The Money Files

OK, this might not be relevant to everyone reading, but sometimes project managers are left with ‘spare’ budget in December. How are you going to make use of any available funds – assuming you are not under pressure to give them back – to maximise project value. Here are some ideas.

Conduct a year-end financial review

First, make sure your budget trackers and up to date, and that everything that should have been accounted for has been added on. That will give you a true picture of your actuals, so you can review the financial status of the project, including how much budget is left and what key areas need funding.

If you need to move money around, talk to the finance team so that the right amounts can be journalled to the right budget lines to tidy up your accounting.

Prioritise high-impact investments

Next, think about where you could use leftover budget in the remaining weeks of the year to make the most impact. That could be new tools (testing software licences are always a win), training for project team members, especially if that will help them develop skills they will need next year, or risk mitigation activities. Perhaps you can buy a few days of consultancy time that will speed up a particular task? Perhaps there are licences that need renewing, or equipment that you could invest in? Perhaps you could talk to suppliers about getting a discount if you place an order now instead of in January – many suppliers have targets to hit at year end and might be open to negotiation.

I think that spending money on training and certification is a good choice. It helps team morale as individuals see that their future is being invested in, and you get skilled team members who have the skills required to continue to support the project, or future projects. So my recommendation would be to look at investing here, in team development, if you aren’t sure what use you can make of additional funding.

If you need to buy anything, make sure to get approval and move quickly before the year end deadlines.

Don’t spend for the sake of it

We want to avoid wasteful spending. Be aware of what is going on in the rest of the organisation. For example, other projects might be struggling, and the most prudent thing is to always offer the money back to the ‘pot’ as a first point of call.

In my experience, budget that is not spent is not carried over to the new year unless it can be accrued against a committed spend. In other words, if you have got £20k sitting waiting to be spent, there is a high chance that you will lose it unless it is spent on something. Talk to your Finance team to find out whether that is likely to apply to your budget, and what they recommend you do at this time of year.

Work with Finance to reallocate funds

Talking of working with Finance – they are the guardians of spending rules and regulations, and they will help you maintain compliance and an audit trail for spend.

They will know if it is possible to carry budget over – and it might be, if your financial year does not end in December.

The start of a new year can bring intense pressure to get projects up and running quickly – have you felt that? There is often new budget available, new expectations and just the natural sense of new beginnings that comes with a new year… all adding up to a desire from senior leaders to get projects moving quickly.

That makes December the perfect time to prepare, so here are some things you can be doing this month to get ahead for January when it comes.

Review the project pipeline

Assess the projects slated for Q1 and their current status. What’s ready to go, what needs more discovery or analysis? What projects are continuing from this year that still need to complete?

Are there any critical tasks that need attention before January? You can use December to create detailed action plans for January launches, bearing in mind the holiday period and any change freeze that might affect your technical deployments.

Resource planning and allocation

How are you going to make sure that team members are ready and equipped to start strong in January? If there is new budget for training, what projects are coming up where the team could do with some training to ensure they have the skills?

Make sure people know what they will be working on in the new year, and ideally have this documented somewhere – chances are they will come back after a short break and they might have completely forgotten!

Backlog and task prioritisation

If you are anything like me, you’ve probably got a backlog of tasks from the months just gone that haven’t quite been finished. For example, I have project budget trackers that need updating, and I know I’m going to be asked for them by year end because it’s important to have the numbers sorted.

Think about what you have outstanding and prioritise what you need to, focusing on the high-impact tasks first to ease yourself into January.

Prepping tools and processes

Talk to your team about getting things set up for the new year. For us, that’s making sure there are ‘2025’ versions of in-flight projects, setting up the 2025 portfolios and making sure steering meetings are booked for the year – best to get booked into busy executives’ diaries before they are blocked!

Communication and alignment

Because nothing says ‘new year’ more than a redoubled effort at team communication! It might not last longer than February, but let’s start with good intentions, eh?

Think about what the objectives are for the coming year. Set expectations to align on goals, especially if you are starting new work or have different priorities across the portfolio.

For most of us, project work just continues into the new year, because most projects won’t have a hard stop at year end. However, it’s always an opportunity to remind people of what the goals and objectives are, and how these fit with strategic priorities.

Planning ahead in December can help you hit the ground running in January, so you can get back to work after the festive break. I know, the “festive break” is really just a few days, but emotionally and mentally it feels different, don’t you think, because we will be ticking over into 2025?

Are you thinking about year-end project audits? Perhaps your PMO is thinking about how to learn from the past year. Perhaps you want to set a good foundation for projects next year. Perhaps you just had a rubbish past few months and want a second opinion to see if there was anything you could have done differently to avoid the outcomes you got.

Whatever your reason, many project leaders’ thoughts will be turning to audits at this time of year, so let’s talk about how to make the most of this exercise – it’s not as awful as you might be thinking!

Planning the audit

First up, make sure the audit is planned in. Schedule it in advance to ensure key team members are available.

Look out the documentation that is required, which is normally things like financial reports, scope changes, and risk logs. You’ll also want to make sure that the business case, project plan, and schedule are available, as well as any change requests that changed those, so the auditor can compare the original planned baselines to the current baselines.

Key areas to audit

So what is your audit going to look at? Whether you have been asked to audit someone else’s project, or you want projects in your PMO to be audited, here are some things you’ll probably want to put on your checklist.

