What do we mean by ‘excellence’, when we are discussing project delivery? Well, we can’t measure it by outcomes for two reasons. First, we already measure success by outcomes, and second, you cannot completely control the outcome. But you can control project delivery. So, what are the capabilities we need, to achieve project delivery excellence?
The 12 Components of Project Delivery Excellence
To answer this, I made a list of 17 things. But that list seemed too long. Examining what went well together, I have crunched it down to 12 components of excellence. I could possibly have got down to 10. And I could, of course, gone for a less ‘magical’ number. But a dozen seems good. Here they are:
- Precise Project Definition
- Relentless Focus on Value
- Positive Stakeholder Engagement
- Appropriate Tailoring
- Competent Planning
- Diligent Stewardship of Resources
- Rigorous Commitment to Quality
- Enlightened Leadership of Your People
- Fluid Adaptability
- Timely Risk and Issue Management
- Continuous Monitoring and Control
- Robust Governance
As you will expect, some of these split out into two, three, or four major components. Let’s take a look…
Precise Project Definition
Regular readers will know how important I consider a good project definition to be. It’s the groundwork and foundation of your project.
So, you must have clear goals and objectives, a well-defined purpose or project driver, and an unambiguous scope statement.
Hang on… In an agile project, the scope needs to remain variable and adjustable until near the end.
Yes indeed. In a predictive (traditional, or planned) project, we will need an explicit and clear statement of:
- What is in scope
- And what is out of scope (exclusions)
But, if you are working in an adaptive (agile) paradigm (more on this later, at #4), your scope statement will consist of:
- An initial product backlog, and
- Procedures for backlog drawdown at each iteration, and backlog grooming
For more information
Project Definition
- What Goes into a Project Definition? | Video
- Robust Project Definition: How to Build it and the Components you Need
- Project Definition: Three Big Questions about Your Project | Video
- What is Strategic Project Definition? | Video
- Capabilities-Based Planning: A Full Primer for Better Project Definition
Our premium Project Definition Kit will help you to take a jumble of ideas, needs, and requests and turn it into a well-defined project brief.
Scope Management
- The Basics of Scope Management: How to Manage Scope | Video
- Establish Project Scope: How to Master Your Toughest PM Challenge
- Scope Management Plan: Everything You Need to Know
- Getting a Clear Scope for Your Project: A Conversation with Joseph Garfield | Video
Relentless Focus on Value
Value is some measure of cost and benefit. We’ll see the cost side in #6, Diligent Stewardship of Resources. Here, we will consider the benefits part of the value equation (whichever you choose). The project must focus on delivering benefits to:
- The Business (Commercial Benefits)
- Society (Social Value)
- The Environment (Environmental Value
I have taken this breakdown from John Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line of Profit, People, and Planet. Do take a look at my interview with Dr Karen Thompson, about Responsible Project Management.
The Business (Commercial Benefits)
Business benefits can be financial and non-financial. While non-financial benefits have a value to the organization, it is hard (or near-impossible) to ascribe a monetary value to them in a rigorous way.
Financial benefits clearly deliver enhanced profit, surplus (in the case of not-for-profit organizations), or cash flow. They can achieve this by supporting either revenue income, cost base, or capital values.
Society (Social Value)
I argue that all projects should consider the impact of the process and outcome of that project to the community and wider society.
- Take a look at my video, What is Social Value? And How Can You Measure it in Projects?
The Environment (Environmental Value)
As important as social value is the wider need to contribute to the sustainability agenda. The latest version (v7 – 32023) of the PRINCE2 methodology makes clear reference to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Green Project Management is the generally used term, but the 17 UN sustainable development goals extend well beyond environmental concerns and into social value, covering health, poverty, equity, education, sanitation, and justice too.
