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2021: Is this Your Year of Project Success?

• Brian Cleere
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All of us involved in running business know the importance of planning our goals and objectives for each new year and keeping ourselves accountable to these goals.

We also understand that it is projects which enable our organisations to execute on its strategy or plans. So we will be setting out our projects for the year to deliver on our goals and objectives.

There is much written about how to run projects successfully including:

• Good Business case
• Experienced & knowledgeable teams
• Good communication

But all of this may be wasted if we are doing the wrong projects or doing them in the wrong order.

Project prioritization is essential to your organization’s success for the coming year. The vast majority of projects I have been involved with have required the input/outputs from other projects in order to make them a success. They have to be done in a specific order to maximise success.

For example a business relocation project I was involved with required another project to deliver on securing new site access to succeed. Without site access my project could not succeed.

I recommend you start the year by producing a project list and then prioritizing the list.  Here is some guidance to assist you produce your list.

Use the Moscow prioritisation technique. This is a simple starting point to set you on the right path to doing the right projects for your organisation. This is a well-used and common technique for prioritizing many things and works as follows:

Must-Have projects– critical to business success and need immediate attention

Should-Have projects – important projects which will add value to the organisation but are not critical right now

Could-Have projects – nice to have projects which offer some value but we could do without them for the moment, however if we have resources and time at the back end of the year we will consider them

Won’t-Have projects – projects which do not currently offer any value to us and which we will not consider this year but may become relevant next year

The technique is simple to follow and as you can see may be used with a timeline such as a quarterly breakdown and displayed on a simple chart as below.

This represents your starting point for the year ahead.

It is not, however, set in stone. We all know that circumstances change in business and priorities may need to be altered to account for new risks and your organisation’s capacity and capability to deliver.

I wish you the best with your projects for the new year but if you need further assistance please be sure to avail of my free one hour online consultation offer which can be booked here.