Steps to realize a project

It doesn't matter if you are an expert or not in project management. Starting a project always has its challenges. However, it is possible to establish a small sequence of steps to carry out a project. Here is a useful guide that will allow you to get any project off to a good start.

Likewise, it is during the start of the project that the steps to follow are defined or identified. It is a key moment, because from this decision, which seems simple, many projects fail or establish management models that do not fit the project. context or reality.

Here you will find not only a simple structure, but a set of tools and practices that, I am sure, will be very helpful in your process.

Project phases

No matter what project you are starting or planning, all projects have a life cycle - that is, a beginning and an end. No one starts a project without knowing what outcome they expect at the end. I've always said that projects are vehicles for change and, therefore, they get you from point A to point B. You should always know what your point B is.

This condition of temporality, that is, that all projects are defined with a beginning and an end in mind, determine what is known as the life cycle. And the life cycle, marks the steps you must perform or follow to define, execute and close a project.

Example generic life cycle with representation of the effort associated with each phase.

The phases of a project refer to the point in time of the project that they happen and their main objective. It is impossible to describe every single activity that has to happen in that phase, since many activities depend on what you want to achieve, but we can set a clear goal for each phase.

Project start-up phase

The project initiation phase is our first step. It happens at the beginning of the project and of course involves some "getting ready" activities.

Step 1: Define the objective of the project

The first thing you should do to start your project is to define the objective: what is the aim of the project? Why have we decided to start the project? What result do we hope to achieve at the end?

Every project is unique, even if you do two projects with the same objective, it is unlikely - not to say impossible - that you do them at the same time, in the same place, with the same team and for the same people or clients. For sure, each project has something different. And that will mean that your next steps will not necessarily be the same.

If the goal of your project is to build a house, you will probably follow a different plan than if you want to research a vaccine for a disease. However, both projects need you to be clear about the goal.

Step 2: Identify the resources available for the project

The second step is of course to identify the available resources. That is, to answer the question: what do we have to carry out the project?

And the first and most important thing is to know, identify, assign, recruit or hire the people who will accompany us in the process. Without people, there are no projects. Without people, projects are meaningless.

The project team

Every project needs a team. The team and the skills you need to complete the project. When you identify the resources - among those the money that will help you in many cases to hire or finance the work team, the machinery, and the supplies and materials, my first advice is to focus on the people who will help you achieve the project goal.

To do so, I invite you to reflect on the following questions related to the people who will accompany you in moving your project forward:

What skills should these people have?
What experience would be helpful or accelerate the progress of the project?
When should they join the project and with what availability?
Can you pay that person well? What remuneration mechanisms can you define in your project?

Example of project team structuring

Small country house as a project example

Let's go back to our example. Your project is the construction of a small rest house on the outskirts of your city. To build your house we can divide the project into three stages:

Designing the house
Building the house
Furnishing the house

For each of those stages of your project you need different skills, and some of them will have roles with major involvement in different stages. So, in the design stage you will need professional architects and designers to have a good house. If the terrain has some particular challenge for the design of the structure or the accesses, some engineers will surely be involved.

However, when building you need skilled labor to build and architects and engineers are likely to be partially involved because they are not the ones who build.

When furnishing the house you will surely need capable and experienced interior designers to help you - if you wish - to choose from the colors of the walls and the materials of the floors, to the furniture.

As you can see, at each stage you need different skills and abilities and your job is to, to some extent, anticipate those skills and the team of people who will be able to help you achieve your goal.

Agile project teams

Not all projects are the same. Some steps require adjustments during the realization of the project to adapt to the project context. What if it is not possible to anticipate the exact outcome of the project? Here I explain.

Imagine your project is more exploratory and less prescriptive. You know you want to build a house, but you're not clear on what it should look like, or what areas it should have. Then, during the design phase, you can put together a team focused on maximizing the benefit of the design.

So, you don't define the team in terms of what you want to build - a house - but in terms of maximizing the design. That said, you could put together an "ideation" team that might include members of your family, a couple of architects with different views on design and, why not, a kid with ideas that might be crazy in principle.

We call this model of equipment agile teamand focuses on complementary skills that work to maximize the value of the outcome - which includes discovering value.

Structuring of innovation projects

If it seems a bit strange to you, then imagine you are the head of an innovation or new product design area in a cosmetics company. Would you want everyone on your team to think alike and have the same ideas? Maybe, have someone with divergent thinking. Your job may not be to define products, but to encourage productive discussions in a team of diverse thinkers.

The way you structure the team will define from the beginning its potential to offer new, highly innovative or totally disruptive ideas. It is an important thing to consider in your steps to realize a project.

Who are the project stakeholders?

Without complicating things too much, imagine that the people involved in a project have two positions. Those who get involved, participate and carry out the activities of the process to achieve the objective - which we would normally call a team. And the people who participate in a specific way in making some important decisions, or as auditors, or auditors.

These people do not contribute directly to the realization or achievement of the goal and often require more of a communicative and political effort than a physical or mental one. This group of people are known as "stakeholders" - not a very accurate translation of "stakeholders". stakeholders.

Organization and preparation phase

The second major phase is organizing the team and structuring a plan. Depending on the literature, the initiation and organization phases are either mixed, overlapping or totally independent. Here's a tip to help you differentiate between them.

If you are alone or with just a few people and you still have to structure the objective and the team, then you are in the starting phase.
If you have someone to work with to structure a plan and you have someone to discuss estimates, goals, risks and so on - and those people are part of the project team, then you are organized and prepared.

