instructions for managers

When you take on a position as a project manager or senior project manager, one of the first and most important tasks is to understand the current project management processes. This process, often called an audit, allows you to determine the “As Is…” point – the current state of affairs in the company. Without a clear understanding of the current situation, it is impossible to develop an effective action plan and start implementing improvements. My name is Sasha Maximova, I have been developing teams and managing projects for 10 years, now I work at Kokoc group as the Head of the Project Management Department and I hope this article will help many to avoid my mistakes.

This guide is suitable for anyone who comes from outside to management positions and faces the task of understanding the processes in the company, including unstructured ones. It does not matter whether you have become a project management team leader or a development team leader, I will show you a clear plan for conducting an audit of project management processes, which you can adapt to yourself. And I will even share ready-made templates that will make it a little easier to conduct an initial analysis and move on to the process improvement phase.

I'll start with the basics of when and why you need to audit processes, and I'll also give you a step-by-step plan to help you navigate the new environment and effectively manage projects from day one.

Why and when is it necessary to conduct an audit?

Any audit helps to quickly understand the current state of affairs and identify key processes that require attention and improvement. But its necessity is not limited to this situation. Let's consider all cases:

1. First of all, it is needed by those who is taking up the new position. An audit helps to quickly understand the current state of affairs and identify key processes.

2. In case of significant changes in the company's structure or strategyThis requires an analysis of existing processes to adapt them.

3. With low project efficiencyIf projects are consistently failing to achieve their goals, it is important to understand the reasons and find ways to improve.

4. As the company growsThe increase in the number of projects and the scale of activities requires a review and optimization of management processes.

5. Upon request from managementManagers may require detailed status reports on projects and processes to make strategic decisions.

6. For continuous improvementRegular auditing allows you to identify and implement improvements, maintaining high project management standards.

How to conduct an audit

First, you need to define the audit objectives. Decide for yourself what you will do with the results. What do you want to get as an “output”? As a basic goal, I can suggest describing a project management process that does not “break” what works well and “fixes” what works poorly. In addition, there are also personal goals, for example, to adapt and immerse yourself in the processes of a department or team. But your goals may differ, depending on the state of affairs, tasks from management, etc.

Step 1. Research

Depending on the maturity of the processes, you will have access to tools for conducting an audit. Or maybe none of them – this is also normal, then skip this step and move on to the next one.

The absence of each of the following tools is also a conclusion of the audit results.

Metrics

Metrics analysis helps you gain quantitative insights into ongoing processes and project performance. Here are some key metrics to consider:

• Time to complete tasks. Look not only at the average time to complete tasks, but also at anomalies in each project. Remember that “The speed of the entire squadron is the speed of the slowest ship.”

• Team performance. Compare planned tasks with those actually completed. How much is in the backlog? Are there any tasks that have not been progressed for a long time, etc.

• Quality of task completion. Number of errors found during project implementation. How does this affect the work of other teams?

• Project costs. Budget and time costs for project implementation.

Read the documentation

A thorough review of the documentation will help you understand how processes are formally documented and which ones are actually used. It is important to review the following documents (or lack thereof):

• Project management policies and procedures. Descriptions of formal processes and standards.

• Project plans. Look not only at current projects, but also at completed ones.

• Reports and analytics. Monthly, quarterly and annual project reports.

• Technical and business documentation. Volume, differences in quality across projects, relevance.

Boards in the tracker

Task trackers provide a visual representation of the progress of work and help identify problems in task management:

• Description of tasks. How detailed and clear are the tasks described? Are the responsible persons indicated? How is the tracker generally maintained?

• Status model of tasks. How are task statuses organized (in progress, under review, completed, etc.) Is it possible to understand from the boards whether everything is okay?

• Overdue tasks. Number and reasons for overdue tasks.

• Incident reports. Frequency and causes of incidents, distribution by products and projects.

Feedback from related departments

Adjacent departments can provide important insight into ongoing processes and identify problem areas that may not be obvious from within the team. The example below is more from my industry, but you can determine for yourself which departments and functions your team works with and who to discuss this with.

• Development department. Their feedback on their interactions with the project management team, the problems they encounter, and suggestions for improvement are important.

• Testing department. It is useful to learn about common problems in projects, the effectiveness of testing and the quality of the final product.

• Analytics department. Information on how accurately and completely project requirements are defined and the effectiveness of communication with the analytics team.

• Design department. Their feedback on the design process, interactions with developers and project managers, and suggestions for improvement.

Step 2. Questionnaire

If there are more than 3 people in the team, start with a questionnaire. It will be difficult for you to quickly conduct in-depth interviews with each employee without preparation, and a questionnaire will help you quickly collect basic information. Why?

• Filling out the questionnaire will activate the managers' thought process and simplify further communication; it will be easier for the manager to answer questions already at meetings; he will understand what is wanted from him.

• It will be easier for you as a manager to first read, prepare your questions, conduct a comparative analysis and come to the meeting not as a “zero”.

Below is an example of a questionnaire that I created for my tasks (synchronizing with the development department). It is quite universal, so you can take it in full or use it to create your own version. It takes about a week to fill it out, given the normal workload of managers.

Download a sample questionnaire directly in Google Docs →

Step 3. Meetings

After you have collected all the answers, you need to analyze them, find the points that are important for you and the business. Then you can proceed to the second phase – a series of meetings. There you can discuss the questionnaire with the manager in a 1-to-1 format, ask questions, answer those that the employee has, hear his ideas. And, of course, write down everything that you consider important for further analysis. During such meetings, you will be able to get to know the project leaders (in my case, it is the technical leader), hear their pains, ideas, where everything is going well and where it is going badly.

