Is your project falling apart and you're not sure how to rescue it? Do you know how to determine the root cause of your project troubles, and how you can effectively rescue a project? Here are the step-by-step process for identifying the root cause of your project troubles and determine if your project is salvageable.
Warning signs of troubled projects
Managing projects involves balancing the iron triangle of scope, time and resources. The most frequently cited definition of a trouble project is when one of these three constraints are significantly varying from the plan. This can occur when there is no skilled project manager engaged on the project. However, many projects go off the rails from very smart project managers are on-board. The warning signs show up early in a troubled project and should trigger action.
Key stakeholders who disagree with each on project priorities and don’t engage in appropriate debate to work out their issues represent a very common warning signs. At other times, senior leaders will not make decisions at a critical for the project and they stop showing up for meetings when their presence is needed.
Sometimes the symptoms are more subtle, key customer representative start changing their minds about project requirements or retract statements made in earlier discussions. Critical team members start missing deadlines and meetings because they try to juggle too many priorities. Team members that might be aware of extra time in the project schedule regularly use that time without any apparent reason. Something is causing them to lose focus.
Trouble can show up on projects because inadequate time and energy is put into understanding the current situation of business processes, often called the “as-is” state. This problem becomes evident when team members and customers start arguing about how things are done today, or discoveries made that multiple business processes exist to create a single outcome. Pressing on with the project in this situation is very dangerous. This is because the solutions and processes created by the project can adequately support some business areas, but will totally failed to support others. Instead of new efficient and effective business improvements, the project may produce chaos and unhappy customers.
Another sure sign of project illness is when the project teams try to press forward, but nobody is stepping up to take ownership of the products that we are producing. As ridiculous as that may sound it is not all that uncommon. The time the managers has been ask to sponsor a project but they don't fully understand or support the project goals, this will often occur when a senior manager has a pet project they want to see delivered. Frequently the vision of nirvana held by the senior leader is not shared by their staff.
Projects can often trigger very substantial change in an organisation and despite the enthusiasm of senior managers many stakeholders may believe the changes is not in their best interest. Apparent, are sometimes subtle arguments become convenient blockers signalling project trouble. This usually takes the form of long drawn out meetings when new processes project approaches or other indicators of change being discussed. These meeting blocker debates often over relatively minor changes of procedural discussions can totally halt the project progress.
The last item we will discuss that can cause significant trouble for a project is placing too heavy a focus on project management. Project management deliverables such as schedule, plans for communication, risk, quality and so on, should always be created as pragmatic tools. Many organisations have very sound project and sometimes legislative responsibilities for producing artifacts. However, in most cases the project manager and the project team have the ability to design and apply project management tools in a way that is simple pragmatic and represents enough controls. At times when trying to ensure project is being managed with a degree of control, project management deliverables seem to overshadow the product the project is meant to produce. This can bog down progress, discourage project customers and create undue burdens for the project team.
So remember to keep an eye out for these six warning signs of trouble project:
unresolved debates among senior stakeholders
inconsistencies in behavior would stakeholders including sporadic meeting attendants
a lack of common understanding around the as-is state
lack of ownership for project deliverables
blockers due to personal versus business interests and
too cumbersome and detail project management deliverables
Just in case your totally depressed fear not, relief is coming. I will provide you with remedies and techniques that you can use to help prevent these project issues
Finding the root cause of trouble
Getting to the root cause of the troubled project involves systematically evaluating the various components of the project. The recommend approach is to valuate both the people involved in the project and the project management processes. I suggest this, because people and process are the likely culprit when the projects have problems. Only in a few rare cases is the technology the problem. So where do you start when you are trying to identify a troubled project?
First let’s discuss the areas of the project to evaluate. The first critical element to examine is your project sponsor. It is essential to have a sponsors that is capable, committed and willing to fulfil the role. Ask these questions when evaluating your sponsor:
Does the sponsor still believe in the project? The sponsor needs to believe in the project and its objectives, if they are serve as an effective cheerleader for the project.
Does sponsor have adequate resources for the project? Projects require the appropriate resources which include people, facilities and the funds to acquire them.
Does the sponsor have control over the business areas that will be impacted by your project? Projects bring about change, and change in an organisation does not happen without the endorsement and leadership of management. The sponsor must be able to provide leadership through this change, or the benefits of the project are very unlikely to happen.
Is your sponsor capable of making prioritization decisions? Project personnel are often working on multiple projects, or on business as usual responsibilities in addition to contributing to your project. Your sponsor needs to set and enforced workload prioritization decisions to move the project forward.
Does your sponsor have sufficient knowledge of the business processes you're going to change? Without sufficient visibility to the business processes, sponsors are unable to understand the magnitude in achievability of the project objectives.
Does your sponsor have time to pay attention to all of what we've just discussed? A sponsor with the capability, but not time, is just like having no sponsor at all.
