How do you deliver impactful business operations projects?

An example I've used is Communicating effectively is critical to successfully delivering a project. It's important to make sure your company has open communication lines among project managers, team members, company executives and stakeholders. This can help everyone involved with a project to stay informed and motivated, which can heavily contribute to the success of a project

Project success transcends the conventional KPIs of quality, time, and budget; it is also linked to the value and impact of the deliverables defined in the scoping phase. Regrettably, it is common for project teams to prioritise immediate solution implementation over thoroughly defining and understanding the business's needs and objectives, handicapping the project's efficacy from the outset. To address this, I find it helpful to adopt an outcome-oriented approach where measurable deliverables are aligned with the business's overarching goals. This doesn't imply an exhaustive process but rather an assurance that the end product is fit for purpose, can be implemented in the agreed timeframe and budget and deliver the expected ROI.

Also important to tie the effort to a broader organizational goal or key result. Knowing the uphill mapping or the “why” will ensure efforts are focused and ultimately make a difference/impact.

I've made it a point to dedicate time in the schedule to connect with our stakeholders and get a deeper insight into their needs. This not only helps me fine-tune our project scope but also plan on managing changes. By doing so, I can pinpoint where we might face challenges or get support.

-A defined, agreed upon scope will also facilitate good communication between team members if changes are made and also to others within the organization who may have influence during the project.

Planning is the foundation of any successful project. This involves creating a comprehensive roadmap that outlines tasks, milestones, resources, risks, and communication strategies. Your plan should also include a clear timeline and budget. A robust plan serves as a guiding framework, helping you organize resources, monitor progress, and effectively manage stakeholder expectations. Utilize tools like Gantt charts, work breakdown structures, or agile frameworks to create your project plan.

One thing I've found helpful is to spend time doing a premortem as part of risk management. The project team should be aware of how they will respond to Black Swan events, covid has taught us a few lessons in this area.

Planning can be predictive (waterfall), adaptive (Agile), or hybrid. Knowing when to use each style is important. Regardless of the chosen method, all projects require some level of behavioral change. Planning how to help people overcome resistance to those changes is incredibly important in order to actually see the realized benefits and to achieve the desired effects.

While planning is important, it is equally important to bake in dipsticks so that what is being delivered is continuously validated with users. This enables agility and avoids resource wastage. A key part of planning is to identify risks and the mitigations.

Planning without preparation is not a right strategy. Preparation is about building or having right capabilities in terms of humans and other resources that are in line with plan. Most businesses make plans that are nothing more than ideal or perfect way of execution. However, in reality idealism or perfection are don't work. Plans should be made considering the available resources or enough time should be spent in understanding resources required to execute the desired plan. At times it happens that available resources are stretched to execute plan made in without considering the capabilities available. Managers: Please find time to evaluate resources available before making a plan.

Well written and comprehensive piece. The structure is hard to fault. I personally use Agile and it works well for me. Striking the balance between meeting frequency is critical to be efficient and prevent Project Inertia. I also found that regular quick meetings to have a specific focus on "Project Creep" was useful in maintaining our "True North" approach. 15 minutes a week could suffice, depending on the project size.

From my experience, executing a project in Africa may require some more skills. In our clime it may have taken a lot of effort to attract projects, and while executing them you may experience setbacks from the the client. This may cause some lags, and may extend the project; while the Project Manager dedicates more resources to the project, and which may not be considered by the client. Hence, Project Managers in these clime should ensure that the client will bear the cost of these time lags caused by them. This risk can be mitigated by including the punitive actions in the SLAs. Again, we may not want to lose our clients to our competitors because of this clause, then we only sit back and play to their tone.

Executing a project can include a variety of technical skills depending on the type of project. One skill that is needed in every successful project is stakeholder management. Motivating and leading your team to achieve objectives and keeping sponsors and clients satisfied requires patience, tact, and great listening skills. This is the hardest part of project management and is difficult to learn without experience. Find a mentor that does this well and learn from them to increase your skills in this area.

