Here are the 12 Project Management Principles ;
- Be a Diligent, Respectful, and Caring Steward: This principle emphasizes the ethical and responsible management of projects, including resources, team members, and the wider impact of the project on stakeholders, the environment, and society. It involves acting with integrity, care, and trustworthiness.
- Create a Collaborative Project Team Environment: Projects are delivered by teams, and this principle highlights the importance of fostering a collaborative, respectful, and communicative environment where team members can work together effectively towards a shared objective.
- Effectively Engage with Stakeholders: Project success is highly dependent on understanding and engaging with all individuals and groups who have an interest in or can be affected by the project. This involves active two-way communication, managing expectations, and building trusting relationships.
- Focus on Value: The ultimate measure of project success is the value it delivers. This principle stresses the continuous evaluation and adjustment of project alignment to business objectives and intended benefits, ensuring that the project consistently aims to create value.
- Recognize, Evaluate, and Respond to System Interactions: Projects are complex systems with interdependent and interacting components. This principle encourages a holistic view, recognizing how changes in one part of the project or its environment can impact others, and responding proactively to optimize performance.
- Demonstrate Leadership Behaviors: Effective leadership is crucial for project success. This principle emphasizes adapting leadership styles to support individual and team needs, fostering a positive environment, inspiring and motivating the team, and demonstrating honesty, integrity, and ethical conduct.
- Tailor Based on Context: Every project is unique. This principle advocates for designing the project’s development approach based on its specific context, objectives, stakeholders, governance, and environment, using “just enough” process to achieve desired outcomes.
- Build Quality into Processes and Deliverables: Quality is about meeting project objectives and aligning with stakeholder needs and requirements. This principle emphasizes integrating quality considerations throughout the project processes and in the creation of deliverables to ensure they are fit for purpose.
- Navigate Complexity: Projects often involve complexity due to human behavior, system interactions, uncertainty, and ambiguity. This principle encourages continuous evaluation and navigation of complexity to enable the project team to successfully progress through the project life cycle.
- Optimize Risk Responses: Risk management involves continually evaluating exposure to both opportunities and threats. This principle focuses on maximizing positive impacts and minimizing negative impacts to the project and its outcomes through appropriate and cost-effective risk responses.
- Embrace Adaptability and Resiliency: In today’s dynamic environment, projects must be able to accommodate change and recover from setbacks. This principle stresses building adaptability (the ability to respond to changing conditions) and resiliency (the ability to recover from setbacks) into the organization’s and project team’s approaches.
- Enable Change to Achieve the Envisioned Future State: Projects are often vehicles for organizational change. This principle focuses on guiding the project and its stakeholders through the transition from the current state to a desired future state, understanding that enabling change can be challenging and requires thoughtful management.
These principles provide a guiding framework for project managers and teams, allowing for flexibility and tailoring while ensuring a focus on essential aspects of successful project delivery.