Guarantee Project Success

One of our successful adwords campaigns has this headline, but I confess it troubles me a bit.  Is it possible to guarantee project success?  I think it is, but it depends on your frame of reference.  If you define a project as something like:

“A project is any outcome you’re committed to achieving that will take more than one action step to complete.”

Then you’ve set yourself up for a very binary pass/fail criteria, and your next action is going to be running to the Gantt chart.  I’ve been contemplating the experience of leading and running projects, and I’d like to propose what I believe to be a much more powerful definition:

“A project is the way an organisation takes a risk.”

I want to leave this idea with you – to gestate – and I’ll be exploring it over my next few blog pieces to see where it leads me.

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Project+success, project+failure, risk+management