Reaching excellence in project management goes through building predictable-repeatable processes in your organisation. This applies to most industries running projects that often are very similar in nature. If you don’t have repeatable processes you’ll end with both increased costs (through unoptimised processes) and un-consistent deliverables. Ultimately project failures.

When a project or programme is about launching a new product to market – such as a Smartphone or a Tablet – then it should not stop at building the product itself but also cover the now-so-popular product launches keynote. A keynote now appears to be so crucial to a product that it has to be perfect and so organisation should learn to productise them and get repeatable and consistent outcomes.

Recently we have seen a few examples of companies with different fortunes in product launches:

One that learned from the best on how to launch a product: Amazon. Amazon learned from Apple how to run a Keynote. Running flawless presentation of the product, with extensive demo and with price and availability announcement. Furthermore, hiding the announced project from leaks and the press.

One that is not learning: Nokia. Despite revealing a what looks like a good product, the keynote failed to deliver on half of the expectations: what’s the price and when will it be available. Nokia is not learning from the best, still not learning despite being one of the oldest phone manufacturers. This is puzzling.

One that is unlearning: Apple. Indeed, even though the keynote is next week, we all know that the iPhone 5 is coming and we’ve seen countless pictures of it through leaks of parts and components – we even know about the new headset and power cable. Apple has unlearned how to hide unannounced products from the press. Well…unless we are all surprised next week.

UPDATE:

To further demonstrate this: Apple can’t even prevent leaks from its on website.