It is obviously important to monitor the progress and to ensure proper controls are exercised. Where there is a lack of control, the project is likely to affect another project. The extra resources used in this project are likely to cause a shortage in other projects when too many resources are concentrated in this project.
To curb this failure relevant controls should be put in place to ensure that team members do not operate outside the limits set by the project plan. This can be achieved through the use of budgets, ethics and corporate governance requirements, standards set by international or national bodies. It is important to carry out reviews after every stage of development.
These reviews help determine the success rate and establish whether the project plan was followed to the latter. It is crucial to ascertain that all processes are well documented and that no ambiguities are left before commencing a new stage. It is also important to evaluate the challenges that were experienced and set forth plans to curb similar challenges or to counter the challenges if and when they come up later.
An insufficient budget can also result in the failure of projects. This is so in the sense that it can limit the number of people being employed in the development of the project. This thereby limits the funds available to execute the project in terms of labor. It is also important to be objective about what a given budget can produce by weighing all of the outcomes. If there is a shortfall in the funding then there is a likelihood of the possibility that the project will be short in terms of resources that may result in the overall collapse of the project.
This shortcoming can be addressed by having the management come with reliable financial plans which should be prepared by members with great technical and overall understanding in the resource planning of such projects.
This is so to avoid such shortcomings which can affect the project and limit the development of the software product. The likelihood of a project to collapse is very high especially when management fails to address certain shortcomings which are likely to befall the project.
These shortcomings include insufficient skills on the part of the team leader or project manager, poor planning methodologies or no plan at all, lack of control mechanism on the various aspects of the project, insufficient budget, and poor conflict resolution.
It is also important to watch out for moving targets. This is if the project specifications keep on changing as the project progresses. This will most likely add a cost and delay the project it is important that user requirements are thoroughly examined and analyzed before the project begins. Again, it is very important to have change management concepts. Change in projects or organizations is inevitable.
When changes are made, it does not necessarily remove the risks identified but rather enables changes to be made to have minimum disruption and slippage. It is the duty of the project management to ensure that a specific project being developed is done so with all the conditions being favorable and the failure to address any shortcomings which may arise may result in the eventual collapse of the project.
If there is no senior management person to decide, then who will? Case Study: The worst project I have been in as a project manager saw a rather insidious case where senior management support was lacking. I was project manager in charge of delivering a banking system to the bank.
During Project Steering Committee meetings, the SMP would appear, ask some clever questions but never worry about the real issues in the project. When I surfaced serious scope creep issues to him and that users were being unrealistic, he would say in front of his senior vice presidents, etc — that my team and I were hired to manage all of these things. Projects are a team effort. A team effort between the client in this case the bank and us the vendor.
The SMP continued to ignore my pleas for executive support to tone down user requirements. In the context of IT projects, poor requirements are one of the major culprits causing project management failures.
Poor requirements result in poor development and design. A software program will end up doing the wrong things for users — resulting in massive rework and re-tests. Unrealistics schedules are the bane of projects. I HATE them. Look, projects should NOT have unrealistic schedules. In fact, I think the mindset around project delivery is messed up especially in Asia.
We need realistic schedules to build small, incremental successes in project deliveries. Instead, people are asking for massive changes in ever shorter timeframes. Tip: Always assume that your timelines are too demanding. Ask for more time in your projects upfront. Especially in the requirements stage — it is important to spend time documenting exactly what the user wants instead of discovering a mis-alignment way later in the project. There is a technique to gathering good business requirements and I think every Business Analyst out there should learn them.
Learn these techniques well. But wait … what about any interfaces in the backend that get triggered when the client account is opened? Should this record be listed in a report showing the list of client accounts opened for the day?
What sort of validation checks should be done on the client when the new account request is submitted? What if his record already exists? Or what if he is a bankrupt? See what I mean? There are so many exceptional details to capture in the requirements area. Well, you cannot. The majority of the project managers you speak with will moan about the scarcity of resources. Additionally, they consider it as one of the reasons for project failure.
It is the core responsibility of senior management to provide project managers with the resources required to complete project. Once the top management ensures that the required resources have been arranged and allocated, only then they can hold the project managers accountable for the both success or failure of the project.
To reduce the chances of project failure, it is important that you have a clearly defined project scope, which does not change frequently otherwise, it will be extremely difficult for project managers and their respective teams to cope up with scope creep. The best way to do that is to get the project scope in writing and get it signed by all the stakeholders.
Mishandling of projects is another issue that takes your project one-step closer to failure. There are many reasons for poor project handling. One of them is inexperienced and non-certified project managers.
Lack of skills among the team members can also hinder your project progress. It is important to conduct weekly or monthly meetings, monitor project progress regularly and hold your team members accountable for what they are doing.
Keep things organized and work towards the achievement of a common goal. Identify issues and take concrete steps to solve these problems so that they could not affect your projects negatively. Keeping the stakeholders in the dark is the main reason why they do not take interest in the project. Keep all the stakeholders involved throughout the process, take feedback and try to bring improvements.
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