Job Shadowing in the Project Initiation Phase will provide a good view of a day in the life of a department. Business Analysts use job shadowing to gather requirements and document the workflow processes. You don't have to be a Business Analyst to job shadow; project team members need to wear many hats at times.
Process Improvement is the goal of job shadowing when you are replacing a system. Information that is collected from job shadowing will be used to compile your project requirements to achieve the defined deliverables. This is also a good time to start defining Key Performance Indicators that will be used to validate that process improvement is being achieved. Start making notes on Test Cases that will be used to validate the KPIs.
The Project Plan should have the defined KPIs evaluated at the appropriate time in the project timeline when results can be measured in a controlled environment. If all KPIs meet expectations, then a project Milestone is truly earned. If KPIs do not meet the expectations, then it's time to stop moving forward on the project so an evaluation can be done to address the failing KPIs. That's why you need good Test Cases to flush out any possible issues.
My Final Thoughts on Job Shadowing that is a valuable project activity that should be used as much as possible to avoid disappointed Stakeholders after a project is delivered and it cosmetically looks good, but that's it, no improvement achieved.
(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on projectmanagement.com/blogs/419316/Project-Management-in-Real-Life in May 2020)
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