There are seven general keys or steps to creating a successful project. These steps focus on things that individual project teams can and should do to make their projects more successful. The seven keys to success are:

Step 1 - Use an effective project management methodology

An effective PM methodology provides you with the steps and tools you need to complete a project successfully. There is no real sense in inventing your own method, unless you're an expert in project management with tons of experience. You're better off using a method that's proven and focus instead on leading the team through its steps. The most important element of the ?rst key is the word use. No method is effective if it isn't used.

The application of the method is what produces results. Reading about a method but not using it doesn't produce anything tangible. Try the tools and techniques you've just read about. Ask the rest of your team to read up on the method and then try it together. You don't have to use the entire method to start. Start by writing a charter or doing a risk assessment. Try creating a schedule with the team or completing a team contract. Whatever parts of the method you actually use will help to improve your projects.

Step 2 - Invest in project planning

Some project teams dive into execution without having a charter or developing a project plan. On the wrong project that can prove disasterous. They think that getting started on creating the deliverables will shorten the time it takes to do the project. However, investing in planning will:

Step 3 - Engage the Customer

Projects exist to satisfy a customer. Project teams often have difficulty identifying the customer, understanding clearly what the customer needs and wants, and then translating that set of wants into customer requirements that the customer can understand and agree to. The best way to ensure that the deliverable from the project meets the customer needs and wants is to involve the customer in the project process, particularly in the early stages when the scope of the project is being defined. This helps to avoid dissatisfied customers, scope creep, or continual changes to scope, and it also creates customer buy-in and ownership for the project and its results.

After you've gathered the customer's requirements and the customer has agreed to them, keep the customer involved in the project. Where appropriate, have a customer representative on the project team. In that way you'll get continual input from the customer.

The team representative can also act as a team ambassador back to the customer. During the execution phase, the project leader should meet regularly with the customer, reporting on progress and gathering feedback and information that might be important to the project. When problems arise, let the customer know you have an action plan to resolve the problem. If it's a problem that will impact the customer, first get customer input on how to resolve the problem. Offer several options to choose from. Then report back on how the implementation is progressing.

After the customer accepts the final deliverable, ask him or her to evaluate not only the results of the project but the process used to create the results. Customers can be your best allies on projects. Use them wisely.

Step 4 - Make the project manageable

It's easy to get overwhelmed. You have a goal to reach that seems unreachable. You have limited resources. You've got a group of people who don't know what to do. Don't panic. De?ne the goal - the final deliverable - clearly. Break the goal down into pieces, interim deliverables, and then organize those into subprojects. Assign someone to oversee each subproject.

Making a project manageable means making it workable, and when a project is workable, it can get done. It may be beneficial to focus on deliverables rather than activities - most methods focus on activities. There are a number of benefits of working with deliverables:

Step 5 - Develop the team

One of the key roles of the project leader is to develop the team. Let's look at a couple of important elements of team development.

Involve the Team in Planning the Project

Building an effective team starts at kick-off. Assess what skills and stakeholder representation you'll need on the team and then use the team to help you develop the project plan. When you get to execution, have the team participate in keeping the project on track. Ownership by the team during execution will produce more commitment to solving problems that arise. They will retain ownership of the project and any problems will belong to the whole team, not just to the project leader.

Use Team-Based Visual Tools and Techniques

Team-based tools will help you engage the whole team in the project process. If you're used to conducting meetings where everyone sits around a table and talks, using team-based tools that engage all three sensory learning styles might feel uncomfortable at first. But once you start, you won't want to go back to the strictly auditory mode of conducting meetings. Just stand up and grab a marker. Write down each idea or issue that's presented on a self-stick note and slap it on flipchart or banner paper, or better yet, let the team members write down their own ideas, say them out loud, and have them slap them on the paper themselves.

Try affinity diagramming if you are going to generate a lot of ideas and need to get them organized quickly. Looking for root causes? Try the interrelationship digraph tool. Trying to narrow down the list of ideas? Use multivoting. Want to analyze the ideas and select the best one? Then the MT decision matrix will do the trick. All of the team-based tools we discussed will keep the team involved, utilize their knowledge and expertise, and produce the best possible results for the project.

