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Five Key Principles of Project and Program Management Success
May 14, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Program Management, Project Management Best Practices
Five Key Principles of Project and Program Management Success
By Vincent J. Bilardo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Principle 1: Establish a Clear and Compelling Vision
Creating a clearly defined vision of the future that inspires and motivates the workforce is an important first step on the path to project success. An effective vision statement should be vivid, concise, motivating, and memorable.
Principle 2: Secure Sustained Support from the Top
Maintaining top-level support for large programs requires developing and sustaining “program protectors” inside and outside an organization. Managers should also establish effective working relationships with key stakeholders.
Principle 3: Exercise Strong Leadership and Management
Strong leadership requires managers to identify and develop other leaders and technical staff, define clear lines of authority, demand accountability, implement sound project management practices, and demonstrate uncompromising ethical standards. This uncompromising integrity for project performance also requires ethical behavior from managers. Team members will not follow a leader they know is capable of unethical behavior and decision making. Lack of integrity fosters cynicism among the team and can compromise the mission.
Principle 4: Facilitate Wide-Open Communication
Fostering open communication has always been a cornerstone of good project management, but it can be — and has been — stifled by leaders who do not want to hear bad news. As a result, the bearers of bad news learn to stop communicating problems upward. Not listening is bad; criticizing anyone who brings to light unpleasant, but necessary, information is worse. Few individuals will dare come forward with critical information if they know they are likely to suffer public criticism.
Principle 5: Develop a Strong Organization
Organizations can remain effective over long periods if three interdependent pillars — culture, rewards, and structure — are well designed and aligned. Such organizations carefully negotiate respective roles and responsibilities before staffing and initiating program office operations. By doing this, they remove as many potential organizational conflicts and barriers as possible before executing any program.
Reprinted with permission from NASA. This article first appeared in NASA’s ASK Magazine, the NASA source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence.
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As a counterpoint (and for your amusement), there’s this: Ten Guaranteed Ways to Screw Up Any Project
1. Don’t bother prioritizing your organization’s overall project load.
2. Encourage sponsors and key stakeholders to take a passive role on the project team.
3. Set up ongoing committees focusing on management process (such as TQM groups, etc.) and make project team members participate in frequent meetings and write lots of reports… preferably when critical project deadlines are coming due.
4. Interrupt team members relentlessly … preferably during their time off.
5. Create a culture in which project managers are expected to “roll over” and take it when substantive new deliverables are added halfway through the project.
6. Half way through the project, when most of the deliverables have begun to take shape, add a whole bunch of previously unnamed stakeholders and ask them for their opinions about the project and its deliverables.
7. Encourage the sponsor to approve deliverables informally (with nods, smiles, and verbal praise); never force sponsors to stand behind their approvals with a formal sign-off.
8. Make sure project managers have lots of responsibilities and deadlines, but no authority whatsoever to acquire or remove people from the project; to get enough money, materials, or facilities; or insist on timely participation of SMEs and key reviewers.
9. Describe project deliverables in the vaguest possible terms so sponsors and reviewers have plenty of leeway to reinvent the project outputs repeatedly as the project unfolds.
10. Get projects up and running as quickly as possible – don’t worry about documenting agreements in a formal project charter, clearly describing team roles/responsibilities, or doing a thorough work breakdown analysis.
Full article: http://www.michaelgreer.com/screw_up.htm
NASA’s view is certainly one that has to be respected and this article is a good example of why. I recently shared on my blog five outcomes of project governance below, which I thought would compliment Vincent’s five program management principles well:
These are:
• Strategic alignment of projects within the portfolio with business strategy to support organizational objectives
• Risk management by executing appropriate measures to manage and mitigate risks and reduce potential impacts on projects and programmes to an acceptable level
• Resource management by utilising available resources and skills efficiently and effectively
• Performance measurement by measuring, monitoring and reporting on project governance metrics to ensure that organizational objectives are achieved
• Value delivery by optimising the project portfolio in support of organisational objectives
Pradeep Bhanot, Product Marketing Director, CA Clarity, CA