Finish While Staying Sane

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.

  Lessons Learned  

It can be hard to stay sane during a project. There is often too much work to do—and not enough time and people to do it. But if you work hard and accomplish most of what needs to be done, you begin to see the finish line—and that’s usually when everything falls apart and the project team goes crazy trying to finish the project.

However, with some careful planning and dedication, you can get the project across that finish line while staying sane—and keeping the client happy at the end of the day.

The Plan
The first thing you need is a good plan for closing out the project. This should cover the final testing of the product that is being created, and it should also cover steps needed to begin operations of the product. Perhaps there is an old system that needs to be taken down, or there are steps for bringing in an operational team that will take over the day-to-day running of the new system.

Whatever these steps are, they should be discussed and documented well ahead of the project’s final days. This plan will help everyone stay calm and work the schedule through the end.

Taking It Slowly
You need to take the end of the project slowly. There is nothing worse than getting to the end of a long and complicated project—and then finding out that because you rushed through the production release, there are a multitude of bugs and …

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