Project Management is Missing Fundamental Best Practices

Too many change projects fail too frequently and for avoidable reasons. Industry research shows many project management best practices are ‘completed’ too quickly (ie ineffectively) due to the strong bias for action and desire for quick results. However, bias to action is not necessarily the problem.

Business agility is necessary for change projects. It is a process of quickly, iteratively, and collaborative exploring (understanding), experimenting (learning), and exploiting (creating value) for the sake of generating personal and organizational learning and transformation. Too often the best practices relating to exploration and experimentation are skipped over in projects. We miss the opportunities to iteratively challenge the status quo, prevailing perspectives, biases, and blind spots.

Given that best practices are so often not done or not done well, suggests there is something missing in the best practices. If people are consistently unable or unwilling to do what they know is beneficial for them, there is a systemic problem.

Table of Contents

1.    Why Change Projects Fail

2.    Understanding the Root Causes of Project Failures

3.    Developing Project Management’s Missing Best Practices

4.    Conclusion

Why Change Projects Fail

Too many projects don’t achieve their expected outcomes, resulting in significant costs (financial, reputational, stakeholder engagement, etc). Industry research shows between 50% and 70% of large and small projects fail.

Industry research shows the causes of project failure can be grouped into incomplete processes and people not being engaged appropriately.

Processes Are Incomplete

• Not allocating the necessary time and energy to planning well
• Not defining the purpose and alignment of the project
• Not understanding and defining the problem
• Not adapting plans sufficiently as new insights are developed
• Inadequate methodology for planning and executing
• Overemphasizing technical details rather than business value
• Imbalance between horizontal and vertical activities
• Not results-oriented
• Insufficient or too broadly distributed resources
• Inadequate monitoring and controlling, unreliable estimates, misplaced accountability, and limited risk management
• Scope creep
• Insufficient processes to recover from missteps, mistakes, or failures

People Are Not Engaged Appropriately

• Not involving the customer or stakeholders appropriately
• Lack of team planning and culture building
• Poor communication among the team, leaders, stakeholders, and the broader community
• Inadequate retrospectives

Project Management is Missing Critical Best Practices

The causes of project failure identified by industry research are all predictable and preventable (although, not necessarily easy to prevent).

Although failure can originate at any point in the whole project cycle (planning, execution, reflecting/adapting), project failure is the usually the result of best practices not being followed, especially related to planning and adapting.

If we use the colloquial education-based framework of requiring the ‘heads, hearts, and hands’ to be engaged in learning that results in outcome changes, we can point to heads and hearts not being engaged appropriately.

There is little shortage of technical skills (‘hands’) among project managers/leaders. However, there are gaps in the ability to understand the context and adapt with new insights (‘heads’), and there seems to be a significant blind spot to the ‘heart’, the humanness of the people involved. People (including leaders) are too often treated as mechanical parts.

Understanding the Root Causes of Project Failures

Robust projects require stakeholders (including leaders) to develop a holistic perspective, and an evolving understanding of the project and its related systems. And it requires stakeholders are supported so they are willing and able to engage appropriately.

A Holistic Perspective is Needed

Most people planning and managing projects are well educated, with many well-honed skills and abilities. They have been taught to use a range of technical approaches to analyze and forecast how a range of variables will affect various outcomes. The techniques used are valuable if used effectively.

However, creating change and transformation requires more than a technical analysis of a project. We also need a holistic perspective of the project; we need to recognize the systems in which the project exists. Each project is a system that is made up of other systems (eg stakeholders, specific functions, etc) and is part of larger systems (eg an organization, an industry, the business environment, etc). The success of the project is determined by the dynamics within and among the various systems.

Each system is in constant flux, and the combination of systems can be quite complicated or complex. Yet project management processes focus on the mechanical and linear, rather than holistic, dynamic, complex contexts.

Better Contextual Understanding is Needed

In addition to developing a holistic perspective of the project, a better understanding of the system dynamics is also needed. Most analysis techniques emphasize easy-to-define and easy-to-measure (usually quantitative) variables within a defined environment at that moment in time (eg process flows, financial forecasting, big data analysis, etc).

There is limited exploration of the various systems interacting with the project, and how those dynamics can directly and indirectly influence the project. As a result, many of the people involved with the project do not really understand the situation, the dynamics of the situation, nor how the systems change in relation to each other. This can result in the wrong problem being ‘fixed’.

Fixing the wrong problem is a waste of resources, and potentially causing various undesired spin-off effects. And even worse, not understanding the systems in which the project exists can result in missed opportunities. There are times the ‘problem’ may not actually be a problem, but rather an opportunity that isn’t yet understood.

Qualitative or textural and contextual information (mapping, stories, thick and rich data, sense-making, etc) needs to be leveraged in addition to quantitative, linear information for a more complete understanding of the systems and their dynamics. Better understanding is an iterative process of observing, learning, and developing new insights.

People Need to be Truly Able and Willing to Engage

To understand why competent and motivated people don’t do what they know they should do, we need to ask whether it is a problem of ability and/or willingness at an individual or systems-level.

• Ability issues are a lack of competencies (knowledge, skills, and intuitive abilities) that can be addressed with appropriate learning.
• Willingness issues can be due to misalignment, or psychological barriers that originate from mindsets and learned behavior patterns. These can be addressed with appropriate reflection and transformation.
• Ability and willingness issues can also be due to systemic issues. Stakeholders can face barriers from a lack of relevant guidance, a lack of flexibility/choices, and/or a lack of safety. Systemic issues can include miscommunication, misalignments, and inadequate processes, psychological safety, and motivation. These must be addressed at the organizational level.

