Launching and measuring the success of a project is always tricky. However, growing as a business requires you to learn how to evaluate projects, determine successes, and turn failures into lessons for the future. With that in mind, let’s look at the groundwork you need to do for a successful launch and completion of your next project.
Here’s what this guide will teach you:
- 9 must-haves for running your project
- The big reason you need to measure your success
- 5 common characteristics of successful projects
- 7 pitfalls to avoid
That may seem like a lot, but you’ll soon discover that everything is well connected and the best practices we discuss for running your project can help you avoid issues and get more useful results.
9 steps to running a successful project
Creating a successful project starts with the foundation. Follow best practices to develop a clear understanding of the goal, what’s required to reach it, and how to share it with your team.
1) Understand the ‘why’ of the project
The most crucial step in any project is to understand the project’s purpose. What are you trying to gain? Do you want to see an increase in revenue, web traffic, brand awareness, or sign-ups for a newsletter?
State the purpose of the project as clearly as possible and remember that most have two goals. For example, a project to create a free ebook may have the primary goal of writing, designing, and finalizing that ebook. Still, the purpose of the ebook itself is to give website visitors a reason to sign up for your newsletter.
So, the why in our ebook example is to create something valuable for that exchange.
2) Understand the scope of work
With the goals in mind, it’s time to set the scope of work for the project. The scope covers what your project is going to do to meet the goal and establishes the desired outcome of the project and the work to get there. By listing out the work that a project requires, you help team members avoid doing too much or working on something outside of your project’s purpose.
Scope of work defines how large or small a project is, who’s needed to work on it, and the resources required. It’s essential to use the scope to set project budget and boundaries, so you can avoid cost and time overruns. So, for the ebook example, you may want to set a fixed length, which will help control costs for any writing or design work you outsource to freelance professionals via services like Upwork.
3) Match people to roles
Success requires the right team and points of contact for your project, especially if you’re delivering a customer project. Turn the scope of work into a list of tasks, roles, and requirements. Assign each to a specific member of your team or an independent professional. Each person will provide you with their deliverables.
If you think the current project will be similar to those you have in the future, consider building a network or team of contacts. This group can help ensure you have all the requirements covered and provide insight that will benefit you and your company.
4) Have a successful kick-off
Success often requires everything to get off on the right foot. For projects, that means a kick-off meeting for your team and potential clients. This is when you define roles and responsibilities, establish your timeline, and ensure everyone is on the same page.
One of your best guides is the RASCI matrix. RASCI stands for responsible, accountable, supporting, consulted, and informed. This matrix clarifies an individual’s responsibilities, ensuring that they are responsible for a specific task, its results, and progress within the rest of the project. RASCI can clarify many questions regarding responsibility and reporting, making the project run smoothly.
5) Consistent communication with team and stakeholders
For a project to succeed, consistent communication is critical. Keep your team and stakeholders informed on project progress and delays. Transparency shows that you consider your stakeholder’s satisfaction a priority. This also helps to ensure trust between your clients and team moving forward.
Your team is more likely to work with you and accomplish what you need if you communicate needs clearly, resulting in higher quality deliverables.
6) Stick to the timeline
Sticking to your timeline is important, as it places your project as a priority. Set a timeline and use regular meetings to verify that a project is on track. Project management tools help significantly by allowing people to update task progress, giving everyone real-time visibility into its overall status.
7) Launch the project
Launching your project is a momentous occasion. However, a launch doesn’t just occur when all of the project development tasks are finished. You’ll want to review the project with your team and client, determine if you’re responsible for any announcements, and update everyone on when final delivery will occur.
Go back to your solid communications roots and get everyone on the same page before launch. While you establish some of this information in the planning phases, it’s always good to circle back and remind people of commitments or your scope of work before delivering and launching the final product.
8) Review KPIs
With the project launched, celebrate, and then review your KPIs. These metrics allow you to determine your project’s success during its development, finalization, and launch. If your company controls the project results—such as an ebook made for your company’s sales team—KPIs should also track how well the project meets the “why” established in our first step.
Project managers need to look at KPIs to evaluate the specifics of this project and broader elements applicable to future projects. Broad elements include how well people worked together, who was on time, bottlenecks that occurred, and problem-solving capabilities.
9) Share updates with stakeholders
With your project completed, you can now share your project’s status with stakeholders. This allows you to explain the benefits and drawbacks of your project. Although success is always ideal, the negatives provide valuable lessons on what not to do for the future and areas you can improve on.
Why is measuring success essential in project management?
It’s easy to think of measuring a project’s success as the last item on a checklist: Did everything get accomplished? Check. Did we stay on budget? Check. The project was a success.
There’s a bit more to it, though, and looking beyond the baseline can help you generate significant value from a project’s process, not just its outcome. Digging deep into a project’s success to evaluate teamwork, business requirements, and the workflow itself informs new work and makes it easier for others on your team to lead what’s next.
Success and failure are both valuable teachers. They’ll give you insight into what works for your organization, what doesn’t, and the people or tools needed to help things go smoothly.
What are the characteristics of a successful project?
Here are a few common characteristics of successful projects and leadership to keep in mind as we go:
- Prioritizing what’s important
- Communicating clearly and often
- Documenting processes, requirements, and results
- Setting a clear timeline
- Using distinct KPIs that help everyone evaluate a project
Measuring the success of your project: 3 important KPIs
Once the project is completed, you must now analyze the final results. There are a few standard criteria for evaluating a project, and these three should apply to most of the work you do.
1. Reviewing the business impact
Did your project accomplish the business goals (the “why”) that you set forth initially? Has it had a positive or negative impact on the overall business?
In many cases, you’ll use changes in revenue to understand the impact. Projects should bring in more money than, first, their cost to create, and secondly, the revenue your company was making before launching the project.
There are many other ways to judge success, however. Sales tools that improve agent efficiency, service projects that reduce customer complaints, and even internal projects that cut back on repetitive, manual tasks can all add value to your company. When possible, tie results to a tangible change.
2. Was the project on target?
Next, you want to evaluate if your project was the best way to accomplish the goals stated in your “why” reasoning. Was this project the best way to meet them, or could something else have been done?
When the project is finished, you want to evaluate the forecasted gains and see if you accomplished them. Then, review your project management processes to see if the scope of work changed to meet goals better. Compare results with this forecast and discuss them with your team. Regardless of the project’s business impact, your team should share their independent perspectives on your project’s results and provide input, which is important to consider for future projects.
3. Are the project results replicable?
If the project is ultimately successful, the next question would be if the results are replicable. Note what worked best and helped your team succeed. Understand and list the tools, skills, talent, and people required to help you mirror this success in the future, plus generate lessons about what didn’t work on an unsuccessful project.
7 pitfalls to avoid in any project
Problems arise in every project. You want to understand the most significant threats so you can be ready to address them when they happen. Here are some core things to watch out for:
- Poor communication
- Changing project goal
- Unclear roles and responsibilities
- Deficient budget planning
- Undefined scope
- Dissatisfied team members
- Moving timelines
The easiest way to tackle most of these is to create a plan and set as many elements as possible in stone. Then, work with your team and stakeholders as issues arise, being flexible with changes that don’t impact the project’s goal. All team members need to communicate concisely and efficiently so there’s no confusion among your team on their input and the desired outcomes.
Companies can measure effectiveness in many ways, and even less successful projects can provide crucial lessons for the future. So, as long as you keep your end goal in mind and provide clear communication, you have the potential to be successful.
