By Ravi Natesh Good project managers have been in demand at least since the Egyptian pharaohs started building pyramids. Because they are in great demand today, companies devote considerable resources to training them. Beyond training, one of the best ways to spread good project management practices is for practitioners with years of hands-on experience to exchange ideas and lessons learned.

To foster such exchanges, CSC’s Project and Program Management Community began a series of international seminars for practitioners. The goal is to establish guiding principles for each phase of a project lifecycle. The first of these seminars focused on the proposal phase.

The top three principles

Dan Sarna, a corporate director of delivery assurance, moderated the seminar and began by presenting the top three principles for a successful project: a clear project definition, a project manager with the necessary skills and experience, and a solution architect who not only has the right skills and experience but also is actively engaged with the project team.

First and foremost is a clear project definition, which must cover scope, approach, deliverables, objectives, and roles and responsibilities. “If you don’t have a written agreement with the client — and among yourselves — about what you have to do, the possibility that you’ll do it well is remote,” Sarna said. “Without a clear baseline for the project, there is no way to manage change, and the likelihood of meandering and doing extra work increases.” The other participants reinforced these points throughout the seminar.

Having a clearly defined project is necessary, but so is a good team to lead it. The team comprises an experienced project manager and a strong solution architect. Getting all three right will put any kind of project on the road to a successful engagement.

Make sure the solution fits the problem

Vendors — CSC included — are solution organizations, so selling solutions is what they do. But vendors can rush to sell a solution before they understand the problem.

“Companies rarely decide to launch a multimillion-dollar project just to test their mettle and give themselves something to do,” Sarna said. “There generally is a pressing business imperative.”

In most cases, there was a compelling event that motivated the company to take action. For vendors, understanding that compelling event and the business imperative is crucial to understanding the problem and to developing practical and effective solutions.

As CSC Consulting Senior Partner Mike Dyer pointed out, though, the solution architect has to come up with something that does more than fit the problem. “A solution has to have three characteristics: It has to be saleable, doable, and profitable. If it doesn’t have all three, the project will fail somewhere along the line. The vendor may not be able to sell it; it may sell the solution but not have the necessary skills to carry it out; or it will complete the project but will lose money on it.”

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