For more information
- What are Project Benefits? | Video
- Benefits Management: the Missing Knowledge Area | Video
- Benefits Management: What Every Project Manager Needs to Know [and Do]
- How to Do Project Benefits Management | Video
- Value Delivery: The Driving Force that should Motivate your Projects
Project Benefits Management
Our organizations and clients are investing a lot in their projects. So, they should expect us to realize the benefits that those projects promise. Our Project Benefits Management course is our best selling course after our core programs.
Positive Stakeholder Engagement
Stakeholders will determine the success (or not) of your project. So, you need to engage with them in a positive way, to learn from them, consult them, keep them informed, and sometimes influence them.
Good communication – proactive and reactive – is the mechanism for this. But the real secret is to see them all as allies, even when they start to feel like adversaries. Yes, stakeholders will resist change and object to some of your choices. But, the most important thing; my ‘golden rule’ of stakeholder engagement, is to always respect your resisters.
Always treat your stakeholders with respect – even when you wish you did not have to.
For more information
We have over 30 articles and videos discussing just about every aspect of stakeholder engagement. Some are overviews and some go deep into one aspect of the discipline.
I have written an in-depth book on Stakeholder Engagement, called The Influence Agenda: A Systematic Approach to Aligning Stakeholders in Times of Change.
Appropriate Tailoring
‘There are many ways to skin a cat.’ But our family cat is not keen on me experimenting. So, instead, we need to recognize that there are also many ways to deliver a project. And your job is to carefully consider which approach is most likely to bring success.
This means coming to a deep understanding of the context, complexity, uncertainty, and politics of the project. From this, you can tailor your approach by selecting:
- Paradigm: largely predictive, largely adaptive, or a broadly balanced hybrid. Note that I do not believe that a purist approach of completely predictive or adaptive is ever likely to be useful. There will always be ideas and tools from the other paradigm that can make your delivery better.
- Lifecycle model: which, of course, will depend on the paradigm you select, along with the internal processes, procedures, and governance of your organization and any program or portfolio infrastructure
- Methodology or framework: you may want to adopt and adapt one single framework and supplement it. Or you may choose to combine elements of more than one.
- Toolset: whatever methodology, framework, and lifecycle choices you make, you need to populate it with tools and processes to allow efficient working and effective delivery.
For more information
Competent Planning
The first decision will be about what is the right amount of planning and how much scope will you leave for adaptation. This will follow from the choices you made in #4, Tailoring.
Next, you will need to consider the appropriate amount of rigor to apply. How much detail and how much validation? You will certainly need some stress-testing of your plan, and some validation by scrutiny from fresh eyes.
The two things that will help you are firstly, involving a broad cross-section of team members. More minds create better plans. Let experts plan out workstreams and then use a review team to search for omissions, errors, and overlaps.
Secondly, a plan will always benefit from being built with we’ll-chosen tools. By this, I mean both Project Management tools (like Gantt Charts, Work Breakdown Structures, RACI Charts, and the like) and software tools (like Proggio, OnePlan, MS Project, Asana, Monday).
For more information
- Project Planning Process: Navigate the Many Steps You Need
- Project Planning Process – How to Build Effective Project Plans | Video
- Project Planning Mistakes and How to Avoid the 12 Most Scary Ones
- The Key Deliverable of Your Project Plan | Video
- What is Rolling Wave Planning?
- How to Restore Order: Your Ultimate Guide to Project Replanning
- Planning Performance Domain: How to Plan a Solution to Meet Your Goals
- Building a Project Plan – Conversation with Kristina Kushner | Video
Diligent Stewardship of Resources
You will never deliver a project without having the right resources in the right place, at the right time. These resources include people, assets, equipment, facilities, and materials.
Specify, Allocate, and train the Right People
Rightly, people are often the first form of resource to come to mind. You need to identify the capabilities you need and then secure the best people to deliver them.
Next, you need to allocate work to them and schedule their commitments. You must ensure they have the resources and training they need – and enough time to do the job to the standard you require and in a safe way. Yes, you must also look after them. Health and Safety is your responsibility too!
