Everyone seems to be happy, but are you? You know your project being delayed is not unusual by any means. You know this because we have been bombarded by stories about the poor project deliver rates based on the latest CHAOS Summary 2009 Report from The Standish Group. The report called out that 68% or over two-thirds of all projects failed to meet their original success criteria.

If you dig a little deeper into the 68%, you find that 24% of projects failed because they were cancelled prior to completion or delivered and were never used. The remaining 44% were considered challenged projects, which are late, over budget, and/or delivered with less than the required features and functions. Over two-thirds of projects failing to meet their original success criteria is a huge number, but again do you or anyone in management really care? So few really do. Why is that?

They don’t worry about being late because in many cases it is hard to quantify the impact of the opportunity that was lost. It is one thing to make a business decision to move out a date in order to achieve better quality or accommodate a late change that will help increase sales, but to be late because of poor project management is inexcusable and something that can be totally prevented. It is a sign that obviously something is wrong, but what is it?

I will stop you now. Don’t rush out and find a consultant or a software vendor who will sell you on the perfect process or the perfect application that will cure all your ills. In your gut, you know that kind of pitch is just someone blowing smoke so don’t get taken by it. When you learn to swim you generally don’t start by diving in the deep-end. The same holds true when looking to solve your project management ills. Start with what I call, “practical project management governance”. Hold the presses! Don’t run away because I used the word governance.

Governance in this case is just a way of saying you need to get your house in order, and you need to start by building a solid foundation for your future projects to be successful: a foundation that is easy to digest both for you and your employees. That is key. Change of any level is always hard to accept, embrace, and incorporate especially when it impacts everyone in how they do their job.

Practical project governance, from my perspective, looks at four key areas to make sure they are in good order and you are building a solid foundation for future project success. The areas are:

• Consistent project management methodology;
• Measurable metrics;
• Management alignment; and
• Proper skill sets.

Once these concepts have successfully taken root and become institutionalized with you and your employees, you will not only see a dramatic improvement in your project delivery rate and your client satisfaction, but more importantly you will be able to quantify it with hard facts and figures.

Let’s go into a little more detail on each of these four items so you can better understand the importance they have:

Consistent Project Management Methodology - It is critical for a company to determine what ground rules your project managers and team members will abide by when delivering projects. The definition of a consistent and company-wide methodology of how to manage projects will provide dividends in many other areas such as: training, reporting, capturing metrics, and providing a solid foundation for scalability and predictability for your company’s initiatives.

There are many different approaches out there on how to successfully manage projects such as classic waterfall, Agile, and PRINCE2 to name just a few. The practical approach is to look at your business, your people, and your maturity in delivering projects. In most cases, a custom hybrid of a couple of aspects from different models will be the way to go. You want to keep it simple and make sure that the process will work based on the realities of your business. You also want it simple so you can change it as needed based on early lessons learned.

The key is to make sure you are able to keep what makes you and your team unique and not get lost into becoming something you are not by implementing a methodology that works for someone else.

Measurable Metrics - There is really only one way to know for sure if you have succeed or failed with a project and that is look at the numbers. These objective data points will help provide insight into progress, issues, budget, and so much more. There are many different methodologies on how to capture metrics, such as Six Sigma, and how to assess and apply the learning from the data. Regardless of the methodology, it is critical that metrics are captured - especially if gathering metrics is new to your organization.

The first step is to define the metrics needed. The practical approach is to look at metrics that will provide value to all levels of an organization and can easily be captured and reported. I recommend that you start with the following areas:

• Timeliness;
• Quality;
• Client satisfaction; and
• Budget/Cost.