Project Management --- 10 Tips for Project Success

(Source: My colleague, Mr Jayaram, Vice President – Projects, had mailed me this content last week. Posted here with his prior permission, to share the information with others.)

1. Starting out:
Make sure that when you start out your customer defines their requirements in depth. You need to know exactly what it is that must be delivered, to who and when. Make it specific, write it up formally and get them to sign it off. This document will become the basis upon which to measure your success.

2. Customers:
Involve your customers throughout the entire project life cycle. Get them involved in the analysis and planning, as well as execution. You don't have to seek their approval, just keep them informed. The more you involve them, the greater their level of buy-in and the easier it is to manage their expectations.

3. Timeframes:
Keep your delivery timeframes short and realistic. Never agree to lengthy timeframes. Split the project into “mini-projects” if you need to. Keep each mini-project to less than 6 months. This keeps everyone motivated and focused.

4. Milestones:
Break your project timeframe into "Milestones" which are manageable pieces of work. Add delivery deadlines to your milestones and try to deliver on every deadline, no matter what. If you're late, tell your customer about it as early as possible.

5. Communications:
Make sure you keep everyone informed by providing the right information at the right time. Produce Weekly Status Reports and run regular team meetings.

6. Scope:
Only authorize changes to your project scope if there is no impact on the timeline. Get your customers approval to important scope changes first and then get their buy-in to extend the delivery dates if you need to.

7. Quality:
Keep the quality of your deliverables as high as possible. Constantly review quality and never let it slip. Implement “peer reviews” so that team members can review each others deliverables. Then put in place external reviews to ensure that the quality of the solution meets your customer's needs.

8. Issues:
Jump on risks and issues as soon as they are identified. Prioritize and resolve them before they impact on your project. Take pride in keeping risks and issues to a minimum.

9. Deliverables:
As each deliverable is complete, hand it formally over to your customer. Get them to sign an Acceptance Form to say that it meets their expectations. Only then can you mark each deliverable off as 100% complete.

10. Your team:
Great projects are run by great teams. Hire the best people you can afford. Spend the time to find the right people. It will save you time down the track. Remember, good people are easy to motivate. Show them the vision and how they can make it happen. Trust and believe in them. Make them feel valued. They will work wonders.

Jaikishan (13th July 2010)
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Book Review: “EMPLOYEES FIRST, CUSTOMERS SECOND” by Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies. Foreword by C.K. Prahalad. Cost INR 595.00.

When Vineet Nayar became CEO of HCLT (HCL Technologies) in 2005, HCLT was already among the top five IT Services companies based in India with 30,000 employees, operations in 18 countries, about 30 percent CAGR (during the past five years then), ….

But, HCLT was growing more slowly than its competitors then. And, therefore ran the obvious risk (in future in their domain). To address this challenge, Vineet Nayar and his team, embarked upon various initiatives which transformed HCLT by 2009 into what they wanted HCLT to be.

“Employees First, Customer Second” is a narration of Vineet Nayar on the various initiatives that they tried during that period in transforming HCLT into what it is today. It’s a firsthand account of a contemporary CEO and is an interesting read. Contains just about 190 pages printed with 1.5 line-spacing.

Though the book is not a treatise on the initiatives taken at HCLT, Vineet believes that those initiatives could be replicated in any organization, in any part of the world, irrespective of the market conditions, size of organization, type of industry, …. Of course, the flavor of the initiatives will have to be slightly changed to suit an organization.

HCLT has been able to perform better, increase their topline and bottomline substantially even during the recent recession, contain attrition to acceptable levels, had performing employees (who had left earlier) returning to HCLT, ….

Details on the concepts can also be viewed at www.employeesfirst.com The site has links to Twitter and YouTube on the concept, speeches, ….

Vineet intended to provoke a thought and discussion on the concepts through his book. The tweets and the YouTube contents testifies that Vineet has achieved it.

Jaikishan
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