Putting projects back at the center of organizations

In the past few years, companies have been running far more projects than they used to, as everyone can see. And we all know the underlying causes: escalating competition and changing consumer tastes have led to shorter lifecycles and greater variety as far as products and services. That’s why knowing how to manage projects effectively is a matter of survival, a component of competitive advantage – now, and even more so in the future.

The second edition of Marco Sampietro’s Project Management was published in October 2021 by Egea. For the occasion, we contacted the author to have him tell us about some of the salient aspects of his new book.

Why is it so important to have a Project Management Plan?

Some think that in a dynamic world, planning is less important, and reactivity and improvisation are the keys. Actually, research demonstrates the exact opposite is true.  Paradoxically, in fact, in uncertain environments there’s a greater need for planning.

The idea might seem counterintuitive, but in actual fact even in our daily behaviors we can see it. For example, when is GPS most useful? When you know there’s no traffic or roadwork ahead, or when there is traffic or a detour on your route? Naturally, the second situation is the answer. Drawing a parallel with GPS also tells us something else: it’s important to plan, but even more important to re-plan, so that the updated plan helps us get where we want to go.

So a good project plan helps us map out the best route (or routes) to reach our goals, but when project variables change, we need to adapt that plan so it’s always meaningful and useful.

What factors do successful projects have in common? And how do you recognize them?

There are numerous studies that investigate so-called “critical success factors” for projects. Some of them that we can list are: having clear, shared objectives; having strong project sponsorship; having a good plan. But the problem is that ensuring a project has adequate critical success factors is not enough. In fact, each individual project calls for a personalized analysis, because it may have characteristics that make general critical success factors less relevant, and make other elements far more impactful that are unique to the particular project. Unfortunately, there are no foolproof methods for accurately identifying critical success factors. My advice is to talk about it on the team - a team that should have diversified experiences and competencies, because critical success factors can be heterogeneous by nature. For example, they can be organizational, behavioral, technological, legal, and so forth.

In your book, you really stress three central issues for organizations: managing time, costs, and risks. In these contexts, what are the most germane elements to keep in mind?

As far as time and cost, there’s a common element we always need to take into account: the possibility to optimize, to improve. Too often we get the feeling that we need more resources so we can respect the timeline, and this naturally contrasts with costs. In actual fact, there are countless ways to make improvements on both timing and costs, the problem is that sometimes we don’t notice because we’re prisoners of our plan.

With regard to risks, the main aspect to consider is cultural. Too often people have a hard time talking about risks. They don’t consider them a relevant variable, or they find it frightening to think that the project could go wrong, so they’d rather not think about it at all.

The most important addition to this second edition is a more detailed description of the Agile Approach. Can you tell us something about that? Why is it so important for organizations?

Agile was created as a better way to manage projects (among other things) in changing, uncertain contexts. So, this statement already tells us how Agile responds to the needs of many organizations. But be careful not to read Agile as the antithesis of other Project Management approaches that don’t carry the same label. Actually, various approaches and methods can be used in rigid or flexible ways. No doubt, Agile is better equipped to some extent because it was created for the express purpose of boosting flexibility and adaptability.



SDA Bocconi School of Management