Project management: 3 keys to Manage Project Successfully

Since the late 1980s, project management has profoundly transformed the practices and performance of organizations. Aiming to increase project control, project management can be defined as the art of driving a team and its project to its destination. Let’s take a look at the advantages of using this methodology and the 3 keys that ensure the success of projects.

Why use Project Management

1. Focus on Priorities

In the course of a project, options often arise and lead to deriving from the policy. But given the clearly stated objective and the expected benefits, the right method invites us to return to the goal, and therefore to the essence of the “why” of the project. This makes it possible to choose the option likely to facilitate the respect of the deadlines, the budget and the expected quality.

2. Aim for Performance and Overcome Difficulties

The members of a team can have varied and complementary skills. Thus, the common language and the shared vision of the approach facilitate the identification and selection of the most relevant options to achieve the objective.

3. Preparing for Change

A project is by definition innovative. It will probably change; shake the benchmarks of future users of the product or service delivered. Project management communication tools are there to facilitate membership, and drive change.

4. Get better Control over Activities

As in the cockpit of the aircraft, the project dashboard is the tool to monitor indicators, measure performance and anticipate potential drift.

Keys to the Success of a Project

The method and tools are not sufficient to ensure the success of a project. You have inevitably seen projects that succeed without any apparent method. The art of the leader, his charisma, seem to be substituted, for the good of all, for every rational approach. The intrinsic qualities of the manager, his human qualities, remain essential. But whatever it is, charismatic or methodical, it must, from the initialization, set up the conditions for success. How? By incrementing these 3 parameters of success

1. The will of the Management

It is expressed in the definition of the objectives, the strategic orientations of the project. It is then reflected in the involvement of the hierarchy and the quality of the means implemented. But wanting is one thing, transmitting one’s envy is another. The involvement of management must go so far as to motivate, train and support the players. That is why the quality of the leader she will choose to set up a project will be one of the first translations of her level of involvement.

2. The Competence of the Actors

To those internal and specific to the business of the company, association or organization concerned must have the technical, marketing or communication skills necessary for the realization of the project. Skills that remains inseparable from the human qualities of the participants in order to work permanently towards the common goal. An audit provides an assessment of the situation. Its conclusions trigger possible corrective actions such as training, recruitment or external assistance.

3. The Project Structure

Whether it is matrix, commando or informal, it must be shared between the partners (“customer” and “supplier”) within a clear approach and a balanced contract. It must involve the client in a mirroring of the roles and rely on a common culture of the actors in terms of project management. A structure that offers communication spaces where the actors learn to know each other, recognize their differences and their complementarities, dialogue to act better together . If these three conditions are not met, there remains a quality that the project leader must have: the courage to stop, the courage to say no.