Most common skipped step of a successful project

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Typical project steps

Regardless of your project methodology, projects usually follow a process where you

  • Define the scope of your project and what you’re going to accomplish in the form or requirements, user stories, revised activities, etc.
  • Design your implementation so you can determine your technologies, interface, and prepare for implementing the changes
  • Develop the solution whether in one-shot build it all at once or build in shorter sprints or phases.
  • Deploy the changes in a migration or launch

But something is missing from these steps.

We’ve started with defining what’s needed, designing how it will work, developing changes, and deploying the solution. However, we missed the most important step: deciding if it should even go forward!

Decide

With so much opportunity for business, there are ideas everywhere.  Your organization is clever, and you have an opportunity.  But, should you proceed?  PMBOK defines stages for defining projects with items like the Project Charter.  I think Charters are valuable for stakeholders to clarify what they want and detail the problem is being solved.  I think Project Managers hear about problems, and get organized to solve the problem without adequately evaluating the necessity of doing the work.  With all the statistics about project failures and cancellations, don’t you think clarity for all up front is useful?

Deciding with stakeholders is difficult for some Project Managers, but they are closest to the decision-makers / stakeholders.  Don’t struggle to implement something that doesn’t make sense from the get-go; you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT Analysis is one method to document the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats for a project. It forces the stakeholders to consider these four angles before moving forward with a project.  For example, for littlepm.com:

swot

Recommendations

Ensure your new project can answer these questions:

  1. What problem are we solving?
  2. Is this the right problem to solve?
  3. Is this the right direction for our business?
  4. Have we completed a SWOT analysis
  5. Is it cheaper to buy this from someone else?
  6. Who is needed to make this successful?

star25 Apply this effectively

  1. Before flying off on your project, take the moment to confirm that stakeholders have considered what they really want.
  2. Ask “I know it’s a difficult question, but what happens if this just cannot be done?”
  3. Consider several techniques to review project goals and outcomes for the organization like a SWOT Analysis.

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