Tracking the Project Team

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.

  Communications Management   Leadership  

In order to keep track of the project, understand what the status is and how the project is progressing, you have to keep track of the project team. But when you have different teams and resources from other organizations—and people all over the world working on your project—it can be difficult to take in all of the status updates from the different people and turn that data into usable information. Spending your time tracking the project team will help everyone understand what’s going on.

The Checkpoint
One great tool to use is the checkpoint meeting. This could be a short meeting to get a quick update on what is going on right now, or it could be a longer formal meeting with full status updates from each team member. The purpose and format of the checkpoint meeting should be broadcast in advance and shared with all relevant parties. This should be an open forum where questions can be asked and issues can be addressed. If there is any follow-up needed, it is the project manager's responsibility to ensure that it doesn’t get forgotten in the shuffle. The checkpoint is the central pole of keeping track of the project team.

Escalation
As issues arrive within the project team, everyone working on the project should be aware of and understand the escalation process. They should know who to contact and what to do when there are issues preventing …

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