More than any project, a composite project needs a clear and inspiring vision. All the best projects we have worked on have had a very clear sense of what they were about and had audacious goals.
What do we mean by a vision? Most projects will have a statement about the project’s desired outcome, such as higher productivity. Most projects have stated outputs, which once delivered, facilitate the outcome, such as new machinery or processes. And, these usually align with business strategy. But, to really engage project teams and the people they will be working with, a statement about how everything fits together is invaluable in inspiring and guiding the team.
Why is this especially important for a composite project? A vision is good practice for any project, but in a composite project, people will be balancing the project work and their day job. Not just their time, but their mental capacity and focus will be switching into and out of the projects. A good vision helps to motivate and inspire them to keep going.
A vision emphasizes that the project is a significant event in the organization’s life and should be something people want to be involved with.
If it is clear both the project and the day job are important to the business’s future, it makes conversations easier by providing a common language.
The vision can inspire the business, the functional areas, and the project team to pull together, removing artificial constraints such as department boundaries and office politics.
Story: Great Latte
This story illustrates the benefit of a vision for a project, and especially a composite project.
A large UK organization embarked on a project to centralize its regional operations into a new national center in a new building. The dream was for the center to be an example to its outlets of what the company’s brand stood for. This was understood in all other parts of the business, but this center was new with new processes, people, and systems. To turn the dream into something tangible, the organization engaged consultants who created a document that did just that. It described the look and feel, the tone, the expected standards within of the proposed operation, and so on.
It was much more than normal project documents like a scoping document or a business case or a design. One of the authors was engaged to run the project to open the center. The vision document was in place already, so it was great to plan the route to opening using the document as the checkpoint.
It informed the choice of everything, for example, external signage, the internal fixtures and fittings, and the uniforms for the new staff. It even specified the need for Great Lattes as a signal of the attention to detail and quality required of the brand. Given this brief and 500 visitors daily, the planning of how to provide coffee took us some time. It was also helpful when dealing with suppliers because it set our expectations of their products and services in a clear and tangible way.