Modern project optimization: How to streamline success in the enterprise

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, managing and deploying enterprise projects are a driving force behind innovation and growth. Whether implementing cutting-edge AI technologies, developing new products or services, or launching omnichannel marketing campaigns, managing projects at scale requires smart frameworks, the right tools, and team agility. But, as anyone who has worked in a large company knows, projects often face delays and, in too many cases, outright failure or abandonment. Through a disciplined practice of project optimization, organizations can help identify priority projects, eliminate bottlenecks, and accelerate successful completion.

Moving beyond traditional project management

It’s important to distinguish project ops from conventional project management. While project management focuses on the day-to-day, technical aspects of overseeing specific work, project ops takes a broader, systemic view. This approach identifies inefficiencies across the entire project landscape and streamlines processes, allowing team members to dedicate more time to activities that advance the project, rather than getting bogged down in unnecessary work or tasks that don’t move the initiative forward. In other words, prioritizing outcomes (impact for teams and users) over output (quantity of deliverables).

The financial impact of inefficiencies

The cost of inefficient project management is substantial. According to a study by the Project Management Institute, 11.4% of business investment is wasted due to poor project performance. In a competitive business environment, this level of waste can be the difference between a profitable quarter and a financial loss.

To illustrate the real-world impact of these inefficiencies, let’s examine two examples:

Prioritization challenges in a consumer products company

In a large consumer products company, cultural and political pressures resulted in an abundance of ideation but not enough successful project starts and completions. Among those that were started, there was a tendency to prioritize popular, easily achievable tasks over more challenging transformation initiatives. The result was a deluge of projects that stalled with only smaller, incremental projects completed. Employees struggled with poorly defined roles and processes, leading to confusion and work duplication. The result was a project management process that, at best, delivered minor improvements and didn’t achieve the desired results and success the company needed to stay competitive. 

 Meeting overload at a telecommunications giant

A telecommunications company faced a slightly different challenge in that it had a solid idea of which initiatives they needed to prioritize, but project participants struggled with managing internal stakeholders and too many meetings. As a result, core team members and project leads were stuck dealing with stakeholder politics and alignment versus actually moving the projects forward. This excessive meeting culture slowed project progress to a crawl, turning what should have been efficient collaboration into a major roadblock.

 Ways to improve your project performance

While many enterprise teams are familiar with managing stakeholders and a nonstop meeting schedule, it’s far from ideal. People don’t want to be stuck on Zoom or Teams all day, every day. Nor do they want to be inhibited by outdated and excessive processes. The Think team has helped hundreds of enterprises streamline and optimize their project work to greater efficiency and success. 

Below are strategies to help your company effectively optimize your project ops in a modern and productive way. 

• • Demonstrate leadership buy-in and project champions. Implementing change, especially at an organizational level, requires buy-in from leadership to champion the work before it starts. Without that advocacy, a project optimization effort is unlikely to succeed. Convey top data metrics, ROI estimations, and how the project will help accelerate the company. If leaders are aligned on the stakes of a project, they will help clear a path for teams to succeed.
  • Use a data-driven approach. Many projects and teams are created based on industry knowledge and gut feelings. Data must be a critical component—from getting leaders on board to planning and execution—across every step of the project. Use concrete data to illustrate the benefits of project optimization. By demonstrating how streamlined processes can lead to fewer, more productive meetings and accelerated project completion, leaders will be more likely to take note and, hopefully, less likely to constantly ask project stakeholders to “jump on a quick call” to give them status updates.
  • Create an outcome-focused mindset. Begin with the desired outcome and work backward, identifying the projects that will contribute most to achieving the goal and mapping out the most efficient path to reaching it. By focusing on outcomes, it’s no longer about the individual tasks or steps, but organizing projects around strategic business value and impact. This also lets teams stay focused on the big picture.
  • Identify and prioritize your core project teams. When building out your project framework, it’s important to determine who is most affected by current inefficiencies within your core teams. Often, these individuals may also be blamed for any project roadblocks or bottlenecks. In the telecommunications example above, the technical team responsible for the project was consumed by so many meetings that they struggled to get the actual work done. By identifying the issues that they may face and addressing them early on, project ops leads can not only pinpoint the key problems they need to focus on but also create a compelling story to ensure meaningful change management for other business stakeholders. 
  • Analyze your meeting culture. Redefine the purpose of meetings to doing, not simply communicating status updates. There are so many available collaboration and project management tools (Teams, Jira, Asana, etc.) that make it easy to track milestones and KPIs in real-time. Then, shift the focus of meetings to decision-making and actionable work. With project management tools providing easily available status information, meetings should be reserved for collaborative problem-solving and forward momentum.
  • Make small moves at the start. It’s important to note that lasting change typically occurs through small, incremental improvements over time. While sweeping changes may seem appealing, they often lead to confusion and resistance. Instead, focus on addressing the small but persistent issues—such as unnecessary recurring meetings, too many stakeholders, or stalled projects—that collectively hamper productivity and progress.

Fostering project success through optimization

 Data and communication are your team’s most strategic assets. By adopting a data-driven approach and implementing the changes noted above, enterprises can uncover hidden inefficiencies, drive company-wide success, and achieve strong ROI. 

 In an era where businesses must innovate or lose their competitive edge, effective project optimization is essential. By taking a step back to assess the broader project landscape and implementing targeted optimization strategies, companies can transform their project management approach from a potential bottleneck into a powerful driver of success. 

If you’d like to learn more, let’s talk. Our team at Think Company works with enterprises on a daily basis to help them optimize their project ops and processes. Get in touch!