How to keep your project on course

Follow these five tips to deliver a successful project that stays on track, writes James Lea

1 Start with a well-defined project

A project with vague objectives and indeterminate outputs is never going to stay on track. If you don’t know where your project starts or finishes, you have no chance of measuring progress. It’s best to tackle the hard, risky things early on and agree the scope of the project carefully, using the correct language. You must also define the project environment carefully and recognise that risk originates from within the project organisation, as well as from outside it.

Well-defined completion criteria are essential too. When you say ‘done’, what do you really mean? If you don’t specify the meaning of ‘complete’, then how can you claim to have delivered? Worse still, how do you know you’re not building up technical debt, exposing yourself unnecessarily to risk and overrun?

When you join a project, ask the question: ‘What is our per cent complete?’ The answer will quickly tell you how well defined the project is, and the level of understanding and control around its delivery. Your next question can be: ‘How do we control change?’ The answer will tell you whether the project chooses to be in control of its own destiny. Finally, ask: ‘What is our plan to get from here to there?’ If these important questions cannot be resolved to your satisfaction, ask your sponsor: ‘Do we have a project?’

Once underway, a small course correction early on is reasonable, but a larger one later, particularly near a deadline, is far less tenable. If you take care around your project design and price the work using your own historical data – one of the most powerful feedback loops there is – then you stand a greater chance of success, because you have given yourself the time to breathe and deliver your very best.

Remember also that the work required to deliver is not just a function of the inputs and outputs, but also of the way you choose to perform the work. These ways of working, defined by the quality management system, influence the project’s cost, duration and risk. To maintain control, ensure your delivery baseline describes the requirements driving the work, the expected outputs and how you intend to translate one to the other. The quality management system should provide a foundation for consistent delivery and – vitally – define the measurements you should take to understand and assess performance so that you can learn and improve.

2 Manage and exploit data effectively

You must provide your teams with information that leads to the right decisions. In high-performing organisations, information is collected primarily for the benefit of teams, because those who are closest to the action have the greatest chance to act on that insight and improve performance. The best expression of that delivery data is through the project plan and schedule.

Invert the organisation chart (when did you last see a tree growing out of the sky?) and ensure that the business functions support the project teams and are highly responsive to their needs. Put teams centre stage with data. Ask them what works and what doesn’t – and focus on the data they need. In the future, teams will make greater use of new artificial intelligence tools and will be allowed to take greater individual ownership for delivery, and this in turn will drive innovation.

Data does not just mean numbers, but also relationships that convey information. When estimating and pricing, use models that estimate outcomes based on hard-won historical data.

Remember how you thrive on a feeling of satisfaction, of a job well done? Design your measure to give your teams a sense of flow. Count and measure consistently, using the standards defined in your quality management system. Relate the work, effort, cost and duration to the size of the product or system being assembled.

By adopting this empirical approach, you will find useful correlations everywhere. Exploit these correlations, for the past is a guide to the future.

3 Communicate effectively with everyone

That means everyone within the project’s sphere of influence. Tell the stories using data, but don’t overwhelm. Imagine your sponsor wants to understand progress against the plan. How would you communicate this in a way that gains its buy-in? Remember that people can easily visualise flow and intercepts, scale and variation. Tap into these concepts and present them visually – show the data so that it can be interpreted easily and correctly.

My favourite communication tool is a milestone trend chart. This shows the evolution of a time forecast and provides a powerful focal point for conversations around timely delivery. Earned value management is another excellent tool for understanding and communicating progress – I use it on projects of all sizes to great effect.

Use the tools that work for your organisation, but you don’t have to stick to the way it has always been done. The world is moving fast and so are your clients. Encourage your teams to innovate locally (a small investment will go a long way) to uncover better ways of working.

Learning from experience is a form of storytelling. Organisations may capture lessons, but they rarely give their teams the chance to listen and incorporate those stories into their own projects. Lessons gather dust and are soon forgotten. To build a storytelling feedback loop that works, place the lessons back into the quality management system, insist that everyone follow these defined ways of working and then identify any gaps. You’ll find that a beneficial feedback loop starts to flow, and you will have a learning organisation that helps keep all projects on track.

4 Understand the broader delivery context

Be mindful of how the customer will use the delivered product or system and use this understanding to optimise the approach and delivery.

Keep asking: ‘What are the benefits? Why does this matter? What will the client do with it?’ The goals of a project will change during delivery, and by understanding the extent to which this happens, you can adopt the best delivery methodology. A note of caution: I’ve seen many projects declared ‘agile’ when instead greater effort in upfront specification and design would have served the client (and the team) better.

Keep your project on track by recognising how its outputs will be used – and use this feedback to adapt and optimise your approach. Try installing a ‘final approach team’ whose task is to ensure the system lands with the client and end users, and that any surprises are handled quickly.

5 Empathise with the client and give it certainty

The client trusts you to understand and deliver against its requirements, even if it can’t articulate them in your language. When there’s change, the client may not be able to recognise the significance of it and will trust you – the expert – to recognise this for it. This can lead to problems of misunderstanding, so you must educate and inform each other throughout the lifetime of the project. Communicate and take the time to understand each other’s business.

How messages are delivered is important: sometimes confidence and reassurance are all that’s needed. Remember there’s no such thing as bad news, only bad news delivered late. You must take the lead with the client. Recognise that it will want change, so include this in your plans from the outset. You may not know the detail of the changes, but this doesn’t matter: when it arrives, call off that package of work. Plan for uncertainty; label the unknown.

By bringing all these principles together, you can build high-performing teams that deliver well-scoped projects that stay on track throughout, actively responding to change. These teams are supported from the ground up by an organisation that learns from data to improve, and so generates competitive advantage.

I encourage you to apply these principles to keep your projects on track from beginning to end.

Tips on sticking to a winning course

“Obtain learnings from other projects. Before starting the project, it is important to leverage experience from other colleagues and/or project teams who are already in delivery or have delivered similar projects. This can be as formal as hosting a lessons-learned workshop or just picking up the phone for a one-to-one chat.”
Osian Evans, principal consultant, Pcubed

 “It is imperative that all discussions on a project are transparent, honest and factual to assist in effectively managing the programme, and the costs and expectations of all involved, at each stage of the process. Many difficulties that a project faces throughout its life cycle could be addressed and resolved at an earlier stage if the respective party had raised the issue as soon as identified to seek early intervention.”
Adam Clay, associate, Rider Levett Bucknall

 “Accept the lack of control that comes with your chosen field and get used to dealing with the unexpected in an emotionally intelligent way. React better instead of quicker when issues arise that could push your projects outside the tolerances you have agreed. This makes sure you have a clear head to investigate, identify the root cause of problems, define solutions and implement them in a controlled fashion.”
Emma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton, director of consulting services, Wellingtone

 James Lea is a fellow of APM and a business change practitioner who speaks widely on the use of data to ensure successful delivery