Project Execution Solutions: Process

The critical elements of successful project execution are People, Process, Technology, and Governance. Success is consistently delivered when all of these dimensions are well defined, fully implemented, well-managed, and fully adopted. They must be both adopted individually and integrated together to enable each other for success.

We saved Process for last because it is largely a wrapper around the other solution areas.

The execution process relies on the side-by-side processes of lifecycle and project management, as shown below:

Project management provides a set of business controls that enable the project manager to deliver on-time and on-budget. The project management process tends to be fairly similar in a broad variety of project types, regardless of the lifecycle management method.

The deliverables of a project are conceived, designed, developed and tested through project lifecycle management processes that vary across many different industries. These lifecycles document the processes that ultimately become the project tasks that need to be performed to complete the project with high-quality (i.e., “on specification”).

The following illustration shows some project lifecycles that are common in the world of project management. This illustration shows how these lifecycles conceptually fit into the overall environment in which projects typically occur.

For these customized processes, the Process needs to drive the People, Technology and Governance (and not the other way around). This will integrate each dimension, enabling each other toward the corporate strategy. This strategy, in turn, informs the Organizational Goals, Vision, and Mission.

To read our first post on the project execution solutions, click here.

To read our series on the project execution challenges, click here.

You may also access our comprehensive white paper on addressing the challenges of project and portfolio management with an enterprise Project Management Office here.