The last few years have demanded project teams and organisations as a whole to really adapt to new ways of working, whilst ensuring that outcomes are delivered and best practices are adhered to. Then there’s the whole challenge of keeping your people happy and engaged.
Projects are by nature complicated and reliant upon a mix of different people and systems to deliver effectively. While we’d never claim that making changes are easy, the practices we help clients apply through our independent quality assurance work do centre around some key principles that everyone from the CEO to front end developer will resonate with. In this article, we’ve picked five ways organisations can help projects to be delivered to reduce the likelihood of time, budget or people issues.
While we haven’t included everything here, with just these changes made in 2022, teams will certainly notice a difference. And if you’re worried about the state of your project continuing from last year, take our free 3 Minute Project Health Check to get a quick read on your project’s likelihood of success. We can provide a free follow up report, or you can get in touch with us to discuss your project further.
Close gaps in your project governance
The framework by which a project is run and decisions are made is an essential component of success. The challenge is this groundwork is less tangible or visible than project delivery so it’s natural for organisations to prioritise the ‘doing’ over governance.
Unfortunately, when things go wrong, projects can be exposed when there’s a lack of effective governance in place. Governance should set out the rules of the game; from the roles and responsibilities of sign-offs and delivery to the identification of risks that need to be navigated around. Without this being adequately established, decisions can be made without the right stakeholders being involved and the project can go in the wrong direction without awareness of the risks that could make that approach unfeasible.
For 2022, conduct a review of your projects and assess the strength of your governance. Is there a clear set of roles and responsibilities in place? What are the reporting methods? How is communication managed across stakeholders? Have you got a complete risk assessment for each project?
If you need help finding these answers, chat to us about what we can offer in project assurance.
Governance exists in most large organisations. The challenge is around the completeness of this governance. Closing gaps in your governance can help your project realise success.
Resolve stakeholder disagreements ASAP
Conflict is simply a natural by-product of a large complicated business with many talented people. The way a business manages that conflict is the determining factor as to whether it derails a project. Instead of aiming for an environment where conflict doesn’t happen, create a space where all stakeholders have the ability to air their opinions or concerns. This may be done through regular stakeholder meetings (face to face if possible), where the agenda allows ample time for these disagreements to be aired out.
If there have been disagreements outstanding for months at a time, it’s time to bring these to the surface and find a resolution. This may be a compromise, but it equally may be a matter of agreeing to disagree and choosing a path forward. It’s in these moments that the existence of good governance becomes so clearly important. It’s also where the project scope and outcomes need to be brought to the fore to create some objectivity in the discussion.
Where you don’t want to be is caught in a long email thread with stakeholders. Keyboard-based communication is typically less personable and can lead to productive discussions going sour. If you sense that there’s a disagreement of any significance to the project, look to bring this into an in person meeting, or at the very least a video call in the short term.
If the project slows down or stops due to stakeholders, this is a major threat to success and needs to be communicated to leadership immediately. However, it’s in project managers’ better interest to try and facilitate a resolution before it gets to the point of needing intervention. How your organisation handles these situations may differ from others, so follow your process and ensure that meetings are captured via detailed minutes that all parties receive.
Increase communication with leadership and steering committee
Few if any projects have suffered from too much communication. The more people involved with a project’s success, the more opportunities there are for communication to break down. While a delivery team can help foster better communication with a methodology like Agile, the bigger issue typically lies between the project team and the leadership team who are looking for a particular business outcome to be achieved. Project managers’ reporting is an excellent way to keep steering committees and leadership teams aware of the progress of a project, i.e. how is each milestone being achieved against the set timeline or whether the budget is being spent commensurate with milestones being achieved.
While reporting on numbers and delivery through a set format tells key parts of the story, there’s still everything that fits around those facts that can benefit from communicating up the line:
- Are there concerns around the approach?
- Are there new threats internally or externally to the success of the project?
- Do the wider operations team have buy-in to what’s being worked on in this project?
- Are there issues with particular stakeholders?
- Does the project suffer from a lack of resources?
- What is scope creep doing to the engagement and effectiveness of project teams?
Having the trust and safety to raise these issues with a steering committee and leadership teams empower project management greatly. Bringing the issues on the ground up to leadership helps to jump on issues faster. And with a project well into the millions in the budget, any time saved on going in the wrong direction can translate to big money saved as well.
It’s a matter of deciding when is a more difficult time to ask for more budget: at the start of a project before any delivery gets underway, or after a project has been running and suddenly runs out of money?
Spend more time on the hiring process
Your project team transforms conversations and plans into realised business changes. Whether your project is improving technologies, embedding a new business unit or even something more tangible like upgrades to a public space (e.g. council infrastructure projects), the people who have been engaged to carry out the work are crucial.
For 2022, our advice is to take more time with the recruitment of project team members. Slow down, and make sure you are very clear on the criteria required from your hires. One risk that no project can avoid is the loss of staff partway through. Hiring too quickly into roles can often translate on the other side to a speedy departure. You’ll want to ensure that along with the technical skill to deliver, your resources are:
- Genuinely interested in the business/project.
- Have an intent to stay the course (until their part of the project is done, or the project is finished entirely).
- Are demonstrably good in a team environment.
- Able to follow project manager directions.
- Understand scope and budget in relation to the efficiency of work they do.
- Have good relationship skills to work with stakeholders.
- Reflect on the values and culture of your organisation.
While many projects engage contractors to get the work done, your project team needs to fit within the rest of the organisation seamlessly.
Are you concerned about the progress of your project?
Start out the year with peace of mind and chat to our team about what we can provide to your organisation. Quality assurance in your project or programme can pick up issues and provide guidance on solutions, giving you the best chance at success. If you’re not sure if you’re ready for this, take our 3 Minute Project Health Check now. You’ll get a result straight away and can request a free report based around your answers.
