Unlike project risk which is the possibility of a problem that has not occurred yet, and if it occurs it could have a negative impact on a project budget, schedule, and scope, project issue is a problem that is currently occurring. An issue must be resolved as soon as possible, otherwise, it will have detrimental effects on the project budget, schedule, and scope.
To have successful management, monitoring, and reporting of raised issues and the resolution of those issues, we need to have a real-time web-enabled solution that enables those involved in managing the capital project delivery to raise those issues as soon as they occur as well as ensure that they are resolved without affecting the project’s objectives.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, a new process for managing, monitoring, and reporting project issues will be created. PMWeb custom form builder allows the organization to create the “Issue Resolution” form in the desired form and format to capture all needed details. Those could be the issue type, category, criticality, issue description, the issue raised by an issue owner, the needed issue resolution date, and which project schedule activity it first impacted. The issue form will also include the fields for issue impact and severity which will automatically calculate the issue severity. The form will also include fields for issue resolution actions and a description of the attached documents. In general, the form should be detailed to the level that eliminates ambiguities and miscommunication regarding the reported project issue.
The attachment tab will be used to attach all issue’s related documents which are usually uploaded into PMWeb document management repository into a folder that could be labeled as issues. In addition, links to other related PMWeb records and imported MS Outlook emails will also be part of the attachment.
A designed workflow for the issue resolution form captures the different review and approval steps needed to resolve the issue. The workflow could include conditions to involve the right project team members depending on the issue category or other fields.
The issues log will be used to provide real-time status of all project issues captured in the issue form. The log which can be designed in any desired form and format could also include visuals to summarize issues by status, type, and issue owner among others. The tabular section of the report will include the complete details of those issues which can be grouped and filtered in any desired format. Usually, the Issue Report will be needed by senior organization executives as well as the project team members.
