PM-14 Do You Have a Purpose AND a Success Strategy for Your Project?

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Most leaders can not define their strategy for how they will achieve something if their life depended on it.? If you did a deep dive into their schedule, you will note that their actions do not support their long-term goals.?? Most actions might not even support the direction that they are driving their team toward.

Can we do better as Project Leaders?

YES!!!

In our last two articles, we discussed creating a Project Charter, Identifying your Stakeholders and Steering Committee (PM101-12), and creating a RACI chart(PM101-13).

At this point, you have some idea of what your project's scope of work looks like.? You know where you need to end up but it is still murky as to how you will get there.? Let us differentiate between purpose and strategy for a project.? Consider the figure below:

The company leadership has noticed an opportunity in the marketplace and believes this project will help to fill that gap.? BUT they might not have even thought about the strategy of how this project needs to be executed.? Maybe they thought about some of the people who will be a part of it in terms of support for the project team?? Don't expect that any of this has been done before you were chosen as the leader.

With this in mind, it is up to you to create the strategy for what you and your team believe needs to be done and how.? This requires some time to think through all of the aspects of managing the project.? The final result is a document that is often called a Project Management Plan (PMP). Notice that we are starting the Planning Process Group activities.

PMBOK shows this as:

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Project management Plan (PMP) should address each of the knowledge areas:

4? Project Integration Management,? 5 Project Scope Management, 6 Project Time Management, 7 Project Cost Management, 8 Product Quality Management, 9 Project Resource Management, 10 Project Communication, 11 Project Risk management, 12 Project Procurement Management, 13 Project Stakeholder management

PMI is very incomplete for industrial projects.? My suggestion is for you to add three knowledge areas at the beginning of the document:

Chapter 1? Introduction with Business Case, Chapter 2 Safety,? Chapter 3 Environmental? AND one at the end labeled Chapter 14 Change Log

You should create a Word document and within it create chapter headings with those chapters. Imagine that you are writing a strategy book about your project because you are. It should have the form below:?

Project Management Plan Structure

Chapter 1? Introduction

-??????? Initial Scope of Work for the Project

-??????? Summary of Business Case

Chapter 2 Safety

Chapter 3 Environmental

Chapter 4? Project Integration Management

Chapter 5 Project Scope Management

Chapter 6 Project Time Management

Chapter 7 Project Cost Management

Chapter 8 Product Quality Management

Chapter 9 Project Resource Management

Chapter 10 Project Communication Management

Chapter 11 Project Risk Management

Chapter 12 Project Procurement Management

Chapter 13 Project Stakeholder Management

Chapter 14 Change Log (Might be easier to keep this in an Excel Spreadsheet)

Now what?

Once you have created the document you need to write a few paragraphs where you describe the strategy of how you will manage that knowledge area.? Those paragraphs should define the system, direction, and actions that will need to be taken to manage the knowledge area to success.?

?

Each section needs to define the system that will be used to keep that knowledge area on track. The direction you currently believe needs to be taken to arrive at the project success destination. This is where you define the actions that need to be taken to make sure the direction of the project is maintained so that scope, schedule, quality, etc. are controlled.?

For example, if you were writing the Scope Management Plan you need to define what you will do to create and manage the scope.? Will you use an external engineering partner or the company will self-engineer the project with its resources?? If new scope is defined, who will need to review and approve the addition of scope?? If the scope of work (SOW) is being gold-plated by Operations, who will need to approve or reject it???

The last thing to mention about the PMP is that it needs to be reviewed and updated probably on a monthly basis.? This review frequency is gold.? By forcing yourself to review it you will be able to add additional detail and knowledge that initially did not capture or were aware of. Any changes to each knowledge area need to be noted AND dated. If anyone reads your PMP they should see what your strategy is and how it has been affected by the reality of life.

The secret is not to be too hard on yourself.? Draft the PMP, hopefully with your team, and share it with your leadership and co-workers to get their feedback.? They will help you improve it and by doing so they will also buy into it.

The transformation I am hoping that you make this week is to understand the importance of purpose and strategy to your project. Recall that:

The Project Purpose provides the direction, the WHERE, of your project.? The Success Strategy in each of the knowledge areas in the PMP is HOW you plan to maintain that direction so that you arrive at a specific place.? Your plan will need to adjust as it comes into contact with reality BUT your purpose should not waver.? ?

My four cents..