Success can be measured in a number of ways and I’m not going to get into that here, but let’s simply call success better than expected outcomes of any activity. It is often difficult to determine what factors contribute to success. Some say luck plays a part and that may be true, but intelligence, knowledge, experience and perseverance are mostly responsible. The synergy of these four attributes is powerful and each helps overcome shortcomings of the other.

Intelligence

Intelligence is genetic; thank your parents. Intelligence allows one to be intuitive, calculate, deduct and apply common sense. It is often thought of as the most important attribute of these four. That is not true, but it does provide a way for one to think his/her way through problems without the knowledge and experience needed with less intelligence.

Knowledge

Knowledge is learned information. Some call it book smarts. Intelligence facilitates efficiency in learning, but perseverance can almost overcome lack of intelligence. “Study hard and you can get the same grades as a smart kid,” my parents told me. Intelligence and knowledge can get you a long way towards success, but as every employer knows, dues still need to be paid to earn accomplishment and credibility.

Experience

“Nothing beats experience” is certainly a cliché and arguable true, but knowledge gained from experience alone can be limiting. An example is someone who only knows their job function. They may know it well, but cannot adapt to new challenges. However, knowledge gained from experience combined with intelligence and powered by perseverance is the ideal recipe for success. This Holy Grail of attributes can almost overcome any obstacle.

Perseverance

Without perseverance nothing else matters. It is the engine that drives success. Too many times we have seen the smart guy that doesn’t meet expectations, the senior person that always just skims by, or the know-it-all that can’t make it happen. Guided by goal setting, perseverance is most important and over time can overcome deficiencies in the other three attributes. The tortoise wins the race…I think I can…Try, try again… You get the picture.

The next time you face a challenge evaluate your cache of each of these attributes, then apply the most effort to the ones you have a deficit. This assures the best balance and arms you to achieve success.

I recently hired a company to build a fence. Now, building a fence isn’t terribly complex, or expensive, but the way contractors conduct their business dealings with customers is interesting when compared to how agencies develop relationships with their clients.

I signed a contract with a fixed price and other specific project specifications. This is much like we do with clients at our agency. I paid a down payment. Again, this parallels our process.

Here’s where the differences begin.

The fence company places a lien on my property in case I don’t pay us for my fence and when I pay in full they sign a release. Can you imagine an agency telling an client something like that?

The fence company tells me they will call to schedule the work. I have little say in this, other than if there is a conflict on a given day. They’ll get to me when they have time. Our clients pay little attention to schedules we provide. We’re on their timetable and they call the shots like they own us and we have no other work to do.

When the day comes to erect the fence, we have a discrepancy in what was planned and what can be built so we discuss and agree to a solution. This is typical in our agency projects, but the fence company requires a change order before they will do any more work and this change order affects the price. I sign. They continue. Agencies have become so scared of rejection from their clients that a simple, formal process like this is often ignored. “We can’t ‘pressure’ our relationship with that confrontation,” we say.

The fence is up. I pay. They release the lien. The dog is in the yard. All is good.

Why can a fence company with tons of competition, no market advantage and a simple commodity be so presumptuous to follow sound business processes while an agency that provides greater value to their clients often cannot?

Two reasons: expectations and presumptions

If other agencies don’t do business that way, then how can we? Inconsistent business practices in a given field create mixed expectations and if all players don’t play by the same rules, there are no rules and the ones who follow rules loose.

Agency people think they cannot control the relationship because they never have done so. This is false. Done in an honest, up-front manner, most clients are not put-off by sound business practices. Even though the agency’s immature perspective makes them think signatures are confrontational, clients do this all the time for other services. It’s not that big of a deal.

It’s time agencies (and all companies that don’t believe in standard processes) learn from the fence guy and take a smarter approach to how to deal with their clientele.

1. Spend more time on learning what users really need, not what they say they want
2. Put more emphasis on your people and less on your tools
3. Think of all solutions as temporary
4. Stop trying to predict the future
5. Build less complex apps
6. Shorten timelines
7. Spend less time on figuring out how to get three more years use out of that version of (insert software name here) you have licensed
8. Never build something the same way twice
9. Don’t worry how your company will support it
10. Don’t worry how to integrate it  -  at least not at first

 The question, “What’s the best way to document a project?” often comes up at PMI meetings I attend and in conversations with clients. Every project is different in one way or another: methodology, technology, size, features, requirements, stakeholder needs, to name a few. The answer isn’t so simple, but here are a few ideas that will make your documentation process better.

Determine YOUR Needs

What information do you need to capture? How will it be used in your process? Who is your audience(s)? What types of documents do you need? These questions will give you distinct needs to address.
Document Examples

• A Project Charter may be needed for initiation and to describe the project to upper management. It may need to include business strategies or information on ROI.
• A Statement of Work might outline what resources are required
• Functional Requirements describe the project in detail.
• A Work Breakdown Structure or detailed Task List may be useful for estimating cost and time budgets
• A Timeline is used to chart progress against a baseline schedule.
• Status Reports keep everyone informed.
• Work Orders are effective for distributing work to team members.
• Change Control Forms create standard operating procedures.
• Lessons Learned prove to be valuable for saving information for future projects.
• A Project Plan probably consists of a number of the above documents and acts as the “bible” for your project.

Please note: there are numerous variations on all these documents.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

There are a multitude of resources available that have outlines, templates, forms and practices others have used to get you started – no need to start from scratch. Look online; project management web sites have resources, often for free. You can get templates and forms from PMI or other PM organizations. Ask your peers for help. They’ll gladly give you samples of what they have found that works well.

After you find something that looks appealing modify it to suit your needs. Don’t be afraid to change it as you use it. Constant improvement is part of any management process.

Make Sure it’s Easy to Create and Edit

I’ve seen too many templates where you spend almost as much time formatting and fighting the template as writing specifications. Documents should be helping the project, not hindering it. Make sure your template is easy to use when writing and quick to edit. Efficiency is a big part of making the documentation process effective and worthwhile.

Make Sure it’s Easy to Read

The whole point of writing documentation is to communicate. Make your message as easy to understand as possible and is well designed:

• Formatting – use type styles and sizes to create a visual hierarchy. Have consistent headers, subheads, lists, tables, footnotes, and other text elements.
• Organization – partition the document into logical sections where one section is dependent on its predecessor. The document should flow.

Keep Redundancy to a Minimum

An effective set of project documents do not repeat information. Each one has its job and together creates a whole set. Having information repeated in several documents creates big problems with revisions that affect the redundant information. Write so revisions will be isolated as much as possible and use inheritance.

Inheritance is when a document is a child of another document and information presented in the parent document is carried over to the child. Inheritance can eliminate the need for redundant information. As part of the child document, include a section that tells the reader what information is inherited and where it can be found. Do not copy things down.

Only Write What is Sufficient

Perhaps this is the biggest contributor to creating effective documentation. Only create the necessary documents that are needed for that project and only write them to the necessary level of detail. Just because you have the same templates available for each project, each project shouldn’t have the same documents. Templates are there to save time and provide standardization, but should also be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of circumstances. Consider only what is required to memorialize the project in print:

• What the team needs to complete their work
• What stakeholders need before, during and after the project
• Any compliance issues for regulatory organizations

Creating useful documentation is part of any project, but it should not be such a burden that the means does not justify the end. After a few competed documents and revisions, the process should be second nature. If it isn’t, take a look at problem areas and fix them. Don’t carry bad practices forward and don’t be afraid to innovate. Kaizen!