Often times it is seen that a project starts with a good project plan created using Microsoft Project. After all, it’s a project management best practice to have a project plan. It’s a misnomer though that if we have a good project plan, the plan will show accurate status of the project at all times. So, if a senior management needs to know about the status of a project at a high-level, the project plan can provide that information.
It has been observed, on multiple occasions that as the project activities start happening, the updates to a project plan starts to fall behind. Some tasks are updated with % complete, however, actual start and finish dates are not updated. If the project manager is has not set his team’s expectations about requiring an update about progress of their respective tasks from them, he may get updates from some but not all. Thus the project plan update is incomplete and inaccurate. Also, if a project is 50% complete, doesn’t always mean that the remaining 50% will take twice the time already expended.
Creating and maintaining a project plan requires discipline. The project manager should set aside time each week to make those updates. Otherwise, the updates are often not made at all or made in an ad-hoc manner. The updates should include % complete and updates to actual start and finish date fields. In case the finish date is likely to be pushed out, the project manager should make that update.
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