This document discusses project management best practices for company directors. It notes that projects often fail due to poor initial planning and lack of stakeholder engagement. Effective project management involves clearly defining needs, risks, and responsibilities upfront. It is important to engage contractors as partners and assign risk appropriately. Other success factors include having the right experience and ensuring good alignment with organizational needs. The statistics show that many projects fail due to lacking wider business skills rather than technical project management skills.

1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR DIRECTORS
For Australian Institute of Company Directors
James Baker
Director Ars Imperatoria Consulting
JULY 23, 2019

2. Overview

3. Projects fail before they begin

4. Beginning and end
Temporary
Unique
Many industries / disciplines
Construction
Manufacturing systems and
processes improvements
IT
Managing change
What are projects

5. Project Management – The stats
Source: AIPM and KPMG Australian Project Management Survey 2018

6. Project Management – The stats
Source: AIPM and KPMG Australian Project Management Survey 2018
“The skills most lacking in your organisation’s project
management professionals are not technical project
management skills, but rather the wider business skills
necessary to navigate complex organisational
dynamics.”

7. Why do projects succeed or fail?
Success Factors Failure Factors
Alignment
Good project alignment with organisational
needs
Projects outputs do not satisfy underlying organisational
needs
Scope Scope of project clearly defined Scope of project is vague or ambiguous
Communication
Well defined responsibilities and communication
lines
Many people making decisions, uncertainty around
responsibilities, senior leaders and directors interfering
with low-level decision making
Planning
Well considered resourcing strategy, potential
risks, sufficient contingency allowed for
Insufficient resources, risks not properly addressed, little
or no contingency allowed
Experience and
capability
Key personnel suitably qualified for project to be
undertaken, external resources sought where
skills not available internally
Organisation tries to “wing it” with personnel with
insufficient experience in planning and executing projects

8. Types of organisations
(from PM perspective)
Rarely undertake major projects
(eg, manufacturing business, service business etc)
Engage external project management professionals to
guide your team as early as possible
Regularly undertake major projects
(eg, construction and resources industries,
government infrastructure organisations)
Build a strong project portfolio management
capability

9. Project Stages
Planning Execution Continuous
Improvement
Problem Identification
Stakeholder identification / engagement
Options assessment
Business case development
Risk assessment
Engineering & design
Detailed cost analysis
Permits & Approvals
Resourcing
Procurement
Mobilisation
Execution
Contract administration
Lessons learned
Team debriefing
Improving resources
and capabilities for future
TIME

10. Project Stages
Planning Execution Continuous
Improvement
What should
happen
Planning Execution
How projects
are often planned
Planning Unplanned Delays ExecutionWhat ends up
happening
TIME

11. Project Planning

12. Project Strategy
Simple 1-2 pages
Identify needs of organisation and end users
Define problem to be solved
Familiar – can your people recall?
Time horizon – appropriate for your
organisations needs (10+ years?)

13. User Centric Project
Management
Plan backwards from end user
Effective consultation
Make projects fit to users – not other way around!

14. Managing a portfolio of projects
Define and communicate the
overarching vision
Allocate budget based on whole-of-
organisation needs (collaborative
process)
Define and communicate criteria for
evaluating individual business
cases
Evaluate each project as part of an
overall solution
Ensure sufficient resources (talent /
funds / etc) to deliver the project
Let project managers do their job
(don’t micro-manage)
Review finished projects and
continue to improve

15. • Big impact on effectiveness of project planning and execution.
• Poor culture can result in:
• Manager reluctance to delegate / consult in planning phase
• Decision makers stalling rather than making a “risky” decision
• Project managers being scared of passing on “bad news”
• Lack of collaboration between divisions
• Demotivated team members not engaged with
problem identification
Organizational Culture &
PROJECT MANAGEMENT

16. Contractors
Your contractors are project
partners – treat them as such
• Fair contract terms
• Don’t keep them waiting (especially
during tender evaluations!)
Assign risk appropriately
• Risk borne by the party best positioned
to manage it
• The project owner ends up paying
for it!

17. • Invest in early stage project planning – projects fail before they begin!
• Project strategy – keep it to 1-2 pages
• Engage stakeholders and experts from the beginning
• Design projects around your end users
• Project teams depend on clear vision from their leaders
• Contractors are your project partners
• Bad culture = bad projects
Key
Takeaways

18. “The seeds of problems are laid down early. Initial
planning is the most vital part of a project. The review
of most failed projects or project problems indicate the
disasters were well planned to happen from the start.”
Jerry Madden
Associate Director of Flight Projects, NASA

19. CREATIVE COMMONS
This material is released under creative commons. The
more we all adopt best practices, the better we all are.
You are free to use and modify these slides as you wish
(just please let me know if you make it better!).