Winning an Oscar is regarded as the pinnacle of any film industry career. They are fiercely sought-after, hotly contested and can take a lifetime to win. But when you look at it, a Hollywood film director is essentially a project manager, juggling multiple workstreams in order to achieve their vision: from costume and script-writing, to the soundtrack. Make no mistake, the director is project managing them all. In the same way, project and programme managers are the stars of the project world. Here’s our guide on how you too can win the ‘Best Director’ Oscar for Project Management:
Build a storyboard
Any good director has a vision, and storyboards are where that vision comes to life. Project managers have project planning tools, such as Microsoft Project for their vision. Think of your project plan as a storyboard for your project. There are the opening scenes, where the context for the story is set-up and stakeholders are identified (aka the planning phase). Then, the characters and the story develop in the development phase. The key event of the story takes place at go-live, and the effects of that event are then monitored as its impact is felt before finally getting to The End. The project plan gives you as the project manager a chronology of events for you to track and monitor until all tasks are complete.
Find the brightest talent
Once the story has been planned, the talent to perform the lead roles can be recruited. It’s important that all the members of your team are capable, engaged and passionate about the project. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link as they say, so it’s important to choose your project team wisely (if you get that luxury!).
Beware of rumours
Public opinion is difficult to change. Once the critics have panned your project, it’ll be almost impossible to turn around, regardless of how truthful the reviews are. Particularly on systems projects, one disgruntled but influential stakeholder may stop your project in its tracks. Here is where the value of open, two-way communication with your stakeholders (including the users themselves) becomes apparent.
Don’t prepare your acceptance speech too early
Many films have had wildly successful opening nights but ultimately suffered in the box office. Once your project has gone live, it’s important to celebrate, but it’s also important to resist the urge to deem the project a success too soon. Maybe the first day went smoothly, but what about the rest of the week? Better to exercise caution until at least a week has gone by before calling the project successful, but for many projects it’ll be too hard to call it until much further down the line once the long term benefits have been measured and assessed.
Supporting actors are also important
The Academy award for ‘Best supporting actor’ has it spot on – where would any project be without the workstream leads, PMO resources, trainers, suppliers and sponsors? A project is never a one-person show, so reward your supporting actors accordingly. It could be a staff recognition award, or just ordering pizza for the whole project team at your last project meeting, a little can go a long way.
You might trip up on the way up the stairs
If Jennifer Lawrence could trip up on her way to collect her Oscar in 2013, it’s pretty likely that you will also have your fair share of slips, trips and falls on your way to Project Management glory. Having the ability to learn from your mistakes is what will make you an excellent project manager. But as a preventative measure, ensure that you maintain a risks and issues log so that you can avoid any embarrassment in front of your sponsors.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Projects sometimes stall, due to budget limits, staff sickness, even the Christmas holidays and it may feel like you will never get over the finish line, but persevere! Leonardo di Caprio has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards and hasn’t yet won a single one, but that hasn’t discouraged him – recently winning his first BAFTA, it looks like this year will be Leo’s year.
It takes practice and experience to become an award-winning project manager. Things won’t always go the way that you want them to, and this may be down to luck or things which are outside of your control. This is why you need to build contingency into your project plan and business case to deal with those unexpected events, as well as also maintaining a lessons learnt log which will enable you to reflect and learn how to improve for future projects.
