Tips for Improving Your Projects

The latest research has determined that only 34 percent of all projects succeed, and that the typical project goes over budget by 43 percent. Those numbers are not conducive to one’s rise up the career ladder if you are responsible for delivering the project. To increase a project’s probability of success – and your career’s—consider these ten tips for successfully implementing your next project.

• Build a strong business case to justify the project.
  You must understand the strategic business goals underlying the project and the expected costs and benefits. Recruit key decision makers to actively contribute to estimate assessments.
• Identify the key business drivers.
  Key business drivers are those tasks that must be executed in order to succeed and attain the company’s stated goals. They are typically external factors that must be forecast or predicted, and internal factors that have various degrees of manageability.
• Secure senior management buy-in by enlisting a strong sponsor.
  This oft-repeated project management tenet is important, but the key factor is the scope of the project. A narrow scope limited to a single department, for example, might be successfully executed by sheer determination. However, a project with a broader scope, one that crosses organization lines, will probably not be successful without a strong sponsor.
• Do not rely on new or unproven technology.
  Unless cutting edge technology provides clear competitive or strategic advantage, do not take the risk of implementing it in your project.
• Communicate team members’ roles and responsibilities clearly.
  People must understand what is expected of them to be motivated to succeed. Document each team member’s role and define the expectations they must meet.
• Document a formal project plan.
  A specific plan does not take forever to create. With the help of experienced team members, a high level activity plan can be developed very quickly without sacrificing consistency and logical analysis.
• Require that team members provide task estimates for their components of the project plan to ensure their buy-in.
  By asking the team to develop their own activity plans – within guidelines – it becomes their plan. And, since they made the plan, they won’t blame it on you later.
• Make objective and realistic estimates and timelines.
  Many team members are reluctant to offer hard estimates. Stress the need for honesty, and be careful to set the right expectations with senior management and your team.
• Limit tasks to no more that a two-week duration.
  If the task appears longer, define an interim deliverable. The reason is that you need to check progress at short intervals or risk being unaware of an escalating problem before it is too late.
• Schedule formal project reviews.
  To deliver a project on time and on budget requires communication. Good meetings will have an agenda, they will start and end on time, and they will provide a current status report, assign new tasks, and track all issues through resolution. Minutes should be distributed to attendees afterwards.

Two short meetings in a week can be better than one long one. Sometimes a quick five-minute meeting is all that is required.