Get Project Partner Skin in the Game

Check your selection criteria on IT project bids, don't over-emphasize low cost, and revise those contract terms to get the implementation partner's skin in the game. ...

... "Most important to ensuring IT project success is binding services vendors into the agreed-upon schedule and budget; that's called skin in the game. " ...

Via ZDNet: ERP project amazingly on-time

Multi-Disciplinary Programs

Advice to position yourself for success in 2008. ...

... "Or, if you can, get assigned to a boundary-spanning role, and seek some relief from daily operational duties so you can focus on the big picture. " ...

Via PC World: Career Tips

Project Advice for 2008

Advice for the new year includes building better business cases and planning for the organizational changes needed to operate new business processes enabled by technology implementations. ...

... "If your business case can't stand up to careful scrutiny and evaluation, then it's highly likely the project will experience significant downstream problems. " ...

Via ZDNet: Five Tips for IT success in 2008

Engage Stakeholders for Project Success

Some tips on positioning a project for success, including video insights. ... Have you identified your user community? Will you need super-users in the community? How will you incorporate user ideas into solution design? Will you need their help in the testing phase? How else can you keep users engaged before the final cutover? Have you segmented the stakeholder population, looking for evangelists or early-adopters to provide the right buzz? As project manager, you may not have time to do all of this, but identify a role on your project team to take on these actions. They'll pay off. ...

... "ensuring that the right stakeholders have been identified, particularly in an IT project – the user community, and that there's a mechanism for them to be involved in the project design and monitoring the progress of the project as it proceeds. " ...

Via Canada ITWorld: Stakeholder collaboration

CRM Projects: Stick to the Basics

Position yourself for success in the customer relationship management space. Do the project management basics - build a case, detail the plan, and check a few performance indicators after the implementation stabilizes. ...

... "Of respondents that have created only a project plan, 50% reported a successful implementation, 60% of those that did an ROI analysis reported CRM success, and 70% that did a post-project review saw success, according to the survey. " ...

Via SearchCRM: CRM business success

Celebrate IT Successes

Seven reasons to be proud of IT successes, while acknowledging the industry's project challenges. ...

... "Mind you, if I should, then I should also be able to wear the finery of the IT industry's successes. " ...

Via ComputerWeekly: IT Success

Change Management Situational

Get aligned, find a champion, and leverage the art of change management to your project situation. ...

... "In my experience, successful projects tend to revolve around a certain type of project manager or coordinator. Someone who really knows the organization, is respected, collects chits constantly, listens well, doesn't personalize disagreement, remains flexible, and generally wraps a friendly persona around a persistent pursuit of project objectives. " ...

Via CMS Watch: Change Management Challenges

Identify and Manage Stakeholders: Position Project For Success

Managing change well on IT projects includes understanding and planning for various stakeholder groups. Use techniques such as customer segmentation to manage communications and stakeholder involvement, as appropriate. ...

... "To deliver both high awareness and support, Everett said that managers should identify key stakeholders, define their current problems, and map how the functionality of a new IT system will improve on these aspects. " ...

Via ComputerWeekly: IT project

Project Forecasting and Uncertainty

Yesterday, I posted about the need to focus on time remaining, using a driving analogy. The premise was that, if we were traveling from Philadelphia to New York and we were at the New Jersey Turnpike entrance (and assuming arriving on time is a critical success factor), the best predictor of success would be to determine how much time remains on our trip.

But what if arriving on time were not the most pressing need? And what if we increased the uncertainty factor? Is "time remaining" still something we can and should monitor?

Let's take IT research projects, for example, which tend to carry great uncertainty. Using an agile approach, the team builds prototypes, and the deliverables get ever closer to "the truth" as the project progresses. If we used a fixed set of iterations, and/or fixed-time iterations, we still benefit from focusing on time remaining, possibly even more so. The only difference is, we're operating in increments.

And even if time is not the ultimate concern, any customer will still want to know "How long will it take before I see something of value?", and usually, "How much will it cost me?" These are the basic fundamentals of good customer service. We still need objectives and scope statements, even on agile projects. It's just that we recognize uncertainty more.

And speaking of uncertainty, proper preliminary research and planning can often help reduce it, and contingencies or buffers can help prepare for the unexpected. Piecemeal deliverables (iterations) can also help, as learnings can be applied to the next phase.

