Three fundamentals for a successful project

What are the three key fundamentals for a successful project?

1. Plan - Setup you project correctly. Ensure you understand the goals & objectives & desired business outcomes. Ensure you understand the benefits you are attempting to realise as part of your project. Engage with the appropriate stakeholders & business users early on and seek their commitment & buy in. Form the appropriate governing bodies, adopt (& adapt) to the right methodology for your project & confirm the resources you require to deliver your project. Define & agree the project tolerances for changes to time, cost, scope & quality through your governing body (i.e. Steering Committee). Engage with your project sponsors & stakeholders & get their buy in & sign off for things like project charters, terms of references, business cases & project management plans etc. Basically plan ahead & be ready & prepared to fail forward (not backward).

2. Deliver - Deliver, deliver, deliver is the key message. Get runs on the board early & keep adding to them. Whether it is a massive six out of the park or a straight forward four to the boundary, or even just a a quick single (cricket analogy for those confused), getting runs on the board brings confidence to stakeholders & executives. An agile way of working makes this really easy to showcase. Most projects these days will adopt an 'agile way of working' & this will assist you greatly in delivering repeatedly rather than waiting for a 'big bang' change at the end. Getting your project team to have a 'delivery' focus & a 'can deliver' mindset can be easily done through the use of sprints & agile ceremonies like 'showcases' and 'retrospectives'. Engaging stakeholders & end users in these ceremonies will help support the repeatable delivery process. However, make sure you deliver on your promises & be open, be honest & above all be flexible and adaptable. Things change during the life of any project & sometimes you need to take a different approach, path or course of action. Being flexible will help you deliver.

3. Transition - Just delivering new functionality, a process, or even a system doesn't mean you have succeeded. It just means you have delivered. Transition is key to making sure end users can use & adopt that new way of working, that new system or process. To transition, you need to bring people on a journey of change. A transitional journey that sometimes takes them out of their comfort zone. I myself have seen a lot of projects fail because that transitional period from old to new has been poorly managed. Too many times I have seen companies not engage the right resources to help with the transition. Organisational Change Management & Business Readiness experts who understand 'change & transition' are worth their weight in gold. They can really help end users engage, understand & be comfortable in the lead up & during their transition to their new way of working. A successful transition is a key element of a successful project in my book.

If you want to know more about successful projects & what they look like, please get in touch.