Have you ever completed a project only to hear something like “that’s not what I had in mind”? Despite all that time and effort, you may have missed the mark! Good project management can help, and it begins with what you do up front. The key is to have a good vision of what the final product or deliverable will look like before you start. This ensures that you find out what is really wanted. A good definition of project success is expectations met. A small investment up front to figure out those expectations will save a lot of time fixing the final product.
In order to understand the expectations around a project, we have to figure out who’s expectations matter. Pro tip: you usually have to worry about more than just your expectations. You might be turning the final product in to a boss, a committee, a church leader, your students, or even customers. If we only think about what we want, we may miss important details about what is expected by the people who will ultimately determine if the project is successful. A great tool we talk about in our Project Management Essentials workshop is to conduct interviews to find out what the key stakeholders expect. This can be a formal interaction, but usually it will consist of stopping the person who just asked you do take on a project and asking a few questions such as:
- What is the timeline/deadline for this project?
- As you think about success on this project, what does it look like?
- How much budget / resources do we have to work with?
- Who needs to sign off on this and how often should they be updated?
- Who else should I talk to about this project?
There are tons of potential questions, but you need to ask enough so that you are confident that you have the same vision as the person(s) who will ultimately decide if the project is successful. This can really change how you approach projects. Once you’ve gathered the expectations, do a quick write-up that combines all your data and get it back to those same stakeholders for approval. With a shared vision of what the project outcomes will look like, you can move forward with confidence. Imagine how much better it would be to find out that key expectation before you begin, than to discover it mid-way through the project or once you thought you had completed it. Take the time to create a shared vision up front and watch how it improves the entire project.