Ten Steps To A Successful Project
- Jan 9, 2025
- 3 min read
Fergus O'Connell is one of the world’s leading authorities on project management and getting things done. He is the author of eight novels and sixteen business books, including Simply Brilliant, a book about common sense and how to use a power you already have.
You don’t need any fancy or complicated methodologies to achieve a successful project. The recipe has been known for years.
Planning the project
1. Visualize what the goal is: Set your eyes on the prize
“…nothing else remained for me to do than to try to solve the last great question – The South Pole.” Roald Amundsen
2. Make a list of the jobs that need to be done
“The devil is in the detail.” Gustav Flaubert
3. There must be one leader
“The buck stops here.” Harry Truman
4. Assign people to jobs
“They practiced moving in the open by platoons, they practiced maneuvering in companies, then moving in waves as a battalion… they did it all over and over again, until every man, from a battalion’s colonel downwards, knew precisely what to do and when to do it.” From Somme by Lyn Macdonald
5. Manage expectations, allow for error, and plan fallback options
“There cannot be the slightest doubt that if the vessel had been provided with sufficient boats to carry all the people on board her, not a single life need have been lost.” From Syren and Shipping in a report on the loss of the Titanic
Executing the plan
6. Use an appropriate leadership style
“You are, my Lord, surrounded by friends whom you inspire with confidence.” Nelson, in a letter to Emma Hamilton, reporting a comment of one of his captains shortly before the battle of Trafalgar in 1805
7. Know what is going on
“Great part of the information obtained in War is contradictory, a still greater part is false, and by far the greatest part is of doubtful character.” Clausewitz (1832)
8. Tell people what is going on
“On the wall of Fram’s charthouse was a map of the Antarctic, with the route to the Pole linked in, and a summary of the expedition’s plans, was hung, in Amundsen’s own words, ‘for everybody’s use’.” From The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford
9. Repeat steps 1 through 8 until step 10
“I told him that I did not look for a ‘breakthrough’ not for rapid and spectacular success, but I envisaged a series of carefully organised and prepared attacks, only gaining ground step by step” General Sir Hubert Gough before the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917
10. The prize
“And so we arrived and were able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole. God be thanked.” Roald Amundsen
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Read more from Fergus O'Connell
Fergus O'Connell, Novelist, Project Manager, Teacher, Speaker
Fergus O'Connell is one of the world’s leading authorities on project management and getting things done. He is the author of eight novels and sixteen business books, including Simply Brilliant, a book about common sense and how to use a power you already have.
He founded his first project management company – ETP – in 1991. His disruptive, common-sense project management method, The Ten Steps, has influenced a generation of project managers. In 2003, this method was used to plan and execute the Special Olympics World Games, the world’s biggest sporting event that year. Fergus’ new company, Fast Projects, is again disrupting the project management space by focusing on speeding up projects / shortening time to market.
