A failed project  can lead to loss of revenue and opportunity; failure to achieve business goals; diversion of resources from other activities; sapping of staff morale and, perhaps, even business failure. So, as projects become more complex and critical to business performance, how do you improve your chances of success?

Follow these eight simple steps to achieve great results in your projects:

1. Get management  and Stakeholder Commitment

In the first instance, you need to have the real commitment of management and stakeholders, the people who will benefit from the project . Be sure that your project  has a sustainable business case and that it can deliver real business benefits, so understand both its business and technical objectives.

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You must maintain business focus to avoid the common pitfall of projects that deliver a technically correct solution, but one that does not meet business requirements.

You must also have a strong sponsor, someone who is sufficiently high up in the organisation to sustain commitment to the project and who will fight for it at senior management level. It is not enough simply to gain management and stakeholder commitment at the start of a project, you must work to sustain it throughout. You can do this by keeping them firmly in the communications loop and making sure that they are aware of major developments, achievements, issues and risks.

2. Define Scope, Goals and Objectives

The scope of a project defines what business areas and processes will be affected. Define it clearly and communicate it to all stakeholders. To avoid any doubt, do not be afraid to say what is not in the scope. Once defined, manage the scope carefully to avoid "scope creep," or widening of what the project will cover. The customer or sponsor should approve changes to the scope, which will almost certainly mean that the project has to be re-planned or re-costed. Don't buy in to a changed scope without re-planning the project, it is a recipe for almost certain disaster.

The sponsor or customer should define the overall business goal for the project, the "end game" that it will achieve. Once you understand the overall goal, you can then define the project's business and technical objectives. These are lower level objectives that will contribute to the achievement of the overall goal. They will form the basis of the high-level project plan.

Remember that the longer a project goes on, the more organisational change will take place. So make sure that the project is not overtaken by events that might lead to its failing to meet customer expectations.

Make sure that the project is realistic and that your organisation is capable of undertaking it. What can you reasonably and realistically achieve with the resources provided to you? Challenge your organisation and your team with stretch targets, but avoid "grand design" projects, they have a nasty habit of failing!

3. Have a Written Plan

The best way to manage your project is with a written plan. Any project over about one weeks duration or involving more than one person needs one. A plan describes:

How the project will be broken up into phases;

What tasks will be carried out in each phase;

Who will carry out each task;

How long each task will take;

When each task will start and finish;

What will be the deliverable or end product of each task, and

What the overall project budget is.

A plan can be as simple as a list of tasks with names, dates and deliverables written on a sheet of paper or a complex matrix of phases, tasks, dependencies, responsibilities, dates and costs managed in a software package.