Project Managers Can Prevent and Stop Project Management Failures

Stop Project Management Failures
The project manager would really like to ascertain his or her project win acclaim as an excellent success. Nobody sets bent fail, but some projects do go down in flames. When this happens, it's tempting to push the dead-on-arrival project under the carpet and hurry on, but it's smarter to require a careful check out the project and find out what went wrong so similar problems are often avoided within the future. There are several factors which will kill a project faster than arsenic poisoning.

Poor communication/Poor leadership

It's the leader's job to form sure senior management and team members are all on board with the project which all know their responsibilities. However, a pacesetter may make vague assignments and not follow up with the team again until the project is nearly due. That's a sure-fire recipe for failure.

Micromanagement

You may know exactly what you're doing to guide your project team to victory. the matter is, your boss doesn't know, and he or she keeps shooting up with impractical orders and changes that do not add up . Trying to please a micromanaging boss may be a common reason projects fail.

Vague Objectives

A project can't succeed if you do not know exactly what its objective is. Objectives should be quantifiable in order that anyone evaluating the project can easily see whether or not it met its goals. as an example , rather than "make customers happy" an objective goal could be , "improve customer service satisfaction by one-tenth ."

The project grows too big and unwieldy

This is also referred to as the "creep" syndrome and therefore the "oh, by the way" syndrome. We've all been there. A project starts out with a transparent objective like keep track of client spending trends. Then another manager suggests that the project should encompass the company's buying trends also . soon , another manager wants it to stay track of client credit ratings. Soon the revised project looks nothing just like the one that was initially conceived, the project manager has lost control, and failure is imminent.

The team is wrong

Sometimes the team selected for a project simply do not have the knowledge and skills necessary to finish it, even with strong leadership. having the ability to guage the team at periodical intervals and replacing folks that still underperform or do not have the required people skills to steer others will make sure the job is completed more efficiently.
In a perfect world every project would be "on time and within budget." But reality (especially the proven statistics) tells a really different story. it isn't uncommon for projects to fail. albeit the budget and schedule are met, one must ask -

Did the project deliver the results and quality we expected?

Answer to the present question might be different in several perspective. there's no single method or organizational structure which will be wont to manage projects to success. Project failure can happen in any organization and to any project.

There are many reasons why projects (both simple and complex) fail; the amount of reasons are often infinite and may fit into different phase of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), initiation through go live. Sometimes it's out of the control of a project manager and/or the team members. Sometimes failure is controllable. Failed projects and other people involved the failure have some things in common. I even have tried to draft few critical and most elementary reasons supported my experience for project failure and should differ project to project.

From outside view, it might be that each one reason will roll up to project manager's responsibility and accountability however from my perspective it should be collective responsibility.

Here are the a number of the common reasons why project fails - supported my experience.

Incompetent Project Manager

First possible explanation for project failure is that the project manager. A project manager who helps steer the project during a timely fashion and provides sound, inspiring leadership can go an extended way toward bringing a few successful project. Reasons like "an incompetent project manager" "project manager unwilling to form decisions," "project problems ignored", "poor management by the project leader," "loss of control by the project manager," and "the failure of the project manager to delegate", "working as only as coordinator" are most vital reason given for project failure.

Less Involvement of Project Managers

This is always a subject of debate for project managers: Should they only specialise in pure project management activities like reporting, cost and issue tracking, or should they also dive into ground-level review and design? there's no correct answer. Even the most important project depends on the success of the littlest components. Every detail contains a seed which will mean the difference between success and failure. On relatively inexperienced teams, project managers must be involved within the details for key activities. this may help them have better control of the trouble also as provide true status of the project to stakeholders.

Unavailability to Skilled Resources

Every project has some resource estimations before starting of the project and even every vendor submits key personnel details and profile as a part of bidding process to accumulate project. However picture is usually opposite once project is awarded. Initial resource estimations and loading sheet handed over to project managers as a part of sales fork over process but I even have seen that project managers always struggle for right skilled resources hence it's necessary that leadership team should understand criticality and supply planned/skilled resources on time to avoid project delay or failure.

Lack of Proper Planning

Project managers should have clear projects outcomes visibility and will involve himself./herself right from sales fork over as this phase is critical for project success. If you do not have a transparent focus at the earliest stage of the process/project, you're making things harder on yourself. this is able to cause inappropriate estimations and half cooked planning.

