Driving a project to succeed is always been a tough job. We have been involved in project delivery for a long time – and we actually are right now – and we know how difficult it can be to identify the best trade off amongst time, cost and customer satisfaction.
In this time we have understood that the major hit in this process is making your team aware of what they have to do every morning, when they start their work day.
Planning project activities and taking care of every expected and unexpected task is a major challenge that your team is going to face everyday. The secret weapon to survive the mess is, don’t panic and slice your project tasks into little chores: simply, understandable and quickly to complete.
So, a successful project driver must first of all answer the following question:
What do I have to do today?
Your people need to know what they have to accomplish every day in order to succeed in projects. They don’t need to know the whole complex picture and be worried about every single aspect of the contract – client expectations, timing and cost constraints, status reports and so on.
You need them to be focused on one task at a time and possibly the right one. The one which is due for the next deadline, satisfying the client and keeping your boss relaxed.
Often the major problem is driving team effort in the right direction, producing visible and valuable results on time. People working hard on the wrong task get frustrated quickly when not achieving results and often decide to leave your company.
So, the main issue you have to address is to have tools and methods which answer to this simple question:
What do I have to do today?
You can be a great planner and a wonderful communicator, but if you don’t answer the simple question you get quickly burnt out as well as the project. It’s really simple: your people need to know what to do and they need it every day. We studied this simple problem very carefully until we understood, us – and probably you – need some tools to support our operations.
