Project Management Series

Oct 2, 2018 | Training, Work Culture

by Kally Swibes & Nicole Bulloch

Post #3 of 6: Review Process

Day-to-Day Tools for Balancing Speed, Quality, and Costs

Project Success = Quality Work Delivered On Time and Within Budget

By combining knowledge from instructional design and project management, we have put together an equipment checklist of key structures needed to meet deadlines while also ensuring quality and maximizing profit in your day-to-day management of a project.

Equipment Checklist:

Timelines

Review Process

Check-In Meetings

Communication Plan

Budget Strategy

To meet deadlines and develop quality deliverables, it is extremely important to stick to agreed-upon rounds of review with a team of key stakeholders. From the development of a deliverable’s initial content outline to addressing final submission requests and comments, having a set review process is a key factor in project success.

Establishing the review team at the beginning of a project ensures that all key stakeholders are represented during the development of an initial design document or outline. This avoids potential changes in direction later if new stakeholders with differing opinions and views are introduced. Trying to accommodate requests to changes in content later in development can add time and cost to the project—something both clients and project managers want to avoid.

It is important to ensure your client understands why providing timely, consolidated feedback is not just a suggestion, but your standard operating procedure. When all feedback is sent at the same time and housed in a central location, it helps ensure all stakeholders are on the same page and any discrepancies in feedback can be addressed internally by the client. This prevents the project manager, medical writer, or instructional designer from having to sort through and clarify any conflicting feedback, which can add not only time but cost to the project.

As feedback is received, a style guide specific to the client is developed. The creation of client-specific style guides makes the process of project development more efficient for future project teams.

Then, if needed, time has already been built into the timeline for live review of the feedback. The medical writer or instructional designer may need to have a conversation with the client to get clarity on feedback. An example of a common clarification that is needed is determining if feedback is global (to be applied across deliverables) or isolated to a single deliverable. Having this open line of communication with the client builds trust between both teams and ensures that the creation of the next draft is efficient and effective.

It can be helpful to imagine the stages of draft review as a funnel, moving from confirming the big ideas to perfecting the fine details of a project. Communicating this to the client during each round of review can help move the project along smoothly, without costly delays.

Join us for our next post, the fourth in this series, as we dive into why holding regularly scheduled check-in meetings allows a relationship of trust to form within the project team and ensures the creation of high quality deliverables.

Kally Swibes

Executive Learning Producer

View all posts

Nicole Bulloch

Senior Instructional Designer