In May's blog we explored the meaning of project success and it was clear that project management is focused on doing the project right, with a wider view of success identifying the need to deliver on more than the key constraints of time, budget and scope.
Over the next few weeks I will explore Portfolio Management which is predominately about choosing the right projects that are aligned to the organization's strategy.
For those who wish to research deeper the sources for this series are:
- The Wiley Guide to Project, Program and Portfolio Management
- Management of Portfolios - Published by Axelos in the UK
- The Standard of Portfolio Management (Third edition) - published by PMI
IMPROVING THE LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS
Wrapping up this series on Project Success I want to revisit some of the earlier themes and identify what you as the Project Manager or Project Owner can do to enhance the likelihood your project being judged a success.
We have already identified in previous entries that a key theme of success is to understand what type of project the organization is initiating or selecting.
Organizations tend to opt for simplistic assessments of project type. They often equate difficulty of their projects based on size
- how big the scope is
- how large a budget will be required
- estimated time / duration for the project
- team, etc...
They use $ and estimated counts to categorize their projects and it is true that bigger projects have a higher risk of failure. However, while size of project brings its own set of unique challenges, the real issues that drive the difficulty of projects are:
- complexity in the solution, and the stakeholder relationships
- uncertainty of requirements, or in the project environment
- urgency of delivery
These issues bring an order of magnitude increase in the difficulty of a project, well above the challenges of a large big project.
