Steve Zobell, Workfront, Chief Product & Technology Officer
Start With The End In Mind
- Project managers should map out the end point (project goals, results) and work backwards by defining ways that will
successfully take them to that end point. - Project managers should define project scope upfront to avoid any future confusion among stakeholders.
- Project managers need to communicate effectively with their teams and executives in order to ensure better visibility into their projects.
- Project managers need to close the loop by reporting to the stakeholders on the success of achieving the outcomes once the outputs have been delivered.
“When it comes to working with project managers, there is one thing I always ask of them: begin with the end in mind.”
As IT business processes have become more complex in today’s rapid-paced workplace, it turns out that business executives have less visibility than ever before. It’s harder to have broad insight into the work that is being completed by the employees. I’ve been fortunate enough to oversee a lot successful projects, but I’ve also seen my fair share of unsuccessful ones, and the
common denominator for the latter was always a lack of end-to-end visibility into what was going on with those projects in real-time. I know that’s a tall order for most IT organizations as business processes now span any number of applications, databases and systems. And let me tell you, it’s a big challenge to cobble together data from multiple tools in order to make critical decisions and have time for thoughtful strategy. This, in turn, leads to missed deadlines and ballooning budgets. So how to get all of this under control without walking blind?
This is an excerpt from What IT Execs Want Most From Project Managers. The eBook was generously sponsored by Workfront.
