On-Time and On-Budget — but Projects Still Fail

October 2nd, 2005 by Hal

rom down under we are advised to align management compensation to project success. On the surface this looks right. On-Time and On-Budget, by Munir Kotadia, ZDNet Australia, however the author fails to address the source of project success. It shouldn't take management compensation schemes to have a project team do well.

"If all you think is, 'Is it on time and on budget?' then you are in trouble."

Egidio Zarrella, KPMG, recommends IT organizations establish an enterprise project management office (EPMO) to bring oversight and aid to project teams. He goes on to say,

"Project management is there to say, 'If it is going off the rails, how do we pull it back? It is like steering a ship — you don't just say 'everybody jump off and let the ship smash into the land'."

Zarella goes on to say,

"The EPMO does not intervene on every project — that is not the point. They become part of the learning organisation."

So what does an EPMO have to do with executive compensation? Neither author Kotadia nor Zarella offer insight. Until we hear more, let's keep our attention on putting together project teams whose talents and interests are in alignment with the aims of the projects. Along with that, help the team make and keep promises to each other. These things work.

“Fail Fast, Fail Cheap” Sounds Like Scrum

No Commitment, No Breakdown, No Problem!

Linguistic Action Perspective of Projects

Could Occam’s Razor Explain Project Failures?

When Good Strategies Fail in Implementation

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 2:25 pm and is tagged: leadership, theory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Convert this post to a PDF document.

Social Bookmarking

2 Responses to “On-Time and On-Budget — but Projects Still Fail”

Dennis Cohen Says:
October 3rd, 2005 at 8:51 am
In our book, The Project Manager’s MBA, Bob Graham and I have tried to tackle this problem by suggesting that everyone on the project team and the outcome lifecycle team have accountablility for the commercial success of the project outcome. This will encourage more focus on the hand-off of the completed asset to the operations team and avoid the kinds of problems highligted above.
Bob Ferguson Says:
October 3rd, 2005 at 9:50 am
I wrote an article “A Project Risk Metric” in CrossTalk Apr2005. One of the dimensions of risk was whether the product had a market. And yes, people do develop products for which there is no market (Coke II, Kerbango, et. al.).

I recommend “Managing Information Technology for Business Value” by Martin Curley, Intel Press. Curley makes it clear that we are responsible for the business value of our work and suggests a type of maturity model that lets you achieve this nirvana in smaller steps.

Comment On This

If you haven't left a comment here before, you will need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.

On the Side

Construction Software Selection Checklist
08/23/2008
Houston Neal offers a high-level feature comparison checklist for beginning a software evaluation.

Wisdom from Professor Rao
08/22/2008
"Smart organizations make difficult things simple," from Bob Sutton's Work Matters.

Think Visual
07/20/2008
Check out Dave Gray | info, a new website giving attention to ways of meaning, thinking and working by the founder of XPLANE and chief blogger at Communication Nation.

Who Knows Engineers?
07/14/2008

Curious blog We Know Engineers on A/E firms. Worth checking out.

Comparing Lean and Agile
06/29/2008
Scott Reynolds writing at Tales from the SharpSide, "Lean forces you into a culture of quality. Agile is about interactions and people, and Lean is very much concerned with tools and processes." Read more about Lean vs. Agile...

Glen Alleman's Models of PM Success
06/24/2008

Glen makes two big claims:

If you don't have a credible plan and schedule, with a handle on the cost all the "soft" skills won't get you back on track
If you don't have a definitive description of what "done" looks like, so the "soft skills" class won't make those appear

Have a look at his comprehensive stand on organizing and managing projects.

Read Robert Sutton's Blog
05/16/2008

Learn from a Stanford d.School prof. Robert Sutton has a great weblog Work Matters and he's the author of The Knowing-Doing Gap and The No Assholes Rule.

Humility Makes Toyota Different
02/20/2008

From the Lean Insider: Speaking to Toyota employees at the Detroit Auto Show President Watanabe asked that they take responsibility for recent quality problems.

"I do not regard the problem as something that suppliers are responsible for. We must work together so that we are fully aware of where suppliers are."

Bernstein closes saying, "At Toyota, they know that doing the best job of serving the customer is what makes the company profitable."

Lean Project Management
02/19/2008

Brad Appleton reviewed Lean Project Management, by L Leach concluding, "I found Lean Project Management to be a fairly quick read providing a good overview of some TOC and CCPM fundamentals and how they align with Lean thinking."

Claude Emond, Guest Blogger
01/11/2008

I'm glad to have Claude posting at RPM. It was Claude who gave name to these wonder filled times -- the project age. Please welcome him with your comments.