Today’s project management world is a complex equation with a lot of copious moving parts. It can be extremely challenging, to say the least, but to make it more bearable and understandable, the upper management and the managers use the project evaluation process.
This process helps the managers carefully plan the project that they and their team members will embark upon. This planning includes all of the different estimations, schedules, and plans needed to ensure the project is completed on time with no obstacles or issues in the process.
But as with everything, planning a complete project to perfection and hoping that nothing will go wrong is a myth or a dream of managers because it never works out like that.
Project managers throughout the organizational paradigm have to track tasks, costs, and time that is spent on the project by themselves and their team to make sure that the project is completed on time and also to gather data and information for all of the other projects that they are going to perform in the future.
So, let’s start from the beginning and learn about the project evaluation process, what is it, what are its benefits, and what are different steps included in the overall process.
What is Project Evaluation?
When we talk about project evaluation, it is the process of measuring the success of the program, project, or portfolio that the managers and the team are embarking upon.
This success is measured by the information being gathered about the project and an intricate evaluation process that allows the different evaluators of the company the overall paradigm to find different performance-enhancing opportunities.
This success-finding mission or process also helps ensure that the stakeholders connected to the project or product are updated on the project status and also about the changes that have or might happen related to the development schedule and/or the budget.
If you are unsure how to keep track of all of these different elements regarding your project, then you should use nTask.
The application is an incredible project management and task management tool that allows you to ensure that all your tasks, processes, and other elements related to your project are tracked and managed without obstacles and problems.
When a project is being worked on, all elements like scope, costs, ROI, and risks are being measured. This is done to make sure that all of the planning that went into the development of the project is useful or not.
Suppose there are any issues or problems in the development of the projects. In that case, you can easily track the data and make sure that the mistake or the lack of a specific element in the plan doesn’t affect any of the future projects that the company works on or the project development team works on.
Project Evaluation Methods
Understandably, project evaluation has been a part of the projects since they started. But when it comes to the exact science of project management, the project evaluation process can be broken down into 3 different types. They are:
- Pre-Project evaluation
- Ongoing evaluation
- Post-Project Evaluation
Let’s look at all these different types of project evaluation in a little detail and find out what happens inside all three of them.
1. Pre-Project Evaluation
Before the project is being worked on and is even planned by the manager, you need to do a pre-project evaluation. This is where you are writing the project charter to get the stakeholders on board by telling them what will happen in the project in the future.
As expected in this chaotic world, you cannot possibly staff, plan, and control every new project if you have not fully evaluated it before development starts.
So, this pre-project evaluation is the only sure way to ensure that the plan of action or development strategy you and your team will use is a perfect way forward.
2. Ongoing Evaluation
When the project is under development and the strategy you created is being used, you need to ensure that you track, monitor, and report everything happening.
You can use project management and task management software like nTask because it effortlessly tracks and manages all of your project’s different tasks and processes.
When you track and measure all of these different metrics using nTask, you can easily measure your entire endeavor’s expected success or failure.
It is highly recommended by experienced professionals in the field to use project management software like nTask for all of the ongoing evaluations and real-time results.
3. Post-Project Evaluation
The third type of project evaluation is the post-project evaluation. In this evaluation, you go through all of the different documentation and processes that were used to develop the project and weed out all of the good and bad parts of it, so that whenever the company embarks on a new project, you can easily resolve any scope creeps or any other risks and issues regarding the project.
Let’s now move on to the project evaluation steps that make it so effective as it is.
Project Evaluation Steps
Here is a list of project evaluation process steps that we will discuss in this article.
- Planning
- Implementation
- Completion
- Reporting and Disseminating
Let’s look at all these steps in detail and find out what they do for the whole project evaluation process.
1. Planning
One of the first steps you have to take when working on a project evaluation process is creating a project evaluation plan. This document contains all the details and data regarding the organization’s project evaluation process.
When you as a manager are planning for a project evaluation process, you must take your time and identify all the stakeholders that will be associated with the project and what the stakeholders consider to be short-and-long-term goals of the project at hand.
Most of the time, these goals and milestones are not as apparent as you’d think, and you have to write many different questions for the stakeholders so that they can provide you with the relevant information and get a clear idea of what they want.
These questions should include all subjects, including the best practices, the project framework, and the different metrics that determine success and failure.
2. Implementation
As a manager, you need to ensure that when the project is being developed, and the planning is being implemented, you monitor all of the different aspects of the project planning like budget and schedule.
Another thing you have to monitor is the total percentage of the work that has been completed. This can be done when you create different status reports and meet the team to determine the delivery times of the tasks they have performed.
While doing all of this, you also have to ensure that the quality is also in check. If you deliver the project early and it is not of acceptable quality, you will lose customers, which will be bad for business.
3. Completion
When you are done with the whole project evaluation and development process, you still have a lot of work to do before you are done.
That work is the collection of data from the project you just developed so that the required information regarding scope creeps and issues can be weeded out for all of the different future projects that you and your team will perform.
4. Reporting and Disseminating
Once the entire evaluation is completed, you need to ensure that all of the results regarding the process are recorded. That means that you have to create a project evaluation report which is a document that provides lessons for the future.
Benefits of Project Evaluation
Here are some of the benefits of project evaluation that we will discuss in this article.
- Improved Team Performance: The project evaluation process helps the managers in keeping track of all of the metrics regarding their productivity and also increases the accountability aspect.
- Better Project Management: The process of project evaluation also helps the managers to perform better project management by managing all of the different tasks, costs, time, and resources.
- Helps with Stakeholder Management: Creating a project evaluation process helps with better stakeholder management as it lets them know about everything that is happening with the project.
- Better Project Planning: The project evaluation helps the managers to compare the project performance against the actual project baseline for better estimation and planning.
As it turns out
We have highlighted the details of the project evaluation process and how it can use for your projects. Feel free to share your feedback with us at info@ntaskmanager.com .
