The Back-up Plan

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Risk Management  

In the project manager’s life, “backing up” has many different meanings--and making sure that you do them well can help your project and your project team succeed. Here are three different kinds of “backups” that you need to keep in mind during a project. Make sure that you know the best practices and the best processes so that you can back up successfully in all the different ways you need to.

Back Up Resources
Everyone on the project should have a backup resource, especially the project manager. Ideally, all the backups are fully trained on the jobs they may be required to do, but in reality there is rarely time for that on a project. Sometimes the best you can do is to get the team to write down their processes and procedures so that if the time comes that a backup has to step up and take over something, the documentation is ready and waiting for them. However, if the team is fully trained to back each other up, then the project will benefit overall. People can step in easily to different positions if someone ends up leaving the project or just taking extended leave.

The best way to accomplish cross training is to get people involved in each other’s business. While your team may not be interested in having someone peer over their shoulder all the time, it is often the only way to make sure that cross training will occur. Cross…

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