The Three Keys of Project Success

Unfortunately, many project and portfolio management systems are complicated and cumbersome, and managers and frontline employees quickly become frustrated and eventually give up, further handicapping the process. Evidence suggests that successfully managing projects from concept to completion requires corporations to re-think their approach to the project lifecycle. Successful systems address management, collaboration and integration – key elements that empower managers and team members to fully participate in the system and deliver projects on time and on budget.

Management
The C-level decision-makers who decide which projects best fit into the organization’s strategic goals need tools that allow them to understand and address project lifecycle problems immediately. They need forecasts and visibility in order to avoid being blindsided by unexpected problems.

What are the best practices to meet the management needs of the organization? The executives begin the process with the first two steps of the project lifecycle: evaluating requests and planning projects that match up with strategic objectives. Current PPM best practices require what is called demand management. Basically, demand management is managing requests that come from within the company or from customers in a way that strategically makes sense for the organization. Managers should create a process that allows them to evaluate project requests based upon what provides the most benefit to the company, rather than making decisions based upon the “wheel that squeaks the loudest.”

In the spirit of making data-driven and not decibel-driven decisions, managers should practice capacity planning. In other words, making decisions based on current demands and available resources is essential because it ensures that projects chosen for execution have all the necessary resources dedicated to guarantee their success. An appropriate evaluation and analysis process will include recognizing potential benefit to the company, cost, alignment with company objectives and resource requirements. Ouimette, Sneider and Loughlin of the InterUnity Group call demand management a “critical factor in building efficient and effective organizations”.

Collaboration
Collaboration happens between project managers and teams. Collaboration allows project managers and team members to optimize project plans, gain continuous feedback from projects and use that feedback for business process improvement.

Project collaboration ensures that team members and management are communicating. Eric Rosenfeld suggests that projects are “likely headed for trouble unless informed end-users are giving meaningful input during every phase of requirements gathering, product design and programming”. This is especially important when team members are not in the same office or parts of a project have been outsourced.

Reconciling management’s project plans with team schedules is step three in the project lifecycle. The faster decisions cascade from the boardroom to project teams, the faster organizations can react strategically to changes in the marketplace. Consider the advantage of a collaborative system that allows decisions made in the boardroom this morning to begin being implemented this afternoon.

Collaboration is essential to efficiently executing projects and a successful post-mortem review. Smooth communication clears many of the roadblocks to productivity.

Integration
Integration refers to how easily a new system can be introduced into an organization. Does the new system impose a conflict with processes that are already refined and working well? Will it work with hardware or software already in place? Is it difficult for users to adopt?

Integration is what makes effective management and collaboration possible. If you’re going to use a PPM tool, it should mold itself to fit your organization, not the other way around. It should be compatible with the other business-critical software applications your organization may already be using, allow for custom data, custom reports specific to your business and be usable with any platform – Mac, PC or Linux and work on any browser. That means employees don’t have to change the way they work to integrate with a PPM solution – it fits them.

With the right technology, business leaders in any industry can use PPM best practices to help them complete projects successfully. Seamlessly blending management, collaboration and integration are three valuable keys to project success.

@task is the leading provider of on-demand project and portfolio management software. It increases efficiency and productivity for Fortune 500 companies and organizations worldwide. For more information, visit www.attask.com.

About Scott Johnson
Scott is founder of @Task, has been involved in enterprise business consulting and solutions development since 1992. Creative, energetic, and entrepreneurial, his leadership has taken @Task to the leading edge of the project management space. @Task is currently helping companies from SMBs to the Fortune 500 get more work done.