Why On Time, Scope and Budget Isn’t Enough

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Stakeholder Management   Strategy  

A little over a year ago, my wife and I did a significant remodel of our kitchen. There were a lot of different elements involved, but one of the major early steps was the work of the general contractor who had to pull out the old kitchen and prepare the plumbing, electrical, walls and ceilings. He completed the work on time, on scope and on budget--and we will never give him any work ever again. Why? Because he dragged muddy shoes through the house, “borrowed” our food and was rude to my wife, among other things.

That small personal example illustrates why project success involves a lot more than simply delivering against the constraints. A project can only be successful if the stakeholders consider it to be successful, and that means that the project manager has to proactively manage those stakeholder relationships to deliver that success. In this article, I want to look at exactly what that means from a project success standpoint. It’s more than just “normal” stakeholder management, and it requires a PM who understands the business environment that he is delivering a project into.

What do they want?
The first thing that a project manager needs to understand is that none of the stakeholders are particularly interested in just the deliverables of the project; rather, they are interested in what the deliverables will do for them. This …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.