Why Projects Fail? Tools of Titans in ensuring Project Success !!!

As a project manager, your whole sense of accomplishment and contribution comes from the success of the projects undertaken. There are times when even the experts lead unsuccessful projects that usually follow lots of struggles for the people involved. Project failure can cause frustration and loss of resources, money, time, puts strain on relationships and an unmistakable dent in the curriculum vitae!

It is not necessary that all the projects that are initiated will be successful. There is no guarantee that certain people or companies will always lead successful projects. Since this topic is subject to a lot of debate, before going forward, let’s take a moment to define what success or failure in project management.

Failure:

1.      Budget or timeline overrun

2.      Project Cancellation before deployment

3.      Change in project requirements or scope

4.      Low Customer Satisfaction

5.      Change in project leadership

Success:

1.      High Customer Satisfaction

2.      Timely completion of Project milestones and deliverables

3.      Effective project management and positive feedback from stakeholders

Now, since we all have seen many projects go either ways, sometimes it is hard to see why some projects – despite having all the right ingredients – do not make the cut.

Do some ‘Lucky’ projects or project managers exist?[i] Wouldn’t it be great if we could ensure our projects will succeed?

Sometimes it is impossible to predict the project’s success a 100% of the times, there are certain steps to ensure that the project is moving in the right direction without missed deadlines, lack of support and other failures that haunt us.

Let’s look at the major factors that can lead to successful projects. As you read through them, remember that each of these factors points at areas so vast that they deserve a book each.

Five factors leading to Successful Projects:

1.   Smart[ii] People : Hire the right Project Manager and Project Team:

Having the right project manager is the first and a truly critical step to actual project success. But roping in the best project manager is far from enough. You need a team to get in place a strategy and plan and execution that will bring all of that together. The team should be committed to the project and must have similar vision of success.

Projects and the project managers will have serious trouble if the wrong or inadequately talented people are selected in the team. Out-of-sync leadership and inept team is a surefire way to failure.

To avoid failure, the following guide will be helpful:

a.      Smart People – a project plan will fall apart if you do not have the right people in place. Skills of the key people will be important in ensuring high quality output.

b.      Right Person for the Right Job – Identify the core strengths of the people and ensure that you put the right person for the task.

c.      Ensure long engagements – every person in your project should be in for the long term. This means that the team should be committed to ensuring project success. Ensure that you consider the personal gains of all the team members during the selection process.

d.     Think Win-Win – the biggest mistake made while selecting people when creating the project charter is that we think only about the project. We consider people who have done a particular thing over and over, are considered experts and ask them to do the exact same thing yet another time. While branding this as a safe strategy, we often overlook the fact that repeated performance of success does not leave people with any motivation to excel again. Worse still, it causes complacency. While selecting people, ensure that only the ones who can contribute and stand to gain something personally from the success of the project are selected.

e.      Use the right tools – Using the right project management tools will ensure ease of management and governance. While many tools exist within organizations, selecting and identifying the right tool will make a large difference. If nothing else, please use Microsoft Project – it still remains one of the best systems to use!

Take a Moment : Notice any movie or story about organized crime (my personal favorite is Godfather) and look at how much effort is put in while selecting the gang-members. The don always knows the levers to pull for each member of the gang and is able to get people to do what he wishes. Shouldn’t our project manager be as careful in selecting the team?

2.   Smart Planning

Planning is a very critical step that lays the foundation to the project execution. Effective planning helps keep the team focused and provides clarity of the timelines and keeps stakeholders aware of the progress against plan.

This step is easier if the right people are selected. As a project manager, if you find yourself struggling to put together a great plan, you would surely find some issue with the people aligned.

The direction of the project should be completely clear to all the stakeholders and team members. They should all know the “solution highlights” and steps to success before the detailed plan is created.

Quality and level of detail are the most critical aspects of this step. Assuring accurate time estimation and clear understanding of milestones and deliverables is the key to project progress. Any good project plan will inevitably double up as a warning system for slippage of timelines or costs.

The few critical steps in Smart Planning are:

1.      Create a Strong PMO – the Project Management Office should be centralized and must be strong. The PMO cannot be aligned to any team (operations / quality etc. etc.) but MUST work as an independent consultant for the project. A strong PMO allows for the utilization of knowledge sharing and becomes a trusted advisor in this capacity.

2.      Clearly defined Goals that add value – A project plan will be defunct without clearly specified goals. It is also critical that all stakeholders see the actions that will be taken to achieve results. It also aids in getting stakeholder support for the project.

3.      Reduce Multi-tasking – many project managers get so comfortable with managing one project that they feel they can manage multiple projects together. This is the honeytrap that many careers have fallen prey of. Multi tasking is sometimes seen as the ‘cool’ or ‘more efficient’ whereas nothing could be farther from truth. Plan resource utilization to ensure that they handle small numbers of tasks and projects at the same time.

4.      Generate team’s Buy-In – this is the most important step in effective planning. Most often, the project scope, costs and schedules are decided between leadership teams who may not know much of the details around the processes[iii].

5.      Generate Executive Buy-In – team buy-in helps you get motivated people, Executive Buy-In gets you the stakeholder support. For this, ensure that you reach out to the ‘big fish’ and ensure that this person is wholeheartedly invested. Your project cannot survive on one sponsor – these people are usually very high up in the organization and have multiple such projects vying for their attention. You need the people who are senior enough to knock down resistance, secure resources and manage issues. Many BPO projects will benefit greatly if the IT, HR, Legal and Finance leadership is aligned and bought-in. Else, the project manager will spend a lot of time chasing teams that do not have your project as a priority.

