A Solid Foundation For Project-based Work

When Italian engineer Bonanno Pisano began construction on the Tower of Pisa in 1173 I'm sure he wasn't expecting it to start tiltingbefore the Ipad Accessories third story was finished. The best guess as to why the tower started to lean was that Pisano underestimated the weight of the 185-foot tower on the stone foundation of only ten feet. The weak foundation combined with the soft sand, rubble, and clay underneath the almost 16,000-ton tower contributed to the uneven settling of the white Android Phones marble tower.Although the builders tried to compensate for the lean, by the time the tower was completed in 1350 it was leaning a full 4 feet, 7 inches from vertical. What's more, by the late 20th century, Torch light the tower was leaning a full 17 feet. (The tower has since undergone an intensive restoration project to keep the tower from failing completely.)Whether you are building a 12th century bell tower or starting a new project, a firm foundation can help you achieve project success. The following are three suggestions for building a solid foundation for your next project:1. Make sure the project has a clearly defined business objectiveand that everyone has a clear Wholesale understanding of what it is. It's important for stakeholders and project teams to understand the business value of what they're doing. Keeping the project vision visible and accessible enables everyone involved in the project to stay focused on what's importantand helps keep scope creep to a minimum.2. Make sure the project has executive commitment to see it through. One of the quickest ways to kill a project is to pull its funding out from under it. A committed executive can also help promote the merits of the project to others within the organization to build a broader base of stakeholder support.3. Make sure there is a shared sense of determination to finish the project. If the only member of the team committed to finish the project is the project manager, it's not likely the project will ever be completed. Individual team members and executive stakeholders need to have the same determination. Without a shared sense of determination to finish, projects languish and eventually fail.Although the Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, it is not a good representation of a successful building project. I'm sure if Pisano had it to do again, he would have spent more time on the foundation and built a tower that stood straight.Business project management software offers both experienced and inexperienced project managers a number of valuable tools to help them establish work management best practices and methodologies. That being said, nothing can substitute for establishing a good project management foundationor as my grandfather used to say, "Well begun is half done."