Making the Right Choice

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.

  Decision Making  

A project manager is faced with many choices throughout the day--all sorts of requests and questions to make choices for the project and the project team. The days can be long, but at the end of it, the project manager should be able to rest knowing that he or she made the right choices or, at the very least, the best possible choices that were available. This applies whether you are dealing with putting together a team, answering client calls or updating the schedule.

Evaluating Choices
One of the key skills of a project manager is the ability to evaluate choices. This goes beyond simply making a “pros and cons” list. You need to look at what is done today or tomorrow and consider the long-term impact: How will the project be affected a year down the road, or five years when the final product is operational?

Choices can also contain pitfalls--the positives may outnumber the negatives, but the risk of the project goes way up, or perhaps the team will suffer based on the direction the project manager suffers. There are many different levels to consider when you are determining the direction of the project or the strategy of the team.

Moving Forward
All of the evaluation and analysis of the choices can help you determine which way to go and how to make the right choice, but it can also stop you in your tracks if you are not careful. If you spend too much …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.