Without the correct allocation of your people, you don’t have a project at all. “Why do so many projects fail? Because they don’t have the right resources in place at the right time. But organizations that focus solely on the process and procedure instead of how effectively resources are being used is a major red flag, Patel says. Figuring out how to best allocate limited supplies of time, money and people can be the difference between project success or failure. Resource management is a key focus for project managers. Red flag: Focus on process instead of people Then, you need to draw direct correlations between what you’re spending and how that aligns with the business’ goals of succeeding in a new, international market. Let’s for example, say you’re a project manager tasked with helping the company expand internationally and open an office in Brazil, then you have to first think of everything that entails: renting or purchasing office space purchasing and deploying infrastructure, setting up internet connections, hiring talent and making connections with customers. “You have to focus on showing your business leadership that the costs you’re incurring are directly in alignment with and furthering the business’ goals,” he says. An undue focus on IT project management as a major cost center is another red flag, and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Project managers bear the burden of proving to the larger business and the C-suite that they’re not just a cost center, but provide value to the organization, says Patel. It’s like if you’re taking a road trip and, at the end you say, ‘Great! We only had one gas stop and one food stop, and we made fantastic time,’ except you ended up in Southern California when you were trying to get to Seattle,” he says. “PMs are supposed to look at output: project completion schedules, budgets, resources, but if you’re completely focused on those, you’ll miss the bigger picture of how your project fits into the larger business strategy. Project managers must first determine what the desired outcome of a project is, and what value that project will bring to the business, and then make sure that all the steps along the way - the output - are contributing to that larger goal the organization wants to accomplish. One of the easiest to see is a focus on output rather than outcome, Patel says. There are signs and signals, though, that can indicate when a project’s in trouble. Red flag: focus on output rather than outcome If you can acknowledge and accept that, and then understand that sometimes these things aren’t in your control, you’re in a better position,” says Tushar Patel, senior vice president of marketing for project and portfolio management solutions company Innotas. “The most important thing to remember is that regardless of how well you plan, how much you build in contingencies for all the expected ways things could go sideways, something else, something you didn’t expect, will always happen. The key to successful project management is being able to not only to balance the “triple constraints” of time, resources and quality, but to identify red flags that could signal an impending project disaster. Robert Burns famously wrote, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” and while he was addressing a mouse in his poem, his words sum up the day-to-day struggles of IT project managers.
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