It is widely recognized that a significant number of federal employees are eligible for retirement in the next several years, and with their departure a significant amount of corporate knowledge and expertise could be lost if organizations don't plan accordingly. One area at great risk as a result of staffing changes is project management.

Many organizations experiencing similar challenges have established program management coaching programs to ensure program managers get hands-on practical support as they take on new challenges. Programs vary significantly by organization, based on the size and formality of the organization, among other things. For example, the program can be very visible and formal, a requirement for all new PMs. Or it can be informal, implemented on an as-needed basis. In some organizations, coaches are full-time internal "consultants," part of a project management office or a project support group. In others, senior PMs allocate some of their time to coaching, spending the remainder of their time managing projects themselves.

ProjectConnections.com has established the following checklist for PM Coaches to get them started.

Coach's checklist: items for helping keep a project on track

1. Help the PM set an initial target for completion of investigation and planning. Watch for the team getting dragged down by product feature/schedule negotiation issues and facilitate the resolution of Requirements churning on the front end.
2. Make sure the project manager follows best practices like recording action items and reviewing them weekly.
3. Ensure all functions have a representative on the team during early investigation and planning.
4. Make sure everyone has sufficient availability to contribute to the design and schedule of work.
5. Identify any critical dependencies that should be started early in the project because of lead times: tools? training? more staff?
6. Attend and facilitate project vision/charter meetings- meetings where the team discusses and documents the high-level objectives of the project.
7. Review schedules for the following:
1. Timeline is reasonable. Is the project under undue pressure for early delivery?
2. Dependencies between groups are shown explicitly; e.g. development hand-offs to documentation or testing.
3. Ample time is included for design reviews, especially for complex projects that will require multiple long meetings or iterative review cycles.
4. Time and milestones for prototyping and testing are shown.
5. Specific risk mitigation work is scheduled.
6. Major design reviews are included.
7. Integration time isn't cut short.
8. Adequate time for meaningful beta testing with customers is scheduled.
9. Project manager checks with common groups like manufacturing, SQA, etc. for overuse of resources that are shared across teams.
8. Make sure critical risks, issues, and milestones stay visible and are referenced weekly by the team.
9. Watch for schedule impacts from outside projects and crises and make sure the project manager and team don't immediately accept them as "normal", then let the schedule slip without giving anyone very direct, specific warning. Teach them to raise it to executives and make sure those executives are making a conscious CHOICE to let the schedule slip because something else is higher priority.
10. Review test plans for completeness and definable exit criteria.
11. Make sure support groups get involved to start getting ready to support the new product/software/etc. after its release.

This and similar information can be found at:
www.projectconnections.com