How to deliver successful projects
Are you willing to say anything other than an obvious “it is everything and I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it”.
Admirable, but what does ‘whatever’ mean? Would you throw in some of your own money to get additional resources to meet an immovable deadline? You may be prepared to work 24×7, but unless the team who actually do the work can, will that help? Martyring yourself may be an instinctive rearguard action, but it will do little for your stakeholders.
Have you thought that meeting timelines, budget and quality constraints may give you only part or none of the success? Meeting these constraints means successful delivery of what was planned, and the vehicle used to achieve this may function correctly - is that your job done? All your good intention is moot if your finely tuned vehicle arrives at the wrong destination.
A hint from Peter Drucker; "There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what shouldn't have been done at all!".
Delivery success can be assessed by measuring if what was planned was delivered according to that plan, but what of project success? This cannot be established until the benefits are assessed and if the benefits are not forthcoming is it your fault, and if not, whose fault is it?
The answer to this question is "yes" or "no", and "maybe a few others". Having a very connected and engaged sponsor with a strong support for the project has many benefits for the PM. They are often the ones who act decisively to remove impediments, garner and maintain senior stakeholder support and inspire confidence in the initiative amongst their senior colleagues that makes cross functional activities and secondary stakeholder buy-in and action a breeze.
Often the enthusiasm of this individual has resulted in them, or from them having a lot of input in determining the solution in detail - read they have a significant amount of skin in the game. If there is no objective project governance or assurance role, this may end up causing severe problems for you and them.
As a PM you need to always have an eye on the business case or project brief component of your PID. It's easy to forego the strategy to focus on the mechanics once the budget is assigned and you drive change, manage your stakeholders, find and manage resources and risks and report. Then you need to fight fires and clear the way ahead, do your championing, plan more and review - so looking back can at times feel irrelevant.
The key thing here is it is not looking back. The business drivers are not historical, in fact they are the opposite. Whilst they were documented at a point in time in the past and warranted action, they were premised on forecasts of solving problems, seizing opportunities, opportunity cost or threats which by their nature are not guaranteed to remain static.
You may think some problems remain the same until solved, for instance the absence of a document management system and continued use of a simple network drive structure always deserves to be put right given ease of security and access management, meta data and version control benefits EDRMS/CMS provide. I would agree with you here, but the question is does it need to be put right now, or have the critical drivers changed that could impact the urgency and priority (government and regulatory compliance are often immovable whilst they exist, but even these are subject to change).
This is why in PRINCE2 the DP focus at each stage boundary requires a re-assessment of the business case to see if all remains the same, it requires updating, or project is no longer relevant and forecast conditions have not materialised or changed in such a way that the business can no longer justify the investment.
So who is responsible for maintaining overwatch on the business case? The sponsor owns the benefits and are accountable that the drivers identified justify the investment. Part of your due diligence as PM though is to verify and validate these attributes. You cannot assume your sponsor is familiar with this aspect of projects, sponsors do not get interviewed for their project / project board role but generally come to it as a result of their organisational position. The organisation may use hybrid methodologies without this DP business case review step (yes many do). This is where you need to employ your upward management skills.
The term manage-up can carry some negative connotations, nobody with authority likes the thought of being in need of it, but this is only so if your intent is unethical or self serving. I see my role with the sponsor and senior stakeholders to be one who provides the bad news brutally enough to encourage the necessary action, whilst not overstating the good. I cover the blind spots and ensure where I can there are no opportunities for them to look ill-informed in front of their peers or managers, and are always armed with the information to stay on point and on message when communicating the project status to others.
Therefore, managing up business benefits monitoring requires you to do two things. Firstly raise the issue, highlighting the ongoing need and the importance (sounds obvious but the key word is 'ongoing'). Secondly, try to have the sponsor assign someone this responsibility as they are generally pulled pillar to post by the many other areas of their business and prevent distractions by keeping them abreast of what is noise, from where it arises (so they can manage detractors) and why it needs to be silenced or separated from the job at hand.
Of course, if various factors change after delivery that were not forseeable or were outside the options or risk management choices available to you, the projects failure could well be a result of errors or omissions in the layers that formulate strategic plans. For the goal oriented PM who see the prize and not the money as the driver in their work life this is no consolation. Most that matters is to deliver successful projects.
