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13 Ways to Guarantee Project Failure - Part IV
August 26, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Musings
13 Ways to Guarantee Project Failure - Part IV (#4 in the series 13 Ways to Guarantee Project Failure)
By Ben Menoza
It’s hard to believe that, after a number of years working with project-based teams, the greatest lessons learned are hardly ever remembered from project to project. Most of the mistakes made are avoided simply by treating your project team right, trusting a proven process to run its course, setting and managing expectations accordingly, and learning to admit when you’re wrong. And yet for a myriad of reasons — fear of delivering bad news, ineptitude of the people involved, among them — a project can swiftly become doomed.
That said, if you want the project to fail, I’ve compiled a list of some pointers, guaranteed to ruin any project to some degree. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. If you have more, please feel free to leave a comment.
#7: Always rely on your project team to go above and beyond what they’re capable of, especially over long stretches of time. Never be limited to the 24-hour workday. You can certainly squeeze more effort out of your team.
Fortunately for you, your project is staffed with superheroes. They will walk through fire for you to get this project done, and they will pour their souls into the project. Motivational speeches and talking big are almost certain to energize your team to perform at unimaginable and awe-inspiring levels.
#8: Focus solely on process, not on the people.
It doesn’t matter what type of people you have on the project, so long as the process that you’ve put in place involves many, time-intensive steps that guarantee that only the right decisions and answers are given. Some people may consider this bureaucratic, but you know that it’s methodical. Your team can move forward without these important decisions, because the assumptions they make will almost certainly be aligned with what ultimately gets decided.
Ben Menoza is a senior member of the User Experience team at Optaros, an international consulting and systems integration firm that provides enterprises with online business solutions that leverage the next generation of internet technologies and approaches. He has over eight years of experience managing, designing and developing web applications for organizations in the financial, e-commerce, and entertainment industries, among others.
You can reach Ben through his blog.
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