Lack of Management Support/Leadership Alignment

It is important to make sure that the senior management remains fully engaged throughout the project life cycle. The involvement e.g. through project update sessions imply that they're willing to require appropriate actions to deal with issues raised by the project team, mitigate the project risks, provide leadership, thus contributing to the project success.

Missing Communication
 Communication plan plays very substantial role in project success or failure. Plan should contain stakeholder details I.e name, role, contact no. and email, project team details, escalation matrix and other dependent groups. Information distribution details (stakeholder, information detail, distribution methods, format and frequency) should be clearly defined in plan. to save lots of your project from failure, project manager got to establish a transparent channel .

Effective communication within any organization is vital to stay all of your team members on an equivalent page, avoid confusions and keep them motivated. By communicating together with your team, project managers can develop an environment of trust, proactively kill conflicts, which might bring the simplest out of your team and eventually cause a successful delivery of the project.

Ignoring Change Management Process

Take a second before your project starts to undergo significant changes, or maybe before you search for a technology solution. it is important to define your change management process steps. A firm understanding of change management principles will function a robust backbone for any change management plan. Change is inevitable, regardless of the dimensions of your project. Whether good or bad, it must be managed well to make sure the project continues without disruption. Every project must have a change control process, and each change request, however small, must undergo it. The change's impact should be documented, approved and presented to key stakeholders in order that everyone understands its effect on quality, cost and schedule. The focus of any leader tasked with change must be to align their team with the vision. Communication may be a crucial component in ensuring every team member is on an equivalent page.

No Risk Management Process

Many projects fail because there's no risk management process as an integral a part of the project management process. i'm unsurprised because I even have been on many projects where the danger log is made at the beginning of the project then quietly parked, never to be seen again. Then guess what - a wonderfully predictable situation arises which nobody knows the way to react to.

It was within the risk log but no risk response was created therefore the predictable outcome may be a but optimal project. my very own feeling supported my experience is that you simply ignore risk management during a project at your risk.

Inadequate Quality Assurance

Now this is often where the technicality comes in. Software projects often fail when no quality assurance activities are planned and no systematic activities are performed to guage the standard of development process or ultimate deliverables. are often "> this is often because managers often fail to project appropriate reviews tests or checkpoints where quality can be verified. Code review is a component of this (as defined in #20).

Missing Project Management Tools/Framework

Successful projects are supported a strategy or framework that has project management tools. Right approach can help project managers to remain on top of the project and by using some reliable management tools; project managers can enhance the team's productivity, can increase accuracy and save time by automating activities like task tracking and managing dependencies.

A great number of unsuccessful project results from missing methodology and framework, which results in inaccuracy and wasted time. There are numerous project management frameworks and methodologies (like Agile, Iterative) and that they can support efficient delivery.

Company/Project Culture

Company or project culture shouldn't be supported with political environment. It should support competency, skill, professionalism and transparency. If it is not , team members won't be motivated to try to to their best. Basically, everyone involved must be participated in their a part of the project to successfully complete it. Any actions which project managers fancy move project execution from the political sphere into an objective and analytical one will improve the project's success. This involves managing and retaining the foremost highly skilled and productive people. Knowledge is money. it's job of project managers to manage and motivate in order that project efforts will experience a zone of optimal performance throughout its life.

Inappropriate Prioritization

While some work best on alittle number of requirements, others are better suited to very complex projects with many decision-makers. But no matter when it's done, before a requirement are often prioritized, project managers must consider why requirement is most vital from a business standpoint and what would be the impact of this on overall system whether new requirement would add value to overall system or it'll be overhead. Project managers should lead prioritization exercise along side all relevant stakeholders. There are variety of possible business considerations, including value, cost, risk, and improve customer experience, stakeholder agreement and urgency variables.

Inaccurate Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Analysis is that the initiative and a crucial process that successful project managers use to win support from others. Managing stakeholders helps them to make sure that their projects succeed where others might fail. There are three steps to follow in Stakeholder Analysis. First, identify who your stakeholders are. Next, compute their power, influence and interest, in order that you recognize who you ought to specialise in . Finally, develop an honest understanding of the foremost important stakeholders supported Power/Interest grid, in order that you recognize how they're likely to reply , and the way you'll win their support which may lead project success.

Use of Unfamiliar Tools

Tools are definitely needed for project execution and success but unfamiliar tools may cause chances of failure also . Sometimes, it can cause many severe problems during project life cycle because the team has got to affect the training curve of latest tools along side usual project tasks and duties. Project managers should make sure that tools aren't enforced on project team members, just to utilize for fulfillment of audit compliance unless tools adding some productivity and save efforts.

