This post is the first in a two part series (click here to read part 2). Many people talk about the triple constraints in project management and their role in determining project success. In the end, was my project delivered on time? Was it delivered within budget? And what about quality – did I deliver a deployable, usable, error-free system? Personally, I usually replace that last one with customer satisfaction in my concept of three key project success determiners because the customer needs to be satisfied with the end product no matter what.
Let’s consider project success and failure at the mid-stream of the project rather than at completion. We’re 40% of the way through an engagement…is the customer happy? Are we delivering on time? Is the budget healthy? What are our failure points so far? When the project is still in mid-stream, if we can recognize issues and make good decisions and act proactively, we may be able to solve whatever is going wrong…whatever seems to be causing our project to fail…and take some action to correct it. It may take some digging to figure out where and why your project is failing, but from my experience, there are usually these three root causes of project failures to start examining that are still within the project manager’s control to take action on and hopefully ‘right the ship’, so to speak: an out of control budget, an ever-growing issues list, and a disengaged customer or project resources. In the first part of this two part series we will look at the first of these three situations…
The budget is out of control.
This can be both an impossible thing to fix and an easy one to prevent, depending on the project. Seriously, if your budget is overrun by 50%, then it’s not likely you’re going to ever see the light at the end of the budget tunnel. But if it’s in a more manageable position of say, 10-20% over, then there definitely are a couple of things you can do to correct the situation.
First, start managing the budget closely on a weekly basis. Forecast and reforecast it every week – updating it with actuals and sharing it with your team so that you and your project team know where it stands at all times. Trust me, a project team that knows you’re watching the project budget closely will sometimes even accidentally help you ‘fix’ the situation. Marketing project management software can aid this process immensely. At the end of the week everyone needs to put their work hours somewhere. If your team members know you’re watching hours and expenses closely, then they aren’t going to put their ‘grey’ hours (those hours we know we worked, but aren’t sure what we worked on) to your project – they’ll charge them to another project they are working on.
Secondly, pay extreme attention to scope management. You can’t do it alone – engage your team as well. On a project where your top developers are working closely with the customer, it can become easier for them to gold plate their work or say ‘yes’ to small enhancements along the way. That gold plating or those ‘little’ enhancements add up over time and soon you have many hours of unplanned – and non-budgeted – work expended. Online collaboration software will help to get everyone on the same page. Educate your team on the change order process and make sure they are on the lookout for work that is requested beyond the agreed upon scope. When those issues arise, they know to bring them to you – with an estimate – that you can then turn into a change order to present to the customer so they can pay for that work.
In the next segment, we’ll look at the situation of the never-ending issues list and the negative affects of a disengaged project customer or team resources.
