I literally came up with this one in the shower last night. Not the concept…I’ve knowingly or unknowingly been doing this for years. But the idea for the article. I was thinking of the article entitled “When Project Management is Fun” and the concept of how keeping things edgy keeps people focused, energized, etc. That’s when it hit me. Risk is challenging. Risk is energizing. Fighting risk keeps a team cohesive. And it keeps a customer and vendor working in unison. Work it to your advantage.

 

 

 

 

It’s Never Easy

 

 

 

 

Everybody likes an easy, successful project and nobody likes and easy, successful project. No huge, visible, challenging project is every going to be easy and perfectly, swimmingly successful. Ever. If someone tells you their big project is running smoothly and perfectly then they are lying. When you tie together a group of opinionated, highly skilled individuals who also have other responsibilities than the ones you give them AND you add a customer with high expectations and large expenditures AND you sprinkle in an enterprise-wide solution with somewhat vague requirements (because requirements ALWAYS have some degree of vagueness to them), there’s no way it’s going to go perfectly or smoothly.

 

 

 

 

It may be successful….highly successful, but it will always take a good deal of effort to get there and you’ll have to fight your share of adversity along the way. And make your management know it…because you and your team might as well get the recognition for it at the end of the engagement. Let them know it wasn’t easy…let them know it was tough. Tell the CEO if you can.

 

 

 

 

Work the Risks

 

 

 

 

So, knowing that your large project is not going to go through the motions without risks and issues coming into the picture, focus a decent amount of effort on identifying and managing those issues and risks and make the entire project team own them…both the delivery side and the customer side. Ownership breeds caring…which breeds focus…which breeds productivity and responsibility and accountability. Your delivery team needs to be more than the resources who act on the tasks their assigned from the schedule.

 

 

 

 

You know how your workday seems more satisfying and goes faster when there is some degree of non-monotonous activities going on? Things that are out of the norm. Wrenches thrown in here and there…fires to fight. The same goes for the project. Don’t get me wrong, if I have 5 or 6 projects I’m leading at once, I’d prefer to not have multiple fires to fight on each project at the same time. I wouldn’t even mind if 3-4 of those projects were easy ones. But having fires around – and unmitigated risks can become huge fires – then things can never get boring. Let me clarify…I’m not saying one should let those risks and issues become big fires. But the challenge of identifying, assigning, managing and mitigating those risks and issues breeds creativity and brings a team together like nothing else. You don’t have to actually face the adversity…but knowing it’s out there if you don’t work together and do something about it brings a team together on a common goal and can make for a very enjoyable…and successful project.

 

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

 

 

The idea is to stay a step or 10 ahead of the risks and issues on the project. Identify them early with your team and with the customer. Assign them to individuals or groups of individuals. Come up with strategies to mitigate those risks if they should actually occur. And keep managing them and holding people accountable to them throughout the engagement. Those risks and issues hold the highest likelihood of derailing your project and making you unsuccessful. So manage them well and manage them carefully. And delegate….delegate often and well.