PMcrunch

Marketing projects are important to companies, simply because they provide the opportunity to increase the top line of the business. That is, they are initiatives focused on driving revenue, as opposed to controlling costs. I have been thinking about three keys for how to lay out the requirements for such such revenue-enhancing marketing projects.

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Projects, like anything else, are subject to change. One of these changes is changes in stakeholders. Many times a project will be very viable for a particular stakeholder, but priorities might change with a new stakeholder. This is also especially serious when the stakeholder is actually the sponsor of the project, the number one stakeholder. Let’s look at some key aspects of maintaining project control during these types of changes.

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With the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States and his coming inauguration in January, we are beginning to see what his priorities would be; this is an opportunity to think through what some of the impacts will be in the project management world.

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This may seem like a crazy question, but it is a valid one: “Does your project have some lunacy?” As project managers, we have been trained, for the most part, to be very rational about what we are doing. Of course, some of us may have a greater foundation in that than others; but nonetheless there is a firm rationality that exists within the profession. The question is, does that serve us well on our projects?

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Basic project management teaches us that quality is defined by meeting requirements, but not exceeding them. If we deliver more than what the customer asked for, it is considered to be gold plating – a bad thing. The premise is that there is a balance as per the triple constraint among quality, cost and schedule, and that it is the job of the project manager to manage that balance. In these tough times, however, how can a project manager produce excellence and in essence exceed customer expectations without gold plating?

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Though I have not heard it made official all indications are that we are in recession. This appears to be not just for the United States but for much, if not most, of the rest of the world. The cause of this recession, of course, is the credit crunch and all issues surrounding that. So the big question is, “What can project and program managers do to cope with this recession?” I have some thoughts, and for reference have tapped into ideas of Jack and Susie Welch.

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Leaders must be able to depend on their people — especially the commitments they make. Projects and programs are built on estimates from the people we depend upon. When there’s a pattern of delay, or poor estimates, intervention is required.

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Projects need to be aligned in some way with corporate strategy . The challenge for project managers is being on top of what that corporate strategy is, in an intimate way, and understanding clearly how their project aligns with that corporate strategy. In this post, I am thinking about the ideal that corporate strategy is not etched in stone. It changes overtime and we must be aware of just what is going on with the dynamics of our organizations strategy.

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The Project Management Plan concerns itself with how the project is going to be managed. This includes consideration for the project management systems to be used to coordinate the plan and the project. The systems that are used are also very important in providing feedback to senior management.

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In today’s information intensive world, managers are inundated with information from many sources. This presents a world of opportunity, but also a challenge in moving ahead. The opportunity is that there is far more valuable information available upon which to base decisions, and the challenge is how to sort through the information efficiently. Let’s take a look at some ideas on how to cope with all this information.

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