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When I was in the Army I lost count of the number of times I heard the following quote:
“We are all project managers in the military because we always get things done”
It wasn’t until I attended Prince2 and APMQ as part of my personal development while serving, that I realised how wide of the mark that statement really is. There is no doubt that many of the skills developed over 24 years leading and managing in the most difficult of circumstances has contributed to the success of my project management career (some of which are below). However, being a good leader and manager will never replace the technical process created over decades by the most intelligent people, which will guide a project manager and is essential to project success. Neither soft skills learned over time, nor technical project management will deliver a project, both must merge seamlessly into a combination of process, leadership, communication and management. Below are some (not all) of what I think are the most important attributes for project success:
Follow the process – Whether your project is agile or waterfall, the process works. Don’t cut corners or ignore it. Start at the beginning and continue to the end. From writing the project brief, developing all the project approaches in the PID to delivering and closing the project, if you follow the process, you won’t go far wrong.
Listen to your team – You can’t do this alone. It’s also very unlikely you will be an expert in every aspect of the project. Your team hold the knowledge and experience you need to deliver, so use them. This creates the bonus of empowering your team members, making them feel needed, and fosters team happiness and cohesion. Happy people work harder – fact.
Support and protect your team – Make no mistake, you are the leader of this team. You are the conduit between the project board and the people who are delivering the project. Support them by listening to their problems, being flexible with their time and taking action to address their concerns when needed. Protect them by fielding nugatory meetings, completing or pushing back on excessive bureaucracy, and stand up for them when mistakes are made. Escalate and give credit for their work, explain an issue but never lay blame, and be personally accountable for all mistakes. Negative feedback stops with you, don’t pass it down.
Lead in adversity – Your project is unlikely to go well. It will feel at times like you are trying to achieve the unachievable. Leadership is not something that is needed when things are going well, that’s just management. It is only required when things go badly. This is the time to show resilience, stay positive and lead your team to success. Tempers will fray during a crisis, conflict increases, and some people will give up. That’s when you are required to step up, calm people down and foster positivity.
Create accountability – Creating the correct governance is part of the process, don’t ignore it. Whether you are writing the first draft of the project brief, or you are taking over a project in full swing, you must ensure the correct people are in decision-making positions. It may seem like a great idea to run the project with no-one sticking their nose in, but you must be held accountable for the day-to-day delivery of the project. Likewise, you must have a mechanism to offload risk to the project board and escalate issues. Setting up the correct governance, information, risk and issue escalation will protect you, and the project.
Stakeholders are key to success (or failure) – Don’t underestimate the power of stakeholders to help or harm your project. Understanding them and planning your response is part of the process but is also one of the approaches that is likely to be ignored as too much hassle under the misunderstanding that the benefits are small. They are not. When things are going wrong, or you need something urgently, your stakeholders are your lifeline. Keep them informed, be diplomatic, don’t burn any bridges, and manage them effectively as per the process. It is time well spent.
Agile is not an excuse not to plan – “I don’t need to plan or write documentation; this is an agile project.” How many times have we heard this statement? It is untrue. Agile project management requires much the same documentation to agree your approaches as waterfall. You still need to manage risk, and stakeholders. You still need to understand your approach to change and quality, it’s just a little different. You still need to ensure correct governance and obtain agreement for project roles. And you still need to plan delivery, requirements, backlogs, customer engagement and how to address feedback. An agile project with no understanding of how to do all these things will fail – don’t be lazy.
In the end, project management isn’t about just being a good leader, manager or understanding project management methodology – it’s about bringing these things together. The process gives you the structure, but it’s the people, the leadership and the grit that make it work. Projects will throw curveballs, that’s a given, but if you stick to the process, back your team, and step up when things get tough, you’ll not only deliver – you’ll set the standard. Success comes when process and people move in the same direction, and that’s when the real magic happens.
