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The Most Important Project

March 1, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Musings

The Most Important Project
By Jorge Dominguez

Some project managers want to work on the most important projects, some do not want to and others don’t care either way. The first ones like visibility, the second ones prefer not to be the center of attention and the others, again, don’t care either way. What makes a project “the most important project”?

Obviously, the organization decides the level of importance for each of the projects based on the value they will provide to the organization. Therefore, some projects will be more important than others, and only one, or maybe a handful, will be the most important at a given time.

But, don’t worry if you wanted to work on one of those very important projects and you did not get any this time. Find out the reasons why you didn’t get any (not why someone else got it, you really don’t need to know that and it is not that important) and make the project you did get the most important one. Yes, you can do that!

I always say that the projects I am working on are the most important ones, regardless of whether they are important to the organization or not. Make them important. Create a project plan, follow the established methodology and ensure everybody knows about your projects. When you talk about your projects do it with passion as if they were indeed the most important projects in the organization. They should and must be important to you if you want these projects to be successful.

Your boss and everyone will notice and I can almost assure you that, next time, the most important project in the organization will come to you without asking. The bottom line is that the most important project is always the one you are working on.

Jorge Dominguez, PMP®

http://www.Expiriance.com

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 and is filed under Project Management Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

Jorge, I agree. The most important is the one you are working on.

I have been in a situation where I was working on the “the big project”,
which consumed the most resources and several smaller ones. I found
that the smaller, more manageable projects drove value faster and helped
me maintain a high level of satisfaction, which would have waned if all
I had was the mega project. Even the execs enjoyed the gate reviews for
the smaller projects, because the risks levels were so much lower and
the gains more assured.

Pradeep Bhanot wrote on March 2, 2009 - 5:39 pm | Visit Link

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