It is better to plan meetings no longer than 1.5 hours. After the questionnaire has been filled out, more time should not be required. You can immediately set limits and not let them get carried away by emotions, lengthy reflections – otherwise you can talk for many hours and not get the desired result.

Step 4. Feedback from customers

After communicating with internal employees, it is important to talk to customers. You can either discuss general issues, problems and misunderstandings, or immediately focus on those areas where you identified specific features in the previous steps. There is not and cannot be any single questionnaire template, since everything depends on the subject area and on the results of steps 1 and 2. ChatGPT is a good helper in compiling a list of questions from which you need to choose the appropriate ones.

Prompt: Formulate a list of at least 20 questions for a survey of adult customers of IT projects to assess the quality and efficiency of IT processes. Pay special attention to the following aspects:

• Efficiency and effectiveness of IT processes

• Project Management Methodologies and Practices

• Interaction between the project team and customers

• Communication between the project manager and customers

• Customer Satisfaction Level

• Areas for improvement in these processes

Please make your questions clear, concise, and understandable, and format them in a structured manner for ease of reading.

How I Conducted My Audit at Kokoc Group

We have a fairly high work dynamics in our company. Everything happens quickly and efficiently: there are no long waits or overtime, and all issues are resolved promptly, tasks are not stretched out. Therefore, I allocated a month for myself to audit the processes. I am comfortable working at a fast pace, and it is nice that the company culture supports the same dynamics.

At some point I had doubts, wasn't everything going too easy and calmly. The team did a great job with their tasks, everyone met the deadlines, but what about the struggle, overcoming and solving difficult problems?

But based on the audit results and after some time, I realized that everything was fine, this happens when everyone understands their tasks and does their job. I understand that in other companies something may be different, so below you will find universal tools. However, if you have a well-coordinated team, then the audit will be much easier.

• It took 1 week to formulate the questions and prepare the questionnaires.

• Time to fill out the questionnaire from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours

• The volume of one received questionnaire is from 2 to 8 pages.

• It took me from 4 to 8 hours to process one questionnaire (reading, checking information, quick analysis of project documentation, Jira), depending on the number of projects the manager had.

• In total, I held 18 meetings with managers and team members, each lasting no more than 1.5 hours.

The final report took about 2 hours to write. I used chatGPT to analyze my recordings. Our company welcomes the use of AI, as long as we do not send sensitive data. Be sure to check your organization's policies before using external tools.

Difficulties

Team alertness: When a new leader comes in from the outside, there is a natural sense of unease. Managers who previously reported directly to the CTO were wary of me.

Attempts to present processes better than they are: Some managers tried to embellish their processes. I consider this situation normal and natural. In this case, my task was to separate the improved reality from the reality.

What I would do differently now:

• I would collect questions not in Google Docs, but in Google Forms, to get summary data in a table and save my time.

• I didn't use Google Sheets because I thought it would be easier for managers to fill out the form in a document and attach screenshots if needed. It would be easier to consolidate data with tables.

• I would pay more attention to communication with customers*. I would add short questionnaires for customers. The audit results made communication problems clear, but it would be possible to speed up and identify not only general problems (for example, we often forget to inform on time), but also specific “pains” that need to be addressed.

* Earlier in the article I wrote that it is necessary to communicate with customers during the audit process, but in my case, unfortunately, in-depth communication with customers lagged behind the audit in time, and was rather a parallel process. As practice has shown, this is less effective.

What's next?

At the very beginning of the article, I said that you need to decide in advance what you will do with the results. Having collected and analyzed all the above information, you can get a fairly detailed idea of ​​the current state of project management processes. This will allow you to:

• Identify weaknesses and bottlenecks in processes.

• Identify priority areas for improvement.

• Develop an action plan to optimize and improve processes.

Conducting a comprehensive and in-depth audit that takes into account all of the above aspects will help you quickly adapt to a new position, effectively manage projects, and improve management processes.

However, the worst thing you can do with the results of an audit is to simply tick the box and put the results on the shelf. You will definitely forget all the findings that you did not write down. Therefore, even if no one except you needs final reportbe sure to write it down. It should include a description of the problems and tasks. If you want, draw business processes, but this is not always easy to do if the projects are conducted in different ways. In general, the idea is that the results need to be digitized in any form convenient for you. At this time, you will just complete the analysis and structure the understanding in your head. To make it easier, below is my template with the Audit Results, use it as you like.

Download the audit results template directly in Google Docs →

P.S. The ideal outcome of an audit would be a clear plan of further action that meets the objectives of the audit. This may consist of the following steps:

• Identifying priorities and areas for improvement. Specific steps and actions that need to be taken first.

• Developing a change implementation plan. A description of how and when changes to project management processes will be implemented.

• Appointment of responsible persons. Identifying key participants and their roles in implementing the plan.

• Establishing metrics and criteria for success. Determining how the success of the implemented changes will be measured and what metrics will be tracked.

• Regular checks and updates. A plan for conducting regular reviews to assess progress and any adjustments needed.

By doing all this, you will not only create a useful tool for ongoing process improvement and your own adaptation in the company or project, but also lay the foundation for the future of your team. Regularly conducting audits and making changes based on their results will help maintain high project management standards and achieve the company's strategic goals. And next time we will talk about the implementation of the Project Management Standard based on the audit results.