-
Spotting a Failing Project: 9 Warning Signs
May 23, 2012
-
Values of Effective Project Managers
May 23, 2012
-
Calm in the Eye of the Storm
May 23, 2012
-
Management by Heroics
May 22, 2012
-
Project Planning for Project Sponsors: Why You Need To Be Involved
May 22, 2012
-
Lost in Projects - Integrated Project Management
May 22, 2012
-
10 Warning Signs that Your SharePoint Implementation May Be Heading for Difficulty
May 21, 2012
-
Smaller is Better and More Effective
May 21, 2012
-
Finding the Roots of Organizational Incompetence
May 21, 2012
-
Project Management Office Basics: Six Secrets For Efficient Shared Services
May 20, 2012
Problems with Project-by-Project Decision Making - Part IV
March 5, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Portfolio Management
Problems with Project-by-Project Decision Making - Part IV (#4 in the series Problems with Project-by-Project Decision Making)
By Miley W. Merkhofer
Failure to Kill Projects
Poor information gives management an insufficient basis for making tough decisions. No one wants to be the one to kill a questionable project, “It’s like drowning puppies!” As a result, failing projects don’t get terminated soon enough. Failure to kill failing projects compounds the problem. Nothing sucks up resources and exhausts project teams more than trying to save a failing project. Resources are spread even more thinly.
Bias Toward Small, Low-Risk, Short-Duration Projects
Not only does inadequate information lead to an inability to kill projects, it also tends to create a bias toward small, low-value, low-risk, short-duration projects (e.g., extensions, modifications, up-dates). High-value/high-risk projects aren’t viewed as feasible (given the constraint on resources). Even if bigger, riskier projects are proposed, management usually isn’t prepared to take the risk due to the lack of quality information. When a large project does get started, available resources get sucked into the big one, often leaving other projects high and dry.
Other Symptoms of the Downward Spiral
Not sure if your organization is suffering from the downward spiral? Other symptoms include:
- No standardized way to document or compare projects.
- Politics plays a bigger role in project selection than business value.
- Excessive project delays due to not enough resources.
- Frequent changes in project status, from “active” to “on hold” to “top priority” and back again.
- Competition rather than cooperation among departments and business units when staffing and funding projects.
- No clear executive-level view of the project portfolio and its business impacts.
- No link between the portfolio and executive-level concerns, such as share price.
- Completion of projects that, after the fact, don’t seem to have contributed much to the business.
Miley W. (Lee) Merkhofer, Ph.D., is an author and practitioner in the field of decision analysis who specializes in assisting organizations in implementing project portfolio management. He has served on advisory panels for several government agencies and has received grants and research awards for work in the area. Lee is an editor of the journal Decision Analysis.
Prior to becoming an independent consultant, Lee was a Partner of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he founded that organization’s capital allocation and project prioritization business practice. Lee is a founding partner of Folio Technologies LLC, a provider of web-based, project portfolio management software.
Lee received his Ph.D. in engineering economic systems from Stanford University. He is the author of the book Decision Science and Social Risk Management and co-author of the book Risk Assessment Methods..
Additional papers on project portfolio management can be found on Lee’s website, www.prioritysystem.com. E-mail: lmerkhofer@prioritysystem.com.
Related Articles
- Problems with Project-by-Project Decision Making - Too Many Projects
- Elements in Successful Decision Making in Project Management
- Inadequate Project Information - Problems with Project-by-Project Decision Making
- Problems with Project-by-Project Decision Making - Poor Project Performance
- Problems of Multicultural Projects
No comments yet.
feel free to leave a comment
Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
All fields marked with " * " are required.
- Agile Project Management
- Ask the Hut
- Certification
- Change Management
- Communications Management
- Computer Based Information Systems
- Concepts
- Corporate Transformation
- Cost Management
- Critical Chain Project Management
- Delegation
- History
- HR Management
- Implementing Project Management
- Integration Management
- Lessons Learned
- Management
- Miscellaneous
- People Issues
- PMBOK
- PRINCE2
- Procurement Management
- Program Management
- Project Lifecycle Phases
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management as a Career
- Project Management Best Practices
- Project Management Charts
- Project Management Definitions
- Project Management Ethics
- Project Management for Beginners
- Project Management Guides
- Project Management Musings
- Project Management Office
- Project Management Proposals
- Project Management Templates
- Project Portfolio Management
- Project Workforce Management
- Quality Management
- Requirements Management
- Risk Management
- Scheduling
- Scope Management
- SCRUM
- Soft Management
- Time Management
- Training
- Uncategorized