There are plenty of lists and rules and checklists and such out there for successful project management. Today, here’s my list. Tomorrow my list might be different. That doesn’t invalidate this list (can one even call 2 things a list?), but means tomorrow something else might suddenly matter more in my consciousness.
Welcome to project management. 
My 2 rules? Value and Scale.
Value
Projects exist to create value. So create it.
It’s true that you need to keep you eye on the standard PTSC measures of Performance (Quality), Time, Scope, and Cost. Traditionally, if you hit those marks, we call the project a success. But you could hit those marks and still not create the intended value for the enterprise. You need to quantify the value that the project is to create, then build a picture of that value (“vision”) and keep it in front of yourself, your team, and your stakeholders.
It’s like the old ISO quality program joke: You could create a cement life jacket that was perfectly ISO compliant. You can do the same with your project.
If at any time the value creation is at risk or seems soft, focus your resources on solving that problem.
Me, I love the concept of the project vision, or said in a more friendly way: “What does ‘done’ look like?” If you can paint that picture for all involved, a lot of things fall into place much better.
This may be especially important for you in a Cottage PM environment where your organization may have committed a huge percentage of resources to the project.
Scale
One must scale the level of project management to the needs of the project.
Think about it. You were doing pretty well leading your projects. Then you went to that project management course and learned of all those PM tools that you weren’t using:
Charters, Preliminary Scope Statements, Scope Statements, Stakeholder Lists, Communication Plans, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), WBS Dictionary, Lessons Learned Reviews, Status Reports, Configuration Management, Scheduling, Resource Leveling, Procurement Processes, Budgets. Then, of course, there are all those formulas, like those used for Earned Value Analysis. (PM Prepcast counts 49 PM formulas!)
Then you realized all that stuff you weren’t doing. So you started trying to use it all. And you got overwhelmed. And your project team got overwhelmed. And instead of more clarity and control, you had less of both.
What happened? You over-scaled your project management.
Remember that all those tools and processes and formulas are like a menu from which you can choose. It’s up to you to pick the ones that are meaningful and relevant to your project, the ones that will give you, your team, and your stakeholders more clarity and control.
What’s the right level of PM? Just enough and not one bit more. Strive for the level that lets you both control and communicate effectively.
Me, I picked a core set of things that worked in my Cottage PM organization and worked to use those consistently. We expanded that list as needed. I started with WBS, which naturally improved existing scheduling and resourcing practices. We now also include Charters, too, when we recognized a pattern of big disconnects about initial project expectations.
Again, this may be even more important in a Cottage PM environment where you may not have a lot of PM formality or PM knowledge in the organization. Certainly work to improve project performance by introducing the right PM tools, but be careful not to overwhelm the organization with too much new PM stuff all at once. Each new tool and process needs to have a clear payoff for everyone involved.
Conclusions
That’s it. That’s my list of 2 over-riding rules for PM. What do you think?
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