Stakeholders’ abilities and willingness must be addressed at the appropriate personal, team, or system levels.

Developing Project Management’s Missing Best Practices

Industry research suggests not enough time and energy is given to developing an understanding (at an individual, team, and organizational level) of the dynamics of the problem and its context.

If the problem is relatively straightforward, with clear cause-and-effect relationships, then moving forward quickly with tried-and-true approaches makes sense. However, creating change or transformation is usually not a simple task; it is usually complicated or complex.

Working in complex situations requires a continuous effort to deepen and broaden understanding of the situation. It is a constant state of experimentation. And adding qualitative ways of thinking to the quantitative ways we have taught and for which we have been rewarded is a process of trading our identities as ‘experts’ to someone who continuously develops and updates their expertise.

In complexity, there are lots of direct and indirect relationships. Things are not black-and-white. There are no ‘right’ answers. And things keep evolving. It can feel very destabilizing. We are giving up the known and comfortable in exchange for the unknown and uncomfortable. It is risky. It can generate strong emotions.

Yet, too often we treat learning and transformation as cognitive, mechanical processes. Learning and transformation are cognitive and physiological processes; human systems include the body and the mind. We must work with our physiological processes (which are sometimes felt as emotions) as well as our cognitive processes.

To change from a more traditional project management approach to one that results in business agility, we must work with all levels of interconnected systems: the individual, the team, and the organizational.

Developing projects that have higher success rates requires developing the missing project management best practices. We need to develop a culture of business agility, holistic approaches, including addressing the human dynamics.

Developing a Business Agility Culture for Project Management

Business agility is collaborative effectuation: the iterative, collective process of exploring (understanding), experimenting (learning), and exploiting (creating value) – co-learning and co-creating.

This requires aligning stakeholders to a shared vision based on a common understanding of the situation, developing competencies and mindsets individually and collectively, and developing processes that motivate stakeholders to engage effectively in graduated creative conflict. This requires that we develop psychological safety and foster resilience,

Developing Holistic Thinking for Project Management

Understanding the systems of the environment starts with understanding how systems are nested within systems. This includes understanding how people and entities are connected, the relationships among different entities, and the patterns of behavior.

Developing holistic thinking or a holistic mindset is difficult, confusing, and overwhelming at first, because it requires focusing on the relationships within and among entities and systems. This means getting a better specific and general understanding of how and why people behave the way they do, the behaviors of teams, organizations, industries, and entities in the greater environment.

The goal is to continuously iterate a better understanding of the problem and its dynamics so direct and indirect influences can be understood.

This is an iterative process where the competencies and the understanding must be developed over time. It is a process driven by curiosity and creative conflict: the ability and willingness to challenge the status quo, to have beliefs and comfort zones challenged, and to rethink what is believed to be ‘right’, etc.

Developing Competencies and Mindsets for Project Management

Change happens at the speed of humans. Therefore, business agility requires people to be able and willing to engage.

Work with a diverse range of stakeholders, who challenge individual and collective perspectives, assumptions, identities, beliefs, biases, comfort zones, and competencies, a process of creative conflict. This requires people have developed a range of technical competencies, and entrepreneurial, collaborative, and growth mindsets – the beliefs that foster deep curiosity, the willingness to confront difficult realities, and a constant desire to learn and understand better.

To leverage stress that arises from the process of business agility, people need to develop body wisdom (the ability to work with one’s physiology as a source of information), which requires compassion, letting go/grieving, and being able to mitigate the risks of bias.

Conclusion

Industry research shows the frequent project failures are most often the result of not following established best practices. This suggests that project management is missing fundamental issues in its best practices: the appropriate engagement of people.

To engage people appropriately, and to create real, sustainable transformation, project management must expand best practices to include: a holistic approach that includes human systems, a continuously improving understanding of the systems related to the project. Better understanding of the context – including understanding of stakeholders – requires using quantitative and qualitative metrics, including narratives, and less easy to measure actions and outcomes. To help leaders and teams/stakeholders to adopt more collaborative, holistic approaches (ie business agility) requires enhancement of personal competencies.

It is time to start pursuing effectiveness where real, sustainable change, transformation, and growth are iteratively created by developing relevant mindsets and business agility. 

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What has worked well in your projects? Are there other best practices you would add?

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Breaking through unseen barriers at the individual and organizational levels to improve sustainable performance can be accelerated by working with someone who knows how to navigate the process effectively. Please connect with me to explore how I might be able to help you generate your sustainable competitive advantage so you can create your breakthrough results.

Catarina von Maydell, MBA, works with leaders, individuals, and teams to facilitate sustainable breakthrough performance improvement and growth.

Other articles you might be interested in:

Mindsets:

• Entrepreneurial, Growth, Holistic, and Collaborative  Mindsets

Collaborative & Entrepreneurial Competencies:

• Effectuation, Creative Conflict,  Graduated Creative-Conflict, Creating Collaboration, and the Creator-Coach-Challenger Paradigm

Personal Super-Powers:

• Body Wisdom, Mitigating Bias, and Generating Better Solutions

Leading Change and Transformation:

• Project Management Best Practices, Understanding Our Systems, Thinking Beyond Simple Metrics, and Deming’s 4 Factors of Change 
• Business Agility is About Humans, Human Dynamics in Organizations, 3-Levels of Leadership, Motivating Humans, Fostering Collaboration, Leadership and Resilience, and Psychological Safety