The next project area to evaluate is the customer or your client. The customer represents the management asking for the product of the project. The questions you asked your customer are:
Can they describe the proposed solution in business terms? If the customer does not understand what the project is doing, or how the project team is going about building the product, the likelihood of the customer accepting what the project produces is at risk.
Have business conditions changed? Projects that were a good idea at one time can become obsolete in a rapidly changing business environment. It is important to assess if the project is still relevant to your client.
Is your customer engaged in the project processes? Although the need for the project may not have changed, the priority within the customers’ environment may have. If a customer wants the projects output, but cannot help at this time, a reassessment of the project may be appropriate.
Does your customer know how they will deploy new functions or capabilities from the project? Beginning with the end in mind is a common business mantra, yet many projects move forward without that advice being fallowed.
Are the right resources being allocated to the project by the customer? Anytime a customer dedicate inexperienced or unknowledgeable people to a project usually adds more risk than the project can handle.
Of course the end customer or the end user of a product is also an essential participant in any successful project. The project manager should determine if they understand the to-be processes being created.
Lastly, you need to look at the status of your project team. The people building the product within your project. Items to understand include:
Are the leaders within the project team supportive of other project goals?
At the skills of the project team been appropriately leveraged and utilized, or are they waiting for consistent management direction?
Getting to root cause does not need to take a long time. Interviews with key stakeholders can be done quickly and efficiently. Ask good questions in your get relevant answers that will quickly identify root cause issues within the project
Re-examining project sponsorship
So what is a project sponsor and what is their role? You can think of a project sponsors the manager or executive who has overall accountability for the project. The sponsor should hold the purse strings, and have the financial authority to approve the funding needs of the project. in addition, the sponsors is someone the project manager should have access to, and frequent interactions with, via status meetings and other means as required to ensure the sponsors is informed and aligned with what the project manager is doing. Lastly, the sponsor should have the ability to deploy resources to the project by helping you work with the leaders that manage your project team members. So the key responsibilities of the sponsor include:
being accountable for the project results
have financial authority for the project budget
dedicated time to the management of the project and
ability to deploy resources
So what happens if your sponsor cannot fulfill the responsibilities? The impacts of the project can be significant. For instance, if the sponsor can only meet with the project manager once a month for 15 minutes, it is highly likely the sponsor won’t be across the project, and as a project manager you could be making decisions that the sponsor doesn't support or want.
To address this, the project manager will need to communicate their concerns to the sponsor with the rationale behind their concern. It’s best to provide specific examples of the decisions you are making without their involvement, or significant things happening that required their retention and/or buy-in
Another approach is to ask if they want to delegate the sponsorship role to someone else because they are too busy. Most sponsors will not want to give up their role and when you suggest this will realize they really need to give you more of their attention, it's in their best interests to ensure proper governance and management oversight. A good rule of thumb from the amount of time required for a sponsor to dedicate to given project is this:
Let say, the sponsor control the total budget of 10 million annually, and your project budget is 1 million. The time value of your project is 1/10 of their portfolio. Therefore, up to 1/10 of their time should be allocated to project related activities. For instance, four hours per week.
Another common issue with sponsorship is that person is too high, or too low in the organisation in relation to the size and breadth of the project. It’s essential that the sponsor has span of control or responsibility over the key departments that are impacted by the project. It can be difficult, but very important to make adjustments if the sponsor is the wrong person and not be able to fulfill their responsibilities. Depending on what is not working will depend how to best proceed.
Let say the sponsor meet all the capabilities we have outline, but does not have financial authority. In this case the sponsor can handle all project sponsorship responsibilities except final financial decisions. In this case the financial authority would need to be kept informed regarding the budget requirements for the project, and the project manager or sponsor would work with the financial authority for financial approvals.
On occasion, the sponsorship board or steering group committee may be warranted. Ideally, this will only occur from very large complex projects, when one person truly cannot fulfill the very sponsorship accountabilities. If this approach is applied, it is critical the roles and responsibilities for each board or steering group member is clearly documented and agreed. One person will need to chair the group who would have the final say in the event the board members were not in agreement.
As you can see the sponsorship role is very important to the project success. They provide key decisions management governance oversight. Have financial authority and become the champion for the project. You can have the best project manager in the world but if the sponsor is not capable of fulfilling their responsibilities a project can quickly flounder and lose focus.
Next Steps
The techniques we have discussed can be used to rescue a project. But more importantly, in many cases, applying the techniques discussed here can be applied early in any project to keep it from needing a rescue.
Although many projects can be complex, the greatest challenges come from the stakeholders that affect the project. It's essential that you make a focused effort on establishing meaningful and trust based relationships with your project's stakeholders.
This is true whether you are managing the project that's running well or if you find yourself rescuing a project in trouble. While rescuing a project, never underestimate the power of sound project management techniques.
For methodology for finding the root cause, and proactive strategies to realign your stakeholders, team, vision, and schedule you can check the following: