Love Thy Project

Many software projects don’t deliver what’s promised on the expected quality. Many of them are late in providing the deliverables, which also results in spending more than the originally allocated budget. Computers with stored program were invented 70 years ago and there have been so many IT projects over the years and yet we keep seeing them underdeliver. Why is that?

The obvious reason is the error in effort estimation. As I wrote in my previous post (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/effort-estimation-ty-kim), effort estimation is bound to be wrong unless it’s something that the team has done so many times in a similar setup with almost identical requirements which is… no fun!

Engineers underestimate the effort not because they want to mess up with the project. They underestimate the work because of the good intention of engineering excellence and a naive hope that everything will go as planned. And of course, nothing goes as planned.

In another article (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/why-do-programs-miss-deadlines-ty-kim), I pointed out the importance of having a clearly defined “boundary conditions” of the project. Not having a crystal-clear definition of success is like playing golf without knowing where the hole is. We can hit the golf ball forward but that’s not going to help much to finish the game if we don’t know how to hole out.

The other issue, similar but not the same, is that the location of the hole keeps moving. We are told initially that the hole is 400 years out, straight forward so we bring out the big stick, hit it nice and hard and it’s one of the best tee-shot in recent days… except that we learn later that it wasn’t the right hole and the new target is now doglegging right and only 350 yards away which made the otherwise beautiful tee-shot out of bounds play. We have to come back to the tee box and hit the ball toward the new target. Even Tiger Woods won’t be able to play a good round in this environment.

OK so this is my 3rd post on the same topic of the difficulty of the project management. What am I adding to it? There’s another critical element which has to do with love… Projects underperform if they’re not given enough love. What happens to the relationship if we’re too busy with all the things around us and not paying attention to our loved ones? The relationship deteriorates.??

I see companies underestimate the amount of love to keep a project healthy and successful and overestimate the number of projects that a single person can manage. Some people think project managers' role is to organize meetings, report issues and manage financials. On the surface, it looks as if all it takes is a few meetings and weekly reports to manage a project.?

On the water’s surface, ducks look nice and calm, seem like making smooth move forward without too much effort. What happens below the surface is legs kicking like crazy. That’s what we are looking for from a well-managed project. Boring project is the best project. There’s no drama, no escalation, no emotion, things flow forward effortlessly (like a great golf swing) from the stakeholder’s vantage point.

Things run smoothly when the project manager gives enough love to the project by clarifying the requirements, adjusting the priorities, communicating deviations, and managing expectations. This takes a lot of work but the best PMs make it look so easy and uncomplicated. So, what do we do with them? We give them more and more projects until they start dropping balls and are not able to manage all the projects as smoothly as before!?

We talk a lot about the technical issues when projects go south. Wrong estimation, lack of good engineers and unclear requirements. Yes, they’re all critical but we don’t talk about the importance of having a solid project management often enough.?

Good PMs can’t define the requirements but they can help understand the importance of them better. Good PMs can’t fix the wrong effort estimation but they can help see it sooner and deal with it earlier. Good PMs can’t solve the problem of lack of resources but they can help the key stakeholders understand the implication much more clearly and set the right expectation.?

No surprise is the name of the game that good PMs play really well and it takes a proper bandwidth and attention. Let them love their projects.