HR and IT Collaborate For Successful Change Management

HR and IT have areas of synergy that contribute to successful projects. The workforce and key talent have a special role in embracing organizational change. ...

... "If successful, the plan will produce a community of people who understand the reasons behind the change, the impact on their roles, and their role in the success of the transition. " ...

Via SMBedge: HR and IT Collaborative Success

Project Success Measures: What Really Counts?

Finally, people are starting to say what I've been saying for some time. Often , the most telling measures of project success are qualitative, not quantitative. Consider this quote from an excellent article on PMI's latest issue of PMP Passport:

“Measures like on time, on budget and on spec are part of the success criteria, but one could achieve these three and still have a dissatisfied customer,” says Ernie Baker, PMP, president of Start to Finish PM Inc., Verona, N.J., USA."

Halleluyah! Indeed, qualitative measures such as customer satisfaction, customer engagement, and team engagement can often tell us more about the "success" of the project, and can even shed light on why the project wasn't on budget, schedule, or spec.

Here's the article...

PMP Passport - Features

Leadership Responsibility For Achieving IT Project Success

Good set of anecdotes for the role of CIO and business leaders to sense and respond to market dynamics and project risks in order to achieve success. Success sometimes means an earlier project kill, so that investment can be shifted to new opportunities. ...

... "McCaig says governance must sit separately to retain its impartiality, because it is the compass for the business in terms of technology-based change projects. " ...

Via IT Week: Role of Leadership for IT Project Success ...

Periodically Recenter on Your Principles

Take a break. Reconnect with your principles. ...

... "Am I doing everything possible in my current project to hold to the principles that got me into all this? " ...

Via tompeters!: Succeed

The Enemy of Simplicity: The Thud Factor

We've all heard about the benefits of simplicity, whether in our processes, our communication, or in our objectives. In all its forms, simplicity is a way to reduce confusion, boost morale, and encourage speed and flexibility. In fact, simplicity, speed, and flexibility are three of the "Six Winning Principles" I wrote about in Napoleon on Project Management (the other three being exactitude, character, and moral force).

But there's a lurking enemy of simplicity, and it often goes unnoticed. It can be found in the motives of individuals creating the processes, communications, or objectives. I'm talking about job protection. I don't mean the blatant kind that results from grandiose thinking, egotism or turf wars. It's much more subtle than that.

It can happen if an individual or department is placed in charge of creating a process or devising a plan. Or it can happen if a consulting company is brought in to do a study or offer advice. Common sense says that these people, while not necessarily devious, will hesitate to come up with anything too simple, lest they feel they're not doing their job. The result is often something that is way more detailed, complex, and expensive than it needs to be.

What can we do about it? We need to be very aware of motives and rewards, and make sure we don't consiously or unconciously reward people for complexity. We need to send a message that the shortest, simplest way to meet the goal wins (even offering incentives if possible). This can avoid what many consultants jokingly refer to as "the thud factor"----the customer's perception of the value of the service as judged by how much of a noise the report makes when it's dropped on their desk.

Whether it's a consulting company, a PMO, an internal process center, or a project team, we need to find a way to head off the thud factor and insure simplicity. We can do this by understanding motives; sending the right message; insisting on brief, simple reports; and creating the right reward system.

Executive Support

Continuing the series of posts on Critical Success Factors, we get to Executive Support. This topic is easy to understand. It's also easy for people charged with establishing a PMO to blame lack of executive support for problems they encounter. The fact is that the kind of executive you would want as a sponsor is high enough in the organisation that they will be too busy to give detailed support. So it is essential to have a common description of the relative roles of the change management team and the executive sponsor.

Some commonly quoted expectations for executive support are:
- Visible enthusiasm within the organisation for Project Management philosophy
- Advocacy between organisational groups
- Creation of, or active support for, a vision for the organisation with engrained project management processes
- Removal of barriers to change
- Assurance of funding for the implementation and continued operation of the PMO
- Enthusiasm for the use of project management information and involvement in the processes

It's important that the support should be actionable at a working level. For instance, providing some high level design principles but not insisting on detailed design approval. Or, issuing a public announcement which would then be followed up by detailed posts about specific topics from the team.

This paper describes a sponsor's role in developing project management maturity.
The Executive Sponsor - the Hinge upon which Organisational Project Management Maturity Turns?