Project excellence requires more than simply creating project charters, detailed schedules and colorful status reports; it involves meeting numerous modern challenges head-on. These may include downsizing, merger mania, restricted finances and an accelerated business pace.
Professional competency is necessary to raise questions, identify problems and conduct a fair, just, and objective evaluation of any project against the PE Baseline model.
1. Strong Leadership
Strong leadership is integral to project excellence. A leadership team that can inspire and motivate staff as well as other leaders is crucial. Your leaders should also have an analytical mindset, offering suggestions to enhance business practices while understanding how best to work with different personalities and backgrounds.
Duggan recommends starting small projects that yield quick results to gain organizational buy-in and show financial returns; this will give momentum and allow you to develop a portfolio of improvement initiatives.
Create an Operational Excellence team to be accountable for selecting and overseeing improvement projects, with expertise in Lean manufacturing techniques provided by management staff and staff members. From there you can establish best practices framework that will guide your company toward success.
2. Strong Management
Firms pursuing project excellence possess senior staff that provides leadership, direction and goal setting across their entire company. In particular, these personnel create and oversee a project management office (PMO), to ensure they have everything needed for its success.
They implement clear processes that are easily communicated to their project team, stakeholders and clients – these procedures help prevent miscommunication, as well as ensure projects are completed on time and within budget.
Senior staff of firms seeking project excellence make decisions and manage projects with client service at the core. The entire firm focuses on meeting schedule deadlines, staying within design and construction budgets and producing quality projects on schedule. Furthermore, their senior staff have experience dealing with constant change such as economic conditions, laws & regulations, labor markets and the environment using experience & pragmatic solutions to manage it effectively.
3. Strong Organization
Project managers in today’s highly complex environments require them to do much more than produce project charters, detailed schedules and colorful status reports. Downsizing, merger mania, restricted finances, an accelerated business pace and multidisciplinary environments with seemingly nonstop change all call for more.
Organizational excellence encompasses many activities, from ensuring your structure supports rather than hinders improvement efforts to clearly identifying roles and responsibilities with written position descriptions and an organizational chart, and implementing tools like McKinsey 7S, value stream mapping or other process improvements that increase efficiency.
Staff development involves creating an environment that fosters initiative and decision-making, including providing stimulating workplace environments, competitive salaries and fringe benefits, training and professional development opportunities as well as competitive salaries and fringe benefits. Finally, operational excellence encompasses standard processes that are easily transferred between projects or locations, thus encouraging growth.
4. Strong Environment
An effective project excellence culture encourages close team collaboration. Collaboration is fostered and rewarded from the top down, while silos are broken down so team members feel united as one entity, no longer needing to protect individual projects, knowledge or expertise.
Since the United Nations Conference on the Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, which established that every person has the right to an environment of sufficient quality for dignity and well-being, environmental issues have moved from peripheral concerns into major global concerns.
5. Strong Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a crucial element of project management, serving as an indicator as to whether a project meets or surpasses customer expectations and requirements. Customer satisfaction also ensures that projects are worth their investments of both time and money.
One method for measuring customer satisfaction is through surveys. These can be conducted through various channels, including email, phone or face-to-face meetings and can provide valuable data that can help improve services and products offered to your clients.
Another way to measure customer satisfaction is through customer feedback, such as interviews, testimonials or Net Promoter Score (NPS) scores. The information gleaned can also be used to improve services provided and foster more positive experiences for your customers.
Customer satisfaction should always be the focal point of project excellence, no matter its size or scope. Achieve high levels of customer satisfaction will bring success.
6. Strong Staff Development
Strong staff development entails providing employees with new skills that will strengthen their current roles, whether this involves external training or in-house development. An employer might send their team to an outside seminar such as leadership seminars in which auxiliary skills learned may not directly affect job performance but could serve to enhance company culture overall.
Operational excellence involves making business processes as efficient and repeatable as possible, using various tools such as process improvement software that collects customer feedback, tracks continuous improvement projects, and monitors key performance indicators (KPIs). An operational excellence team may oversee these initiatives depending on the size of their organization.
7. Strong Integrity
Integrity at work means meeting commitments and being considerate of coworker needs while being honest in dealing with all matters related to work. A person of integrity takes full responsibility when she makes mistakes and works tirelessly towards correcting them; additionally she protects confidential information while not misusing company resources.
Workshop participants reported that managers in their organizations prioritize integrity as a top priority and display strong personal integrity on a daily basis. Many also communicate company integrity goals and policies to their staffs in order to set an example for employees.
Example: When presented with a project manager’s assignment, an employee of strong integrity will assess her time and abilities honestly before agreeing to take on too much at once. She will make sure to communicate this to her team as well as giving credit where it’s deserved.
8. Strong Social Responsibility
Project leaders who incorporate social responsibility into their strategies create the environment for companies to grow alongside their communities. Leaders may use ISO 26000 framework as a basis for addressing organizational governance, human rights, labor practices, the environment and consumer issues.
Companies can make an impactful contribution to society through ethical labor practices, renewable energy sources and investing in local communities. Companies may also take a stand against social issues by encouraging employees to volunteer their time.
Companies that prioritize strong social responsibility tend to be more successful. Business guru Peter Drucker taught that even good intentions may have unexpected repercussions that have serious unintended negative effects, so he advocated for organizations to have an unlimited liability clause and hold themselves accountable for their actions. One prominent company which prioritizes social responsibility is The LEGO Group; their commitment to using only fair trade ingredients supports environmentally-friendly farming while paying farmers an added premium over and above market price for their produce is an example of their dedication.
9. Strong Ethics
Ethics in project management encompasses principles of honesty, responsibility, and respect. This means being fair to all stakeholders while avoiding offensive language and behavior; maintaining open lines of communication; taking ownership over actions taken or decisions made, taking responsibility for their successes or failures – this all comprises the definition of ethical project management.
Managers can promote strong ethics by creating an environment of support and rewarding employees for their accomplishments, while offering opportunities for growth. Managers should also pay attention to employee morale; low morale is often indicative of dissatisfaction or burnout. A healthy work culture helps reduce stress, anxiety and turnover – which in turn contribute to project excellence – according to Andre Oentoro of Breadnbeyond; additionally it prevents conflicts from escalating into larger issues resulting in improved productivity as well as teamwork between colleagues as fostering teamwork and trust between members of team.