Here are top 7 tips to be a more effective leader with doing your projects:
- Start far fewer projects. YES – you read that correct. Many projects will not even get off the ground until you take the time to perform a detailed feasibility analysis, develop a cost-benefit analysis, and assess the potential risks you may face. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT IDEA.
- Align all projects with current strategies.Examine your entire portfolio of future and existing projects to decide which ones better suit your immediate strategic objectives. ONLY work on projects that are in accordance with the path your organisation is going. BEFORE we begin any project at Education Edge, we conduct a short opportunity scan to determine which projects are the right match. We review our existing projects every quarter to see if they are all worthwhile to pursue.
- Know what “Finished” means. Once you’ve agreed to pursue or continue a project, take a look at what it takes to complete it as a group. This is something you can do BEFORE you start or finish working on your projects. Scope creep can happen right when you start working on a project. You’ll be much more motivated to finish the project if you have a common understanding of what it takes to complete it.
- Reduce risks of completion. Review the risks involved with the execution of your project on a daily basis. Start the process BEFORE you begin your project. Identify the risks and devise methods to eliminate, reduce, and manage them. Determine who is responsible for reducing the project’s risk of failure and what would motivate their project completion accountability.
- Deliver results, FAST. Early on in the project’s life, make sure you can give something useful to whoever is paying for it. Nobody enjoys waiting for results. Show outcomes in a monetizable manner, and do so immediately.
- Pay attention to who is on your “bus.”. Bring the right people on the squad FAST, and get the wrong people off as quickly as possible. Your project isn’t a storage facility for items that the organisation doesn’t know how to effectively use. The name of “special projects” is occupational suicide. Consider if this is a job you still ought to be doing if you haven’t hand-picked the people on the project team.
- Quality is a measure of how much you care.It also takes much less money to perform the job correctly, using the proper procedures. Quality isn’t something that someone else can compel you to do or stop you from doing. Recognize the methods you’re using to build the project’s deliverables. Check to see if they’re up to par, or work to update them right away.
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