It's not just about checking boxes

Whether you're a project manager, project administrator or a departmental manager, success is not about checking boxes.

If you do it that way, both your stakeholders and your team can feel that the project management process is something that is done to them rather than something that’s done for them. It gives them no additional value but all of the additional pain.

While checking boxes appears to be the most efficient way of getting through all of the work that you have as a manager, it's not effective... and if it's not effective then it doesn't matter how efficient you are, it's all wasted effort.

Remember what you're there to accomplish as the project manager or, any manager for that matter. One of the first roles of a manager is as a leader. That means leading change effectively.  In order to do that, you need to understand is what success for the project and for the organization actually looks like.

On time and on budget are very important but it doesn't matter how close to budget you came or how close to schedule you came if the project doesn't deliver the business value that it was intended to. Keep that in mind. So the first step is to orient yourself to what the project success actually looks like.

Once the work is done, what is the measurable outcome that benefits the business?

• What is the measured target?
• How do your tasks align with this?
• What other (implied) requirements or deliverables are there? There usually are a number of implied conditions:
  • Users adopt the system and business process changes
  • Those changes deliver the efficiency or effectiveness results
  • Those results translate into business value
  • The conditions under which the work was undertaken haven't changed materially by the time the work was done: 
    • this includes whether the initial cost estimates and timeline were achieved and if not,
    • whether the impact of the difference was greater than the actual realized business value

Read that list again.

Notice that cost and timeline impacts are near the bottom of the list? That doesn't mean they're not important. The impact of missing a timeline might have huge financial penalties, but then again, the difference of a few weeks on the delivery date might not have any impact at all.

If you're working from a context where budget and timeline are your primary indicators, instead of business objectives and delivered business value, then you're missing the key information you need to lead and manage. Without that information you don't have what you need to make effective leadership decisions.