The simplest answer to the question what do I need for project success, comes from one of my favorite speakers - David Walker. Mr. Walker spoke at a EVM World conference. He is the former Comptroller of the United States.
In a recent video he was speaking about the difficulties of the US Government and compared it to the New York Yankees (he's a big baseball fan).
You don't have a hope of having a successful project if you don't have:
- A Plan
- A Budget
- Accountability
These three attributes are contained in the 5 Immutable Principles of Successful Project Management:
- Where are you going?
- How are you going to get there?
- Do you have everything you need to arrive on-time, on-budget, and on-specification?
- What problems are you going to encounter along the way?
- How to you measure progress to plan?
There is a huge amount of discussion about all kinds of things around project management. Ranging from the completely inane discussion of "is project management a profession?" to which flavor of agile should be used in User Interface development.
Without credible answers to David's success criteria and answers to the 5 Immutable questions, you project doesn't have a hope of being successful.