Careful Financial Management
It may not seem like the most exciting part of our discipline, but financial management is critical. You are, after all, spending somebody else’s money and putting it at risk. You need to be on top of costs, cash flow, procurement, and interest and exchange rate risks. This brings us to…
Fair Procurement and Contract Management
Procurement without fear and favor to achieve the best value (not lowest cost) with no undue discrimination. And, once you have secured goods and services, you need to manage the contract to ensure both that it delivers value and that it works effectively to the benefit of all parties.
For more information
- Project Resource Management: Part 1 of Your Comprehensive Guide
- Project Human Resource Management: Complete Survey of its 6 Themes
- Realtime Resource Planning and Optimization: How to Make Your Project a Success
- Resource Optimization: What’s the Difference between Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing?
- How to Deduce Project Resource Requirements | Video
Rigorous Commitment to Quality
Quality is about delivering precisely to the specifications that the project sponsor commissions. For this, you must establish and operate effective quality management processes.
Quality Design (QD)
You need to plan the quality processes and design products to the standards that the sponsor is paying for.
Quality Assurance (QA)
Once you know what quality standards you are working to, manage the delivery process to ensure delivery to those standards. The procedures you follow and the steps you take to ensure compliance with your quality design are your Quality Assurance process.
Quality Control (QC)
Once a product is complete, Quality Control processes test and validate compliance, before you release the product to its new beneficial owner. This is the case whether what you produce is a product, a service, or a process.
For more information
- In Praise of Quality: Why it Should Matter to You | Video
- Project Quality Management 101 | Video
- Project Quality Management: Principles and Practices You Need to Know
- How to Manage Quality Assurance in Your Project
Enlightened Leadership of Your People
I favor servant leadership as the predominant approach to leading a project team. But, there are a whole host of leadership models that you can mix in. What matters is that you balance attention to:
- The tasks at hand
- How your team works together to achieve them
- The needs and well-being of each person
- Ensuring everyone has the information they need, to do their work
Let’s look briefly at each of these.
Performance Orientation
Everyone needs to know two things:
- The big picture of what the project is aiming to achieve, why it is important, and how it will deliver
- Their individual role and responsibilities in the shared effort
This means building a shared plan (see #5 Planning) and working to align the team around their shared responsibility to deliver it.
Collaboration
Building a sense of team spirit will ensure that people work together and support one-another – particularly when times get tough, as they often do on projects. A well-functioning team will also take care of each other and resolve its own internal conflicts. You just need to get out of their way and provide them with the protection and resources they need, to thrive.
Care
You also need to pay attention to each individual. Get to know them: their needs, their aspirations, and their talents. Use this knowledge to deploy them effectively and motivate them to succeed.
Awareness
Tying your team and tasks together is the web of communication among them. Ensure that information flows freely and that no individual chooses to withhold information, nor omits to share it inadvertently. This is about setting up good processes and also about cultivating a strong communication culture.
For more information
We have over 30 articles and videos on just about all aspects of leadership in the context of project delivery.
One of my best-selling books is Brilliant Project Leader.
Fluid Adaptability
Whether you are working in a predominantly predictive or adaptive paradigm, the concept of adaptability is central to project delivery. You must be constantly alert to shifts in the situation and open to opportunities that arise to:
- Improve your project delivery processes
- Harvest additional benefits
- Recognize and reward positive contributions
If you are not able to able to adapt and flex, then you will fail. No amount of monitoring of progress will allow effective control responses without it (see #11, Monitoring and Controlling).
Honest Review of Lessons Learned
A valuable part of adaptability is taking time, with the team, to reflect on experiences. Whether you call this a lessons learned review or a retrospective – or something else – this only works if you can do it in a spirit of openness and honesty. And this demands a genuine ‘no blame’ culture where the learning about the error is what matters, but who made it does not.
There is one other thing that is paramount. What good is learning a lesson without the determination to act on that new understanding?
For more information
- How to Get Your Next Lessons Learned Meeting Right
- Lessons Learned Meeting: How to make it Excellent | Video
Control of Change
Situations will change and so, therefore, will the desirable end-deliverables. Adaptive methods have this baked into the process. Predictive approaches need a robust change control process.
