Attention to Detail

Decision Making

Michael King

Community Champion

Senior IS Project Manager| Baycare Health Systems Clearwater, Fl, United States

I understand that as Project Managers we need to pay attention to the details of our projects. According to Charles Swindoll, American Pastor and Author, "The Different between something good and something great is attention to detail".

How do we ensure that we have the right level of detail in our projects? For example, how can we ensure that the engineer's drawings are correct, or the programmer's test cases as complete?

In the financial industry audits are commonplace, do these have a place in project management?

Posted: Sep 11, 2026 12:04 PM

Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal

Interesting question, Michael.
I would distinguish attention to detail from assurance that the right details have received the right attention.

A project manager cannot, and often should not, personally determine whether an engineer’s drawings are technically correct or whether a developer’s test cases provide sufficient coverage.
Those judgments require the appropriate technical competence.
The PM’s role is different: to establish whether the project has a credible system for building justified confidence in the work through clear ownership, appropriate standards and criteria, competent review, traceable evidence, and escalation where necessary.

The required level of assurance should also be proportional to context.
A reversible, low-consequence decision does not require the same scrutiny as one involving safety, regulatory exposure, major investment, or difficult-to-reverse consequences.
Depending on that risk, assurance might range from self-check and peer review to specialist review, independent assurance, or formal audit.

So yes, audits can have an important place in project management, but I would not treat them as substitutes for quality control, technical review, validation, or built-in quality assurance.
They answer different questions.

Perhaps the deeper challenge is therefore not “How much detail should the project manager inspect?” but “How do we create justified confidence that the material details, including those at the interfaces between disciplines, have been addressed by the right people, with evidence and a level of independent challenge proportionate to their consequences?”

Posted: Sep 11, 2026 12:25 PM

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