I recently completed a review at a client site. The review was on their project management capability. The findings are really interesting although not at all surprising for me. The organisation is a well respected name in the FMCG world. About two years ago they rolled out the Agile methodology and they have adopted it well. They have gone past the initial hurdles of using agile and really embedded it into the organisation. Yet the success rate of the projects haven’t improved significantly. This is what prompted the review – they wanted to know what they were doing wrong.
What I found, which is quite consistent with my experience of 20 + yrs is that what they were lacking was not the methodology, not the structured project management, but the soft skills. Stakeholder management, influencing skills and just general people skills. This was quite consistent with what I have experienced having led a number of programs to successful completion, specially rescuing troubled projects. My formula for success has always focussed on the soft skills – focussing on the teams, the stakeholders – people aspect of the project to get it back on track and get it moving forward – to provide the results that were required.
So really soft skills are becoming more and more important. Methodology is very important, structure is very important but we cannot underestimate the importance of soft skills.
So what has your experience been?