For more information
- Change Control 101 – Your Guide to Project Change Control
- How to Manage the Change Control Process | Video
- Project Change Control: What You Need to Know to Make it Effective
Resilience to Setbacks and Adversity
Things will go wrong. And sometimes they will rock you and your team back on your heels. Sometimes a series of setbacks can wear you down and place real stress on the team – and on you.
Consequently, you need two abilities. To:
- prepare for this possibility by building your own and your team’s emotional, psychological, and physical resilience.
- spot the signs of stress and know how to intervene to quickly reset the team to maximum resourcefulness and effectiveness.
For more information
- Control Stress – or it will control you | Video
- How to Spot and Deal with Stress in Your Team
- Resilience Unleashed: The Secret to Project Success Under Pressure
Timely Risk and Issue Management
I feel like the need for effective risk management and issue management should go without saying. But it does require your commitment to the process and constant attention to detail.
Risks
A good risk register is nothing more than a piece of paper or a data file. What matters is how you use it. I would expect to see a regular review of a risk register to:
- Identify which risks are current priorities
- Set agendas for meetings with risk owners
- Determine and take the next steps
- Update the register with up-to-date information
- Periodically add risks from a horizon scanning session where new risks are identified
- Assess the overall risk level of the project – and act accordingly
Issues
Issues arise from time to time, and you need to deal with them rapidly and effectively. This may require the proper use of exception reporting and change processes.
For more information
Risk Management
We have over 30 articles and videos on just about all aspects of risk management in the context of project delivery.
I have also written a book, Risk Happens! that gives you everything you need to know about Project Risk management.
Issue Management
- How to Do Issue Management | Video
- https://onlinepmcourses.com/issue-management-pmboks-missing-process/
Continuous Monitoring and Control Regime
The monitor and control cycle is the beating heart of project delivery. It needs to be disciplined and systematic. The pace of the cycle needs to match the pace of the project. The faster things happen, the more frequently you need to check-in on your project and the quicker you’ll need to intervene if issues arise.
An absentee Project Manager is a contradiction in terms. If you aren’t there, you aren’t managing the project!
For more information
- Monitor & Control Cycle: What is it? All You Need to Know
- Monitoring and Controlling: What is The PMBOK 7 Measurement Performance Domain?
Robust Governance
Finally, my usual hobby horse for why projects end up going bad is poor governance. There is no excuse. All components need to be in place and operating well. The structure and processes you create need to ensure transparency, accountability, and good decision-making.
Transparency and Accountability
Transparency means that decisions are recorded, and motivations are clear. This requires that each person is accountable for the choices they make. To support that, it helps to have clarity around roles and responsibilities. I always like to see written terms of reference for key project roles.
Decision-making
Good decisions require the right people in the room, a sound process for evaluation options, and a flow of reliable information through effective formal and informal communications and reporting.
Audit and Assurance
To supplement the primary governance infrastructure, assurance and audit processes give challenge and comfort in equal measure. They play the role of a critical friend, who asks the tough questions before the implications of mistakes can hit the real world.
For more information
- Project Governance 101: A guide to the governance of projects
- Navigating Success: How to Deliver Excellence with Good Project Governance
- Agony Angels: Setting up Project Governance – with Rich Maltzman
- 5 Project Governance Tips | Video
Decision-making
- Your Essential Guide to How to Make Robust Project Decisions
- Rapid Project Decisions: Do You Know How to Make them with Confidence?
- Better Decision-making and More Robust Choices – Top 10 Tips
- Decision-Making AI for Project Portfolios – with Stuart Easton | Video
Audit and Assurance
- What are Assurance and Audit in Project Management? Your Awesome Guide
- Project Management Review: A Guide to Project Audit and Assurance
What are Your Thoughts about Fostering an Excellent Project Delivery Capability?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below. As always, I look forward to responding to every contribution.
