In many organizations, the ghosts and goblins of poor project management are haunting all year round, not just at Halloween!

A Frightening Scenario

Here’s a scary scenario that anyone involved in project management will probably recognize:

1. Projects are not meeting expectations! They can drag on over-scope, over-budget, over-schedule, or under deliver on promised deliverables.
2. Executives do not have real-time visibility into all projects! If they have visibility, senior executives and project managers can begin to pull on the levers of control.
3. The people working on projects are not trained in formal collaborative project management! The people involved in the project – especially those managing the project – are not experienced and trained enough in collaborative project management. A term that has been in use for many years now is “P-MBA” or Project Manager by Accident! This label describes the project management reality of many organizations.
4. Your organization does not have best practice processes and guidance for project managers! This includes documentation, explanations, templates, and training that explain to people how you want projects run and how you want them to be successful.

It Doesn’t Have to be so Scary!

Does the scenario above seem all too familiar?  Well… it doesn’t have to be that scary!

In our 20+ years of helping customers to become more successful with their project management, we have identified five critical success factors needed for successful project management improvement.

Here’s a quick summary of the five factors required to transform your project management approach for better results:

1. Executive Sponsorship: Senior management recognizes Project Management as a strategic capability and necessity for the organization, and desires to improve this capability.
2. Project Management Champions: The organization appoints an individual or a team to drive Project Management improvement.
3. Problem Definition: The group understand and can prioritize the challenges associated with Project Management that they require to improve.
4. Solution Definition: The group have an understanding or can recognize workable solutions to these Project Management challenges.
5. Stakeholder Engagement.  The designed solution is vetted by a representative sample of the key stakeholders (e.g. project managers, team members, senior executives) before deployment.

This blog post explains the critical success factors and also includes some quick self-assessment questions that will help you hone in on the areas you need to improve.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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