In our consulting and training practice we have found that going back to fundamentals is sometimes the most effective way of making Project practitioners realize how their current processes are lacking. In the field of project management in general, we have found that four basic navigation questions were extremely effective in dealing with many processes including scope management, cost control and schedule management. Our new White Paper 2014-14 ‘Why the Four Key Navigation Questions Are So Essential for Project Management’ describes how these questions apply to Project Management.

The four basic navigation questions come from the basics of naval or air navigation:

• Where do we intend to go?
• Where are we currently?
• Where are we going right now if we continue the current trends?
• What do we need to do to go back on track and reach our expected destination?

How organizations are able to answer these questions is an indicator of their maturity in the field of Project Controls. Sometimes we encounter organizations that for historical
reasons might be excellent at forecasting or scenario planning, but lack the first fundamentals of adequate project objectives and fail at knowing the actual current
situation of the project. These organizations are doomed because not knowing where they
intend to go and what their actual position is renders more elaborate skills in forecasting and scenario planning totally unhelpful. Hence the four questions can be used as a simple measure of increasing maturity of organizations and processes.

The four navigation questions always look very basic when we expose them. Still as we demonstrate in our new White Paper 2014-14 ‘Why the Four Key Navigation Questions Are So Essential for Project Management’,  they have a wide reach when it comes to actual Project management. They can also serve to gauge the actual maturity of specific organizations by assessing how they fare against the different questions – in the right order because that is the way they need to be assessed for effectiveness.