Whatever your goal – integrating a software system, creating a product or service, or putting on ten pounds of lean muscle – you have to stop periodically and take stock. CS Lewis wrote, “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” If you’re on the right road, a progress check will encourage you to keep going and, perhaps, help you to remain at the same pace knowing you’re moving in the right direction. A review of an ongoing project gives us that reality check, that weigh station, to see if we can proceed full speed ahead.

An interim project review can happen at virtually any point, and it is particularly useful when projects have a great deal of complexity, a large number of stakeholders, or political uncertainty associated with them. What makes these reviews so beneficial to project teams and stakeholders?

The thing about grocery shopping, exercising, laundry, cleaning, or risk management is that you’re never done. You never get to a point where you say, “Well, I did it. I finished shopping for ever. Glad that’s done!” Managing risk in business is an iterative process. Think of it as your albatross, or, if you are an optimist and would like to stay in business, your chance to minimize threat and maximize opportunity.

Accenture’s 2009 Global Risk Management Study highlighted some deficiencies in how businesses approach risk management. It should be noted, though, that the research also revealed a strong interest in and motivation to improve in this critical area.

Author C. Northcote Parkinson wrote, “The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything himself.” Paperwork is the bane of all existence, it’s true. We have our work. And then we have the paperwork. It’s like having a great dinner at home. You eat. And then you have the dishes. We see a lot of project managers who are so busy working that the paperwork gets left by the wayside. While there is some that is extraneous, I’m going to make a case for this necessary evil – and say it’s not so evil at all.

Some projects are doomed by insufficient budgets, unyielding schedules, lack of senior buy-in, lack of user-adoption, or technical failures. Some projects are doomed because of their project managers. Most projects fail, or are in danger of failing, because of people problems. Working on a few people skills, then, can help increase the odds of success for projects big and small.

An ineffective project manager demonstrates these behaviors:

• Insufficient Communication. What I often see is managers taking a lot of information in, but giving back very little to the team. They cannot clearly articulate what they’re doing, where they’re going, or what their objectives are. A project that is not clearly defined, and a team that does not have a good understanding of their roles and responsibilities, starts ten paces behind. Most of the time, it is difficult to catch up.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Never bring a knife to a gunfight?” That’s a little like how it feels to show up to a project management situation with Excel instead of Project or Word instead of Primavera. Many times, clients focus on the software or the technology: we want SharePoint, or we want Basecamp. What they bypass is the project itself; what will work best for our needs? What will facilitate this project and allow us to accomplish our goals? Sometimes a knife works just fine.

In large projects, a software program like Microsoft Project is a necessity. Even for smaller projects, SharePoint can be a lifesaver because it allows you to share documents, keep them in a central, accessible location, and coordinate dispersed team members. But there are other tools that are essential, and here’s where the knife/gunfight analogy comes in. These tools include: