Principles of effective project management

Project Management, like accounting or bridge engineering, operates under a set of crucial rules. When comprehended and applied, these rules are the backbone of successful project implementation in any company, regardless of the project’s nature or size. Let’s delve into these rules and recognize the importance of learning and implementing them in your project management approach.

1. Design and implement pragmatic project management standards in your company

2. Each project must have an "active" sponsor from senior management

The project sponsor is one of the most influential people determining the project’s success. However, the sponsor must not be a “statistician.” Such a sponsor does not give much.

A good sponsor should not be operationally involved in the project. However, he should get involved at a high level to understand what is going on in the project, whether it is going well or badly, have good contact with the project manager, and actively make the required decisions.

The sponsor “thwarts” the obstacles before the project and allows it to move forward. The world literature unequivocally states that one of the main factors in project failure is the lack of involvement of senior management in projects.

3. Make sure that the project manager and his team have the capacity to complete the project

The project team should not consist of random people. The team members should present a set of competencies that will allow the project to be implemented well. Suppose we engage an inexperienced project manager for an important project and give him the management of people with inadequate competencies. In that case, it is as if we immediately burned a chicken in the oven—such a project will not succeed.

The company’s management, the project sponsor, should be 100% convinced that the people delegated to carry out a particular project have a 100% chance of successful implementation. If there is no such conviction, it can be compared to a roulette game. It is agreed that the result will not be black or red, i.e., as unambiguous as in roulette, but we can be sure that if such an approach takes place in the company often, it means that many projects – just like many roulette bets – will fail.

4. Choose projects for implementation wisely and objectively

Implementing any project involves resources, and those resources cost money. Another undisputable fact is that each company can simultaneously carry out a limited number of projects. Finally, an equally undisputable fact is that companies have many project ideas.

This means that every company should take great care in selecting the projects it wants to pursue. Here, for example, is what one international logistics company operating in Poland stated:

“(…) we have more than fifty ideas for potential projects, while at the same time, we have the internal capacity for about five major projects – we need a tool that will allow us to objectively select those ideas that have the greatest impact on building sustainable value for our company.”

This company decided to build a scoring model. Such a model contains a series of questions based on which each project is evaluated, and within each question, each project is assigned an appropriate number of points. We operate on two main dimensions. The first is “business benefits,” while the second is “degree of comprehensiveness of the project.” Ideas are compared, and those that score most favorably become projects. Such a selection process still has the advantage of being primarily objective and minimizing the influence of people with solid character “pushing” their solutions.

5. Always develop a good business case for the project

Unless some legislative condition drives the project, its implementation should always focus on achieving specific business objectives. This means its business objectives should be defined and written down before starting a project. Why? Because more is needed to describe only the required product and scope of the project. It is necessary to know what this product is supposed to bring to the organization.

This approach influences greater creativity of project teams, who know what they are doing and what business results will be achieved for the organization. Another thing is the project sponsor’s responsibility – the sponsor should always focus on what business effects the project will realize. The project manager should focus on delivering the project product. Inappropriate proportions, both should be interested in one and the other.

6. Well define the expected end result of the project

Many project managers, sponsors, and others pay too little attention to defining project expected outcomes. Human nature is such that people prefer to act immediately—to have the proverbial wind in their hair. The Prince2 project management methodology says unequivocally that every project must have at least two phases: planning and implementation.

Practice shows that the planning phase needs to be addressed. Also neglected is defining the expected project results/products well. Why is this such a big problem? Creating a good project schedule and defining tasks and budgets is easier when we have a vague idea of what we want to do. Another issue is that it is difficult for us to assess at the end of the project whether we have been successful, as there is no clear benchmark in the form of a predefined product.

There is another essential argument—the lack of a clear definition of the result/product at the beginning of the project causes the project to be adjusted too often during the project. This, on the one hand, hurts the motivation of the project team and, on the other hand, most often forces the organization to incur more than necessary costs to complete the project.

7. Pay great attention to creating a good project plan

Tip 6 discusses the need to define the project’s expected outcome/product well. This is the absolute starting point for creating a good project plan. In the Prince2 methodology, this approach is called Product-Based Planning.

It is based on the fact that after defining what the project’s products and sub-products are supposed to look like, we start planning the tasks that will realize these products. With this approach, we know exactly what we want to achieve and focus the definition of project tasks on that. The next step is to create a project budget, define the tasks’ responsibilities and duration, and create a risk plan. All this and the Project Charter (the so-called Project Charter) comprise the project plan.

A refined project plan is essential because we refer to it at every moment of the project. With a plan, we know if we are behind schedule or over budget, which is the essence of project management. Finally, without a good plan, it isn’t easy to know whether the tasks carried out and expenses incurred are necessary. A good project plan is the basis of good project management and determines its success.

8. Provide your project teams with modern tools to support project management

Effective project implementation requires providing project teams with practical project management tools. When we say tools, we mean providing a dedicated IT system that supports project management and integrates all aspects of project management.

In particular, the project management software’s functionalities should be dedicated directly to the project manager and the project team. The system’s tools are sufficient to plan and execute a single project.

9. Monitor the implementation phase and systematically conduct a business project review for all ongoing projects

These tasks are among the main tasks of the project manager and the sponsor. Earlier, we talked about the need to create a good project plan. Monitoring the degree of implementation of the project refers precisely to this plan. Monitoring means that:

• We understand that the project will deliver the business objectives.
• We know the project will result in the product defined in the Project Charter.
• We review any deviations from the approved project schedule and budget and take the necessary actions immediately.
• We manage project risks – this involves not allowing known risks to materialize.
• We effectively manage ongoing project problems.
• Systematic project reviews are conducted.

10. Strengthen your company's project management culture, build a knowledge base, and learn from mistakes by analyzing your own experience.

It will be no revelation that projects can be managed better or worse. What we are concerned with is achieving excellence in project management, and this – in addition to providing the organization with the right project tools and resources – requires systematically building an organizational culture that promotes and pays a lot of attention to good project management, called project-driven organization. Here are some of the elements involved:

• Project sponsors, company boards, and critical management are actively involved in making projects successful.
• We place a high value on systematic project reviews. There are no situations in which key managers who were supposed to be at a meeting write an email the day before saying that “something” fell through and, unfortunately, they won’t make it.
• People are rewarded for success; they may make so-called “smart mistakes,” but they bear the consequences of their negligence.
• We build the organization’s project management knowledge based on implemented and used projects.

Guarantee the implementation of projects

Implementing all the tips described above is complex and cannot be done quickly. However, implementing them in the right time horizon will guarantee that the existing organization will change—its processes will start to run more efficiently, people will be motivated, and the company will achieve better financial results.