The Unrealistically real disaster : Planning vs Execution

In the realm of product, engineering or program management, the gap between planning and execution often becomes evident, revealing the challenges and complexities of bringing a project to fruition.

Understanding why deviations occur and how to mitigate them is essential for success.

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Reasons for Deviation:

1. Unrealistic Planning

?? Plans can be overly optimistic, underestimating complexities or overestimating capabilities and resources. This often results from a lack of experience or insufficient data and sometimes overconfidence or not learning from experience.

2. Scope Creep

?? Gradual expansion of a project's scope without proper assessment can derail timelines and budgets. Additional requirements or features are added without considering their impact or coexistence with existing features.

3. Resource Constraints

?? Plans assume resource availability, but resources can become scarce, overburnt or unavailable, leading to delays and necessary adjustments and at times significant delays.

4. Poor Communication

?? Miscommunication or lack of communication can cause misunderstandings, mistakes, and rework, especially in large programs with multiple stakeholders. Specially instances where logic or rationale behind a decision, not socialized with the stakeholders with transparency.

5. Risk and Overambitious forecasting

?? Unforeseen events like technical failures or market changes disrupt plans. Poor risk management exacerbates these issues.

6. Change Management Issues

?? Organisational changes, new regulations, or market shifts necessitate changes in the project plan, impacting execution.

Remedies to Mitigate Deviation:

1. Realistic and Detailed Planning

?? Involve experienced team members and use historical data to create realistic plans. Ensure assumptions are well-founded and buffers well accounted for in required areas.

2. Scope Management

?? Implement strict scope management practices, using tools like change requests and impact assessments to evaluate the effects of new requirements and practice of having thorough impact analysis, testing cycle and stakeholder sign off before release.

3. Resource Allocation and Management

?? Reserve slots of time for unseen situations and regularly review resource availability. Project management software can help track and manage resources.

4. Effective Communication

?? Promote open communication through regular meetings, clear documentation, and collaboration tools. Ensure roles and responsibilities are well understood and taken care of.

Too many additional responsibilities blur areas of attention.

5. Risk Management

?? Develop a robust risk management plan to identify, assess, and mitigate risks. Regularly review and update the plan throughout the project lifecycle.

6. Change Management

?? Implement a formal change management process to handle changes systematically. Engage stakeholders early and often. System uptime and change failure rates should be measured post every changes.

7. Stakeholder Engagement

?? Actively engage stakeholders with regular updates and feedback sessions to align expectations with project goals. Each one should understand the risk of foregoing respective commitments and how each commitment to goal achievement is important to be met.

8. Technical Reviews and Prototyping

?? Conduct technical reviews and use prototyping to identify potential issues early, allowing for adjustments before they become major problems. Research and development mode for new changes, migrations and unknowns. Prototyping before changes directly to production, are fail safe methods with a plan B.

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Conclusion

The gap between planning and execution is an interesting challenge. Realistic planning, effective communication, retrospective, robust risk and change management, and proactive stakeholder engagement are crucial for bridging this gap.

Embracing these practices helps manage current projects effectively and builds a foundation for long-term success. Learning from deviations, and accommodating for them in next set of plans, distinguishes successful program managers.

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“Don’t be scared of mistakes ! Just make sure you make new ones every time ! And better your learn not to do them again.” --? Someone