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Project failure is prevalent all projects. Todd's Back From RedTM blog addresses the reasons for project failure along with methods to avert and correct the problems that cause the failure.



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Outsourcing: Hiring Individual Resources

The most common form of outsourcing is to hire resources through a staff augmentation firm. Staff augmentation firms, better known by their less polite nicknames of headhunters or pimps, provide anyone from project managers to developers and testers to fulfill a projects' temporarily needs. These firms match your requirements, based on level of experience in a skill or trade, or talent in dealing in specific situations such as overseas deployments, military contracts, etc., to the people in their database. The challenge remains in getting the correct person, who can ramp-up quickly and integrate into the team.

 
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Kill the Postmortem

In a recent blog on stupid decisions, a reader asked about lessons learned processes. I had to defer the question since my reply would have been as long as the blog he was commenting on. So here we go: the entire class of retrospectives, postmortems, and lessons learned are a waste of time. Well, to be fair, I have never seen them work. They may have worked for others. Maybe the reason I never see them work is that I am involved only on disasters, you know, those projects everyone talks about for years to come, the ones people cannot get way from fast enough. Surely, the type of work I perform taints my experience.

 
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Outsourcing: Being the System Integrator

The system integrator is the magical troupe that works with the customer and the software vendor to deliver a project's desired functionality. They cut through the vendor's promises while controlling the customer's expectations to create a successful deployment. Mike Krigsman refers to this triad as the Devil's Triangle; all three parties are culpable in the failure and share in the success. However, the system integrator is responsible for holding the three together to achieve successful delivery. The cornerstone to this relationship is a thoughtfully built contract.

 
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Finding Gold in Red Projects

The costs of failing projects are huge. Roger Sessions estimates the cost in the US alone to be $1 trillion annually. The impact, though, goes beyond monetary; it includes reputation, the organization's morale, consumption of resources, and missed opportunity by postponing other projects. Fortunately, there are also many unrealized benefits to glean from troubled projects. To reap those rewards, companies must adopt a culture to exploit failure and learn from it. More often than not, people just want to get the project behind them.

 
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Five Of The Ten Stupidest Management Actions On Failing Projects

In many years of recovering failing projects, I have found a few management actions whose rationale seem completely absurd. Regardless of my efforts, I am unable to understand or dissuade them from their decisions. These decisions either precipitate the failure or greatly exacerbate the project's dilemma. Regardless, due to management's level of shear desperation, they can only be classified as stupid decisions. If there were the Darwin awards for management, these would qualify.

 


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Project Failure Insight:

The following blogs regularly have articles on project failure, recovery and good management practices.
Chris Curran
CIO Dashboard
Michiko Diby
Preventing Project Failure
John Estrella
Dr. John A. Estrella's Blog
Mike Krigsman
IT Project Failures on ZDNet
John F. Moore
Random Thoughts of a Boston-based CTO
Roger Sessions
Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises

Earn PDUs with the online class Recovering Failing Projects

Suggested Books

Many of these books have reviews in the "Books to Read" section of this site.

The Toyota Way
by Jeffery Liker

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