Hi All,
They say that the root of all evil is money, but I am beginning to think it might be project management!
I work with many organizations, from huge multi-national companies to solo businesses. In addition, I work with both in-house teams and external agencies.
Despite this enormous variety, it seems that the root of many of their problems all boils down to the same thing… how they run projects.
Most Digital Projects Are Badly Run
Those in-house teams in larger organizations find projects grind to a halt, crippled by complexity, legacy, and stakeholders. Meanwhile, small external agencies regularly underestimate the cost of their projects and struggle with managing clients.
Almost all projects I encounter run over budget, take longer than planned and seem to lead to unnecessary stress.
We Need to Run Digital Projects Differently
It doesn’t need to be this way. We need to stop running digital projects like building a factory or making some other physical deliverable.
Instead, we need to use the flexibility, and data digital provides to run projects more agilely.
But that is not just about using an agile methodology for building our digital services. It also means taking those hard to define, unwieldy projects and breaking them down into something more manageable.
We need to stop providing estimates for large projects that are based on little more than an educated guess. Instead, we need to break projects down into easy-to-define chunks that can be then costed more accurately. What we learn in each chunk can then inform the next, ensuring we are always building the right thing and staying within budget.
Resources for Running Projects Differently
It is a subject I covered in a recent Smashing Magazine article I wrote. However, I also go into the practicalities in more detail in this new free Skillshare course I have recently released.
It is a course sponsored by the team at Cloudways and is supposed to help agency owners run their ecommerce builds more effectively (Cloudways and seeking to promote their Ecommerce Starter Bundle). However, the techniques I outline are helpful for any digital service build and can help in-house teams just as much.
Of course, getting stakeholders and clients to think differently about running projects is no easy challenge. That is why in the course, I also get into convincing others and approaching things more effectively.
So, if you are frustrated by how your digital projects run, whether you work in-house or as an outside supplier, I highly recommend checking out my Smashing post, and my hour-long Skillshare course.
I can honestly say since adopting this approach to projects, things have gone considerably smoother all around.
Thanks,
