How to deliver projects on brief, on time & on budget

Hello guys. As you probably have seen by now digital marketing is a continuous learning process (we have only seen the tip of the iceberg). Through all my blogs I have try to cover the main pillars and characteristics of digital marketing, starting of course with its definition, then analysing and targeting its customers, followed by marketing strategy, digital channels, and finally an example of a successful digital campaign. If you haven’t catch-up with my blogs feel free to read them and most importantly comment! Now today’s topic is concretely about putting into practice what you have learnt so far. This, if I may, is the empirical bit of digital marketing. In other words, we are going to analyze the characteristics of a good project management that will enable us deliver the three characteristics portrayed in the title: BRIEF, TIME & BUDGET-the golden rules for a successful agency.

There are many definitions about project management. Graph A.1 comprises its theory. An outstanding project management must deliver its projects at the lowest cost with the highest quality and in the shortest period of time, it means that the managers always seek to be in the middle of the “Ben diagram” (where the three circles intersect). Achieving these three characteristics can be summarized in one word: productivity.

Every agency tries to keep and achieve these goals in every project since the success of the project will determined their reputation and ergo future businesses. You will be able to find plenty of project management theories such as: Agile, Prince 2, PMMI or a bespoke process. Each of these methodologies, target the project into a different angle, it could be linear, circular or waterfall (for more information click on the names).

So with so many options available, you may be asking; which one should I use?

In order to answer that question and at the same time our main thesis statement I will use Jeff Oltmann’s criteria of Synergy Professional Service- an experienced management consulting firm. As you will see their methodology is very simple, straightforward, yet efficient.

First, DESING: “Begin with the end in mind”-Stephen Covey.

See your project as an obstacle race, where your goal is to finish first in the line and with the least obstacles thrown at the floor. Your agency should finish according to the pre-established deadline and deliver a high quality product.

Starting with the right foot means understanding and recognizing your client’s petition. A very useful technique is to create a PROJECT CHARTER. Within the charter you should include a complete and detailed definition of the problem, a formal recognition of the problem by all the members of the team, define responsibilities and constraints (what to do and what not to do), agreement of budgeting and to define their possible expenses (helps to control de budget).

According to Oltman a project without a charter is “driving a car without being told where to go”. Second, never believe the excuses of not doing a charter: normally statements such as “the project is to easy-there’s no sense writing a charter” or “I know my responsibility”-never believe it! Usually stakeholders expectations are high, and normally as the project evolve the team will discover more risks that were ignored in the designing stage.

Also a charter will improve communication between the team players-crucial for being productive and efficient.  It will trace individuals’ role boundaries making it easier to solve problems or misunderstandings in the future.

By the same token, in order to improve communication and bonding the manager never should write the charter by his/her own. A manager should listen to opinions and analyse them. The charter should be approved by all the team or at least a great majority.

In the charter include, business alignments (1): “Why is this project important and how does it link to your organization’s business priorities” (the WHY).  Second, deliverables-arrive with SMART objectives and estimate how and when you will measure the project’s success (WHAT). Third, define targets and milestones. Use deadlines for each target. Estimate the cost of the project (4). Analyse possible risks and constrains (5). And last but not least approval of the charter (6).

Second, PLANNING:

The goal of planning is to be more organize and effective with the project. Essentially is to reduce the amount of time spent in the “redoing” stage.

There are seven questions that you have to take into account in this stage. One of them was solved in the Design already, which was: “what are we creating?” (1). The other questions are all interconnected and are the following: “what tasks must be done to create it?” (2), “who will do what?” (3), “what will it take to do the task?”, “how do the task fit together?”, “what could surprise us?” and “how will we execute and control the project?” As you see the planning is the most time-consuming stage in this methodology. Yet a good planning will deliver the project in time and at low cost.

One of the keys aspects of good planning is to be realistic. Managers must make the plan manageable considering the human and financial resources. As well managers should quantify all the evolution of the project in hard data. This will allowed them to have a clear view of the team players’ productivity. Moreover, “divide the work equally”, “eliminate gaps and redundancies” and “convert the whats to hows” will contribute to a good planning strategy.

During planning, is very useful to use visual tools such as sticky notes, power point, cloud maps, excel spread shits, specialize software such as “mindjet”, boards etc... Also, try to create a chronological sequence when planning what to do- example task A will lead me to task B & C that will allowed me to achieve task D.

Finally use milestones as a tool to structure your plan, motivate your team, improve communication and track their work. According to Oltmann milestones “help people work together better, both during planning and later in execution”.

Third, EXECUTE:

At this stage you have to control and keep the planned direction of the project. As a manager you should constantly analyze the team players productivity and if he/she is going according to his/her pre-established dead line.

If the project is taking another road than the planned one you have to stir it back into tracks. More often you do so by talking with your team players and giving new instructions. If you are running out of time you may consider making trade off, and evaluating which is the most important task that should be done first. Tradeoffs usually are “time”, “financial resources” and “scope”.

 Fourth, CLOSE-OUT:

At this stage, after execution, delivery and sometimes redoing, retrospection is really important for future projects. Extracting the positive and negative aspects of the project, analysing them and learning from the mistakes will definitely improve the performance of the next project. The key is to apply what is learnt and not just having your ideas in your mind. Retrospect should be use in the “organic” life of the project, for example when a milestone is achieved it will give you a sense of how the project is going based on previous experiences.

            I will leave you guys which the do`s and don`ts of project management. Some more tips that will really help you deliver a project on brief, on time & on budget. (Taken from Jeff Oltmann’s)

Do’s:

·         Agreement on goals

·         A good plan

·         Progress measurement

·         Constant Communication

·         Management Support

·         Controlled scop

Don’ts:

•  Ignore the project environment (including stake holders)
•  When problems occur, shoot the one most visible.
•  Let new ideas starve to death from inertia.
•  Don’t bother conduction feasibility studies.
•  Never admit a project is a failure.
•  Never, never conduct post failure reviews.
•   Make sure project is run by a weak leader

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[1] http://www.enlightenedleadershipnow.com/Home/two-goals