As your project progresses, issues will arise from various areas—product, process, people, requirements, design, solution and so on. If not managed properly, such issues—and their corresponding resolutions—will reside in various e-mails, voicemails, hallway conversations and napkin notes. Important pieces of information might get lost or forgotten.

By creating a project issue log at the onset of the project, you can keep track of the issues—when they were raised, who raised them, what were the resolutions, etc.—and manage them accordingly. An expensive issue tracking system is usually not necessary because a simple spreadsheet oftentimes will do the trick. However, the former makes it easy to assign the issues, set priorities, send reminders and generate reports.

So, go ahead and create an issue log for your project because if you don’t, I’ll have an issue with you.

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