• Budget vs. actuals: Compare planned spend to actual spend and do the same for resource utilisation if you have the data.
• Scope management: Look at how many change requests the project had and whether that resulted in managed change or scope creep. Personally, I don’t think it is important to assess whether the project stayed within its original scope – what you are looking for is whether changes were assessed and approved rather than being done in an ad hoc manner.
• Risk management: You’ll want to go through the risk log to see how well risks were managed, mitigated, or exploited.
• Quality of deliverables: If anything has been delivered so far, check to see that the quality is comparable to the targets set. In other words, are there post-go live bugs still to sort out, and does the product meet quality expectations?

Identify lessons learned

The main purpose of an audit is to review what worked, what didn’t and what needs to change (or be continued). So you can think of the output of the audit as a sort of lessons learned report. If you already have scheduled lessons learned activities, you can feed those in to the audit report. If not, it never hurts to have a lessons learned conversation with the team.

Set the stage for next year

If your project is running into next year, discuss how the results of the audit can be used to improve processes, define new standards or ways of working, and inform the next year’s project strategy. There might be some easy things you can do to change up how things work to make them more effective.

Whether the outcome is a lot of things to change or the reassurance that you are doing everything right, it’s a good time of year to be reflecting on project management practice. Take stock of where you are and how far the project has come, and if an audit is offered, say yes! It really is a good learning experience.

Quarter 3 of a calendar year is July, August and September. Your business year might not follow the same quarters, but wherever you are in your business year, it’s probably the right time to be looking ahead at what needs to come next. Here are 3 focus areas for Quarter 3.

Forward planning

Begin strategising and planning for high-priority projects in the upcoming quarters. That might look like warming up stakeholders, seeing who is going to be available to work on upcoming projects, doing some light discovery work or pre-initiation investigation, especially on the areas that are likely to take the most time such as procurement and contract negotiations, or getting suppliers to submit security information and forms, or the RFP process. (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything!)

Involving the team in these discussions can help maintain their focus on future goals and the bigger picture, while hopefully getting you a head start when you come to get those projects going in earnest.

Process optimisation

There’s never a right time to optimise processes, in my experience. The process is in use and it works, so often it feels better to sort out something that is broken, or that is strategically important. But those inefficient processes contribute to low staff morale and wasting time, month after month, so it’s worth scheduling some time to put some effort in. Each quarter, tackle one point or a couple of points, and soon you’ll build up a momentum and improvements.

So how do we do this? Analyse the project management processes and methodologies. Look for inefficiencies or bottlenecks in workflows that could be streamlined for better performance in busier times. I would look through the lessons learned from recent projects and see what’s highlighted there that could be improved.

Ideally, you’d do a full analysis of all possible problems and highlight one or two from the priority list, but in reality that’s a load of work before you see any improvements. A better option might be to just trust your team. If they are telling you that the change control process is a pain in the behind, just focus in on that for now. Improve what is causing people the most headaches, and trust me, they’ll have an opinion on what that is if you ask them.

Tool use

Do a quick review of who is still using the project management software tools you have. People move on so it might be time to claw back licences from users who are no longer in the business or who have changed roles. And other people might benefit from having the licences.

On the topic of forward planning for the quarter, look at what projects are coming up and whether your current licence package is adequate. You might need to add in more licences if you’ve got more projects or more stakeholders needing access to the tools.

If you foresee a need to add in more users, it might be worth scheduling the training for them now so they can hit the ground running when they get their own account.

What else would you be doing at this time to feel prepared for the upcoming months ahead? Let me know in the comments!

Earlier this month I looked at spring cleaning your portfolio to check for strategic fit and also to ensure resources were being managed appropriately.

Now it’s time for step 3 of my decluttering plan: setting clear priorities. You can’t keep everything tidy if you don’t have a plan for how to manage the space going forward. Otherwise, the clutter starts to build up again (looking at you, cupboard under the stairs).

It’s really important to set clear priorities for the remaining projects in the portfolio (the ones you haven’t swept away with the clean sweep brush) and develop a roadmap for execution that aligns with organisational goals.

You probably already have a strategic, portfolio roadmap, and if you haven’t reviewed that yet, it’s worth it, so you’re starting this section of the year with a fresh slate and clarity about where everyone is going.

Focus on high-impact initiatives

Scan through the portfolio and make sure projects are prioritised appropriately. Use scoring models and an alignment matrix, or whatever prioritisation model you have agreed with your stakeholders, to ensure everyone is focused on the high-impact initiatives. Typically, these are the ones which are relatively straightforward to deliver and have high benefits. You might use a PICK chart (let me know if you want me to write about PICK in a future article, it’s quite a useful tool to Google if you don’t already use it) or something similar to pull out the projects where it’s worth investing your time and resources.

Remember, even if you did this exercise a while ago, things might have changed. The business context is different now to how it was even 3 months ago, so it’s worth keeping prioritisation under review.

Create (or refresh) your roadmap

If you already have a roadmap, pull it up and check that the key milestones and timelines are still valid. Adjust as necessary, being as flexible as you need to be and flag anything that needs approval before it is updated. For example, you may have internal rules about the number of projects that can go live at any one time in an area and now the portfolio plan shows that guidance would be broken with the current timescales. Discuss internally and update so that you’re not overloading any single area with too much change at once.

Engage stakeholders

Finally – although this is something you’ll be doing throughout the spring cleaning process – check in with key stakeholders. They should be aligned and supportive of project prioritisation, both the process for assessing priorities and the final outcome of the prioritised list.

Hopefully, getting buy in is straightforward, because you’ve aligned priorities to the strategic plan and everyone can see that this roadmap is the best approach to making sure all the projects get the organisation closer to delivering on the overall objectives.

When all that is done, you can put down your dustpan and brush. The old stuff has been swept away and the portfolio is looking clean and refreshed. After your spring cleaning I think you deserve a well-earned rest!