Evade Project Failures - Insights & Strategies

Working with various industries to help them navigate complex programs and projects throughout my career journey helped me drill down the most common problems that result in project failures. Strategizing carefully around these can largely contribute to the project’s success.

1. Failure to Evaluate Project Requirements against Triple & Other Competing Constraints

While there can be various execution flaws that lead to failures, the most critical aspect is to evaluate your project requirements against the Triple Constraints (Iron Triangle) and other Competing Constraints even before selecting the developmental approach for the project while responding to RFPs/RFQs (Request for Proposal/Request for Quotation).

2. Stakeholder Identification and Engagement Failure

As the projects progress, the stakeholders may change based on their needs, interests, priorities, and other reasons. We must constantly identify the right stakeholders and keep them engaged. Stakeholders' engagement and satisfaction can be managed through various means:

a.?Ensure the Stakeholder Engagement Matrix is created, updated, and followed by teams for effective engagement.

b. Ensure an effective Communication Plan is laid down at the beginning of the Program/Project and regularly reviewed by the teams.

c.?Regular Operating Committee Meetings are scheduled with the crucial stakeholders to discuss progress, dependencies, blockages, impediments, etc. Ensure the effectiveness of these meetings.

d.?Regular Steering Committee Meetings are scheduled with executive leadership to update program success, progress, and risks, and gather the support/ decisions required.

e.?Follow a collaborative approach to create a win-win situation for all

3. Customer First Approach Failure

Irrespective of the industry you work for, customer/stakeholder satisfaction is another crucial aspect to take accountability for. We must follow the Customer First Approach, which means keeping your customer first. In other words, understanding the customer behavior, desired approach, requirements, and priorities is the key to project success.

To align your strategy with the customer, we must include the customer and all stakeholders in the very initial discussions of project onboarding. We can use one of these top three prioritization techniques to evaluate and prioritize the customer requirements and decide the roadmap and path forward.

a.?MOSCOW Analysis Technique

This is one of the crucial techniques that can be used to align stakeholder expectations for a product/service/ etc. This technique offers a structured framework for stakeholders who usually are from various teams like business, IT, etc. to have healthy discussions, debate, and mutually agree on the task/feature priority. It is commonly used where Agile methodologies like Scrum, Rapid Application Development (RAD), and Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) are chosen.

As the acronym suggests, MOSCOW can be categorized into the following quadrants:

??b. Kano Model

This model is primarily used by product companies and focuses on customer satisfaction and loyalty. It helps prioritize product roadmap features based on the customer’s opinion. It enables product teams to weigh a specific feature against the cost and value it may bring by the joint opinion of internal and external stakeholders. In my view, it can also be used by the service industry to know the priorities of the customer placing them in relevant following quadrants shown in the diagram below. ?

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c. Prioritization Matrix /Criteria Matrix

This prioritization method is based on two factors - business value and the required effort for each work item to be implemented. Each work item is rated on a scale of 1-10 by internal & external stakeholders based on these two factors and then placed in relevant quadrants to get the bigger picture.

Quadrant 1 – Place the work items that have a high impact and require less effort. Therefore, quadrant 1 lists the high business value, critical, and urgent features/items/tasks that must be tackled with utmost priority.

Quadrant 2 – Place the work items that have a high impact and require high effort. Therefore, quadrant 2 lists important but not urgent features/items/tasks that can be tackled next in priority.

Quadrant 3 – Place the work items that have a low impact and require low effort. Therefore, quadrant 3 lists features/items/tasks that do not contribute much to the outcome/ result and can be tackled at a later stage.

Quadrant 4 – Place the work items that have minimum to no impact. Therefore, quadrant 4 lists the least important features/items/tasks that can even be eliminated.

We can also use other prioritization techniques that fit our needs, but these work well for projects where external stakeholders have high stakes.

4. Effective Communication Failure among Cross-functional Teams

Communication plays a great role in project success especially when various departments, cross-functional teams, or vendors are involved. We must remember the below listed five C’s for effective communication to avoid delays and achieve the desired outcomes. These five C’s practiced along with a balance of Emotional Quotient can help achieve great results.

5. Other factors

Numerous other things may impact the project's success like scope creep, resource availability & capability issues, funding issues, or the organization’s culture, readiness to adapt, maturity to understand the project management practices, etc. but these can be dealt with by implementing effective change management models & techniques, basic project management protocols, and following situational leadership techniques.

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