Principles of Project Management

Stick to a few basic principles and minmise the rules. Rules just annoy people, especially when “common sense” forces them to break them!
Ensure there is leadership from the top

If you are serious about enterprise-wide program and project management you must realize that it doesn’t run itself.  It needs leadership to establish its profile and to enforce the accountabilities. The opportunity may be have been recognized by a few middle-management enthusiasts in various parts of your business and they may even get as far as agreeing some common methods and practices. However, that is not enough if you are to reap the full rewards. You will need to have:

  • someone with top level accountability for the adoption and direction of the full environment across the whole organization, preferably reporting directly to the CEO, deputy CEO or COO. I will call this a Programme Management Director;
  • someone with specific accountability of the architecture (accountabilities, process, systems and culture) of project management; I often refer to this person as the “Design Authority” or “Program/project management authority”
  • an organization to support these people in undertaking their roles. After all, you seldom find directors at this level do all the detail work themselves.
Support the people, not the process

This brings us to the subject of “project support offices”; what exactly should a “support office” do to support enterprise-wide program and project management and how should this service be provided?  Whilst many proprietary methods define a “support office” role, you will find they often have different activities and styles associated with them.  To make matters worse, many of them are not clear as to whom they are supporting! As with many project management related topics, there is no single commonly agreed definition or approach; you have to create you own, drawing on whatever experience is available. I find the easiest way to approach this is to:

  • assume a support office has no accountabilities of its own;
  • decide which roles the office supports
  • look at what aspects of the supported roles can be delegated to the support office. 

You can then look at the discrete accountabilities associated with each supported role and decide which will benefit from a support service.

For all the projects (portfolio)
  • Make sure that your projects are driven by benefits which support your strategy.
  • Balance the risks across your project portfolio.
  • Build the business case into your business plan as soon as the project has been approved.
  • Make informed decisions on which projects you allow to continue
  • Prioritise benefits, not projects.
  • Ensure that you have the freedom to change by having “white space” resources.
  • Keep a list of the projects you are undertaking.
For each project
  • Manage your project within a staged framework.
  • Place high emphasis on the early stages of the project.
  • Treat gates as “entry” points to stages, not “exit” points.
  • Address and revalidate the business aspects of the project throughout its life.
Controlling a project
  • Encourage team work and commitment.
  • Practice single-point accountability.
  • Break down functional barriers by using a cross-functional team.
  • Manage your stakeholders’ expectations.
  • Build excellence in project management techniques and controls across your company.
  • Ensure success by planning for it.
  • Monitor and control against the agreed plan.
  • Manage changes to the plan actively.
  • Close the project formally.

Source: The Project Workout, preambles to Part 3, Part 2 and Part 4.

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Copyright Robert Buttrick 2009