The Benefits of Visual Communication
Paul is a Sr. Project Manager with The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. Paul’s 14 years of project management experience run the gamut of industries: health care, publishing, finance, manufacturing and marketing. Paul is PMP certified, and he holds true to the principles of project management when running his projects, which has resulted in many successes.
We as project managers are well-versed in visual communication by virtue of our ability to present our typical project management artifacts. We can produce colored Gantt charts at all levels of granularity. Our S-curve showing project spend makes it clear if we are on budget or not. We can even go so far as to produce histograms of hours consumed versus hours remaining.
With these visual communication skills, there is a larger opportunity to apply them to other facets of our projects. Through our ability to conceptualize and articulate, we can assist with the capture and creation of domain artifacts as well as decision-making aids. This demonstrates an added value that transcends routine project management, for which we will be appreciated.
Let me start off by recounting a real example. We had a major IT initiative underway in the hospital and health network where I work. This was a large, long-term project to ensure the availability of our infrastructure, which is vital to a healthcare setting in which IT systems contribute to keeping people alive.
Long-term projects require extensive long-range planning, with clear milestones to demonstrate progress and to maintain steady momentum over the long duration. The project manager was diligent in laying out what need to be accomplished and when. He reported, with great enthusiasm, that his project was “on track”
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Published at Mon, 21 Aug 2017 04:00:00 +0000
