When Good Projects Go Bad
At some stage, every business runs a project – and maybe more than one at the same time. These might be IT projects or they might be something completely unrelated to IT such as moving to a new premises or transforming how you do business. In many cases the project will be large enough to justify employing a professional Project Manager but very often, particularly in the SME sector, the task is delegated to a line manager who may or may not have run projects before.
The one certainty about running projects, large or small, IT or non-IT related, is that the more of them you run, the more likely it is that you will come across a good project that’s gone bad.
So, what kind of trouble can you expect, and more importantly how can you avoid it? Let’s have a look at some famous (or infamous) projects and see if we can learn from history as opposed to repeating it.
Great Late Projects:
We’ve all heard about PPARS and how after spending almost €200 million over 10 years, the HSE ended up with a system that didn’t work, but the history of Government and failed IT projects goes back much further than PPARS – right back indeed to the very beginnings of computing. In 1849, Charles Babbage, one of the earliest pioneers of computing, designed his Difference Engine – and persuaded the English Parliament to fund building it, making the promise that, among other things, it would greatly facilitate the calculation of tide tables and other nautical information vital to the Royal Navy. Ten years and over a million pounds later, the project was abandoned. The Babbage Difference engine was finally completed, using the original drawings, in 2002 – a total of 153 years after it was started. Perhaps we got off lightly with PPARS!
You can see the Babbage Difference Engine at work here. http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
However, we shouldn’t just look at IT projects for examples of massive cost overruns and significant delays. Construction of the world famous Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona started in 1882, with Antoni Gaudi taking on the “project manager” role a year later. Gaudi worked on this project until his death in 1926 and when he was questioned about the slow pace of work is reputed to have answered that “his client wasn’t in a hurry”. Sacrada Familia now has a projected completion date of 2026!
Common factors:
There is an old saying among Project Managers: “There are three components to any project – Cost, Functionality and Quality – and you can have any two out of these three”. Personally, I’m inclined to add a fourth component – Time – but you can still only have 2 out of 4!
It may sound strange but many projects start either with no fixed budget in mind or, more frequently, a sum of money that can be allocated for a given project, and the expectation is that everything the client wants can be delivered for that money. This is especially tricky when the client doesn’t know exactly what they want. They may have a general idea, but they very rarely know exactly. They may also have a quality product in mind, but many clients underestimate the complexity of their project and, in my experience, it’s in the integration of complex requirements that most projects fail. Then there is my final factor: Time. How often have we started from a position of “the client wants it yesterday”?
I’ve been speaking from the perspective of the people tasked with delivering a project, but if you’re contemplating a new project ask yourself the same questions but from your perspective. Do I have a fixed budget, for the functionality I need, with a clear understanding of how robust I want this product to be, and when I need it for?
Let’s think about this in terms of moving house. You start with a budget, with an idea of what you want in your new home (maybe three or four bedrooms), and what qualities you want that home to have (e.g. bungalow, semi-detached), along with an idea of when you need to move. One or more of these factors might be non-negotiable. For example your new home must have 4 bedrooms or must be located close to schools. What are the chances of finding the house you want, within budget, where you want it and then closing the deal in time?
Keeping Projects Good
Fail to plan, plan to fail. Never underestimate the amount of time you need to plan your project, and you should never start your project until you have completed the plan. It’s probably fair to say that once the project starts, the first thing to change will be the project plan, but a good project manager will have anticipated many of the potential snags and should have them documented in a risk plan, along with a set of contingency actions to get around them. Be very clear on what the non-negotiable parts of the project are – is it budget, specific functionality, quality or deadlines.
Of all the variable factors, I would suggest that the single most important is time. You can amend the functionality you want, you can add or subtract money from the budget, you can compromise on quality, but it’s very difficult to make more time. Yes, you can add additional labour, but in most projects adding more labour becomes self-defeating very quickly as people get in each others way or end up waiting for other work to be completed.
As a rough guide, you should allot up to one third of the total time for a project to the planning phase. Remember; when you do start your project to make sure that the lines of communication are open. The project manager should speak to the key people on a daily or weekly basis – and you are one of those key people. Finally, be prepared to run the project and take responsibility jointly with your contractor or Project Manager. It is a sure recipe for disaster to agree a plan and then walk away telling the Project Manager you’ll see them in six months when the project is finished.
Many more projects succeed than fail, and while they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, most people would rather succeed quietly rather than fail in a blaze of publicity.
About the Author:
John Brophy is a 30-year veteran of the IT industry and has run projects with budgets ranging from €100k to over €10 million. John specialises in rescuing failing projects (not his own!). John’s focus in Carrig Solutions is to source the right solution for your business.
