Is your organization failing to close the gaps between strategy and project execution? This isn’t an easy task. Fortunately, there are strategies (and tools!) you can use to help you close those gaps.

And you’re not alone in this challenge. Let’s learn how the right strategies and tools can help you close that gap to promote successful project execution. We’ll hear from experts and review key takeaways that project leaders can immediately put into practice in their programs and projects.

What Is Project Execution?

During the five process groups of the project life cycle, there are multiple objectives and outcomes for each phase. After the project initiation and the planning processes, the execution of the project begins.

Successful CEOs Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy define execution in their book Executive: The Discipline of Getting Things Done: “Execution is a specific set of behaviors and techniques that companies need to master in order to have a competitive advantage. It’s a discipline of its own.”

Project execution is the third phase of the project life cycle and one of the most vital of the project phases. During this phase, you’ll construct your deliverables and present them to your customer and key stakeholders. This is usually the longest phase of the project life cycle and predictably the most demanding.

Project execution’s key purpose is to complete the work defined in the project management plan and to meet key project objectives. During this phase, a project leader will focus on these key processes:

• Managing people
• Following processes
• Communicating information to all key stakeholders, sponsors and team members

When you’re executing a project, you need to manage many things: resources, costs, schedule and more. ProjectManager is work and project management software that has multiple project views that can do this more efficiently. Build Gantt charts, assign tasks and track progress to share data with stakeholders and keep the project team connected in real time.

Project Execution Steps

Project execution, as with project management, is broken down into steps. These steps ensure you’re not neglecting anything crucial. The eight project steps can be slightly different depending on the project and how you’re organization works, but these are the basics.

1. Execute Project Scope

You’ve planned for the project scope, collected requirements and defined it using a work breakdown structure. Once that scope has been validated, it’s time to put it into action. This also involves controlling the scope, which is part of the monitoring and controlling phase of a project.

2. Manage Your Team

Assigning tasks to the team is only the beginning. You need to monitor their work and make sure that they are producing at capacity by monitoring their workload and clearing any bottlenecks that might block their progress.

3. Make Changes

This leads to the changes that are necessary for every project. No matter how good your plan is, there will be changes that impact your schedule and budget. You need to monitor the project, recommended changes and take corrective action to stay on track.

4. Update Stakeholders

Your stakeholders are invested in the project. You need to manage their expectations. One way to do this is by regularly communicating with them. Manage those communications by finding how often they want to be updated and how they prefer to get those updates.

5. Conduct Team-Building Exercises

Proper execution only occurs when teams work together. That collaboration involves many things, such as tools to connect them, but also trust. Team-building exercises are a way to upstart trust, especially for new teams that don’t have a lot of shared experience.

6. Celebrate Milestones

Some might want to save the celebrations until the final delivery, but having milestones, acknowledging them and rewarding the team throughout the execution phase is how you keep morale up, which influences productivity.

7. Meet Regularly

In order to keep your stakeholders updated, you need to have a clear picture of the project’s performance and progress. There are tools that monitor and report on that, but you also have to meet regularly with the project team and get status reports and feedback.

8. Document Changes

As we noted, change is part of a project. You might be tempted to identify and respond quickly to change, which is important. But without documenting these changes to the project plan you’re setting yourself up for problems. These change management documents offer historic data for future projects, but also explain actions in the current one.

Project Execution Challenges

There are more problems than we have space to capture. Things are always going wrong or, at least, not following the project plan. That’s why monitoring and tracking during execution are so important. But here are some common issues to look out for.

Scope creep is when the project scope goes beyond its original objectives. There are many reasons why this can happen. Stakeholders want changes, supply chain issues and more. It’s your job to review each and every change that occurs and prioritize them if necessary or disregard them if unnecessary.

You need to have a tight-knit team that trusts you and each other. That requires everyone is accountable for their work. Without accountability, you’re going to have delays and costs will soar as teams begin in-fighting and are no longer productive. This is part of managing your team, making sure they’re accountable.

