Project Health Checks and Audits

Saturday, 14 November 1998 00:00

Media Information

People talking and listening to Todd Williams

Interview:
Public Sector Problem Projects

Media contact:

Joanne McCall
Office: +1 (503) 642-4191
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Office contact:

Savannah Rogers
Office: +1 (360) 834-7361
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833 NW 24th Ave
Camas, WA 98607

Keynotes
Event Planner's Page(requires registration)

Publications

Image of Rescue the Problem Project

Author
Rescue the Problem Project
AMACOM (2011)

Image Gower PIPM

Contributing Author
Gower's Handbook of People In Project Management
Gower (2013)

Visualizing Change:
Making Change Fun

Presentation:
Back From Red Excerpts

Book:
Rescue the Problem Project Trailer

Published in Media Contacts
Sunday, 08 July 2012 00:00

Stop All IT Projects!

Again, I was chided for saying there are no Information Technology projects. This time, the excuse was that the company built software. I countered my antagonist by asking if the same group that built their software also maintained the account system, workstations, email, and network. "No, that is a separate group." He was missing that his company's production group was not IT. Information Technology is the support group... and yes, they should not be doing anything that fails to directly affect getting product out the door or reducing costs. Every project's goal must be to deliver to the operational needs of the company—selling product—not to the whims and desires of the IT group. If a project fails to address the needs of the customer (directly or indirectly), then it should never see a penny of funding. This seems such an elementary concept, but it is routinely violated by techno-bigots trying to implement the latest toy or tool.

Published in IT Assessment
Sunday, 04 March 2012 00:00

Technologists Are Never the Problem

I sent a note to professional organization's program director the other day asking if their group would be interested in hearing about methods to increase project success. The organization was for a technical group that worked with data transformation—a skill set used in every IT project I have ever been on. The reply came in a prompt, succinct, and sarcastic reply:

"We [sic] you please tell me just how this would ever relate to the members of our group. You obviously do not understand that we are not responsible for running the project."
Published in IT Assessment

Information Technology organizations continually struggle to build systems that meet their customer's needs. They work tirelessly developing solutions that are delivered late, difficult to use, or deficient in key features and functions. This is nothing specific to the last couple decades; it stretches back to the first systems developed. Fredrick Brookes eloquently underscores this in his recount of the 1960's software engineering project to develop the IBM 360 in his book The Mythical Man-Month (1975) and is required reading for all IT executives. For the Chief Information Officer to solve this problem takes a new approach, one, nearly opposite from today's direction.

Published in IT Assessment
Saturday, 15 August 2009 00:00

Extensibility

Yes, I am on that soapbox. Ensuring that maintainability and adaptability are part of a system is a "best practice," extensibility is not. To the extent that a highly structured system is extensible, that is the end of any commitment to building for the future.

Adding hooks and stubs for something that may not happen, confuses and clutters the design of the resulting system. Building and running prototypes wastes time. Making a system extensible adds significant undefined scope. The reason is that no one knows what the future will bring. Furthermore, how can it be tested if the systems it is interfacing with are not defined?

Published in IT Assessment
Monday, 21 April 2014 00:00

Project Health Check

Visualizing Change Session Photo

Projects never go bad overnight. It takes time. They slowly drift away from the baseline. Maybe it is a change request that goes undocumented, or a series of tasks that run a little late, or an over-optimistic employee not realizing they are in trouble, or misinterpreted communication. They all add up over time and are very difficult to detect while in the heat of the delivery. It often takes an experienced outsider who is removed from the history and politics to see the issues and make the recommendations that will keep a project on track. The Project Health Check does just that—keeping your project healthy.

The other day while preparing for an interview with Fortune Magazine, a junior colleague asked, "When recovering a failing project, what are the role differences for various people in the organization?" Great question! I had never sat down and captured that aspect of project recovery. After all, failed projects are a hodgepodge of lost leaders, perplexed project managers, and trampled team members. Without defining everyone's roles early and continually refining those roles, you will struggle establishing calm in what is otherwise a very stressful situation.

Published in Health Checks & Audits
Tuesday, 04 November 2014 00:00

Project Health Check & Audit Services

Projects never go bad overnight. It takes time. They slowly drift away from the baseline. Maybe it is a change request that goes undocumented, or a series of tasks that run a little late, or an over-optimistic employee not realizing they are in trouble, or misinterpreted communication. They all add up over time and are very difficult to detect while in the heat of the delivery.

It often takes an experienced outsider who is removed from the history and politics to see the issues and make the recommendations that will keep a project on track. The Project Health Check provides the data and accountability you need to maintain your project on a proper course.

Sunday, 07 March 2010 00:00

Who Do You Trust?

Trust

The first ingredient in recovering any project is trust. The team must trust the recovery manager, the customer must trust the supplier, team members must trust each other, and so on, until all permutations are exhausted. Without trust, all is for naught. Therefore, to have a successful recovery, or project for that matter, it is a requirement to thoroughly understand trust and how to foster it.

Published in Health Checks & Audits
Sunday, 23 May 2010 00:00

Finding Gold In Red Projects

The scope of Rescue the Problem Project

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.

Published in Health Checks & Audits
Page 8 of 9

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