Tony Robbins said that there is no such thing as an overnight success or overnight failure.

As a simple message as it is, it’s almost always forgotten during a project execution.

If a Project was successful, it’s not because suddenly things turn well.

There were a series of tasks executed. Were all those tasks performed perfectly? Most probably not, but if they were executed with satisfaction and the project achieved its goal, it’s considered a successful project.

As a Project Manager I am regularly checking the project and I see that those skills are very important in our daily life to label it in a week/month/year/decade time as being a successful life.

1 Have a Goal

Lighthouse representing your goals

I can’t even stress enough how important it is to have goals. Our goals are like the lighthouse that illuminates our path. There are so many people whose time pass lacking clearly defined goals.

This is especially true about projects. The project must have a very specific goal, which is time-bound as well as flexible enough in case there are changes, and there will always be changes!

Without goals, we will stay in the same place day after day.

I still remember at one of my first job interviews as a student, I asked the interviewer how long is he in the company, just to receive a response:

I am there 10 years, that seems a lot, but you do not understand how fast the time passes!

2 Have the right resources

If we have everything to achieve that goal, that won’t be a goal but a task we execute. Getting X amount of salary increase is a goal. Buying food is not.

The resources can be people we need to help us in achieving our goal. Typical example is organizing an event. Think about what knowledge and new tools you would need?

This also applied to moving to a new position or deciding to change our career.

When we have the right resources, the goal becomes achievable. There are many people who become discourage, because they hadn’t defined for themselves what resources they lack to achieve that goal.

Time is of course one of the biggest resource people underestimate. The most common mantra I hear occasionally from people is:

I don’t have the time!

If we are currently in this situation, it’s better for us to go back to the goal and re-evaluate why we want to do it. Having amazing goal without the right resources could lead to disaster.

3 Execution

Once we have the goal and the resources it’s time to execute the goal. It’s okay to have dependencies and to accept that not everything will be crystal clear in the begging of the project. As much as resources and a clear goal we have in the beginning of the project the better the quality of the project will be in the project’s end.

There will be soon an article about the variables of a good project.

4 Control and delegation

The final step in Project management is to have a regular control and to ensure that the people and resources we have are used at their optimum.

Summary

In this post you had read a high-level overview of how to be on top of your project.

Would you like to learn more about useful tool you could use?

Then the following article will be very useful: https://aleksvladimirov.com/how-to-be-on-top-of-your-project/

Aleks Vladimriov is a Senior Software Developer, recognized Project Manager and Soft-skilled trainer and a coach.

Aleks Vladimirov

Solution Engineering Manager at Thales | Senior IT Professional | Startup Mentor and Product Manager

Aleks is experienced Product Manager with an engineer background and over 10 years of experience as a software developer. He works with different governments and is responsible for negotiation features and requirements, understanding the customers’ needs and supporting the senior management with regular reports and analysis. He held various positions starting as a software developer, moving to a team leader and software architect.

He strives in waterfall and agile environment alike. He is certified Scrum Master and Prince2 Practitioner and he knows how to design business processes and help teams optimize their work.
During his tenure, he had to wear many hats, prioritizing business requirements, delegating work and mentoring team members, creating mockups with Balsamiq, providing MS Project plan to the senior management.

He had worked in many international teams, located in the same city or distributed in different countries and continents. He had been a team leader of cross functional international team of 8 people.

In his current position, he is very much client focused. He has excellent presentation skills.
He delivers training sessions on presentation skills and leadership and he had helped hundred of people to improve their presentation skills.

He is also interested in creating more positive changes in the workplace by using entrepreneurship skills.
He had won startup competition where his team had validated and develop a business idea from scratch.

In his free time, he writes in his blog about effective product development.

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