WOW! So many people coming to my blog this month! Looking for the elusive recipe, aren't you? I'll give it to you, but before, let me settle scores with 'Listmania', a type of illness that prevents project managers and other stakeholders from thinking straight.

I noticed while looking at my blog entries that the ones with numbers in the title, promising 'lists' of questions, answers, laws, principles, success factors, failure factors, etc... were the most read. I also noticed it was the same for my co-bloggers here. So the list of the three most read blog entries on Projecttimes.com is as follows:

10 Ways to Use Requirements to Melt an Executive's Brain        2752

Twenty Ideas du jour for the Practicing Project Manager             1616

Project Risk Management in 12 Questions                                862

So, what does it say about us as project managers? It says that we like quick fixes. It says that we like recipes. It says that we might have lost our capacity to think straight and that we rely on others to tell us what to do on OUR projects.

I am very untrusting of any list that has not been subjected to proper cause and effect analysis, and most of the lists that one can find have not been given the 'Ishikawa' treatment. So what is offered are lists of items that are rarely mutually exclusive. Consequently, we might end up working very hard on things that are symptoms or effects rather than root causes, which means working for nothing.

For many years, I have presented in my workshops the 10 Project Success Factors list from the Chaos Report (www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/chaos-report.pdf) as the best thing that ever hit the world since the invention of the wheel. Here it is for those who came here driven by the title of this blog entry:

The 10 Project Success Factors

(Chaos Report, version 1995....for they changed over the years, as any list of factors like that will)

1. User Involvement -15.9%
2. Executive Management Support -13.9%
3. Clear Statement of Requirements -13.0%
4. Proper Planning - 9.6%
5. Realistic Expectations - 8.2%
6. Smaller Project Milestones -7.7%
7. Competent Staff -7.2%
8. Ownership - 5.3%
9. Clear Vision & Objectives - 2.9%
10. Hard-Working, Focused Staff - 2.4%

The % at the end of each item shows the percent of persons (out of 365 respondents based on their collective experience on more than 8000 IT projects) who listed this item as a success factor. According to this list, the No 1 factor is User Involvement ...so let's act on it 'Pareto style'.

What's wrong with this approach is that it assumes that there is no causal relationship between these elements, which is a false assumption. As I look now at it 'Ishikawa style', the No.1 is No. 9 in the list: Clear Vision and Objectives....and, really, it is the No.1 of all lists claiming to uncover the key success factors of project management. Here how it really works. If we do not have No. 9 ('clear' meaning that all stakeholders see, understand and share the same vision and the same objectives), it will be impossible to:

• respectively or simultaneously get 3, 8, 2, 1 and 7;
• agree on 5, 4 and 6; and
• have 10 and succeed

So, I would suggest that project managers and other stakeholders forget about all those lists for now and concentrate on the one single ingredient common to the success of all projects: clear and shared common vision and objectives. This is the one project success factor 'list' that is universal and that I propose to follow. The remaining items are contextual and will vary from one project to another, so be prepared to do some analysis on your project to make it a success.

No list will ever give you the recipe for success if no one is working on the same project. So start there and build, together with the other stakeholders, the list of things that you ought to do on THIS project to meet your common vision and objectives.

Don't forget to leave your comments below

Comments (2)

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written by Bruce, October 28, 2009

"clear and shared common vision and objectives"

"Clear" is a bit more possible then "shared" in my experience. Getting that common understanding and keeping it during the entire effort where things, such as requirements, will change can be tough.

When we didn't have this, and we rarely did, we used a lot of "gorilla management" techniques to tame the beast and get a good product out the door.

Many of the tools and techniques of project management are needed to cause a project to be successful, in spite of all the normal organizational and human imperfections that exist.

I've found that for any given organization, and it is different for each organization, there is a small collection of things that work best to cause the organization to be successful. This is why I also don't like the "lists" that come from too many studies (or blogs!). It is good to know of factors that have had impact, but you usually have to find the relevant ones for your organization (and these will often change over time).

Nice title ;-) and thought provoking article.

Bruce
http://PMToolsThatWork.com

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written by martin62, November 19, 2009

I am not new to proect management, but I am new to the literature (I am in the middle of getting a certification), and rather facinated by these lists and "case studies" I find in my required reading. I was interested in your note that, get to the bottom to the list and the key to project success is a "clear vision and objectives". I see this alot in the literature and my response (and sorry if this seems a bit arrogant), but, "ok, now that we have stated the obvious ..;. what's next?". I just read as part of my course the NWA ResNet case study, and they trumpeted what an innovative thing they did in involving users to define system functionality. My only question (or rather concern) is what the hell were they doing before consulting Tarot cards?! These things do me do not appear to me like stunning discoveries! Pretty obvious actually.

That said, I really liked how you took apart the list and spelled out just how obvious this really is. My current course is based on project management in the IT industry, and on one page in a chapter you see these lists and some discussion on what they "mean" and on the next page they review articles that are all trying to figure out why IT projects have such poor success rates! Hello!? What do we expalin next ... how to add two and two "the hard way"? (For a start, from what I have read so far, as a start don't let IT people manage IT projects -- that was sure the message from the NWA ResNet case study that was the subject of the assignment I just finished).

I enjoy your blog

John Martin

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