The Importance of Strategic Planning to the Success of a Project

Regardless of the size of a project, there are specific essential elements that a project manager should follow failure to which their project will be thwarted by several problems and issues. Whether the project’s intention is to manage change, improve services or implementing systems, a successful project should involve basic considerations such as strategic planning. Planning serves to identify and understand the project’s need and what it wishes to achieve. Through the process, the project managers are able to identify specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely goals which are called the SMART objectives.

Communication forms another basic management practice that is vital to a project. Speaking a word about the projects draw the interest of concerned people which ensures that the project gets awareness and relevance by the time it is completed. Communication within the stakeholders involved in a project also helps a project to be delivered timely. Another vital component of a good project is adequate resources to recruit human resources and run the project.

Resources ensure that the project runs consistently and its purpose is achieved timely. Finally, people are the main and most crucial component of a project. Everybody involved in a project has a role to play and collectively propel the project to serve its purpose, Why Many Projects Overrun Their Budget It is true that many projects often overrun their budgets. Budget overruns arise from unexpected costs that the project incurs after commencing. Such costs are as a result of some assumptions in the budget or underestimation of costs while budgeting.

Get quality help now

RhizMan

Verified

Proficient in: Free Papers

4.9 (247)

“ Rhizman is absolutely amazing at what he does . I highly recommend him if you need an assignment done ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

There are various explanations that state why cost overruns occur. These explanations are based on psychological, technical and politicaleeconomic aspects. Technical aspects account for the imperfection in forecasting the project.

Psychological aspects, on the other hand, are responsible for the overruns that emanate from optimistic bias. Finally, misrepresentation of the budget results to overruns related to economic aspects. Cost overruns are common in many projects where a project ends up using more money than it was budgeted for: While working in the infrastructure and construction sector, overruns seemed to be so common where almost 71% of the projects we had suffered an overrunr The main reason for the cost overruns in the projects was the longevity of the projects which often exceeded the framed time The highest overrun l have witnessed was 43% of the total budget where $5 went to waste.

Reference

1. Pinkerton, W J. (2013) Project management: achieving project bottom-line success. New York: McGraw-Hill,