It's not a foolproof formula, but it helps.

Step 3: How are we going to work towards the project goal?

At this point you are clear about your goal, resources and equipment. You have basically answered the following questions.

What do we want to achieve?
What resources do we have?
Who are we going to work to achieve the goal?

The steps to carry out the project contemplate of course the structuring of a plan. A plan that can be as detailed and strict, or as simple and ambiguous as required.

The planning process is as complex and in-depth as the project requires. If your project is to structure a camping trip with friends, you don't need a big plan. If your project is to structure the renovation of a city to get it back to normal after a flood or hurricane disaster, well... you get the point.

Detailed, incremental and adaptive plans

Again, the question is what you want to achieve. If you're developing a new product, you'd probably want to validate the hypotheses about the product first. And therefore your plan doesn't extend much beyond that first validation. In any case, what's the point of planning further if the market might reject your product?

We call these plans incremental. They require early validations and therefore limit the execution of a plan beyond one delivery. Like when you want to conquer someone? Every next action depended on the previous one.

Other plans require more anticipation. We call these detailed or predictive plans. Based on knowledge and experience it is possible to anticipate or predict the most likely outcomes.

Plan like a pro

Planning is a process that is as wide as it is tall. It is extensive and even has specialties by industry or sector. There are experts in planning for engineering works, or construction of residential condominiums. There are experts in incremental planning for software product development and experts in adaptive planning for scientific research projects.

Always seek to validate the best planning practices in your industry - the sector in which you work. You will discover that there is a world of knowledge and best practices that will empower you and your team.

Issues to consider when planning a project

Some of the issues to consider - but not all of them:

What do you want to achieve? - We call it outreach or scope
How do you want to achieve it? - plan, roadmap (roadmap) or timeline if it is very detailed.
How much will it cost? - quote
What are the risks to our project, our plan and our team?
How are we going to control the quality of the products or services we develop in the project? How are we going to assure our processes?
How will we manage the team? How will we manage the stakeholders? What legal or supervisory requirements do we need to comply with?compliance?

Free resources to learn about project management

If you're interested in going into detail, there are specialized programs for structuring projects and some free resources that will be useful to dig deeper.

Steps to properly execute a project

Before you begin execution, remember that the plan is your best attempt to anticipate things. Sometimes, depending on the nature of what you are trying to accomplish, you may anticipate more or less detail.

However, plans are, of course, projections and assumptions. Your job throughout the project - everything, without exception EVERYTHING - will be to always validate that the plan is consistent with reality.

You can't imagine how many times I have consulted on projects where the plan was a document that was completed at the beginning of the project - organization and preparation phase - and never revisited again. Worse yet, senior management in organizations are not only unaware of the changing nature of some plans and close to the sidelines with the adjustments that result from their own decisions.

Nothing could be more useless than a plan that only represents the emotions of the HiPPO and is not a valuable tool for the project team.

Execution phase

There is little I can say about this phase. The execution is, almost entirely, an effort of the project team. If it's a build, then executing is building. If it's the development of a new App, then developing and testing software. If it's scientific research.... well, you've got the idea.

The important thing, from a project management point of view, is to keep the team focused, support them in discussions and decision making to complete the plan and adjust to the unexpected.

Here, although the team is in "execution mode", you as coordinator or director, must be in "monitoring and control" mode.

Step 4 and 5: Support the team in executing and objectively following up the plan

I can't separate execution from follow-up, it's impossible. For many years, in my project management courses I always left this slide at the beginning of my classes:

We can only control what is in execution. We can only execute what has been planned.
Alberto Dominguez

This sentence sums up the nature of the phases we have seen so far. If you want to execute a project and have some control, you must have a plan and support the execution.

I could write a whole book. But this article is meant to be an introduction with the steps to make a project happen. So for now keep in mind these two important things about the execution phase.

Executing and controlling are like a couple dancing. Each step of one person triggers a reaction - coordinated and subtle - from the other person. This means that if something happens in the execution - planned or unplanned - the control should reflect it. If monitoring detects information or evidence that could affect our objective, the execution should respond accordingly.
You don't execute once, you don't control once. Again it's like a dance. The process repeats all the time until the song - in this case the project - is over.

Closing phase

We have reached the end of the project. The activities and plans have resulted in reaching our goal. Of course, it is possible for our project to end early for different reasons that I will present below. However, let's talk about the happy ending.

When we have achieved the objective it is time to close the project. Here are some activities that may include, among other things:

Settle contracts
Terminate relationships with contractors and allies
Deliver results to our clients
Celebrate

Celebrate the closing of the project

All the steps in a project are important. Without exception. Many times we don't stop to celebrate what we have achieved. My biggest advice is, don't stop celebrating every step and every closure. It's not just money invested in the project.

The only thing we people give to projects that we can never get back is time. So, in completing a project, it is our time and dedication that brought that result. And, therefore, celebrating, thanking and congratulating those who deserve it, is fundamental.

What is the role of the project manager in the steps?

The projects are unique and unrepeatable. The teams are the people we work with who make the experience good or bad. But it is the leaders who make each project memorable, valuable and of personal and professional growth.

Good managers will lead better personal and professional experiences for their team, and better and more stable results for the organizations they work for.

Tell me, how has your experience been in the projects you have had the opportunity to participate? Has it been good? Why? Has it been bad? What steps have you followed to carry out the projects? Have I forgotten any of them?