Issues Management

Turn a cloud of worries into a list of issues. Good advice if you want to sleep well and good advice if you want you run an efficient project.

Issues management is a small strategy with a big punch. Here is how the mechanics work.

For each area of the project keep a list of issues a spread sheet is OK or you might want to invest in some light weight database like Datawasp to make things easier.

For each issue you need to record.

The Name of the Issue
A Description
The Date the Issue was Raised
Who Raised the Issue
The Issue Owner
The Expected Closure Date of the Issue
Actions - Outstanding actions intended to close the issue.
Issue Severity - one of

Trivial
Important
Severe

The Issues Status - which can be one of the following

Open
Closed
Postponed + postponement date

Regularly a group meets to go over the issues. First the group goes over any actions that have not been completed since the last meeting. Then the group goes over open issues and makes sure there is a next action for each of them.

It is useful to discuss some of the things recorded about issues.

The Issue Description.

What constitutes a description may seem self evident but to be useful issues must be described as problems.

All too often issues are stated as solutions to unstated problems. E.g. we need to bigger windows. The actual problem behind this 'issue' may be that the room is too hot or that fire regulations require emergency exits or simply that the complainant would prefer a better view from his desk.

A good way to drill down into the problem behind an issue is to ask why. In fact keep asking why until the answer has a financial or time impact on the project.

Having identified a negative impact on the project the proper solution is usually self evident.

The Issue Owner

Issues are often neglected because every one assumes/hopes that some one else is looking after it. If no one owns an issue then no one cares about it. The issue owner is responsible for sorting it out even if some one else takes the actions. They should be reviewed against the issues they own to see if they are closing them or letting them drift.

Actions

It should be clear from the issue list what is being done about every open issue. Often the actions for an issue are investigative and often another task is created as a result of an investigative task.

Multiple Issue Lists

It is common for a single project to have many issue lists relating to different parts of the project. When this is the case it is a good idea if all issues from all areas can be viewed as a single list by the project manager who could then, for instance, list all the severe issues raised over 4 weeks ago.

Disaster Recovery

When a project is in trouble creating issue lists can put things in perspective and allow the real problems to be identified.

Describing Issues Correctly