The Project's Hype Train
The Art of Meeting Expectations
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
The moment a Sponsor approves the launch of a new project is also a moment where a wave of excitement is spread among the company. Wishful thinking lists start to be written, and the Elves of the Magic Land of “Everything is Possible” present their view with excitement and expectation. In the middle, there is someone who will be charged with the task of making part of the dream a reality: The Leader. It may be a Project Manager, Product Manager, or any kind of Management position inside the organization.
With time and experience, decision-makers tend to become more cautious with expectations and how a project can move forward. However, the start of a new project is always an exciting moment to make positive changes across teams or products. Because of it, expectations start to rise and someone is dealt the task to meet those expectations. The goal of this article is to provide some pointers on how to manage and meet those expectations.
Stay Real. Stay Focused.
One of the most important aspects of starting a new project is to avoid riding the hype train. Controlling the Ego and having Emotional Intelligence to remain focused on the target, despite all the pads in the back and all the conversation on how a PM is the right person for the job, or if having Engineer X in the team is better than having Cristiano Ronaldo during his prime. Words alone are not enough to deliver projects. Is important to navigate graciously during the first project meetings to leave a good impression, but is not on the agenda to go full steam ahead on hyping project-related aspects that might not be feasible to deliver in the end.
Ask Questions. Especially about the feasibility of things.
When a company prepares a list of things that should be delivered and a set of objectives to be met, some of these might not be feasible at all. That’s why is important to be accurate on what is the project’s scope and the expected timeframe. Agile folk will hammer now with arguments stating the product’s scope should be evaluated based on continuous deliveries or cycles, and both feedback and estimations should only be given when there is clear visibility of the work to be done. Yes, you are kinda right. However, if a Sponsor wants to build leading-edge software for marketers all around the world, it should have a budget to hire more than 2 developers fresh from university. That’s why is important to ask questions, on how objectives could be met, which resources would be available, and limitations and strengths linked with the project context.
Mistakes will be made. Stay Positive.
A project is a learning journey. If companies, CEOs, CTOs, and Experts, knew how to deliver the project’s output, it wouldn’t be needed a project in the first place. It would be part of the companies’ operations. In all projects, there will be always a factor of Knowledge Management to be taken into consideration. To move forward, some mistakes will be made. With experience and time, a Leader will learn to mitigate and avoid some mistakes but is a certainty that mistakes will slip through. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a project. Collaboration and having multiple inputs can help prevent errors in the project strategy, but most importantly, staying focused and positive is key, to moving past some hurdles that will happen for sure.
Develop a Plan. Execute. Adapt.
Once the Project Leader has the information needed, a plan should be drafted and presented to multiple stakeholders. Gathering opinions and experiences and validating a strategy to move forward. The next step would be opening Agile’s Menu of Methodologies and choosing your favorite approach to make the project a reality (Kanban would be a great option). Once the moving parts are set, reality will give the hard truth to the project team that not everything will work as expected. For this reason is important to adapt based on the feedback the project team gets from the project context (clients, partners, team members, sponsors, etc.).
Meeting expectations is all about perception and delivering what is expected from the project. Managing the project scope to a manageable level, is a great way of delivering those expectations.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur