Research identifies seven common characteristics of highly successful projects.
From time to time a company’s project truly stands out, creating exceptional value and having an impact on the industry. IBM’s AS/400 development effort in the 80s was a game changer and gave IBM a competitive edge. Apple Inc.’s success in creating the iPod portable media player and iTunes online store is another more recent example of a great project — one that changed the way people listen to and buy music. Why are such projects so rare — and why can’t more projects be like them?
2 Comments On: What Great Projects Have in Common
The most important factors for a successful project are to identify a problem and objective, manage all stakeholders to agree, develop an action plan and then execute it until complete. Rarely do projects require someone to reinvent the wheel, but rather simply to use existing knowledge and innovatively apply it.
I have been going through MSP (Managing Successful Programmes) and the exams with this. It strikes me that it is designed for rolling out exactly these sorts of major projects and programmes. Yes, great projects have some inspiration and insight as to what they want to achieve, but an awful lot of the success is down to the tools used to implement this.