Learn how to duck and cover? Learn how to blame Al from accounting for project errors? Start to berate your team for their failures, which you had absolutely nothing to do with? Just how do you excel at project management? Before you throw Al under the bus, consider this list of 10 must-dos that will help you lead more efficient, effective projects.

In order to ensure optimal success at program and/or project management, you need to develop and foster the following competencies:

1. Business Leadership: Firms with effective management consistently and overpoweringly outperform those without strong business leadership. Leadership is not a fixed quality; rather, the best leaders tailor their strategies to specific situations and teams.
2. Business Analysis: Whether you have a separate Business Analyst or a PM who handles both roles, this job involves identifying pressing needs and determining possible solutions. According to Meta Group Research, 60 – 80 percent of project failures are directly attributable to poor analysis, management, and requirements gathering.

Why do projects fail? Lack of executive sponsorship? Lack of funding? Poor planning or project governance? Lack of buy-in at all levels? The reasons go on and on – but the Centre of Excellence approach doesn’t touch on this. We prefer to ask, “Why do projects succeed? How do ideas become action and how do concepts come to fruition?”

BLTC Group’s Centre of Excellence approach (COE) puts into place an effective framework on which to guide a project from germination to harvest. We plan on success rather than avoiding failure.

It is crucial to get senior executives involved in projects; often, their role is limited to authorizing a project, approving funding, and, if all goes well, taking credit when you’re done. But they also have to buy-in to the concept or change that is going on. Without that senior level engagement, any initiative is virtually doomed to failure.

Sometimes a project can start to look like “Who’s on First” corporate style. Who’s supposed to do this? What’s he supposed to do? I don’t know who’s doing the rest. As you can imagine, your project is about to devolve into a mess; an expensive, time-consuming mess. This is what a RACI document can help you prevent. Its purpose is to identify roles and responsibilities for a given project. It can tell you who’s on first.

What makes a team effective? Is it having one or two exceptionally intelligent members? Is it the average intelligence? No. As it turns out, neither of these factors is really predictive of a group’s efficacy, according to researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College. What determines success is the collective intelligence in conjunction with the right dynamics. The group can only rise to this level, or beyond, when there is effective communication, coordination, and the right blend of personalities. This is why it is so crucial to find the best brains for your project.

The “best” brains are not necessarily the ones with the highest IQs. They are the ones with high EQs that can work collaboratively, listen, respond, and work towards a common goal. We typically walk right into the middle of a project crisis, and we don’t have prior knowledge of employees, managers, and executives. The first thing we do is ask questions to steering committees, business leads, tech leads, stakeholders…