Leadership Skills for PMs: Edition 9 – Focus on Results
Great project managers not only manage the project’s scope, time and cost (the triple constraints); they make sure those constraints will deliver positive results. That means focusing on outcomes rather than just activities. Here are ways you can demonstrate a results-focused approach.
- Define success criteria. Draft scope statements that define project outcomes and explicitly describe how success for those outcomes will be measured. Success criteria ensure that everyone knows what project success looks like. This reduces the risk of getting sidetracked and helps evaluate changes to scope. For example, a success criterion “Improve manufacturing line throughput” is vague. How much does it need to improve to be considered a success? A proper success criteria would be “Improve manufacturing line throughput by 20% by March 31 as measured by process X.”
- Manage scope change requests while maintaining good stakeholder relationships. Evaluate each scope change request against the project’s success criteria and either say no to the change, negotiate a trade-off, or agree to expand the scope by asking for adjusted timelines and budgets. No matter the decision, there is a solid rationale that reinforces the integrity of the project’s success criteria. Communicate the rationale to interested stakeholders without judgment, while listening actively to their responses. That way you can maintain a productive relationship with your key stakeholders.
- Make decisions quickly, even when complete information isn’t available. Analysis paralysis is detrimental to a project. To keep your focus on results, gather enough data to make an informed choice, then commit and move forward. Making a good decision today beats a perfect decision three weeks from now, especially when those three weeks put deliverables at risk. However, revisiting decisions might be the responsible thing to do when new information comes to light. When that happens, reassess your decisions if feasible. You’ll have to put your ego aside for the sake of project success.
- Communicate status using business outcome terminology. Completed tasks on a schedule isn’t what’s important to key stakeholders. What is important is the status compared to expected outcomes. For example, “tasks 39 to 51 are done” doesn’t mean much to management. However, “we’ve circumvented the highest risks without any issues” or “we are 2 weeks away from a workable prototype” are more meaningful and outcome-focused. Results-oriented status updates keep stakeholders informed about what is relevant to them.
- Prioritize features to adjust the project based on business value. When time or resources get tight—and they often do—be sure to reevaluate scope. That way, you can use business value to defer or cut lower-priority scope items, while fully delivering the highest-value items.
If you’re like me, you probably get a dopamine rush by crossing to-dos off lists. But make sure you’re building those to-do lists based on project results and that you define your success criteria before diving into work.
For more about the importance of project results, check out my Project Management Foundations course.
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