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Improving Project Management Failure

October 12, 2007 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices

Improving Project Management Failure
By Clerical Solutions

The failure in project management often stems from executives, the project team & stakeholders measuring the project differently & not agreeing on the outcome of the project. If everyone thats involved can agree on the end goals and have everything in order to start with, in the end the project can be viewed as a project success. A successful project end result can seperate a company from those struggling to compete. A projects success can represent a company’s attempt to establish a competitive advantage & profit from the improvement.

1. Define the Project/ Set Expectations

Everyone involved should agree on the end goals and what the project is supposed to accomplish. Often times projects fail because those involved can’t agree on most or all aspects of the project & the end results. To begin the project definition by understanding the current state. Document the current processes and current tools used. Gather the documented processes & established guidelines by management & each business area. The objective of the targeted current approach is to understand the business goals, current tools & processes.

Document the desired processes, tools & timing required for future vision by management & stakeholders. To move from stated to real requirements, challenge & clarify statements. Identify the changes required to reach the vision by comparing the requirements collected to the current processes & tools. Collect success measures, the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that signal project success. Establish the project scope with specific expectations for success.

Be clear on dates with key deliverables. Use a phased delivery approach if the analysis identifies a great deal of change & effort to reach the end vision. To avoid over design create several phases to a project. Multiple short projects increases speed to benefit by delivering incremental gains as they are available. It does not require the project to wait for the entire vision to be completed for delivery. Validate the current state, project requirements and scope with stakeholders. Gain signoff from executives and key users to establish clear boundaries and goals for the project team.

2. Create the Project Plan & Get Organized

A clear vision & understanding of what must be done, provides the roadmap for project activities and identifies if the project is ahead of or behind schedule. Sometimes the tasks of the project may take weeks or months to accomplish so break it into workable portions. Ignoring administrative steps or efforts creates a chance to miss milestones in the plan. Set realistic time estimates to these tasks don’t add unnecessary time.

Defining tasks into smaller efforts enables the project team to more easily understand when a task is complete. You could create tasks between a half day to five days in length. Assign realistic time estimates to these tasks, refer to past project plans or experts to get accurate estimates in order to complete the work.

Incorporate hard dates, specific deadlines, meeting dates & contingencies into the plan. Sometimes completing tasks ahead of schedule, late or behind schedule can create many problems because of contingencies between tasks & meeting planning. During project planning, focus on implementation & rollout. Incorporate sufficient training, documentation & work time to ensure that project team efforts are accepted and utilized by the project consumer.

Keep an eye on those tasks that have the greatest impact of completing on time & watch the critical path. The critical path, which identifies tasks that completes the project on time, activities that should be prioritized to be completed by that date & helps to calculate the minimum length of time in which the project can be completed. Track & communicate project status weekly.

Update task completion percentages & future date changes to keep others informed. Gains or delays in tasks completion timing impact other work efforts down the road. As early as possible, to keep the project running smoothly, identify & address: project progress, tasks completed ( on time or late) & decisions on projects scope may be needed or future tasks timing may be impacted.

3. Gain Executive Support: Start at the Top

The key is to gain support early on, make sure it does not stop at the project meetings & extends to project scope & resources. For project success identify executive support: Top Level Executives & User Executives.

Top Level Executive Support drives User Executive support, motivate entire user community through involvement in project communication, kick-off & roll out meetings. They approve budgets, ensure the project team gets the necessary tools, training & resources for the project to succeed. Without their support, the project team may not be able to get the computers, office space, sofware, server processing time or IT assistance during the project effort.

For the impacted user groups, User Executives are team leaders. Without executive support, project success is at risk, user involvement in testing, training & rollout activities will be inconsistent.

4. Project Teams Working Together

Project teams that work together produce successful projects. Areas impacted by the project are shown in the project scope document. Executive support increases the chances of top performers being made available for project efforts. Internal candidates make excellent team members by their knowledge of company processes & tools, they succeed in projects & they become change agents ensuring continued project success once it’s completed. So select the best people for the project team.

External resources or outsourcing is a great addition to the project team and they can focus 100 % on the project at hand & External resources are not required to juggle other responsibilities.

A great external resource or for outsourcing is a Virtual Assistant who can handle the tasks of a portion of your project or all aspects of your project. If you or your company want to focus on a certain part of your project then outsource the rest of your project to a Virtual Assistant in order to get the project done on time or to run efficiently. You or your project management team can work simultaneously with a Virtual Assistant. You can delegate parts of your project or all of your project duties to a Virtual Assistant who can save you time, money & help your project to run efficiently.

Some Virtual Assistants are often well-versed in project management support or team dynamics. A very specific skill-set and expertise can be targeted externally that may not be available inside the company. A full -time project manager or outsourcing resource may be needed depending on the size, time & complexity of the project. To help minimize the impact of competing priorities, focusing on the project plan & deliverables improves the quality of project results and/ or team chemistry.

