4 Project Management Lessons from World Cup Planning

[metoc15411]

Our neighbor to the north is about to move from the land of maple syrup and moose to the land of hat-tricks and dangerous games. The FIFA Women's World Cup , which kicked off Saturday, has drawn tens of thousands of tourists to Canada. While attendance pales in comparison to the World Cup , Edmonton officials are scrambling to prepare their city for the influx of soccer (or football) tourists .

The World Cup and Women's World Cup require incredible planning and provide project managers with extensive lessons to improve their trading.

xx lessons from the world cup planning copy

There are only four of them.

1. For large-scale projects, start earlier.
Consider last year's World Cup fiasco in Brazil. The Cup was spread across 12 cities ( an admitted mistake ) and cost the country $13.5 billion, without making the necessary infrastructure improvements.

Brazil was choked by delays that could have been expected key features of paytm (weather and protests) or prevented (deaths of construction workers). Unexpected, unpreventable delays (like the swine flu outbreak ) should, in their own way, have been part of a risk management analysis (as the linked article points out, Brazil should have mapped out potential problems and prioritized responses accordingly). Brazil should have given itself more time to do everything it wanted to do.

2. Don't reinvent the wheel.
With record crowds expected and high television ratings in the United States, Canadian cities have done a good job of using the resources they already have to host the Women’s World Cup. Situated between Edmonton, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver, Canada is relying on its existing stadiums and infrastructure to support tourism growth. In fact, Canada did not need to build any new stadiums to host the Women’s World Cup.

Brazil, meanwhile, was trying to remake itself as a World Cup nation last year. Brazil's decision to build seven extra stadiums was an unnecessary challenge.

Realizing your own capabilities is often a difficult task, especially when you have tight deadlines. Fortunately, there is project management software that can help you identify your capabilities.