The project management sweet spot.

In an ideal world, there is a perfect harmony of project manager, project management and toolset to achieve project outcomes using a standardised method / project technique.

The highest likelihood of success through a well-managed, concerted project approach to delivery is by balancing project management, project toolsets and having a good project manager. But achieving this balance is difficult. The project manager and the team must interact well with the toolset. The Project manager needs to have the flexibility to achieve project oversight. The project toolset needs to not encumber the team’s ability to self-direct their portion of the project. There is a need for some administrative project management separate from the project management that relies of soft skillsets.

Achieving this may be resource intensive but has a much higher likelihood of smoothly driving productive project delivery. The project that is focused on perfecting toolsets, methods, techniques, and outcomes, ensuring that all administrative tick boxes are checked has the danger of over engineering project administration and management through too many gates, reports and templates or forms.

The Project manager focused on the softer, cultural, and strategic side of project management and project delivery, without the distraction of too many tools and administrative overhead may put too much focus on project management delivery than project delivery. The project then lands up focusing too much on the process and approach of the project than the project deliverable.

So, the sweet spot of project management is to balance intuitive management and the toolset. This requires matching the toolset to the company’s culture well enough then adapting so that project visibility, reporting and documentation is balanced against stakeholder management, change management, performance management, cultural fit and team cohesion.

Achieving perfect project management can look too resource intensive but unless your team or business is so small that another approach, such as self-directed project management, will see you to project delivery in the most efficient way, it is highly worth it. It is not over subscribing unnecessary team members to make sure that the team has the reporting and cohesion it needs to achieve delivery fast.

WiRD can help achieve the nebulous balance of good project management. Talk to our consultants about how you can achieve diamond project delivery.