Let’s Be Prudent
September 7th, 2003 by Hal
I love it when readers take me on…Particularly regular readers. Frank Winters commented on my Sept 3 posting titled Never on the Rails. Frank sees me as a pessimist:
Hal - hate to say it but you sound like you might fall into the second cultural category - you don't believe (project) success is possible.
Please read the comments. However, Frank raises a great point. I've come to expect that most projects will fall short of their intended outcomes. (There, I said it.) Projects take too long; they cost too much; clients are dissatisfied along the way; and project participants can't wait to get on to something else. I'm not saying that this is the case for all projects. I'm not even saying that all four conditions apply to disappointing projects. What I'm saying is we need to do something different.
I got involved in the project world out of the love of the one-of-a-kind situation. I met great people. I was challenged in ways I didn't expect. I learned a ton. If only projects were routinely successful. Not always successful, but more often than not.
While Frank implied I am a pessimist, I'd be equally concerned being called an optimist. Let's be prudent. Let's start tapping the great storehouse of talent, wisdom, experience, and good will that we find on each of our teams. Maybe then we will routinely succeed.
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September 11th, 2003 at 5:58 pm
Project success is always a subjective judgment of the customer, project team and stakeholders.
I believe that the key to project success is in managing the expectations of your customer.
From project initiation to closing the PM must struggle to keep the expectations of all project stakeholders grounded in reality.
All of us have requests made of project team that are entirely unrealistic (unstructured requirements and unrealistic dates being the most common). These issues are ‘project killers’ and must be addressed. As soon as the unrealistic demand is placed on the project the PM is responsible for communicating this to the customer and all stakeholders.
I can feel at this point the question “But what if the customer refuses to accept the PM’s explanation of the problem and continues to believe that the impossible is doable?”
This is where your project change control and communications plan kicks in. The PM must do an assessment of the risk (which is what unrealistic expectations are) and communicate it to all the project stakeholders.
At this point, one of the project stakeholders is bound to take this up as an issue that needs to be addressed. If no one objects and everyone sticks their head in the sand then they have accepted the risk.
When the project does not meet expectations due to refusal to address the unrealistic expectations of the customer, the PM should bring out the risk assessment and point to the failure to address the risk as the cause.
This may not help very much politically. But when the PM has properly documented the failure to address the risk, the organization will have an opportunity to learn from the mistake.