What’s always been intriguing about project management is that, superficially, it appears extremely easy. You simply agree what the project needs to deliver, plan the resources, develop some strategies to manage, and then deliver. However, although the processes themselves appear quite straightforward, the ability to deliver successfully, in a variety of industries, with degrees of complexity and size, becomes subtly complex.Let’s take a look at the Telecoms industry which, over the past few years, has grown at an inordinate pace, and where project managers are increasingly faced with growing pressure to deliver projects with ever increasing efficiency and speed; manage multiple organisations and bring them together to deliver to a common goal; prioritise multiple projects with overlapping schedules and conflicting precedence; and deliver to unreasonable deadlines frequently set before a solution is specified.
Today’s project manager now deals with fast-tracking, schedule-crashing, rapid-deployment and many other euphemisms, used to describe what seems to have become one of the industry’s overriding trends: delivering projects better, faster, and cheaper. But the old saying still holds true: ‘better, faster, cheaper, pick any two!’. In most cases, this approach involves taking short-cuts on the basics of good project management: planning, communicating and controlling a project.
Is it hardly surprising then, that far from delivering success, a staggering 40% of IT Telecom projects fail – costing the average IT organisation $1m each year?
Going back to basics, removing complexity, and encouraging best practice should sit very close to the top of every organisation’s project deployment wish list. There are several pointers for organisations to get back to basics, regain control and get off to the right start.
Start with good planning – end with good plans. Firstly, it is essential to understand that a project has to be planned and defined ahead of time in order to succeed. Good planning provides focus, forethought and direction and greatly increases the chance of delivering a successful project;
Set up a common framework of understanding between all parties. Consider your own organisation, as well as all outside parties, when planning your project;
Communicate project- management processes up-front. Most processes require the participation of multiple teams to understand their role ahead of time;
Define the project scope. A clear and unambiguous set of project goals is essential to allow all parties to sign up to meet the project deliverables;
Establish your customer’s weighting for success. It is unlikely that you can have better, faster and cheaper, so work to agree what’s most important to your project;
Determine your customer’s acceptance criteria. It is essential to determine your customer’s expectations for acceptance so that success can be measured throughout;
Agree an issue management procedure. Establish a change process at the outset to allow you to deal proactively with all major problems when they occur. This allows you to maintain control;
And finally, establish your risk management strategy. Since high-benefit endeavours are always risky, identifying risk at the beginning of the project and then managing and monitoring throughout are essential to project success.
Imtech Telecom Global’s customers find implementing successful projects in today’s multi-faceted environment, requires a proactive approach by all parties. Many large carriers find that an agile and responsive partner can reduce the complexity and risk of deploying projects. Imtech has adopted a hands-on approach and our project managers manage proactively because we understand that best-practice project management gives our customers a golden opportunity to increase overall project deployment success.