Let's be honest, when projects drift over time or deliver less than promised hell is around the corner. Wether you are on the client or the project manager side. All project managers I know have lived data projects where nothing goes as planned. But I say never again ! After 10 years of project management I started crafting the ultimate checklist to avoid a nightmarish project. Now as the head of the Delivery Team I have been able to test it at scale. And it's working like a charm.

1. The ultimate checklist
for a successful data project
How to establish a clear and shared vision

2. On what pillars does
a shared vision stand on ?
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People & Commitment
A strong Sponsor, a Project Manager, A Data
Owner and Business Owners
Pain & Business needs
The project output is the answer to the pain /
business needs
Key Success Factors
Communicated by all the stakeholders,
provide guidance to the project
Data
Available, clean, and well formatted data to be
exploited
Communication
Clear, honest, scheduled and recurring
communication
Methodology
Acknowledged and respected by all

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Project ManagerData Owner
Sponsor
Business Owner
People : who are the stakeholders of the
project ?
Stakeholders Description Who
Sponsor Ensures that the project will be pushed forward before, during and
after the project delivery
Project Manager Responsible for the global monitoring of the project, its rhythm, its
timing, its closure
Business Owner Sets the goal of the project by expressing a pain or a business
need
Validates the implementations made during each steps of the
project
Data Owner Knows where the data is, how to extract it or how to manipulate it
to output the value from it.
Persona Target of end users of the project

4. Answer a Pain : A successful project is a useful project, a project with a purpose.
Question the Business Owners to get their pains and business needs.
List their answers below, and order by priority :
Pain & Business Needs
● Pain #1 :
● Pain #2 :
● Pain #3 :

5. Having all the stakeholders to agree on the KSF gives a frame to the project
Question the stakeholders to get the KSF : what is necessary to consider that the
project is a success ?
List their answers below, and order by priority :
Key Success Factors (KSF)
● KSF #1 :
● KSF #2 :
● KSF #3 :

6. 6
Data Type (what kpis…) Data source (name and format excel, csv…) Where (data lake, ftp…)
Data is necessary to bring value and actionability to the project.
Data must be available, clean, and well formatted to be exploited efficiently in a
project
Ask the Data Specialist to list all the data sources available and to be used on the
project
List the answers below :
Data

7. Communication
A clear, honest, scheduled and recurring communication.
Also, works better with a dedicated tool.
Can you think of any tool that will bring all the stakeholders to be able to have an
effective communication and equal access to the project progression ?
Also, think about the type of interactions you will encounter during the project and
how to communicate effectively the feedbacks and comments.
Project touch points Date People involved

8. Acknowledged and respected by all.
Methodology allows to time the project and make sure that it doesn't drift over
time.
Here is an example of our homemade methodology at Toucan Toco, inspired by
Agile principles :
KickOff
2 Hours 1 Week
Back office
Meeting
Methodology
ITERATION
Configuration/Conception
& Data Integration
Review
(Phone)
1 Hour 1 Week
Configuration/Conception
& Data Integration
Delivery
(Demo &
feedback)
2 Hours

9. I created this checklist to share best practices
with other project managers
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanne-bertrand-a90b4220/
LET’S HAVE A CHAT ON LINKEDIN

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