Project Management | Project Managers

Co-authored by Jeff Hodgkinson and Gary Hamilton

"A Project Success Plan can be a platform for ensuring all project stakeholders start off, and continue on, the right footing."

Setting up projects to succeed in the view of the customer/stakeholder is a critical part of the Project Manager's role. We suggest that, as part of project planning activities in the early stages of your project, you should hold a Project Success Plan (PSP) meeting with all key team members to agree on the project's goals, and to discuss the emotional success factors that will ensure the team gels successfully to deliver the required outcomes.

In an earlier article in the Complex Project Management (CPM) series, we introduced the topic and discussed CPM trends. We also presented the new, validated project complexity model. The model consists of nine complexity dimensions that may (and often do) exist on highly complex projects and programs. In this and subsequent articles we will discuss each complexity dimension in detail.

When I write about enterprise project management implementations, I tend to speak often in articles I write about making sure you have a good executive sponsor or support from the executive branch of your organization, (but it's rare for me to talk about just how executives get involved in an epm initiative). Let's correct that today.

Senior management can be either a help or a hindrance to an epm project and the deciding factor has everything to do with the preconceived notions the executive or executives in question bring to the table. Let's take a look for a moment at the possible states in which you might find the relevant senior executive for your epm deployment.

What qualities are most important for a project manager to be an effective project leader? It's a question often asked and one that makes us sit back and think. Over the past few years, the people at ESI International, a leader in project management training, have looked at what makes an effective project leader. They quizzed some highly-talented project leaders and compiled a running tally of their responses. Below are the top 10 qualities in rank order, according to their frequency listed.

A project charter is a critical document in that it authorizes the start of a project. Unfortunately it is sometimes viewed as a formality in the rush to get a project started. The costs of rushing the project charter will be felt later in the project with greater role ambiguity, slower decision making and lack of focus. The project charter serves as a reference throughout the life of a project and even in the subsequent post-mortem. The project charter is a formal deliverable that should not change, unless there is a significant change in the project itself, which, of course, should be detailed in the risks and mitigations section of the project charter. It is important because the project charter must be approved by the project sponsor, granting the required resources for the project.