1. Clear Objectives
What is the project there to achieve and by when? The
first key is to establish and maintain clarity and
agreement on this, and then communicate it well.
The difficulty is often that everyone involved or
affected by it has their own ideas and interpretations,
and even when agreement has been reached, as time moves
on the views diverge again. Clear objectives need to be
a continuing focus during a project.
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2. Structuring into Stages
All projects progress naturally through a life
cycle of phases - e.g. research, decision making,
planning and organising, implementation, and
closure.
A key, particularly with long projects, is not to try to tackle the project as one great whole, but to
“chunk” it down in appropriate stages, making each
stage a “mini-project”, and each end-of-stage a
milestone.
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3. Project Organisation
Because projects often operate outside of the normal
hierarchy (often also crossing boundaries) the project
manager needs to establish organisational foundations for
it.
This key has two elements:
- to get clarity and support
of those sponsoring the project
- to build the commitment
of those working on the project.
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4. Sound Planning & Control
Project planning is done throughout the whole project on
three levels:
- top-level planning
to establish the viability of the project and to
structure (chunk) it into stages;
- strategies to
identify and resolve likely implementation issues.
- activity scheduling
to plan in detail, what actions need to take place when,
and who will do them.
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