent  the next two weeks of my life working way too closely with policy details from every department, helping everyone understand the changes that would take place and how those changes would alter current departmental policy.  Calling an emergency meeting of the Policy Board so they could review and approve nearly 75 new and revised policies, was not a picnic either.

We have incorporated this lesson into Atlanticon’s standard methodology—and leave nothing to chance when it comes to ownership.  We push to make sure that there is a designated owner for all aspects of a project.  Every key file, every set of screens, all reports, policies, finance, forms, security, activation—all these areas need a designated coordinator to make sure that proper attention is being given. 

Atlanticon utilizes an org chart for naming leaders to all teams, in concert with an Ownership Matrix that covers the bases for all key files, applications, and other functions.  This results in team members that know what is expected early in the project, it reduces the chance of someone inadvertently overwriting your work, and gives the entire team a solid understanding of who they need to speak with for most of the areas of a project.  All of this reduces the unnecessary traffic that a PM has to handle and it’s just one additional approach that helps make an Atlanticon project go more smoothly.

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