THIS WEEK’S FOCUS
What is project management, really?
Welcome to Success Factors Discovery, your weekly email for enjoying projects + delivering with confidence.
Search online and you’ll find polished definitions of project management from PMI, APM, US and UK government handbooks.
They talk about “applying skills, knowledge, tools, and techniques to deliver within time, cost, and quality.”
Useful? Yes.
Complete? Not entirely.
Here’s why:
Successful delivery relies on three overlooked foundations:
1. They frame project management as delivery only.
2. They miss that projects are vehicles to deliver strategy and achieve purpose.
3. They rarely highlight the social side, project management is as much about people and behaviour as it is about process.
Project Management: Plain english
Add these points to the good practice definition of project management, and you get this:
👉 Project management is helping a group of people turn a big idea into reality, moving from where they are now to where they want to be, in service of a bigger purpose.
Tuesday Action
Ask yourself: does your organisation use project management to deliver its biggest changes, the ones that drive strategy?
If the answer is “no” or “not often”… why not?
Talk soon,
Greg
P.S. If you’re interested to explore our core discovery, the 4 Success Factors that apply to all projects. That’s APEX-4 Project Expert Formula ™→ . The playbook is now live and you can access it here and includes checklists and readiness assessments.→