If a project delivery team had a magic recipe to ensure a successful project, what would the ingredients look like?

 

Based on almost a decade of project delivery experience at StrategicFront, we asked our Project Management Consultants this exact question. Here’s what we believe is needed to make a project delivery team successful.

People

There can be a number of stakeholders on any given project. However, the more the project delivery team and recipient business team of any project is aligned, the higher the chances of meeting project goals.

We believe that focusing on both the project delivery team and client business team is integral to overall project success. Engaging, organizing, and focusing on project delivery goals with these individuals will result in the desired project outcome.

Further, the cost of having the wrong people in a project is extremely high. We need to ensure that we have the right people, and that they are engaged the right way to meet the project outcome.

Planning

Every project has a goal. However, there can be a number of different ways to reach that goal. We believe that the best way is the most optimal, meaning the least expensive but most efficient.

Planning is all about understanding the business and delivery environment, but also creating the most optimal path to get to the desired goal.

Planning also includes organizing the people, as mentioned above as well as dependencies, so that everyone knows exactly who’s doing what, when.

Performance

Performance is all about the metrics. It’s important to know upfront what the performance goals of the business are, and what this project can possibly impact and achieve.

For example, say you’re working on a project around social media – knowing that your client’s follower count is integral to the business will impact how you approach this project. Will it meet the performance requirements, such as growing followers by 10%?

It’s important to consider the performance of the business, and to ensure each activity of the project is going to move the needle on an important performance goal.

Often project teams can be too focused on the project activities and details, and will lose sight on why they’re doing those activities. Consider the task of building a door-stop. If you focus too much on building the door-stop, it may become too small that it actually isn’t capable of doing its job of holding the door open. Focusing on the overall goal of the entire project will prevent this.

Are you struggling with managing your business projects? Let us know some of your goals for 2019 and we can discuss getting you there!