Projects are complex, your supporting tools really shouldn’t be.

Projects are complex, anyone who has managed or been involved in project delivery will recognise that even the simplest project can easily get complicated.

Whether it be unforeseen risks and issues, complex stakeholders or confusion in requirements there is an inherent complexity to even the simplest project. Add in timescales, budgets and communications and things get even trickier – it’s the nature of project work!

One of the biggest mistakes that I therefore see as a result is the creation of overly engineered project delivery process and associated tools.

The statement “Projects are complex, Project Management is not” always raises a few eyebrows in the room but it’s true. The theory and practicality of project management isn’t hard, it can be if we want to mystify it but, in reality it is:

• The agreement of scope
• The creation of a plan to delivery on that scope
• The management of the plan and resources to deliver the scope
• The identification and management of risks and issues
• Communication
• Expectation Management

So why do organisations put such complex governance and tools around what they do? The tools and governance are simply there to support the project delivery, they should make project delivery repeatable, easier and the toolsets should help automate some of the manual tasks that project managers do.

With the plethora of tools available to you in Microsoft 365 it is really quite simple to find the right tool that will aid the delivery of your projects – but please don’t over complicate them and don’t believe they are a silver bullet that will solve all your project delivery issues! They are an enabler, a very, very good enabler when used in the right way too.