The Fundamentals for Project Success

In today's competitive business environment, organizations need to ensure their project management processes and practices follow best practices to maintain a source of competitive advantage. Through extensive project benchmarking, studies of companies' processes and systems, and real-world experience, seven fundamental principles have emerged that apply to all types of projects, from developing physical facilities to implementing new systems or business changes.

Single Point Accountability For Business Outcomes

One person must be ultimately accountable for the project's direction, for both business and project outcomes. This individual is responsible for implementation decisions and for fulfilling the promises made at the time of authorization.

Continuity Of Key People

Experience from numerous projects demonstrates that maintaining continuity of key personnel across the definition and implementation phases delivers measurable improvements in project outcomes. This underscores the importance of identifying the right people early and involving them from the start.

Benchmarking clearly shows that key-person turnover significantly harms both project execution and business outcomes.

Applicable Project Experience

Projects vary greatly in shape, size, complexity, and maturity. Different projects require different skills and experience depending on the circumstances. Project success depends on ensuring team members have the skills and experience needed for the project at hand.

Front End Loading

Front-end loading involves conducting sufficiently detailed studies, design work, estimates, and analysis to achieve a high level of accuracy before submitting the project for authorization.

Benchmarking indicates that when organizations perform sufficient quality front-end loading, they achieve significant savings in time and cost, along with faster production and operations ramp-ups.

Investment Optimization

A key focus must be optimizing investment levels across all projects and minimizing non-value-adding expenditures. This approach immediately increases the net present value (NPV) of a project proposal. The emphasis should be on achieving the best business outcome for the organization.

View this as a questioning process: Do we need this project? Do we need this component? Is there a better way? Do we have to invest capital to achieve our desired outcome? Is the balance between capital expenditure and operational expenditure optimal for the project life cycle? Business leaders and project managers should both contribute their skills and experience to this critical debate.

Minimize And Manage Change

By adopting front-end loading to improve project definition accuracy, authorized projects should be well thought out in business terms and well engineered. Once defined prior to authorization, these outcomes should be delivered without further change.

In other words, a "minimal changes" philosophy should apply to all authorized projects. If events significantly impact a project's net present value criteria (or other key business measures or project KPIs), any remedial changes should be approved by the authorizing body. Locking in quality and accountability early, with an overlaying "minimal changes" philosophy, can improve business and project outcomes.

When changes do occur, a disciplined process must tightly manage them. This process must include analysis of both direct and indirect impacts on the basic project parameters of scope, quality, cost, and schedule, followed by a review of all relevant project KPIs.

The Change Management process must clearly spell out the necessary levels of authorization required prior to implementing any change.

Independent Reviews

Finding the best people and processes for the task at hand is central to any project. Regular independent reviews are a powerful way to tap into organizational knowledge. Reviewers should be experienced professionals within their area of expertise, and all project teams should openly engage with them at key stages during the project life cycle.

Tollgate reviews by a Project Review Committee provide the opportunity for independent assessment during project definition. Post-Implementation Reviews offer an opportunity for independent evaluation following project completion.

By adhering to these seven fundamentals, project management professionals can significantly increase their chances of delivering successful projects that meet business objectives and provide lasting value to their organizations.