World-Class Project Management

Many organisations aspire to be world class in project delivery, but it is not an easy task to achieve. The organisation culture, resource skills, and entrepreneurial leadership play a major role to achieve their goals. I would recommend implementing the following points if an organisation to be a world class in project delivery:

1. Collaboration: A motivated and respectful team is greater than the sum of its parts if people work together and provide cover for one another. More can be achieved this way than working in silos. Collaboration is not just internal to the team: it involves external collaboration with all stakeholders, especially the customer. Fully engaging with customers and working with them, rather than for them, will create shared understanding and ownership of goals and outputs.

2. Rich Communication – Face to face or telephone, rather than emails: People should always use the most effective channel to communicate. Using face-to-face and/or visualization are many times faster and more effective than words on their own like emails. A rich communication environment should be created where information passes freely in a culture of commitment and trust. Emails should be used for formal communication.

3. Servant Leadership style (not autocratic culture): In simple terms the idea of servant leadership is that the best way to lead a team is to be a servant to the team. Therefore, as a leader of a team you would put team members’ needs above yours. It would be your role to ensure that everyone is looked after; that they are okay and they have what they need, and also ensure they are working towards project objectives. This in turn creates a happier, more effective and productive team, and performance improves accordingly.

4. Lessons- learnt database: Create database of lessons learnt for every project and this will be a great asset to reduce repetitive mistakes of future projects and this will also improve delivery processes.

5. Deliver outcome not output: Project team should be trained on delivering the outcome rather the output – this will improve customer and supplier relationship. This improves one team culture across the organisation. Also delivery team may also suggest the business on new streams of revenue generation.

6. Trusted Partners (suppliers): External trusted suppliers should be treated as partners and can be included in profit sharing. This focus will move from output to outcome focused.

7. Speed to market: Deliver core benefits first then deliver the rest later. This will help the business to realise benefits a lot quicker

8. One Project Manager end to end: In many organisations, we have two project managers, one from the business and the other one from the supplier. I suggest combining both roles as one role i.e. one project manager will manage and implement all the activities end to end. This will improve accountability on the outcome, speed to market, ownership, and reduce waste.

9. Proper review and approval of business cases i.e. robust portfolio review: Many projects/programs start with good intention then it would be stopped within a few months due to various reasons. Portfolio planning needs to be improved i.e. prioritisation process and governance needs to be more robust.

10. Have fun on Fridays from 4 PM to 5 PM:  This needs to be a team building activity; senior managers should mingle with their staff and make it has fun party. They need to create one team and one family culture. This removes barriers and hierarchies, and improves transparency. Note: Please make sure it shouldn’t end up with just drinking only sessions

We can measure the improvement using following KPIs

1. Level of collaboration
2. Level of happiness
3. Level of retention rate
4. Are people working longer hours because they enjoy
5. Speed to market

Questions, suggestions, and comments are most welcome.

Author: Ravi Shankar, Senior Project Manager at Telstra