The basic premise of project management is that work needs to get done, by a certain number of folks, in a certain amount of time, and for a certain amount of money.  To accomplish this, project managers have sophisticated tools at their disposal to organize all the work tasks, assign people to do the work, and track how long each task takes to complete.

So why with such tools at our disposal, do so many IT projects fail to meet expectations?

…Because it’s not about the tools.

The process that occurs before a project manager can even think about opening Microsoft Project (or any other project management tool) is extremely important, and quite frankly, can set the project up for success or failure from the get go, despite the sophistication of the software used to manage the project.

The process that I refer to is the one that defines the scope of work, identifies the tasks, and sets the customers expectations accordingly along the way.

An effective way to accomplish this is use a “top down” approach, meaning, once clear functional requirements are identified and agreed upon (this in of itself can be a tricky endeavor), the project team (the PM and the technical folks) can get in a room and begin to identify the work items (tasks) required to satisfy the requirements.  The key thing here is to identify the tasks granularly enough to increase the accuracy of the work estimate. 

For example, if an identified task is estimated to take 40 hours, well, what are all the things that need to be done within those 40 hours?  Can they be discretely identified, down to the subtasks that can be measured in 1 or 2 hour increments?  If yes, then break out the work plan to that level of detail.  It will significantly increase the accuracy of the estimate.

So really, it’s not about the sophistication of the tools we use to manage our IT projects, it’s really more about the basics, and gaining thorough understanding of the tasks at hand prior to inputting the data into the tools that separates project success from project failure. 

Keep it simple and stick to the basics.

It’s been said that managing IT projects is akin to “herding cats”… conjuring up the image of programmers, managers, and business stakeholders scurrying about in all directions, as the well intended project manager attempts to keep everyone on task, and carries out the daunting task of consistent and effective project team communication. As the work environment continues to become increasingly “virtual”, with project team members spread out across separate locations, typing with their thumbs on Blackberry’s, iPhones, and related mobile devices, keeping the project team “on the same page” is an ever increasing challenge.

Well, there seems to be light, or should I say, a portal, at the end of the tunnel. We here at Diamond have found that implementing an easy to use, secure, web-based project portal, accessible from anywhere a project team member might find themselves, is a very effective “cat herder”.

It used to be that with a well written project status report and email, projects teams were able to stay relatively in-synch. But today, with team members increasingly in scattered locations, keeping track of the latest version of key documents, important project developments, and risk reporting, relying on attachments in emails is less and less effective.

Enter the “project portal”… another example of a shift taking place as the world of social networks, blogs, wiki’s, and other forms of instant communication takes hold of all of us. The  shift is the concept of a central “place” where invited participants can “meet” and collaborate. Google has recently deployed their “Wave” platform (http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html) to over 100,000 developers for Beta testing. Google Wave is a whole new approach to email, chat, and collaboration… possibly changing the communication experience as drastically as email itself did almost 20 years ago.

The power of Diamond’s project portal is in its centrality… as project team members go to a central place to find the latest news, status, reports, and risks.  Document version control ensures that team members are always reading the latest, up-to-date copy of any document loaded into the portal.  Automation in the form of team member notification can be implemented to ensure notice is given when significant events occur on the project.

So, even as project teams become more and more scattered across offices, cities, and states… the project portal becomes the consistent meeting place and central voice of reason for everyone involved in the project.

As defined by Wikipedia:

“Critical Success Factor (CSF) is the term for an element which is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission.”

We here at Diamond do not take the concept of ‘critical success factors’ lightly.  As a matter of fact, we make sure to review these with our clients at the start of every project so we’re all on the same page.

Now there are some easy, no-brainer “success factors” that come along with any project.  They are the ones listed in bright clear text, usually in a section of a contract called “Deliverables”.  Although these are obviously important, there are often other factors that can make or break a project that aren’t always spelled out so clearly.

Diamond likes to look at success factors from “within the trench”, as a team, in partnership with our clients.  As we all know, once a contract is signed by the management types, it’s up the collaborative efforts of the project team to actually deliver the goods.  And the critical success factors should speak directly to delivering these goods.

The critical success factor discussion usually starts like, “Ok, we have all signed up to build this new, really cool software widget.  How will we as a team know when we have reached success, and what or who will tell us?”

It is amazing at times what comes up.  As an example, in a recent project, the project team members on the client side brought up that this new software needs to be the easiest, most intuitive, program to use as possible, with little to no training required.  These folks knew the user community intimately; and they also knew that whole hearted acceptance and buy-in by the general user community was going to be the lynchpin of success.  So, over and above the black and white “deliverables” outlined in the contract, we as a team knew that the user interface and general usability of the system was going to influence short and long term success.  So specific ‘critical success factors’ were written as a team, and documented in the project status report which is distributed weekly.

So, to sum up…attacking ‘critical success factors’ from the trench, as a cohesive, collaborative team, will uncover aspects of the project that have not been discussed during the sales and proposal generation process.  This tactic also provides opportunity to have all project team members provide input, and in the end, results in a unified project team with mutual success at the forefront.

After spending more than 10 years of my career managing enterprise level IT projects, I have learned, and come to appreciate that effective Project Management is truly a blend of both science and art.  I stumbled over this quote from Atlantic Global’s website, after doing a bit of “creativity reconnaissance” on the web:

“Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.”

There is obviously science to successful project management.  Gathering the requirements, defining the scope of work, estimating the work, building a project plan, identifying risks, measuring and tracking effort and progress, etc…and there are many tools available to us today to help us (even automate) these scientific tasks.

But what gets lost al too often, even by the best project managers, is the art of project management.  What I mean by the word art is all of the subtle and sometimes intangible aspects of managing a project to a successful completion.  As the quote above says, things will ALWAYS change… business needs and circumstances change, priorities change, scope will change, people change…The project manager, and ultimately the project team, need to expect change, and it’s up to the project manager to prepare the team (the customer included here) to expect and be able to handle changes along the way.

The art of project management includes activity like; educating, preparing, counseling, and communicating.  I have found that educating the customer, especially in the world of Information Technology projects, is huge.  If the customer is afforded the chance to learn about what happens “behind the scenes” and how it happens… as change happens, the customer will be armed with enough broad view knowledge of the process to better understand the implications of the change.

To sum up my thoughts here… it truly does take a blend of science based tools and processes, with an equal part of artist-like communication to have the best opportunity for project success… because as we all know… CHANGE HAPPENS.