The No. 1 Reason for Projects in Trouble

Keep your project focus where it belongs, monitor your priorities daily, and keep your project on track.

by Neal Whitten, PMP, Contributing Editor

I HAVE OBSERVED many hundreds of projects, either as a project member or as an outsider. These projects consisted of from less than a handful of project members to well over a thousand, and project durations ranged from several weeks to several years. My experience has been that the top reason for projects in trouble is that the project’s most important problems are not managed effectively, nor with the sense of urgency they require.
All project members should manage to their top three priorities to make the most effective use of their time. (Actually, it’s the top three to five problems, but the term top three is used for brevity.) Let’s look at an example of how this is performed by a project manager.
First, identify the top three priorities. You probably already know what they are, but if you aren’t certain, then you can do the following. Assemble a small team consisting of project members holding key project positions. (If the project team is very small, then assemble the entire team.) Brainstorm and generate a list of project problems; then prioritize the list of problems based on the importance of them being solved. Truncate the list after the top three to five items, and focus only on what is left, on those at the top. Now assign a person to own each problem, preferably a different owner per problem. Each assigned person puts together a plan to resolve the problem. The plan can be called a priority management plan or a risk management plan. The plan identifies, at a minimum, the following items:

  • Who owns the problem
  • Activities to be performed to resolve the problem
  • Owner of each activity (if different from the owner of the problem to be resolved)
  • Dependencies that each of the activities have on other activities
  • Duration of each activity
  • Special items of note, if any, such as the likelihood of this problem occurring (if it is a risk)
  • Persons who must sign off (approve) the plan; these are people with whom the plan has a dependency for it to be successful
  • How the plan can be tracked daily.
Each plan must be trackable on a daily basis. (All other project problems are tracked on a weekly basis.) The owner of each of the top problems meets with the project manager at a designated time each day. For example, one problem owner meets in the project manager’s office from 4:00 to 4:15 p.m. each day, another meets from 4:15 to 4:30 p.m., and so on. Meeting each day, even if only for five minutes, shows the sense of urgency that is placed on resolving the problems. Each problem should be closed as soon as reasonably possible.
It is expected that an owner of a top problem is spending most of his or her time each day in solving the problem. If this is not the case, the person’s time on the project is not being used effectively.
As the top problems are worked off the priority list, assign and address the next level of priority problems, and so on throughout the project.

THE TOP PROBLEMS of a project are the areas that can cause the most harm. These problems must be identified, assigned, tracked, and resolved with the urgency they require. The project manager must exercise a great degree of leadership, vision, creativity, and discipline to ensure that the most important problems are being appropriately addressed. If a problem remains on the top-problems list very long, then the owner of the problem, as well as the project manager (if different), are not effectively performing their duties. Do you know your project’s top three problems?

Neal Whitten, PMP, president of The Neal Whitten Group (www.nealwhittengroup.com), is a speaker, trainer, consultant, mentor, and author in project management and employee development. His books include The EnterPrize Organization: Organizing Software Projects for Accountability and Success and Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success.

This material is reprinted from PM Network magazine (February 2000) with permission of the Project Management Institute Headquarters, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-2399 USA. Phone: (610) 356-4600. Fax: (610) 356-4647. Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world’s leading project management association with over 50,000 members worldwide. For further information, contact PMI Headquarters at (610) 356-4600 or visit the web site at www.pmi.org. "PMI" and "PM Network" are trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
© 2000 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

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