Going to be in Philadelphia on the 15th-17th of this month with the Project Management Institute to review all the standards just released and how they fit into PMI’s strategy. I am very excited about these new standards, particularly OPM3® and the approach to the organizational market. I’ll update you next week.

Businesses today are under tremendous financial strain. They are also under pressure to respond to customer demands, competitive threats, and market conditions fast enough to survive. Projects are the method of creating change in the organization to deal with these challenges. Studies show that projects are late, over budget, and fail to deliver the expected benefit over half the time in most organizations. This results in a waste of money, management attention, and energy. We can’t afford this waste anymore – and we can’t afford to not respond to the challenges. So how can companies rapidly reduce the failure rates of projects?

Here are five strategies to implement that will result in reduced failure rates and a much higher return you business investments.

1. Treat projects like promise the business makes to itself. Projects aren’t done “to” a business – they are done within the business. A project is like making a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. Define a clear goal, realign the majority of your activities and decisions in support of this goal, and hold the entire organization accountable for achieving the goal. If the organization waits for the project do be done to them, it is very likely to fail.

2. Focus on the right projects. Not all improvement activities improve the organizations ability to achieve its strategy. Don’t expend dollars, management attention, and performer effort on everything that can be done better. Improve at key capabilities that improve performance for the business. Finishing a project that doesn’t result in business value is a waste. As Drucker said, “results only exist on the outside”.

3. Set the project delivery team up for success. Implementing any change is difficult – Implementing big change, in a changing market, while doing many other projects, is a recipe for failure. Reduce complexity by simplifying and laser focusing projects, reducing the number of active projects, and reducing time to business benefit for the projects. Smaller projects more focused projects with less competition for resources will finish faster. Remember, it’s not how quickly you start projects it is how quickly you finish them.

4. Responsibly govern projects. Too much project management is a bad thing, but not enough is irresponsible. At a minimum, project communications, effective forward planning, progress verification, process discipline (and adaptability) and active management of risks and opportunities should be in place. The trend towards agile methods does not mean undisciplined process or no formal planning. Good project management will help accelerate the completion of the project without being overly bureaucratic.

5. Understand Talent Management. Projects are done by people and often impact the way people will do their jobs. As simple as this concept is it is often overlooked. If you are doing new technology, make sure you have experienced talent involved in developing the technology. If you are changing the way someone does work, make sure they have the right talent for the new job and train them. Accounting on a Double Ledger paper system requires different skills than the one required to run a computerized financial system. Failure to get the right people in the right place will result in a failure to optimized value from the project.

For various reasons, most organizations are ineffective at each of these strategies. But if we want to get different results, we need to take a different approach. With a little effort, each of these strategies can be implemented rapidly. Implementing them will greatly enhance the likelihood of the success of your projects. I will go into detail on each of the strategies over the next week.

This is my first podcast. Merry Christmas.