Creating Successful Projects with Compliance
Reaching the goal is not the only thing that matters. The journey is just as important.
How Important Are Rules and Norms for Your Project Work?
Companies are subject to legal requirements, with failure to comply often resulting in penalties and a damaged company reputation. There is a lot to consider when it comes to EU guidelines, internal company guidelines and practices, international agreements, ISO and ANSI norms . Compliance is regarded either as a burdensome obligation or as a means of optimizing business processes and creating benefits for the company.
Answering the following questions helps to ensure compliance in your company:
- What are the goals of your organization and what is its relationship to the rules and regulations it must adhere to?
- What happens in case of non-compliant behaviour?
- How are rules or changes thereof communicated within your organization?
- Do compliance related measures have an effect on your corporate culture?
- How do you monitor compliance measures and what can and do you do to improve compliance?
What Measures Do You Take to Improve Compliance?
Rules and regulations lead to concrete requirements for companies. In order to meet these requirements, organizations must
- define processes and operations,
- guarantee the availability of information,
- monitor processes and operations,
- establish an effective communications policy
- implement software tool supporting compliance measures.
Compliance and flexibility – no contradiction These measures apply to organizations as well as small organizational units, departments or projects. The best way is to establish a so-called Compliance Management System and set up a workflow that helps you to meet standards, one that is independent from individual persons while at the same time supporting the work of individuals. This will help you to master audits, implement changes to your processes and operations and take advantage of the opportunities compliance offers.
How You Can Guarantee Compliance in Your Processes?
Compliance is attained by defining roles, assigning outcomes and cardinalities to results as well as by establishing states with conditions and activities for results categories. Roles determine individuals’ rights and access. This process is set using software and is the basis of your project. Team members take on roles, carry out tasks and produce results. The project control panel gives an overview of the states of activities as well as results being produced. Traceability is a prerequisite for compliance in a project – it enables participants to retain an overview of what happens with each result.
Okay, so compliance is very important to you – now what?
Do you already know how you would like to communicate within your projects? If not, a system could help you in the future to make sure team members comply with rules and prescribed procedures. It also serves as a support to individuals working on the project. Systems like these make it easier to perform well on audits and provide the possibility of making needed corrections. Read more »