Managing Projects Successfully
Organizations are built on the completion of individual projects. New plants, new methods, new ventures all require dedicated teams working to strict timetables and separate budgets. Today, managers may spend as much time in interdisciplinary, cross-functional project teams as they do in their normal jobs—project management must increasingly be among any manager's core competencies. This applies not only to projects undertaken for customers (external projects), but also to those undertaken for the development of the business itself (internal projects).
Project management may be as formal or informal as is appropriate for the project at hand. For a smaller company working on a modest project, sticky notes may be all you need for planning and control. But underlying both formal and informal approaches is the same set of principles, which, if you apply them correctly, will give you the results you need.
Your project will run much more smoothly if you:
- define strategy clearly and make sure projects are driven by your strategy, to keep projects on track and under control
- plan through progressive stages: proposal, initial investigation, detailed investigation, development and testing, trial, operation, and closure
- concentrate on the early stages of the project, when the decisions have a far-reaching effect on the outcome
- engage all stakeholders (everyone potentially involved in or affected by a project), such as staff, customers, and suppliers
- analyze the project, determining its intrinsically risky parts and acting to avoid or reduce the risks
- tip the balance of power toward the project and away from your company's normal management structures
- gauge your progress based on how close you are to the final milestones, rather than simply counting how many activities you've completed.
Don't waste time on unnecessary projects. Remain in touch with your "vision"—what you want to achieve, how, and when—and make sure that all projects are driven by that vision. Otherwise you risk wasting precious resources on ideas that are ultimately worthless and may risk the business's overall performance.
It's very rare to be able to plan a project completely to its conclusion when you've just started work on it. However, it's usually possible to plan the next steps in detail and prepare a rough plan for the remainder. Typically, the major steps are:
- proposal: identifying the idea or need
- initial investigation: a quick look at the possible requirements and solutions
- detailed investigation: a feasibility study of the options in which you choose a solution and defining it
- develop and test: building the solutions
- trial: piloting the solution
- release: putting it into practice and closing the project.
Whether you use the terms above or other terms, it's helpful to use the same terms for every project, so participants can follow a consistent process. What differs is the content of each project, the extent to which each stage is used, the level of activity, the nature of the activity, the resources required, and the stakeholders involved.
Decisions made during the early stages of a project set the tone and have a far-reaching effect on the outcome. Creative thinking and innovative solutions at the start can cut delivery times in half and reduce costs dramatically.
On the other hand, once development is under way, it's seldom possible to make changes that yield more than incremental savings, while introducing changes later can be very costly. Up to half of the project life can be usefully spent on the investigative stages before starting to assemble any final deliverable.
The involvement of stakeholders, such as staff, customers, and suppliers, adds considerable value at all stages of the process. Viewed from a stakeholder perspective, a particular project may be just one more problem added to their usual duties, or it may appear irrelevant to them, or even regressive. For your project to be successful, you must take time to understand stakeholder perspectives and communicate effectively with various groups about how the project will ultimately benefit them. If their consent is required to make things happen, you ignore them at your peril!
If you have a team of people working with or for you, involve everyone and take the time to ensure that they all work together. Smaller business often have an advantage over larger organizations in this area, because larger businesses have to draw on people in more (and necessarily separate) departments to collaborate on projects, sometimes resulting in misunderstanding and problems.
Because there are fewer line managers in small businesses, the projects are "business-led" and not manager-led, leading to more effective delivery. Managers at larger business must be aware of these factors when planning projects.
The desire to stop planning and start doing is a natural one—we all want to see results. But the most critical key to success of a project is in its early stages, when determining the objectives, scope, and scheduling. Don't short-change your start-up.
In many cases the project leader has the most experience and expertise of anyone on the project team. So the urge to do it oneself, rather than delegating, can be strong. But doing so is a prescription for failure, as team members will become demoralized and miss out on what might have been a valuable learning experience that would benefit the company for years to come. The project leader must therefore carefully blend roles as a supervisor, mentor, coach, and constructive critic.
We all know the consequences of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. This is an ever-present hazard on any project team, but is magnified today, when teams are more diverse, global, and virtual. That makes continuing communication more vital than ever before. Depending on the length of a project and team size, consider regular, formal communications vehicles, such as a weekly email update to all team members, or even a Web site or printed newsletter. And always encourage and practice ongoing informal communication.
Buttrick, Robert.
Haugan, Gregory T.
Lewis, James P.
Mind Tools: www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_PPM.htm
Project Workout: www.projectworkout.com