Monday in the Project Management Circuit

Successful Project Management delivers the results based on a group of specific documents created in the initial discussions of a project. These documents form the basis of agreement within the organization and allow the program manger to have a mandate to create new products /processes or modify existing efforts. The documents are a framework that outlines the SMART attributes of any project.

SMART is an acronym for the various parts of a project to be viable
These include
S- Specific. A project plan must be clearly written to be well understood. Therefore it needs enough detail to meet the S for SPECIFIC

M- Measurable. If a projects success or failure to deliver on the requirements cannot be measured, how will anyone know when the project is complete? Measurable by definition eliminates many of the fluffy “customer satisfaction” type goals and replaces them with increased customer satisfaction rates by xx% as measured by xxx.

A- Attainable. Projects must be small enough in scope to be attainable within a reasonable amount of time. Hand in hand with measurable, by focusing on an attainable project, the team members are much more likely to deliver.

R Relevant. Feel good projects should be limited. A project must be designed to be relevant to a specific problem. That is, would a reasonable person reading the documents agree that the project is important?

T- Time-bound. A definitive beginning and end of the project is necessary for delivery of to a goal. This time bound requirement can be in the form of milestones or deliverables at agreed upon frequencies.

SMART is a good gut check on the viability and validity of a project. This is not to say however that a project needs to be simple or complex. In fact, many projects are focused on smaller parts of much larger master projects. The theory of eating the elephant one bite at a time is alive and well within Project Management.

There are alternatives to the above SMART description but all focus on basically the same 5 points.