Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

Chapter 8. The Project Manager Faces the Board

I stayed behind and got myself another coffee and a chocolate chip cookie and thought about how different our objective statement was from the project goals we had developed that morning. Those goals had been vague and, as it turned out, not even all that accurate. Our assignment was not to make theWindSailor successful, it was just to build the facilities.

Something else I had learned: there was a big difference between the objective of the assignment (building the facilities), and the expected outcome or benefits (the success of the WindSailor). It appeared to be very important not to confuse one with the other, because you really only had control over achieving your objective. The expected benefit could only happen if the objective was achieved. Even then, your expectations might not be met if your objective was wrong in the first place. Fortunately, the WindSailor being a good idea was a strategic planning concern. I just had to get Hyler ready to make the thing.

On the whole, the objective statement approach had provided a concise definition of our assignment and a much better starting point. I was finally starting to feel comfortable with Martha's ideas.