Guest Column | September 10, 2015

3 Critical Steps To Project Execution That Deliver Results

Lori Benson, OPM TMA contract manager for Big Sky's support to the U.S. Army's Insider Threat, Personnel Security and Counterintelligence Programs

By Lori Benson, OPM TMA contract manager for Big Sky's support to the U.S. Army's Insider Threat, Personnel Security and Counterintelligence Programs

“Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation, but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling,” according to serial entrepreneur Naveen Jain.

Just like any ongoing project, it is the day-to-day efforts that make up the “basic blocking and tackling,” if you will, that lead to the best results. Even the best-planned projects can go awry without careful project execution — but, with budgets being reduced and every organization needing to focus on making their resources stretch, even large companies and agencies must ensure that their efforts are impactful. In fact, strategy execution is such an issue for top managers these days that corporate chief executives rated it as their number one concern and their most challenging concern, according to the Conference Board’s recent Survey of CEOs. And it’s little surprise that the C-suite is concerned, when the same study found that six out of 10 strategies are not successfully executed.

In business projects — be it developing a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for an emerging market, or designing an in-house plan for greater efficiencies—organizations must focus on project execution from start to finish in order to manifest success. The specifics may vary depending on the organization, the specific details and objectives of the projects, and the resources that are available. However, ultimately, successful project execution needs to be broken down to three key steps: Plan, Monitor, and Control.

Plan

A successful plan is a good start to a well-executed project. The main facets of the plan should of course include establishing the objectives of the project, timeline, budgeting, and a review of the available resources, including people, materials, physical space and data or informational assets. But the plan should also take into account other factors, which often get over-looked, such as:

  • establishing communications channels to report progress upward to top managers and out to frontline employees;
  • an assessment of what external resources or personnel might be necessary to completing the project;
  • a plan for regular team meetings, either in person, online, or on the phone or by Skype, to communicate progress throughout the group itself; and
  • an honest assessment of potential challenges that could arise and, at least, a rough back-up plan for overcoming these possible obstacles.

Also important: make sure that after all is said and done that the plan for this project not only aligns with the strategy of the organization, but that it is not creating conflict or redundancy with other projects occurring in other parts of the organization.

Monitor

Once the project is in motion, there needs to be a system for properly and efficiently monitoring the progress as it is ongoing, so that the participants and any other involved parties in the organization know that the project is being executed as well and as efficiently as possible. The monitoring process also exposes flaws, redundancies, or other inadequacies in the process that could hinder a successful project execution and that could be tweaked or fixed along the way. Monitoring could include, but is not limited to:

  • generating project data, such as cost, schedule, technical and quality progress, and current status to facilitate forecasting;
  • issuing change requests and adapting approved changes into the project’s scope, plans, and environment;
  • reviewing the progress of the project participants to gauge workload, individual output, efficiency and success in meeting individual goals;
  • reviewing budgets and how they sync up with previous cost forecasts; and weighing both quantitative; and
  • anecdotal feedback from the participants and stakeholders in the project itself.

It is often a good idea to feed the monitoring results into a framework, dashboard or scorecard that can provide a user-friendly, on-going view of the project as it evolves to determine progress.

Control

Once the project leaders have planned and monitored their progress, they can set about determining how to control for any weaknesses or shortcomings in the plan in order to effect a successful project execution. This is the stage where the participants need to mitigate and manage any emerging risks, manage their vendors, suppliers or other third parties with whom they are working, communicate their own lessons learned, improve the process and document and communicate these changes up the chain to management. And then it’s back to plan for the next phase of the project.

When properly managed, these three steps create an effective and continuous cycle of preparing for and conducting a successful project execution.

Lori Benson is the OPM TMA contract manager for Big Sky's support to the U.S. Army's Insider Threat, Personnel Security and Counterintelligence Programs.  She also leads the firm’s client delivery and HUBZone outreach efforts. Benson joined Big Sky Associates in September 2014 after 20 years at Booz Allen Hamilton, where she managed a team of C4I Foreign Military Sales (FMS) project, financial and training experts supporting the U.S. Navy and CENTCOM allies.  She holds a B.A. in Communications from James Madison University and a M.S. in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has been a certified PMP since 2008.