Many projects life cycle can be classified into just two phases -
Too Early to Tell where they are heading and Too Late to Stop failures.
We all know that most of the projects over run agreed baselined budgets, timelines and some even compromise with minimum acceptable quality levels of project deliverables.
No project fails in a day, failure is built brick by brick over many weeks and months by overlooking many poor project health symptoms. As success doesn't come all of a sudden so does failures. Many times projects have flaws from project definition stage itself - it could be around unrealistic goals, timelines or dependence on some yet to be proven cutting edge technology.
While project issues & risks are to be managed well to mitigate their impact on project, it is equally important to review basis of project sizing, key assumptions & techniques used to arrive at feasible timelines (e.g. are you using single point duration estimates for R&D type of project tasks?), WBS and tasks dependencies validation by experts/ sr. members, resources & vendors skills & competency levels and 3rd parties work products integration commitments.
Often, many of these aspects are over looked which then add up to the problems in later phases of project. They were never a surprise in the first place. A periodic project review of actions taken to manage project issues and actions done for mitigating project risks can also reveal some of these underlying problems which were present right from project foundation stage.
Some time lack of a competent project manager is also a major reasons why projects move on failure paths. Project manager soft & technical skills with reasonable domain understanding plays a critical role in uncovering issues early followed by proper action plan to manage them.
Project audit by PMO or some independent consultant is often a good way to unearth project grey areas which may turn into big issues later.
Too Early to Tell where they are heading and Too Late to Stop failures.
We all know that most of the projects over run agreed baselined budgets, timelines and some even compromise with minimum acceptable quality levels of project deliverables.
No project fails in a day, failure is built brick by brick over many weeks and months by overlooking many poor project health symptoms. As success doesn't come all of a sudden so does failures. Many times projects have flaws from project definition stage itself - it could be around unrealistic goals, timelines or dependence on some yet to be proven cutting edge technology.
While project issues & risks are to be managed well to mitigate their impact on project, it is equally important to review basis of project sizing, key assumptions & techniques used to arrive at feasible timelines (e.g. are you using single point duration estimates for R&D type of project tasks?), WBS and tasks dependencies validation by experts/ sr. members, resources & vendors skills & competency levels and 3rd parties work products integration commitments.
Often, many of these aspects are over looked which then add up to the problems in later phases of project. They were never a surprise in the first place. A periodic project review of actions taken to manage project issues and actions done for mitigating project risks can also reveal some of these underlying problems which were present right from project foundation stage.
Some time lack of a competent project manager is also a major reasons why projects move on failure paths. Project manager soft & technical skills with reasonable domain understanding plays a critical role in uncovering issues early followed by proper action plan to manage them.
Project audit by PMO or some independent consultant is often a good way to unearth project grey areas which may turn into big issues later.
1 comment:
It is a brilliant piece.
This is Dr. Rajashree I run PMI approved PMP/RMP/ACP/SCMP/PGMP courses => I was wondering if you are interested in being faculty for PMP and others.
You can call me on 98223438
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