Project success: from the trenches

Why do some projects succeed, and some fail?

Are there common ingredients that ensure your project is:

• On time, in scope, within budget

• Delighting your customers

• Pleasing to stakeholders

• A success for the team

• Hitting ROI and other KPIs

The stupidly simple fact is there ARE things you can do to succeed, and some simply stupid things you can do to fail.

Here's what I think after almost 20 years in the world of software and digital.

Paul's Top 10 Success Factors

1. Have one single burning ambition (SBA) per sprint/timebox: 37 bugs, 18 features, 11 user stories. Make sure behind the noise is 1 SBA.

2. Hire very vocal Product Managers. Wallflowers need not apply. If there's one thing you do need it is a VERY LOUD voice of the customer. Even if they are a major pain in your butt, better to hear 1 shouty Product Manager than a thousand customers quietly exiting your product.

3. Stop messing around with the Product Backlog. Not even Diety should have the right to mess about with the Backlog mid sprint. Fact. The worst projects I ever worked had a self-appointed senior busy bodies who loved to mess with the Product Backlog mid sprint. No, no, no, no.

4. Get over your methods: Prince 2, Scrum. Blah. The best companies I've seen learn to adapt to what works best. Fragile, Wagile, call it what you like. More important than any single method is CONSISTENCY and COMMUNICATION.

5. Understand the difference between RESPONSIBILITY and BLAME. Not sure what it is? Neither was I, until I read 'The Power of Responsiblity, by Joelle Casteix. (Hint: the first is about solutions, the second is about victimhood)

6. Get out the office regularly. QA manager, Head of Engineering, CFO, Project Manager. Whatever your role or title, make sure you sit in front of actual customers as often as possible. The problem with spending too much time starting at our screen is we simply forget what real customers do, think, say and feel. You are not the typical customer.

7. Take care of your mental health. Software can be a lonely business, and I've learned to recognise signs of depression, anxiety and burn-out within myself. As Steven Covey liked to say, take time to sharpen the saw.

8. Spend proper money on tools. How come your CMO can spend a million on a schwanky champagne do, but your Head of Engineering has to come begging for better laptops?

9. Treat contractors like family. There is no them and us. Only us. But then I would say that...

10. Relax. Smile. This relates back to point 8. I've spent time in the poorest communities on the planet. I have seen kids die of disease and lack of nutrition. This provides context. Yes your software project is important, your customers are important. But if your daily efforts are increasingly leading to serious lack of humour syndrome (SLH), then take a big breathe, and climb down from Mount Ego for a while. The world can carry on without you, and sorry to be blunt, but 18 months from now, no-one will care that much about the software you are working on. Unless it's life support. Obviously.