5 Attributes of Effective

Project Management
Winston Churchill once said, “Plans are of little importance,
but planning is essential.” This paradox is especially true in project
management. Circumstance causes frequent departure from plans, and
yet planning remains an invaluable asset, serving as a roadmap for the
project and a baseline for measuring end-results.

But the truth is, a lot of businesses struggle with project planning, with
predictable results. According to the Project Management Institute,
only nine percent of businesses rate themselves as excellent at
executing initiatives to deliver strategic results, and 44 percent of
strategic initiatives fail to meet their original business goals. Worldwide,
this costs organizations an estimated $109 million per one billion
invested in projects.

So how do you make a project plan that will actually work (i.e.
successfully accomplish business objectives on time and under budget)?
There’s no one-size-fits all answer, but there are a number of attributes
that effective plans usually have in common. Below are the top five.

Effective Project Plans.

1. Use the right methodology:
There are a number of different project management frameworks that suit
different industries and project types, but most fall under the two reigning
methodologies: Agile/responsive and Waterfall/forcing. Waterfall is the
more traditional approach where project tasks and objectives are passed
down from the top through a hierarchy, and the project plan provides a
detailed agenda of the steps required to get from the drawing board to
finished project. This top-down, predictive planning is usually best suited
for projects with larger scope, repeatable workflows, and fixed
requirements.

Agile methodology emphasizes a more bottom-up, collaborative process

which includes reactive planning, and working in short, time-boxed
increments. The flexibility of agile project management makes it a good
fit for product-focused teams whose work is constantly subject to
changing customer requirements, such as software and technology
development. Roughly 76 percent of developers are using or plan to use
an Agile project management tool. In the past several years, other
project-focused industries have also taken an interest in Agile planning,
from construction to human resources to marketing.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these methodologies,

and more often than not, the best approach involves a balance between
the two—a balance between strategy (top-down planning) and tactics
(bottom-up planning).

2. Use the Best Project Management Software

That doesn’t mean the most expensive system on the market—just the
one that’s best suited for its anticipated use. Project management
software can range from lighter, web-based tools for small teams, to
scrum-based systems for software developers, to enterprise project and
portfolio management (PPM) for large companies with simultaneous
projects.

In any case, a software tool can help your team share assets, measure
progress and ROI, build repeatable workflows, report on key metrics, and
collaborate between locations and departments.

3. Keep the Lines of Communication Open

Since most projects require collaboration between diverse groups of
stakeholders, it’s important to keep everyone on the same page about
goals, progress, and requirements. In a waterfall PM ecosystem, this will
usually mean passing down memos from upper management or sending
out weekly recap emails. In Agile, it could entail daily “stand-up”
meetings where teams update each other throughout a sprint, or setting
up an internal feedback loop using project management software.

One example of this is the enterprise social network, which is now being
incorporated into many core business systems for project management,
CRM, and HR. Gartner predicts that 50 percent of large organizations
will have internal social networks by next year. This hive of intelligence
(from databases, audit trails, and communication platforms) is sometimes
referred to as knowledge management.

4. Stay Flexible
Project managers from the more traditional camp tend to over-emphasize
predictive planning. It’s good to set goals and milestones for the future,
and even to create a work-breakdown-structure (WBS) to help you map
out labor and schedule allocations, but it is possible to over-plan.
You might be over-planning if you’re trying to anticipate resource
requirements and budget adjustments down to the granular level at every
turn, or if you’re building intricate reverse timelines with the precision
and neurosis of a wedding-planner. This fixation with control will probably
be thwarted during week one, when the budget changes, or customer
demands change, or your team structure, asset availability, and so on.

5. Match Talent with Tasks

This is a pretty basic tenet of resource allocation: treat your team
members’ skill sets as resources that should be assigned to the most
appropriate project responsibilities. But many project managers get so
wrapped up in strategy and timelines that they mistakenly treat people as
interchangeable parts. If you want your team members to be personally
invested in their portion of the work, you need to acknowledge and
exploit their areas of expertise. According to a recent study by Baseline
magazine, companies that “align talent planning [with] business
objectives” have 14 percent higher project success rates.

Conclusion
Projects vary by industry, complexity, and scope, so there’s no single
recipe for successful project management. But if there were, it would be
equal parts strategy, tactics, and collaboration, combined with a flexible
program. It would create project plans with just enough foresight, and
just enough adaptability—in other words, a recipe for a recipe.