Planning for Success in Your Projects

When I am in a room with other directors and the word ‘project management,’ comes up usually I get some shudders or eye-rolling, and invariably, the horror stories start. I believe that projects and the management that goes with them can lead to either epic failure or epic greatness and no real in-between. A great project can build significant trust in your department and your leadership. The opposite had the same level of negative effect. But I want to say that it will be ok and that there are things that you can do to help guarantee that epic greatness that will make you shine.

Successful project management can be boiled down to understanding not just the scope of work for the project but also the intended vision of what it will accomplish, planning and communication.

Know what you are about to do. How can you make sure a project gets done on time, within budget and is successfully accepted by the end users if you don’t understand what you are trying to do? You need to get a feel for what the vision is for the result of the project, what the end users want and what they need.

"Successful project management can be boiled down to just understanding not just the scope of work for the project but also the intended vision of what it will accomplish, planning and communication "

Need and want are always two very different things and a lot of times they do not match up. The US Government is well known for projects that are delayed, have huge cost overruns and change order after change order. To me, when I read about these things, I get the feeling that it all started without a clear vision of what the project is supposed to deliver and a real lack of planning of how they are going to get there. Spend time talking to everyone who will be using the result to make sure that what is being envisioned fits what is needed. Talk to people about what they think they want and help them find what is realistic and what is not. I used to have a boss who when asked if we could do something, no matter how outrageous, said yes, we could without any discussion. Ultimately, we would end up with some projects working well, but we also had our failures. Some of those failures could have been avoided by having discussions ahead of time about what couldn’t be done or that what they were asking for wasn’t going to resolve their issue. Wasted time, effort and money.

While discussing everything, start making your plans. I firmly believe that the more time you spend on planning the project, the better the chance for success in the project. You need to plan all the steps, plan your equipment ordering and schedule the different tasks. There never seems to be anything as aggravating as having people scheduled to work on a project and having to send them home because the equipment wasn’t delivered in time for the work. Recently I had a project in our department where there was a miscommunication of when the vendor could be on site to do their equipment install. Instead of walking into an empty room, they found themselves being asked if they wanted to join a Pilates class. It sounds amusing, but we ended up having to delay the installation of the equipment for three weeks due to this scheduling miscommunication. Double-check your tasks, double-check all communications and never assume that all parties understand. Verify and confirm everything.

The two things I just talked about cannot happen without communication. Don’t be afraid to talk to everyone about the project. If you have a question, ask it. If you have an insight or update share it with everything. There is no such thing as over-communication. I am always super happy when I get an email about a little aspect of a project. Even if it is not relevant to the tasks I am working on, it helps me understand the big picture of what is going on and helps me plan the scheduling of what I have going on.

A project management application can help facilitate this communication and the tracking of what the big picture is. There are a ton on the market and I have come to find out that the bells and whistles don’t matter as long as you are comfortable with it and it helps you accomplish good communication with everyone involved.

In a nutshell, understanding, planning and communication can impact your projects more than most people think. I hope these thoughts help you be more epic, the good kind, in your future projects.