Change - Always saying "Yes' to the Customer

Many behaviors can cause a project to fail, but accepting regardless of the client says is certain to spell project doom. Initially, a stakeholder might appreciate your flexibility - but which will be overshadowed later by the impact of possible schedule slippage and unmet objectives.. Change may be a major explanation for project failure. Project specifications are often changed for several reasons: initial planning wasn't complete or thorough; Senior-level management changed the scope of the work; the client (if not upper-level management) changed the scope of the work; this is not to mention that you simply should tell customers "no." If you are doing that, they'll feel their concerns aren't being addressed. Before you plan to something, perform due diligence and analyze the pros and cons of your decision.

Bonding between Project Team Members

It is the prime responsibility of project managers to unite the team members to realize a standard goal. The stages a team generally goes through are: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. As a project manager, an honest understanding of those stages would help in guiding a team from infancy to maturity which creates needed bonding.

Things can easily go from good to bad very quickly if there's no unity between your team members. Consider a scenario during which all team members are occupation different directions. Could you expect a positive result to return out of this situation? There might be many reasons from personality differences to conflicting interests. All of them contribute towards taking you one step closer to project failure.

Unrealistic Expectations

At the start of a project, it is vital to line realistic expectations for each member or stakeholders who are a neighborhood of the project. If the project kicks off without setting goals for individual team members, they're presumably to lose clarity and focus somewhere within the middle. Project managers must have one on one session with individual team members and help them understand their role within the project. If goals are set before the project is fully swing, the members would have a roadmap to follow that forestalls them from derailing the project.

Talking Through Problems

Condensing bad news internally for long enough will only seed the explosion afterward . It's is ok to try to to for a limited period, but you'll got to take a while to tug it out, examine it, feel it, and study it so you'll find how to re-channel it, or transmute it into another quite energy. very often we face the dilemma of whether or to not deliver bad news to stakeholders. And too often we forget this truth: Clients have a vested interest within the success of the project. they need every right to understand any development impacting the result of the initiative. you'll find yourself having this heavy thing on your chest which will never move. you'll never understand what it's about. the matter is that we believe that sharing problems will make us weak, which stakeholders will start to guage us for our short-comings. Maybe they are doing . But stakeholders having higher interest who genuinely care about project and you alright know these people, will begin and help. Sharing helps you are feeling less burdened, because you now have less things on your mind. this may also allow you more room to place new thoughts, planning things better.

Guesstimates - Efforts

A "guess estimate," also mentioned as a "gut feel," is predicated on personal intuition and past experience. But even the foremost strongly held conviction might be faulty. An inaccurate estimate can leave a project team slogging day and night to satisfy a deadline. The project might finally be delivered on time-but with an enormous effort overrun. If time is pressing, use Function Point technique, Function Points are units of measure for functional size as defined within the IFPUG Functional Size Measurement (FSM) Method and it's the main global functional sizing methodology. Project Manager is liable for accurate and re-estimation post sales fork over . If efforts guesstimated or not correctly estimated with appropriate tool then it definitely impacts one among all three critical project parameters- Cost, Scope, schedule.

Avoiding Code Reviews

Assuming that testing will catch bugs or that defects are fixed faster once you know where code is breaking. you will only find yourself increasing the danger of schedule slippage because the inflow of defects rises during testing and therefore the turnaround for code fixes increases. Code review helps produce a stable, quality deliverable. Its focus isn't only to catch code defects but also to seem at critical dimensions which will not get caught during testing, like code optimization and requirement coverage.

Skipping Prototyping

Defects may result from a misunderstanding of requirements and a misinterpretation of stated requirements. albeit requirements are well-documented, they need to be validated for proper understanding. Only by a visible walkthrough can users spot the differences in what they expect and what's being built. Feedback must be planned at various stages throughout a project to scale back risks. These feedback loops will assist you spot gaps early and supply enough time for correction. A sketch, wireframe, mockup, and prototype are all unique ways to visually display the wants of your project with varying levels of detail. Understanding that level of polished output each of those present will keep expectations aligned and communication clear between all the stakeholders.

There might be many various , seemingly independent causes of project failure. However, it becomes clear that a lot of of those causes are literally linked to project managers (which may differ project to project) and their way of execution. Past failure shouldn't discourage project managers from future efforts. Past samples of IT project failures gives us the chance to point to the relevant lessons which will be derived from recognizing areas where IT projects is more likely to fail.

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