Far too many projects fail to deliver on their outcomes but effective practices can improve the chance of success.
In our new ‘The Art and Science of Project Management’ blog series CES Director of Change and Improvement Ken Stanley will share CES’ insights into 5 key learnings based on our experience which, if adopted, would help any project improve the likelihood of success.
Lesson #2: Autonomous project teams
Projects are temporary structures that bring a collection of individuals together, often having never worked together before, yet are expected to deliver the project outcomes.
“Project teams need to feel ownership of the projects they are delivering”
Why?
Teams that have autonomy and who are trusted to deliver are more engaged and perform better.
What should be done to enable this?
Sponsors, and senior leadership, need to empower the project team and its Project Leader to deliver. This means devolving day-to-day management responsibility and decision-making to the project team without the need for continuous approval
Project teams should be clear at the beginning on the level of tolerance and their authority to to make informed decisions
Project teams should feel challenged to achieve milestones and feel encouraged to be creative in doing so.
What benefits will be seen?
Team members who feel accountable are more engaged. This strengthens teamwork and so team members are more likely to collaborate to meet their collective objectives
Feeling challenged to deliver, and owning this, fosters creativity and creates a continuous improvement mindset.
Having empowered the team, how does the leadership know what is happening?
Project plans, status reports and other project artefacts should articulate the project story – i.e. where it needs to go and how its journey to get there is progressing.
These should support the Sponsor and other leadership to:
