Jennifer began the lesson by explaining that she hears the term “deliverables” all the time, whether from business managers, project managers or team members. They’re an important part of the project, so she wanted to clearly define what they are. After all, if you’re the one responsible for delivering something, isn’t it good to know what it is?
She defined a deliverable as something produced or provided as a result of a process. The input to the process can be anything, such as:
- Information
- Documents
- Plan
- Equipment
- Money
- Software
While the output can include:
- Consultation
- Project Plan
- Tools
- Apps
- Software
- Test Results
- Contracts
When you’re producing a product or a service in the course of a project there will be due dates for deliverables, as well as specific and measurable key performance indicators, such as quality or quantity. Jennifer also distinguished between project deliverables and productdeliverables.
Project management deliverables include:
- Project Plan
- Reports
- Minutes
And for individual team members, you can break that project plan down further into tasks, which are also deliverables.
Whereas product deliverables might be things like:
- Hardware
- Software
- Apps
- Contracts
- Assessment Results
Deliverables are what drive the success or failure of every project, so it’s important to know what they are in all the different forms they can take.
Pro-Tip: Deliverables can be tracked with a project template, such as a task tracking template for team members, or a project status report template for the managers. Templates are more efficient in that you’re not always having to create new documents each time you move onto a new project, so you can make sure you’re always tracking the deliverables that you are responsible for.
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Transcription:
Today we’re talking about what are project deliverables. We hear that term all the time on projects, so whether you’re the project manager asking your team members what the status of their deliverables are, or the team member with your project manager asking you for the status, or maybe even you asking your other team members what the status of their deliverables are. They’re very important in projects, so we wanna take a look today at what the project deliverables are.
So first of all, a deliverable generically is something produced or provided as a result of a process. So if we look at a process, we get inputs and even the input into the process could be deliverables.
It could be taking some form of information, some type of documents from the project, a plan, maybe even some equipment, money, or even software. That’s not all the different types, but these are just examples of input that you could take into the process.
And for the output, you may get something like a consultation, you may get a project plan, some type of tool or app, or even software, test results, or maybe even a contract. So if you look at these, again, these are just examples, but in a project, you’re producing deliverables that are either a product or a service. And with those, you wanna be sure that you get a due date for each deliverable, and you wanna make sure it’s specific and measurable.
So let’s take a look further at the project. So on a project, we have the project lifecycle and a product lifecycle. So the project lifecycle produces project management deliverables, and they look something like maybe even a project plan, some type of reports, or even your meeting minutes.
Again, these are not all, just some examples. But your product lifecycle, that’s the life cycle that produces the different products, the main deliverable from your project. So that could be something like hardware, software, again, some type of app, maybe even a contract, or assessment results.
So here are some tips. So with your deliverables, you want to be sure to track the due dates because that’s what helps get the progress of your project and make sure it’s completed on time and successful.
You also want to maybe track these as milestones, so when the deliverables are completed, you mark that milestone as completed. And then number two is measure the outcome. Measure the outcome of those deliverables and make sure they meet the specs that’s required of the project.
And then the third one is my favorite, is to use an online software tool. That helps simplify things not only for you but also your team members, and here’s why. So if you have all the deliverables from not only a project lifecycle but a product lifecycle, and you have not only deliverables that you have to complete as a project manager but also all of the ones for the team members.
So if you have it in an online software tool, it makes it more simple to track, it makes it also easier for your team members to report their status, and also know what’s due.
So if you need a tool that can help you with your project deliverables, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.com.