[1/4] Our Approach to Project Management: Why Project Management Matters

In system development, one of the biggest risks is "failed project management." Our mission is to develop impactful products through co-creation with our clients. That is exactly why we take project management seriously.

This article is the first in a four-part series on our approach to project management.

• Part 1 (this article): Why we focus on efficiency

• Part 2: Guidelines and internal training

• Part 3: Thorough automation to focus on what matters

• Part 4: Results and outlook

Through this series, we will share how we have systematized project management, made it efficient, and set ourselves up to focus on creating real value. We hope it is useful for anyone choosing a system development partner or looking to improve their own project management.

The Biggest Risk in System Development

A system development project is a major investment that consumes a lot of time, money, and people. Core business systems, business DX, and systems for new businesses in particular involve larger budgets, longer timelines, and growing complexity.

In a situation like this, what happens when project management is inadequate?

According to the Standish Group's well-known "CHAOS Report," the success rate of projects without proper planning and management is only 16.2%. In other words, more than 8 out of 10 projects fail in some way.

When project management is absent or inadequate, problems like the following arise.

• Opaque progress: nobody knows what has progressed and how far

• Issues found late: problems are discovered only after they have grown large

• Delayed decisions: judgments can't be made at the right time

• Schedule delays: deadlines are missed

• Lower quality: rework happens frequently

• Stakeholder anxiety: trust is damaged

These are major factors that lead projects to fail.

Management Is Not the Goal

So should project management be as rigid as possible?

No, that is not the answer.

We are not a "management company." For us, project management is only a means, not the goal.

What matters is that the product delivers its value.

We co-create products with our clients. Many people take part in a project, and a great deal of time, money, and resources go into it. What we build has to be worth something.

What is really needed for that is:

• Increasing the value of the product

• Understanding how users use the product

• Responding to users' requests and frustrations

• Continuing to think about how to make the product better

We want to maximize the time spent on these.

We don't want to spend a lot of time on project management. We don't want our time taken up by writing progress reports. But at the same time, we don't want to neglect project management either.

What we aim for is to run project management with high quality and high efficiency.

That way, the whole team can spend its time on what really matters: increasing the value of the product.

Barriers to Project Management

So why does project management end up inadequate on so many projects?

The main challenges we recognize are as follows.

1. The Effort Involved

Breaking down tasks, defining dependencies, assigning owners, entering estimates, setting schedules: this work takes more effort than you might imagine.

In fact, on many teams it has become "the work nobody wants to do," because it is so tedious, complicated, and time-consuming.

2. Hard-to-Use Tools

Many project management tools require you to open and configure each task individually. There is no bulk processing, and the UI is not intuitive, so the learning cost is high. GitHub Projects, which we use for task management, is no exception.

As a result, "using the tool itself becomes a burden," and people can't keep it up.

3. Hard to Sustain

People put in the effort for the initial setup, but then get swamped by daily work and put off updates. Before they know it, the information in the project management tool is out of date. This is a common sight.

4. No Policy

If an organization has no project management policy or guidelines, every project starts by feeling its way. One person manages things in GitHub, another in their own notepad, and another doesn't manage things at all. At that point, it becomes impossible to see the big picture.

Worse still, project management tends to rely on "intuition and experience," and becomes dependent on specific individuals.

A Reliable Methodology

With these challenges in mind, we approach project management based on a reliable methodology.

Following Agile Development and Scrum

Our project management is based not on intuition or experience, but on the principles of Agile development and Scrum.

Our approach puts the Agile Manifesto and Scrum values into practice as follows.

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools": in the Daily Scrum every day, the whole team shares progress and issues face to face. Tools are only a means of encouraging conversation.

"Working software over comprehensive documentation": by automating report creation, we can focus on achieving the sprint goal, that is, actually building the product, without getting tied up in writing documents.

"Customer collaboration over contract negotiation": through continuous alignment with the Product Owner, we adjust flexibly based on feedback rather than following a fixed plan.

"Responding to change over following a plan": even during a sprint, we adjust tasks according to the situation and keep improving.

And to realize the Scrum values of commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect, we place great importance on psychological safety. We value an environment where nobody is blamed for reporting a problem, a system where progress can be shared transparently, and a culture where the whole team works toward success together.

An Emphasis on Psychological Safety

As Google's Project Aristotle research showed, psychological safety is the most important factor in team success.

Psychological safety is an environment where team members feel safe taking interpersonal risks. Not being blamed for reporting a problem, not feeling embarrassed to ask a question, being able to learn from failure: this kind of culture leads to project success.

Our project management is designed to foster this psychological safety.

Alignment with Our Purpose, Mission, and Vision

Our purpose is "to develop impactful products through collaborative and effective engineering, and to keep delivering value to our clients and to society."

Project management is the foundation for achieving this "collaborative and effective engineering."

Transparent progress management, clear task definitions, and goals shared across the whole team encourage collaboration and maximize the effectiveness of our engineering.

What We Do

We practice project management properly. Without cutting corners, we carry out the process, progress management, and reporting thoroughly, and maintain a level of quality our clients can rely on.

But this is not management for its own sake. Project management is not the goal; it is only a means. What truly matters is that the product delivers its value.

That is why we are serious about efficiency. By running project management with high quality and high efficiency, we make it possible for the whole team to spend its time on what really matters: increasing the value of the product.

In the next article, we explain in detail how we have systematized project management, how we train our people on it, and how we put it into practice.