“What do you mean you’ve slipped again? Only last week you said you understood the issues behind the last delay and that these would be resolved. So how come we are here again?”
If you’ve ever managed, performed on, or been the customer of a project, the likelihood is you’ve been on one side or the other of what I refer to as a Britney.
A survey by Gallup found that only 2.5% of companies polled, declared they successfully delivered 100% of their projects. I’ll be honest, I was surprised it was that high.
There are many reasons why projects go off track and incur delays; poor planning, ineffective controls, and inadequate communication to name a few. All of these deserve a deeper dive, but with each consuming more of your precious time than I want to take now, I will only focus on the first, planning.
Poor planning manifesting itself in many ways; missed tasks, under-estimated effort, overlooked dependencies, unrequested resources and unidentified risks.
The reality is the vast majority of projects will have an element of uncertainty which needs to be managed. A skilled PM leverages their experience to define plans that incorporate appropriate activities they instinctively know are required for a successful outcome. Likewise, they also understand the importance of risk management. Miss a key risk, or leave it untreated and at some point it will become an issue that derails the project through additional time or expense to resolve.
This is where the knowledge of experienced project managers really pays off. Through their intellect and hard lessons learnt they’ve developed a rich understanding of how to shape and manage their projects to maximize the likelihood of a successful outcome. They are the stars that every Sponsor wants on their project. They are in high demand and not just within your company! Retaining these PMs is vital, but so is the upskilling of your new talent to broaden your delivery capability and develop the stars of the future.
So what if you could leverage industry best practice in the form of templates that automatically generate project plan structures and associated activities? How much time would you save whilst reassuring that you’ve covered all the key areas? Pretty good huh? Well what if you could then refine these templates and then augment with your own best practice, conventions and standards, thereby capturing the invaluable experience and intellectual property generated from your successful projects for all to share? Driving consistency and increasing the likelihood of future success, whilst also recognizing the contribution of your star performers.
Within our flagship product, OpusView, this is exactly what we have built. We have created templates that enable you to generate your project structures within seconds, which can then be modified, saved and then shared with your peers.
We see it as helping you encapsulate everything that is great within your project teams to drive exceptional results. Ultimately it may mean you’ll never suffer another Britney.
So shall I hit you one more time or are you ready for OpusView?
