Challenge

"Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true" (Lester R. Bittel, *1918, American Author)

Unclear goals, lack of communication and management support are the most frequent reasons for projects failing. If an effective early warning system is missing, it is nearly impossible to react fast enough when a critical situation surfaces. By then, it is almost always too late.

If the whole project landscape is not well managed, project interdependencies are not considered sufficiently and not aligned well enough to the corporate strategy. The total benefits will be far below the best possible result.

Advice

It sounds very simple to address the three classical dimensions - time, budget and quality. In practice the trade offs between the three are very often not made explicit and even more seldom communicated. Lack of up front, up right communication of trade offs leads to expectations which cannot be met.

By setting realistic expectations and by making conflicts between the three dimensions of project management explicit, we make sure that the perception of the project is as good as possible.

Manage the expectations towards your project - then you will succeed!

Very often, it helps to support the existing vertical organizational structures by establishing flat, project oriented horizontal organization structures.

In order to become an out performer regarding project implementation, increased stakeholder management, intense trainings for project managers & teams and systematic controlling and reporting need to be established and become a part of the project culture.

4-advice offers to plan and manage projects to ensure that these critical success factors are properly addressed. Our advice does not end with the planning - we follow through until the execution is done. This makes our contribution measurable.