Archive for the ‘ Why Projects Fail ’ Category
The Denver International Airport Story or Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About How Not To Run A Project (final)
Project Management Expertise As previously mentioned, the person in charge was in fact not a project manager at all but a Chief Engineer. Now, this is not to say that a technical person cannot manage a project. But I would argue that this is a classic case of the “accidental project manager,” or someone who is put into a PM position due to his or her success in a technical field. The problem very
Solving the right problem – training as panacea
One of the things I’ve personally identified as a top ten reason for projects failing is using training to solve other institutional problems. I ran into this situation recently and it provides a perfect example of what I mean. I am going to briefly describe a prospect’s situation but I’ll disguise the industry the customer comes from. The company is a firm that makes software for
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #10
Reason #10 – Monitoring and Controlling Perhaps one of the less well understood facts about projects is that they need to be monitored and controlled. Basically what this means is that in a project you create baselines. (Let’s deal only with the schedule baseline for sake of argument). That baseline is an approved snapshot of the tasks with dates and milestones that you have agreed you will
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #9
Reason # 9 – Team Planning Sessions As I mentioned before, PMI devotes fully twenty processes in the PMBOK just to planning. And they will be devoting even more in v5. Point being, planning on a project is extremely important. That seems like a fairly obvious statement. But in my travels, as I go into and out of companies either as consultant or trainer, I find that team members are either not
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #8
Reason #8 – The accidental project manager I talked in my last post about the fact that so many projects fail because the concept of project management is not well understood and so therefore, is not supported in some organizations. And so I mentioned that people who are asked to manage projects are often not trained. And very often these people are secretaries or coordinators without a lot of
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #7
Reason #7 – Unsupported Project Culture In my twenty years in project management, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. If you ask 100 random people walking down the street what a lawyer, doctor or accountant does, they will all know. Now ask that same group of people what a project manager does. Some will know, many won’t. They won’t even necessarily know what a project is much less
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #6
Reason #6 – Risk Put simply, risk management is one of the most powerful (and, I think, easiest) techniques you can use in managing projects. Why is it so powerful? Because projects have uncertainty. And by predicting risk, you can lower that uncertainty and increase the likelihood of completing your project on time. And so if I tell you that I once saw a study that said risk management had
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #5
Reason #5 – Estimates The Project Management Institute’s (PMI) book of all things project management (PMBOK) has a chapter dedicated exclusivey to risk. There are several facets to risk management but the one I want to mention today is risk identification. Yes, I know, we’re talking specifically about estimates here. But what I wanted to point out is that as input to the identification of
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #4 (continued)
Stakeholder Management (Part Two) So, duly chastened, my team and I went home that night then returned to the office in Manhattan on Monday morning. Meanwhile, I had to report something to my boss. And so I told him what went on and what our speculation about Tom’s motives was. Needless to say he hit the roof. And he started making phone calls. Which led to more phone calls. And then Tom started
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #4
Stakeholder Management – Part 1 I had originally intended each post in my “Why projects fail” series to be one page. But I wanted to tell this particular story which speaks so well to bad stakeholder management that it will be in two posts. So, still overall a ten-part series on what makes projects fail. But maybe more than ten posts. So here’s the story: Back in 2003, a short
Top Ten Reasons Why Projects Fail – Reason #3
Reason # 3 – Communications One of my colleagues said something interesting recently that hadn’t occurred to me. He stated that many people on a project will know the project manager only through his or her communications. So the PM is often working in a virtual environment and some of his team members are in another part of the country or even the world. And they will know him by how his