In a cross functional setup, alignment of priorities is the key to on-time, high quality execution. Question to ask is, "While the task is of a certain importance to me as a project sponsor, is it equally important to the managers of the resources that I need to accomplish that task?".

Control ensures that the project stays on track and aligns with its objectives. Monitor and measure performance against the plan and scope, gathering relevant data for analysis. Identify risks and implement corrective actions as needed. This phase ensures that the project remains within budget, schedule, and quality standards. Use tools such as key performance indicators, variance analysis, and audits to maintain project control.

Yes project Controls are key to success for project completion in time, but it is not necessary, because every project have different kinds of constraints and issues which caused delays, deviations. Due to these conditions and circumstances project control needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Controlling a project starts at the very beginning. How will you know you are within bounds or making appropriate progress unless you have a baseline to measure against? In addition to standard baseline metrics like cost and schedule, I recommend to have tailored measures of effectiveness. This means you should track performance toward the actual value you want to create, and not just activities completed. As an example, you may complete a half the tasks from your project plan, but have you actually created half of the intended value? Measure the impact you expect to achieve.

One thing I've found very helpful is to have an opportunity to vent, discuss, and agree to lessons learned and incorporate this process into the org genes.

Before you close a project you should also validate that the value you created will be sustainable. Whether you are handing your project over to an operations team to sustain or otherwise, you should ensure that the value you created is sustainable. I once spoke with a person working on a project where they had created a technically superior solution to what the client was currently using. I asked if the client was actually able to implement this and was told that it wasn't project team's concern. They were tasked to create the solution and it was up to the client to figure out how to implement it. Wrong answer. Projects are created to provide value. If we produce excellent solutions that can't be used, then what are we doing?

Feedback is very important and we rely on others to better understand a change, launch or product. Make sure to prepare a succinct and rich survey, packed with the right topics and questions to ask. Analyse the responses, apply this feedback where it makes sense to your goal and improve wherever possible and then do it again! Don't get lazy! Always continue improving yourself and your product.

It is critical to always be learning and not repeat mistakes. From this perspective, it becomes very important to capture and disseminate both what worked and what did not work to the team itself and perhaps even the larger organization. I see this step being often performed mechanically. It is a delicate act that a project manager has to orchestrate to surface meaningful insights.

To be more precise this phase is called feedback (dynamics) wherein the performing results in the various deliverables are evaluated against expected/projected results. From there, it should be determined if further action is warranted. That is, were the original projections over/under/appropriate estimates. Action plans, if necessary, would be developed and implemented.

Left out a critical factor. Getting approval to proceed after completing the planning. Unless you have been given carte blanche, you’ll have to obtain permission and potentially funding to move forward. There are often reasons (some valid) for not being given the go ahead to execute.

Business operation means it has to be disruption-free, no partial solution, operating team will carry it as usual include dealing with chaos. Impactful means significant change that drive positive result & benefits to follow. In my experience, operating team involvement from day-1 is key to success. They will assume ownership throughout project phases. Business solution design that underlay the success (or fail). Q: Can we live with it? Test & pilot must be realistics, to plan workaround ahead for any circumstances. Training, learning tools, practices for both normal operation and contingency. Upon golive, manage issue resolution rate, healthiness and adaption check. Last & most important, credit must stay with operating team!!

The project will not be executed without people. Recruiting people, team building, and aligning people's motivations with the project are more important than choosing tools and methodologies. Getting the right team is an integral part of a project. People get things done.

Quantifying the Opportunity (Continued from "Identifying a Project") The next step is to determine if the opportunity makes business sense. For this we use the contribution margin over three or five years to determine potential revenue side. We then analyze what the best performing OU is doing that the worst is not and if it can be replicated. If it can, the investments need to replicate can produce the cost side. A financial model can then be created and the ROI determined. If it looks good, this is then presented to the executive group to determine if the project should proceed.

In my experience projects handover into operations is also a critical step and, if possible, should be considered as a standalone objective to emphasise its importance and due focus. The activities in this step would help ensure project deliverables are indeed operable, and the operations are equipped with all the knowledge, resources & support to deliver the business value that was expected from this investment.