What is Project Management Issue Tracking?

What is Project Management Issue Tracking?

Project Managers work diligently to ensure that their projects get completed on time and on budget. It is a challenging job because problems will inevitably arise from nowhere. If these issues don’t get identified and resolved promptly, the project can suffer extreme time delays and cost impacts.

Construction projects are subject to many internal and external factors that can create several issues. Some common construction issues occur around:

Safety

Heavy machinery, scaffolding, live wires are just some of the hazards that make construction sites inherently dangerous. While accidents are inevitable, issues that can jeopardize the safety of a team member should be documented immediately and quickly remedy the problem to prevent serious injury or death.

Environmental

Construction projects directly impact their local environment concerning noise, waste disposal, chemical usage, traffic, etc. With many federal, state, and local environmental protections, noncompliance issues can seriously delay your project.

Project Quality

When you cut costs in construction, it becomes very evident. Substandard materials and work completed by unskilled and cheap labor can comprise safety as well as negatively affect the overall quality of the project. Project quality issues that get ignored can become very expensive rework and disparage your company’s reputation.

Issue tracking in project management software is critical to document issues as they arise and provide all stakeholders visibility into any and all issues in projects. Once an issue becomes identified, it is important to document the issue immediately in an issue tracking system.

Key components in issue tracking software should include:

– Date the issue was identified – This is important to document when the issue was first identified and how long an issue is open. Issues that have long resolution times could be further investigated by performing a root cause analysis.

– Description – A thorough description of the issue along with potential impacts to a project should be noted. Including pictures or video along with pertinent annotations is vital to provide a visual reference to the issue documentation.

– Issue priority – When multiple issues need attention setting a priority of Low, Normal, or High will accurately present the hierarchy of which issues are most critical to impacting project success or need immediate resolution due to safety issues.

– Responsible party – By assigning the person(s) responsible for resolving the issue (e.g., in the issue tracking system) provides accountability. The transparency of an issue tracking system allows for the responsible parties to be held accountable for completing tasks and keeping the project moving forward.

– Due date – An issue tracking system should provide the ability to set reminders for those tasks to ensure that due dates do not get missed which could jeopardize project closure dates. Setting reminders of due dates ensure that no tasks slip through the cracks!

– Status – The visibility of issue status is essential for all project stakeholders to know if any progress is being made. If there are bottlenecks or further approvals needed, it is important that these items be documented and a plan of action created to resolve the issue.

An issue tracking system provides an easy way to document issues, assign responsible party, and view the status of how the issue resolution is progressing. Complete documentation of issues is critical to mitigate risks on current projects and prevent similar issues on future projects. When issue tracking is integrated with your project management system, all documentation, and communications related to the project become centralized to provide complete transparency into project status.