Make A Statement: Turn Vision Into Reality

  PM Network  

Think about all the projects you’ve managed. How many of them were considered “smooth sailing”— no scope creep, plenty of resources, flexible deadlines?

You may be wondering whether these amazing projects really exist.

On the other hand, we all know about the other kind of projects.

One differentiating factor may be the vision statement in your project charter. Vision is powerful. A shared project vision enables team members to focus their energy toward the future reality. Vision also provides context and meaning to their hard work. In the case of a troubled project, the vision statement can serve as a marker to steer the effort back on track when targets are missed and/or scope changes cloud the original mandate.

So many ideas, so little time

Having a vision statement can also help rein in all those good ideas. I learned that lesson at a former job when I was working on a project to update the company website. The directive from senior management was to generate some quick wins in three to six months’ time. The core project team had spent many hours defining the project scope without coming to an agreement. At one point or another, we had contemplated a range of possibilities: rewriting and cleaning up page content, redesigning and rebranding the general look and feel, changing to a new content-management platform, …

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