Manasi Nair

Making your project goal SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) on day one is the most common advice in project management. Unfortunately, it’s also what kills most goals before the work starts. Research shows that only 31% of projects fully succeed, and a common culprit is a goal that was swapped for a metric. The problem is structural.

In 2004, Amazon made an unusual rule for internal meetings: no PowerPoint. Teams had to write narrative memos, usually capped at six pages, and everyone in the room read the document silently before the discussion began. Jeff Bezos later explained the logic in a shareholder letter: slide decks made life easier for the presenter at the expense of the audience. A written memo forces the idea, evidence, tradeoffs, and recommendations to stand on their own. That is also the job of an executive summary.

Web projects usually blow up when someone says, “We’ll figure it out as we go.” Nobody writes anything down. Then everything falls apart. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession found that the worst-performing teams hit 37% scope creep on average. That’s almost double the rate of the best teams. And it happens before anyone draws a single wireframe.