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

Sunday, 17 October 2010 19:31

Aligning for Success, Getting Your Ducks in a Circle

As mentioned last week, alignment is of the utmost importance. Achieving alignment, at first glance, is easier when the supplier works for the same company as the customer, say an IT organization delivering a new application to a business unit. However, from my experience there is little difference. In fact, exploring a vendor's world, where access to the customer is inhibited, sheds significant light on techniques to improve the customer-supplier relationship. Classically, vendors must wait for a request (RFP or RFQ) before they can get access to the customer. Exploring ways of "fishing up stream," as an eloquent account manager friend of mine says, is critical in improving project success. To understand this we need to review a couple of case studies on vendor success and failure.

It Is All About Alignment, Not Expectations

I have always enjoyed cooking and rarely thought of it as a chore, let alone a project; however, when my wife became ill, I became the household chef and had to learn a new way to cook. Every evening was a project with varying degrees of success. Eventually making multi-course meals from scratch became easier. I used to joke that cooking Chinese food was two hours of chopping fresh vegetables and ten minutes with three blazing woks.

The Politics of Risk

Risk is a risk in itself. It is risk for you if you dare bring it up. Have you ever identified the risk, in writing, that your boss' inherent inability to make decisions is going to sink the project? How about the company loss of market share will require laying off half the project team? Or, that the project manager has never had a successful project? These are CLMs (career limiting moves). Even mentioning such common risks as a company's inexperience in the project's domain is too risky to put in the risk register. It is as if management enjoys blissful ignorance and relishes the firefight that ensues. Cowboy mentality. Identifying risk, modeling mitigation plans, and compiling contingency are too boring compared to the thrill of disaster recovery.

Loyalty: The Ever Changing Company-Employee Relationship

Loyalty. I have heard a lot about loyalty lately. It focuses on a company's loyalty to their employees. The current stormy economic condition means layoffs and employees on both sides of the pink slip are unsettled. Albeit, conditions today bare a stronger semblance to a hurricane stalled over the employment sector, while Wall Street seems to be holding its own, when the floodwaters subside both employees and employers will be on more fertile ground. As opposed to straining loyalty to its breaking point, it is only taking on a new form.

Good Estimates Only Have a 50% Chance of Being Made

Estimates are wrong if you cannot beat them half of the time; they are also wrong if you are not late half the time. Neither condition is one that should make management upset. In fact, matching that score is a great accomplishment. So how can people get so emotional about the statement? The answer is that people do not understand estimates and how they work. Through years of estimates being treated as quotes, we have been brainwashed into thinking our best effort is to meet the date, not better it. Heaven forbid if you are late. This lack of understanding is very evident by the number of blogs on the subject and some of their bewildering comments. The comments point out wildly different views. Some people think that Monte Carlo analysis gives you an estimate that has a 95% chance of being right and others believe that using Agile relieves people from having to make estimates entirely. Both of which are plainly not true.