You should have developed a risk management plan during the planning phase. It will come in handy as you execute the project. This will allow you to identify issues as they arise and respond to them quickly, with a plan and team members who are responsible for owning that process.

Naturally, communication is key to success. If your team isn’t communicating with each other or you, problems arise. If you’re not communicating with stakeholders, then they are going to get upset and interfere with the project. Again, this is something that is addressed in the planning phase. Without a communication plan, your execution is destined to fail.

Execution Gaps

Over the last several years, there have been numerous books focused on how to solve the gaps regarding strategy and execution. These books suggest that sponsors are critical to filling these gaps, as well as implementing a well-defined framework.

Organizations that implement an executive strategy to turn strategic goals into business value will discover the “larger system” for success – the C-suite executives, middle management, project manager and project team.

Earlier this year, another book was released called Filling Execution Gaps by Todd Williams.  Williams’ book takes it one step further to clearly identify “six execution gaps” to close for realizing repeatable project success.

Per the latest PMI Pulse of the Profession 2017, “C-suite continues to be largely focused on bridging strategy formulation and execution and tackling technology and business disruption.” Williams’ research reveals the gaps we’ve been missing.

Williams’ research identifies six primary gaps that prevent successful project execution:

• Absence of common understanding
• Disengaged executive sponsors
• Misalignment with strategic goals
• Poor change management
• Ineffective corporate governance
• Lackluster leadership

Shouldn’t it be more complicated than this? The reality is that fixing each gap individually is not the solution. The real challenge is finding solutions, developing action plans and implementing strategies to fix all six gaps. According to Williams, it’s not rocket science, but understanding how each gap affects your program initiatives is key to the most critical phase of your project–execution.

Closing the Execution Gap

There are two pieces to closing the gap:

• Aligning the strategic plan goals and objectives with an implementation plan
• Executing in the program and project delivery of outcomes that meet those objectives

Closing that execution gap, also known as the strategy gap, is one of the most frustrating challenges facing business leaders today. The execution gap is a perceived gap between a company’s strategies and expectations and its ability to meet those goals and put ideas into action.

Strategic Tips to Improve Project Execution

Let’s review some strategies to promote successful project execution.

1. Begin with the End in Mind

It’s a good idea to consider the alignment of strategy with your program or projects and the projected final outcomes.  A big problem with going from concept to implementation is simply a lack of clearly defined goals and objectives.

Executives who cannot define what they want to be accomplished can hardly expect project leaders to understand their strategy and lead their projects with any level of meaningful contribution.

2. Gain Buy-in From Your Core Team

Clear and concise communication is vitally important. A well-defined project upfront will help earn the buy-in from your team and stakeholders, and it sets the stage for your team.

Furthermore, explaining the vision behind strategic decisions gives this core team a deeper understanding of how their knowledge and work will contribute to the larger whole. Using collaborative project management software is an ideal way to keep everyone working as a team while keeping sight of primary objectives.

3. Project Leaders Get Their Projects Across the Finish Line

To make sure strategies get put into motion, you must make sure you have the talent with the right project leadership skill sets to manage the project. Emotional intelligence and self-awareness continue to be essential skillsets for project leaders. You also need to better understand yourself to lead others.

4. Build a High-Performing Team

You should aim to build a highly qualified team that can help define the right strategies and alignments for your programs and projects. Project leaders that can align their vision and work with their teams will successfully deliver key programs and projects. The alignment of vision and strategy to implementation will help you close those gaps.

5. Monitor Progress and Performance Through Accountability

Implementing any strategy involves meetings to discuss the various projects and programs that will be required. Meetings are critical to helping bring together the focus in this phase to do the following:

• Manage people
• Follow processes
• Communicate information to all key stakeholders, sponsors and team members

Meetings are a great way to firm up agreements, document actionable items, identify risks/issues and hold your team members accountable to follow through to produce results.

Keep the line of communication open throughout the project. Make sure to follow up before, during and after meetings regarding outstanding action items, issues and risks. Make sure not to micromanage, and adjust your leadership style based on the situation and the team member.

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