Once a team member selection has been approved, building a strong working relationship is the next priority. The group performs at a higher level & improves the quality of work by building a team identity. This can take time but implimented by a project manager can speed up the process.

Conflict resolution is critical so keep the team focused on the end-user & project scope document. Priority management can also be an issue with project teams. Keep internal teammates focused by temporarily changing their reporting structure to ensure commitment to the project team, tasks & successes. When this is not possible, outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant or partnership with user executives is critical.

5. Risk Management: Prepare for the Inevitable

Risk management is a clear focus on the identification of risk & reduction in probability & impact of that risk. Early in the process brainstorm the business, legal, technical & organizational risks. Identify triggers that may increase the probability of the risk happening & risk symptoms. They are early indicators of risks occurrence. Probability of risk occurrence can be listed as low, medium or high. Classify each of the potential risks with an impact rating & probablity of occurrence.

Create contingency plans for high impact or high probability risks. These risks can have the largest impact on the bottom line & have a good chance of becoming real issues. Create plans with tasks, timing & probable resource assignments that can be quickly put into action if the risk situation is identified.

6. Scope Management: Stick to the Plan

Keep the end goal in mind & practice scope management throughout the life of the project. Any changes to the scope should require project team approval, also any additions or deletions from the tasks list. Regular team meetings provide a forum for minor changes. If the team can agree that the gains from the change do not impact the overall scope & timing then change is a positive one to be added.

7. Deliver on the Plan: Quality Assurance

It is important to meet the requirements that have been set. With proper planning a good quality assurance plan & approach ensures that the project deliverables fullfill the requirements, on time and on budget. To ensure that project quality & timing do not suffer, identify issues early in the timeline so issues can be fixed. Involve a quality assurance team early on in the planning and risk mangement stages.

Schedule reviews and audits throughout the project to identify quality issues early and fixes can be created. Create functional design documents to guide the work and provide a measurement guideline for success. Functional Requirement Specifications {FRS} spell out the user requirements and provide a blueprint for the project team. The FRS should list project assumptions made, so when stakeholder signoff is achieved there are no surprises.

Use business data that represents real-world examples when creating test examples. The Q A team should pre-determine what results will determine a passing grade in a test scenario. Quality is defined by both the technical & business recipients of the deliverables. The users should be interviewed to understand their needs.

Complete business and technical testing prior to pilot. Compile and distribute lessons learned to the project team and sponsors to validate the effort. Once the project is complete close the project with a client satisfaction survey. This type of closure document is helpful in determining team rewards.

8. Communicate Early & Often

Build a communication plan as part of the initial project planning. When building the communication plan be aware of the recipients, overkill will lose peoples interest. Too much communication will become annoying and cause the audience to stop attending meetings or ignore future messages.

Pick the right audience for the message, it may be received differently by each group. Changing the communication vehicle or timing helps to personalize the message to each group. Share the project overview, benefits and timeline prepares the user community for the upcooming change. It should be done at the begining of the project so barriers for change success are identified early.

Weekly project status updates to stakeholders, keeps the project on schedule. Publication of project success rewards and motivates the project team and user communities. Some people find public recognition to be unpleasant and this type of communication may be counter-productive. Early user success, such as gains made by the pilot group, can be a useful tool to motivate the larger user population during rollout.

9. Change Management

The communication plan is just one piece of the overall change management effort. A big obstacle to overcome is changing peoples behavior. The end goal should be to change user behavior to follow the best practices. Some people become set in their ways when they become comfortable with a set or same process. To break them out of their ways of doing things is an effort of a well-formed change management, then they are ready to accept a new way of doing things.

Identifying all the people involved in the change is the first step to ensure a change management effort. Some people are driven by achieving their goals. The team should be able to show someone how the change would benefit them. Test the new approach with a pilot to learn new issues & fix them before implementation. The best plans will have gaps that won’t surface until a project encounters a real business problem.

Use multiple progress checkpoints, set clear & achievable deadlines to insure the change. Support users with working sessions where the project team can provide process & tool expertise while the user group applies the new approach to their business. The structured work time insures focus on the change effort when other responsibilities could distract them.

10. Measure Project Success

To establish a pre-project baseline, quantify results across all impacted areas before the start of the change. Project success is shown by Key Performance Indicators (KPI), scope document creation and early project planning. The team should monitor (KPI’s) along the way to track progress, motivate users to change their behavior & keep projects on schedule.

The impact of the change can be measured once it has been implemented in the entire company. Most projects require a business case to justify the time & expense of the project. With measures gathered after project completion & comparison of the KPI baseline gives a good indication of the projects overall impact. Comparison of the anticipated benefits & these gains helps the project team do a better job of estimating benefits for future project efforts.

Renee Cloud is the CEO and Owner of CLERICAL SOLUTIONS, LLC., a Virtual Assistant and Business Services company. Renee has over 10 years of experience in office management and administrative assisting. Renee’s personal blog can be found at http://clericalsolutions.wordpress.com/.

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