Admirable, but what does ‘whatever’ mean? Would you throw in some of your own money to get additional resources to meet an immovable deadline? You may be prepared to work 24×7, but unless the team who actually do the work can, will that help? Martyring yourself may be an instinctive rearguard action, but it will do little for your stakeholders.
Have you thought that meeting timelines, budget and quality constraints may give you only part or none of the success? Meeting these constraints means successful delivery of what was planned, and the vehicle used to achieve this may function correctly - is that your job done? All your good intention is moot if your finely tuned vehicle arrives at the wrong destination.
A hint from Peter Drucker; "There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what shouldn't have been done at all!".
Delivery success can be assessed by measuring if what was planned was delivered according to that plan, but what of project success? This cannot be established until the benefits are assessed and if the benefits are not forthcoming is it your fault, and if not, whose fault is it?
The answer to this question is "yes" or "no", and "maybe a few others". Having a very connected and engaged sponsor with a strong support for the project has many benefits for the PM. They are often the ones who act decisively to remove impediments, garner and maintain senior stakeholder support and inspire confidence in the initiative amongst their senior colleagues that makes cross functional activities and secondary stakeholder buy-in and action a breeze.
Often the enthusiasm of this individual has resulted in them, or from them having a lot of input in determining the solution in detail - read they have a significant amount of skin in the game. If there is no objective project governance or assurance role, this may end up causing severe problems for you and them.
As a PM you need to always have an eye on the business case or project brief component of your PID. It's easy to forego the strategy to focus on the mechanics once the budget is assigned and you drive change, manage your stakeholders, find and manage resources and risks and report. Then you need to fight fires and clear the way ahead, do your championing, plan more and review - so looking back can at times feel irrelevant.
The key thing here is it is not looking back. The business drivers are not historical, in fact they are the opposite. Whilst they were documented at a point in time in the past and warranted action, they were premised on forecasts of solving problems, seizing opportunities, opportunity cost or threats which by their nature are not guaranteed to remain static.
You may think some problems remain the same until solved, for instance the absence of a document management system and continued use of a simple network drive structure always deserves to be put right given ease of security and access management, meta data and version control benefits EDRMS/CMS provide. I would agree with you here, but the question is does it need to be put right now, or have the critical drivers changed that could impact the urgency and priority (government and regulatory compliance are often immovable whilst they exist, but even these are subject to change).
This is why in PRINCE2 the DP focus at each stage boundary requires a re-assessment of the business case to see if all remains the same, it requires updating, or project is no longer relevant and forecast conditions have not materialised or changed in such a way that the business can no longer justify the investment.
So who is responsible for maintaining overwatch on the business case? The sponsor owns the benefits and are accountable that the drivers identified justify the investment. Part of your due diligence as PM though is to verify and validate these attributes. You cannot assume your sponsor is familiar with this aspect of projects, sponsors do not get interviewed for their project / project board role but generally come to it as a result of their organisational position. The organisation may use hybrid methodologies without this DP business case review step (yes many do). This is where you need to employ your upward management skills.
The term manage-up can carry some negative connotations, nobody with authority likes the thought of being in need of it, but this is only so if your intent is unethical or self serving. I see my role with the sponsor and senior stakeholders to be one who provides the bad news brutally enough to encourage the necessary action, whilst not overstating the good. I cover the blind spots and ensure where I can there are no opportunities for them to look ill-informed in front of their peers or managers, and are always armed with the information to stay on point and on message when communicating the project status to others.
Therefore, managing up business benefits monitoring requires you to do two things. Firstly raise the issue, highlighting the ongoing need and the importance (sounds obvious but the key word is 'ongoing'). Secondly, try to have the sponsor assign someone this responsibility as they are generally pulled pillar to post by the many other areas of their business and prevent distractions by keeping them abreast of what is noise, from where it arises (so they can manage detractors) and why it needs to be silenced or separated from the job at hand.
Of course, if various factors change after delivery that were not forseeable or were outside the options or risk management choices available to you, the projects failure could well be a result of errors or omissions in the layers that formulate strategic plans. For the goal oriented PM who see the prize and not the money as the driver in their work life this is no consolation. Most that matters is to deliver successful projects.