Tip for Planning: Always start with a blank page for the project plan[iv]. Always go from the high level project, to the key milestones, break them down into steps, into the substeps all the way to the activities and start putting realistic timelines for completion of the tasks. Do not let anyone tell you to use previously used project plans as templates for the new project – I have tried it and it DOESN’T WORK! Using an older plan puts you as the validator – the brain starts working only to weed out the steps that are not important for your project and you end up losing the vision of the project deliverables. Many plans have suffered because of this age old and absolutely useless ‘best practice’

3.   Solid Execution

All the steps before this were a preparation to ensure rock-solid execution. Execution is where the true mettle of your organization is shown. This is also the stage with maximum stress and action. Here are the steps of how we can do this:

1.      Manage adherence to plan with an IRON FIST – Manage the schedule very tightly and ensure everyone knows what is expected, by when, and of what quality. Never let the project slip dates.

2.      Manage Scope with the same IRON FIST – all changes to the scope MUST be managed very tightly and changes that were not a part of the original design should be avoided as much as possible. Many projects have moving timelines due to scope changes and eventually, people tire out of the project, funding stops, stakeholders get wary, and the project eventually dies a slow and painful death

3.      Jointly manage the project with the Customer – Many project managers avoid customers like the plague and forget that the customer is the biggest stakeholder and must be kept informed, aware and engaged. Always be upfront and honest with the customer. After all, it is their project and their money !!!

4.       Deliver as expected – this may come as obvious but you’d be surprised at how many times the delivery fails. First of all, many project managers do not understand the difference between the stated and expected outcomes. Always try to ensure that the expected outcomes (e.g. successful delivery on the metrics etc.) is clearly articulated and delivered to.

4.  Open Communication

Effective Communication has the biggest impact on the engagement, involvement and confidence of stakeholders and ensures complete awareness of the tasks, progress, risks and updates of the project with all concerned. Ensuring open and clear communication is vital to the project especially when working under tight deadlines.

Good communication also means knowing when to say NO. the project manager cannot be a ‘yes man’. This skill will be put to test multiple times in each project by way of scope creep, change log management, approvals et al. Project manager should be completely honest about what the tema can do and by when. Anything outside this should be a strict NO.

Below are the key points to take care of :

1.      Schedule regular meetings and Actually Hold Them – Many project teams set up very few calls, or set up calls with the wrong audience. Some teams cancel so many calls that the team members lose interest in attending the calls and finally the entire communication structure collapses. Plan the communication structure ahead, ensure the right people get the right updates at the right time in the right forums (emails vs. calls vs. in person meetings). Find time slot that suits everyone.

2.      Standing meeting – the biggest impact on the project communication is to have one standing meeting each day with the core team and one meeting each day with the customer project leader. Start it in your projects today and thank me later !

The daily standing call with your team ensures that the team has a short call where the entire team comes together and discusses the gains, losses, happiness and pain. This ensures strong connect within the team that has unmeasurable impact on team bonding

The daily standing call with the project leader ensures that you have a regular and close touch of the pulse of the customer. This will ensure that you are the first to know about the customer feedback and are in a position to manage customer expectations.

5.  Careful Risk Management

Risk management is how adults manage projects – Tim Lester

Many things have a knack for going awry. Multiple things failing at a regular pace is not quite unusual. While planning, it is important to create a Risk Log – one formal document which keeps a log of all foreseeable risks, mitigating action items, and a tracker that records progress on the actions. It should be in easy access of all the stakeholders.

Having a risk log is one part of risk management – and an entire book will not even cover half of the topic, so, I will keep it brief.

Fundamentally, what is needed is a risk management approach with a flexible action plan that responds to risks. Detailed planning is no guarantee that nothing will go wrong in our projects.

6.   Strong Project Closure

Project closure the most frequently neglected aspect of project management. If your project does not have a strong closure, you run the risk of scope increase and the resources will continue to get consumed. All projects should have a formal and strong project closure. This should be conducted the moment the project has met all the stated deliverables.

As a project manager, sometimes, the project closure may conflict with your other priorities and it is natural to pay more attention to planning than closure if you have multiple projects ongoing. The project manager and the team must be firm and ensure that all stakeholders have formally signed off the project once the success factors have been met. Customer satisfaction surveys are usually a good documentation at the end of the project to ensure feedback and learnings are captured and retained.

Let me know what resonates with you. Share your feedback in the replies section below.

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Endnotes:

[i] Please read the book titled “13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck” by Ashwin Sanghi. Some of the factors influencing luck are described very candidly and clearly for everyone to follow. And this is not about Astrology !!!

[ii] Many people automatically associate SMART with the ‘Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound'. I DO NOT INTEND the word SMART to be used as an acronym. When I say SMART, I mean intelligent and committed. Smart People can move mountains, Smart Projects can create wonders (Taj Mahal and the Pyramids were indeed construction projects !!!)

[iii] We see this very often in BPO projects where the Global Process Owners sitting in the head office take decision on the scope and schedule for their global teams without realizing the local nuances. My teams have landed up in China during the Chinese new year, in Brazil just before the carnival and in London during the Olympics ! While it was great for the travelers, it was the worst that could happen to the project !

[iv] Do not let anyone tell you to use previously used project plans as templates for the new project – I have tried it and it DOESN’T WORK! Using an older plan puts you as the validator – the brain starts working only to weed out the steps that are not important for your project and you end up losing the vision of the project deliverables. Many plans have suffered because of this age old and absolutely useless ‘best practice’