Wednesday, 23 February 2011

General Insurance Projects – 5 tips for success

Managing General Insurance Projects is not for the faint hearted but when completed successfully is very rewarding. Look at our Project Management Services page for some general information. If you’re keen to succeed with a general insurance project, then read on. Make sure you treat it with the respect that any business project deserves! Follow these basic project management tips for project success for your general insurance project. These basic principles can be applied to business projects in any sector but this blog concentrates on general insurance systems and solutions.

1. General Insurance Projects need a clear business case is critical to success



All projects need a clear business case and it is critical that when you start to work on any project, make sure that you have a clear and agreed business case. This is important because all projects should be planned on the basis of an agreed and achievable set of business objectives. If you don’t start with a clear set of business objectives, then your project runs the risk of failure.

2. Your General Insurance Projects needs to consider risk so think about what could go wrong and how it could go wrong



In business risk is everywhere so another important consideration for the success of your project is to think about the risk to your project. It’s a good idea that you spend some time thinking through “what could go wrong” and “how it could go wrong”  ”what controls are in place now to stop this going wrong” and put in place some plans to mitigate the risk factors that you identify.

3. Make sure your General Insurance Projects has a good plan



Fail to plan, Plan to fail is an old military saying and it is still very true today for business projects. All of the world’s most successful general insurance businesses are generally ‘expert’ at planning. So make sure you have a sensible plan and list out all your major phases, activities, tasks and deliverables. Making a general insurance project work for you is just like any other project. Build and work with a finite and defined project life cycle that is flexible and repeatable.

4. General Insurance Projects need to keep change to a minimum



Some change to business requirements is inevitable because the business environment will change during your project.  However, manage your insurance project delivery in a practical way and keep your changes to the minimum. Change introduces lots of risk and every change should be verified back against the business case. Instead of complicating projects by introducing lots of constant change, stick to the 80/20 rule and get 80% of your requirements done first.

5. Your General Insurance Projects need to test, test and test again



Make sure that testing forms a big part of your plan and plan your testing early.  Test planning for general insurance projects should never be left to the end and should form part of an overall integrated project plan. It is important to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and establish some clear test plans to verify some of your key elements. Set up some basic metrics to measure the success of the various elements of your project.

General Insurance Project Success



So if you really want to succeed in project management then the general insurance sector is a great arena for you to shine.  Follow these basic tips to avoid costly errors and re-work on your project and save yourself money and deliver your general insurance projects on time. Make sure you can put together a simple plan on one page of A4. You should be able to list all of this out on one sheet of paper. Project Management for general insurance is 90% common sense and 10% process and discipline.



We have worked very successfully with some of our major clients to

deliver fairly complex business projects.  Here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd we promote the use of PRINCE 2 best practices on all our projects.  If you want advice or help with your projects please contact us.



To find out more about how we can help you with project management, please get in touch by using the contact form, sending an email to info@jmruk.com or calling us on 0845 052 0900.




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