Keeping Project Management Practices Going

Getting project management discipline in the door is one challenge. Getting it to outlast you is another one entirely. The teams that keep these practices going aren’t the ones where it was shoved down their throats. They are the teams that saw the benefit and took ownership of it. That doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen fast. Here is how to make that a reality in your organization:

• Point out when the discipline prevented a problem, not just when it fixed one. The hardest thing to sell is something that worked invisibly. When a risk was flagged early, and nothing bad happened, that’s the discipline doing its job. It just looks like nothing happened at all. Get in the habit of sharing those moments, such as: ‘Remember when the arguments about scope stopped? That was due to the document we agreed to.’ Don’t assume people will connect the dots on their own.
• Meet people where they are with the tools they already use. Asking a team to adopt a new project management platform, a new communication style, and a new planning process all at once is too much to expect. Start by looking at the tools they’re already using and figure out how to build good practice into those. The tool matters far less than the habit. Nudge forward; don’t leap.
• The best level of project management is the least that’s needed. Over-engineering the process is just as damaging as having no process at all. If a project is unlikely to need a procurement plan, don’t build one. Every document created for the sake of methodology and then filed away makes it harder to argue that the work is worth doing. Scale your practices to the project, and people will stop seeing them as overhead.
• You need at least one management sponsor. Discipline that relies entirely on a single project manager to enforce will disappear when that person moves on. For practices to stick, a senior leader needs to recognize the value and be willing to advocate for it… especially when there’s pressure to skip steps. Part of your job is to give that person the language and examples they need to make that case.
• The real measure of success is when the team keeps doing it after you’ve left. There’s no better sign that you succeeded than when the team is still running things the way you introduced. That doesn’t happen because you enforced compliance. It happens because the practices improved their success and people’s jobs got easier.