Are you having trouble being successful with your operations or project? Are your projects viewed by some as successful but others think you missed the mark? There are a couple of things that could be causing this but it can be summed up in one phrase; failing to define success for each stakeholder before you start. Therein lies the problem; success looks different to each stakeholder so how do you define success for each of them without going crazy? I believe there are three things that will close the gap.

The first is managing our stakeholders. We need to know who they are and what they expect. Sounds simple but often it’s the overlooked stakeholder that is the one that pulls the project down. Once we know who they are, we need to manage those relationships and expectations. It’s virtually impossible to achieve every stakeholder’s expectation. Often some of these expectations will be at odds with each other, but we can manage the expectations. If we know that a particular expectation will not be met in this project we can start working with the stakeholder to define another project for the future to achieve their goal. Sometimes you are just not able to give what a stakeholder wants but to ignore this is a mistake. Communicate your position and why. Continue to listen to them, most of the time they will understand and play along. Ignore them and they will look for a way to be heard and it could be your project that provides the vehicle for them to be heard.

The second way to increase the odds of your project being considered successful is to ensure that the objectives have been clearly described for all of the stakeholders. Ensure that they can refer to the objectives over and over again because over time people forget or begin to remember it differently. Place it on project reports, on the wall in the project team’s space, on the project web site and anywhere else you can think of. Keep the objectives visible. As part of making the objectives clear, ensure the language used to describe them is appropriate for the audience. It's also a good idea to hold a meeting to kick off the project and talk about the objectives to make sure they are clear. Meet with the individual stakeholders if necessary to ensure that they understand the objectives and the limits of the objectives.

Last but certainly not least, ensure all of the team members and stakeholders understand the 'triple constraint'. This trips up more projects than anything else and the topic is large enough to be the subject of its own course, so I will summarize it as best I can. The triple constraints are Scope, Time/Schedule and Money. I maintain that you can only ever achieve one of these completely. Another one you can manage and the third therefore must be flexible. But you say to yourself that to be successful in the eyes of the stakeholders all three must be achieved. All three can be achieved if they are defined appropriately for the objectives. Often projects are defined with the scope/functionality set, a single budget number and a single delivery date. The problem with this is that projects are used to bring about change and change is never nice and neat. So, projects are used to facilitate change and change is messy; therefore there will be many things that are unknown at the beginning of the project. Therefore it's difficult to hit an exact delivery date and spend the budget to the penny while delivering the functionality exactly. However if we determine up front what our stakeholders expect and want the most, we can craft the triple constraints so they are met.

To summarize, it comes down to how well you communicate with the stakeholders. In the beginning it’s about listening and asking good questions to ensure you understand what they expect. As the project progresses, ensure that all stakeholders understand the projects objectives and how that might affect them; including the possibility of not receiving what they want but helping them understand why and being ok with it. Lastly, craft the project plan and the triple constraints so the project can be successful and then communicate this definition of success to the stakeholders and ensure they are in agreement and understand it.
Good luck with your next change (project).