Act as a Facilitator, Not a Director

In the old model of management, the project manager acted like a dictator, deciding what needed to get done, and then handing out assignments to team members. In the new model, the project leader acts as a facilitator. Three of the most important rules for facilitating are: (1) Honor individual differences; (2) Create and maintain a safe environment; (3) Focus on the process and not the content. By facilitating the process, and making sure you have the right people on the team, the content will take care of itself.

Manage the Team Process

All teams evolve through the stages of team development, but not all make it to the highest evolutionary stage - performing. Part of the job of the project leader is to manage the team process so that the team does make it to the performing stage, where people are satisfied with the work they're doing and they're productive and having fun. Managing the team process starts at kick off and continues through close out. Using participative, team-based tools for project management will help to build a team.

Leading both the team process and the project management process requires a whole new set of leadership skills. These include:

Maybe the most important key is learning from your mistakes, so you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future. It's also important to learn from your successes, so you can repeat those next time around. Lessons will be learned and documented during the project. In addition, at the end of the project, it's important to take the time to revisit what happened throughout the project. Get the customer, sponsor, and stakeholders to evaluate the project. What did you do well? What could you improve? Also ask the team members to evaluate the project. What went well? What did they learn? Once you've documented all the lessons, consider doing a root cause analysis of the problems you experienced. This will help you trace back what were some of the most important things that you could have done differently to avoid the problems in the future.

During the project, it's also important to continually solicit feedback from the team and stakeholders about what could be improved. The sooner you know there is a problem, the sooner you can fix it. What you learned from the project can be translated into templates or checklists for the next project team. Each project team will then learn from the last one, improving the capability of the entire organization to successfully carry out projects.

Step 6 - Communicate effectively and efficiently

Communication is a challenge in any organization, but it's a particular challenge when you're working on a project. A project is like a start-up enterprise. A project is commissioned because something new needs to be developed or something existing needs to be improved.

A team is assembled and the customer and stakeholders are identified. Lines of communication must be established. Both internal and external communication procedures must be developed. Internal communications happen primarily through team meetings, voice mail, and e-mail. The project leader needs to establish a schedule for team meetings. These meetings need to be held using good meeting-management techniques.

Effective meetings go a long way to establishing productive lines of communication. In addition, formal information flow between team members and between the project leader and team members should be defined. For example, are status updates due before the team meeting? If so, when? The most important external communications are those between the project leader and the sponsor and customer. In addition to the interactions that occur in developing and approving the project, the sponsor and customer need ongoing updates on project status and change requests.

In addition, other stakeholders, such as resource managers must be kept informed of progress and their inputs solicited. This is done by team-member liaisons, members of the project team who have been assigned the responsibility of communicating with assigned stakeholders. Although communication can often seem like a time-consuming exercise, it's hard to have too much communication, particularly when you're working on a project that will result in a change to the organization or something very new. Preparing stakeholders for the results of the project is as important to its success as doing the tasks of the project in the first place.

Step 7 - Learn from your mistakes - and everyone else's

Maybe the most important key is learning from your mistakes, so you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future. It's also important to learn from your successes, so you can repeat those next time around. Lessons will be learned and documented during the project. In addition, at the end of the project, it's important to take the time to revisit what happened throughout the project. Get the customer, sponsor, and stakeholders to evaluate the project. What did you do well? What could you improve? Also ask the team members to evaluate the project. What went well? What did they learn? Once you've documented all the lessons, consider doing a root cause analysis of the problems you experienced. This will help you trace back what were some of the most important things that you could have done differently to avoid the problems in the future.

During the project, it's also important to continually solicit feedback from the team and stakeholders about what could be improved. The sooner you know there is a problem, the sooner you can fix it. What you learned from the project can be translated into templates or checklists for the next project team. Each project team will then learn from the last one, improving the capability of the entire organization to successfully carry out projects.