The Most Important Thing in Project

Managing project is such a complex job. Gathering requirements. Planning. Designing. Logistics. Orders. Invoices. Schedules. Plans. Critical paths. Milestones. Deadlines. Slips. Controlling. Bureaucracy. Risk management. Subcontractors. Internal tests. Acceptance test. Protocols. Phones. E-mails. Status reports. Ass-covering. Project meetings. Bugs. Issues. Punch lists. Emergency situations. Documentation. Yikes. A piece of hard work.

If you asked me which is the most important factor bringing a project closer to a success, I’d say that people are. Projects by default don’t go well. They don’t go as they’ve been planned. Sure, you can argue, saying it’s the matter of a project management process or a software development process, but look at statistics - they don’t lie. Projects aren’t successful.

That’s why I think people are the most important. When it comes to deal with serious issues (and sooner or later it will) you’ll reach the place where even the best project management methodology (there’s no such thing, but in this case I can even agree there is) won’t help because it doesn’t predict this kind of situation. It’s the time when you count on people only. On their dedication, commitment, flexibility, creativity, communication abilities, will, experience, knowledge and when the situation is extremely bad at least you count on their sense of humor to make whole thing a bit better-looking.

I’m not saying that good team will make every project a vast success. No, with no organizational support project won’t be a success, but chances are good it’ll be finished and won’t be failure either. On the other hand the best methodology won’t help if the team isn’t good. Then, forget about a success, you’ll be very lucky if you’ll struggle just to finish the job.

People have been always one of the most important drivers keeping me wherever I’ve been working. In my current job they’re definitely on the first place. We did some really good job. We had some real fun.

• Emergency duties for 24 hours a day, 10 days in a row. No forcing, only volunteers.

• 5 people in a single car going to and coming back from an event organized for a customer. 16 hours on the road. Most of them spent on laughing on each others. The rest on brainstorming.

• A couple working 32 hours in a row resuscitating one of our most important systems when it crashed. Several more people barely sleeping or no sleeping at all during night.

• Pillow war in company apartment when sleeping there during conference event.

I could count much, much longer, but I guess you don’t have as much time. I’m proud of them.

Do you have the team like that?