12 Questions to Ask Your Team Members for Project Success

It’s always better to ask questions when you need clarity, which is the key to project success. Without proper communication and a shared understanding of the project’s scope, goals and roles it can quickly go off track. 

Miscommunication and conflicts are a common thing in a workplace. These misalignment should be addressed sooner to ensure project success. Usually managers wait until it’s too late. 

To ensure that everyone is on the same page and their efforts are directed towards a common objective, project managers should ask the right questions to their team members. 

In this blog we will explore the top 10 such questions to ask your team members before starting a project.

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What Are Project Objectives and Its Role in Successful Project

 

It is difficult to step ahead toward an unknown destination. That's why a project manager needs to list out the project objectives and drive the team towards success. By utilizing Orangescrum – project management software, PMs and team members can efficiently plan and ensure on-time project delivery.

When managing targets for direction and purpose, a visible list of these goals helps in achieving them. The PM should be aware of how to write project objectives for the team. Breaking the major tasks into simple steps makes it uncomplicated to complete what's ahead. This article tells some light on what these objectives are and how they can be managed in attaining the project goal. Let's jump into it.

Project Objectives - Definition.

In simple terms, project objectives are a set of goals that the project should achieve. They will impact the project life cycle, and hence they are vital in creating the project at the outset. The best way to ensure the objectives are specific and well-defined is to use a project management objective for the project flow.

In project management, we have the technique called SMART Project Objective that develops personal and business project plans very effectively. SMART is defined as something Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Let's catch up with a brief on each segment.

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What Happens When the Project Goal Isn’t Clear

Every project manager must think beyond the proposed requirements, budget and timeliness to ensure they are performing high-visibility projects efficiently to achieve strategic goals.

What happens if the goal isn’t clear?

As a project manager you are accountable for the failure and success of the projects. No pressure, right?

Let's face it. Being a project manager is no easy gig. With different deadlines, personalities, work approaches, communication styles, and priorities, keeping everything on track and running the entire process smoothly often feels like a battle.

In my previous posts, I’ve shared many strategies on successful project management.

Can you tell me, what’s the most common thing in all those posts?

A clear project goal. Yes, every successful project carries a clear goal and efficient execution.

Hence, in your case…

Is the goal clear?

A well defined goal helps complete a project successfully. What if the goal is not clear? Or it's clear, but you're not sure whether it's right for you or not?

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Expert’s Advice on Project Management and Workplace Productivity

It's always true that the customer wants the best products and services. Employees want better salaries. Executives want growth. So everyone wants to grow.

But the truth is, it’s hard to deliver consistently positive results in an uncertain and continually shifting global marketplace.

Organizations that invest in SaaS project management spend 13 times less money because their strategic initiatives are completed more successfully.

We all know that proper management of projects is essential for any organization’s success, yet the message is not being realized.

“We reviewed this year’s Pulse of the Profession data, we were hoping to see improvement over last year’s results. Instead, we saw declines in many of the success factors we track. Even more concerning, the percentage of projects meeting their goals—which had been flat for the past four years—took a significant dip”.

                                                                                                      Mark A. Langley, PMI President, and CEO

To examine this situation further, Mark further surveyed executive leaders and PMO directors as part of this year’s Pulse research and found that, although many individuals are beginning to sharpen their focus on managing projects as a strategic driver, their organizations aren’t always in step.

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How To Spot And Rescue A Failing Project

Most often, we all follow the success story/path/strategy of other businesses or individuals. But sometime it may boomerang for new or existing businesses. By the time we realize, the project is already in trouble and started failing.

There are many reasons for project failure. Stakeholders change project objectives, bad planning of resources and priorities, sudden budget or time cut etc. 

It is very hard to spot the early signs of project failure, but here is how you can spot the mistakes relatively easy, if you’re watching and how you’ll rescue or turnaround it in quick time.

It is very hard to spot the early signs of project failure, but here is how you can spot the mistakes relatively easy, if you’re watching and how you’ll rescue or turnaround it in quick time. 

• Stakeholders are not attending project meetings
• Developers are leaving the project
• The financial group is asking just too many questions about daily expenses/resource allocations
• Project Milestones are not completing on time
• Expense is higher than estimated

Once you find out these issues frequently you need to review projects immediately. The review includes budget, expenses, execution plans, resource allocations etc.

As a manager, you need to reassess if you go by the same strategy, plan whether to achieve the project goal on time and budget or you need to stop all project activities for a period in order to re-plan, modify the design, improve the communication strategy after discussing with all stakeholders, and then, finally, realign all the necessary resources. 

Depending upon the unique aspects of a project, there could be multiple reasons for a project going out of control. It may include the following:

Sloppy Requirements Gathering:

With our eagerness to start a project, most of the times we gather incomplete requirements. 

Any incomplete requirements will have both a negative cost and schedule impact on the project, if you are developing a project using a standard waterfall methodology. 

User requirements are still utmost important in iterative development projects which can be negotiated ahead of any development stage.

For projects to succeed, it must start with compact user requirements.

Schedule Slippage:

Many times, project schedules get out of control when dates and deliverables aren’t monitored and tracked on a daily basis. 

Aiming the quick progress of the projects, managers leave behind issues unresolved for days, which indirectly affects schedule managements. I recommend that you should check project schedules daily.

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