The Project Manager's New Year Wish List

With the New Year barely three weeks old, I thought it would be a good time to look at the top 5 items project managers should have on their wish list for 2008.

1. Respect of Their Team

Nobody has the right to be respected by their team; that can only be earned by reputation or deed. Within project management respect of your team is essential. What will encourage team members to go that extra mile if they don't have respect for you as their leader? Will they care about the project enough to ensure success? You must lead by example, and then your team will follow. If they truly respect you as a project manager they will put in the extra effort required to guarantee success.

2. Leadership Support

It is very hard to deliver any initiative, product or service without support from an organisation's senior management. Most successful projects have leadership support and champions from the highest levels of the organisation. If people further down the organisation are going to take your project seriously and help you succeed, they must know it has support from the top.

3. The Right People

All of the respect and leadership support in the world won't deliver a successful project this is done by your team. When selecting a team you must recruit the right people, and by "right" I don't mean best. The right people for a project are those that can deliver what is needed, on time and on budget. Look for a mix of different skills and abilities applicable to your project and not just paper qualifications you'll never need.

4. Good Communication

With respect, leadership support and the right people you're well on your way to a successful project. However, the one thing that binds this all together is good communication. Without it the project will start to drift and people lose interest as the next newest, shiniest thing comes along. Developing good communication channels to keep everyone updated and talking together is essential. By this I don't mean a status report every few weeks; we need a lot more. Regular team meetings where issues and risks can be discussed; update meetings with the stakeholders; demonstrations of work in progress and of course regular status reports.

5. Luck

As the saying goes, you make your own luck. You must foster a sense of optimism and enthusiasm in and around your team. Negative teams who constantly look at why they can't succeed tend to find it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Things will go wrong because they expect them to. Working together with a sense of purpose and energy tends to create opportunities and many more possibilities for solutions to risks and issues.

Conclusion

Without these five essential ingredients you will have an uphill struggle to bring a project in on time and on budget. In fact without these items it's very questionable whether a project should go ahead in the first place. Think about this before you take on your next project - and good luck in 2008!