Managing
Project Risks (Part 2): 10 Major Mistakes Your Team Can Avoid
by Adele Sommers, Ph.D.
Does your organization see every opportunity
as a must-win project, even when its a poor fit
for your in-house talents? If so, this is one of several viewpoints
that can blind your company to potential problems ahead. In Part
1 of this series, we explored how to recognize six common project
traps. Now in Part 2, well review 10 major mistakes to
avoid (or risks to flag) when choosing, estimating, and staffing
your projects.
First, its important to recognize that your
organizational culture sets the tone for how you approach
projects. For example,
- Does your company always expect people to do more for less?
- Does the management routinely insist on or agree to unworkable
schedules?
- Are team members encouraged to underestimate their realistic
efforts?
If so, these are signs that your organization may
have a must-win-at-all-costs view of projects. You may
want to consider how idealistic but impractical expectations could
set the stage for project failure.
In any case, if your business faces challenges with
project budgets, schedule, quality, or features, try asking these
10 questions the next time youre considering a project:
1. Is the project
non-compelling or a bad fit for the project team?
A bad fit means that it doesnt fall within the
general professional or technical arenas in which your company has
accomplishments or your colleagues have expertise. Note that if
your projects normally entail working with subject matter experts
who would supply the information you need, this is not as great
of a concern.
2. Will the project
scope entail operating in unfamiliar territory?
Even if its a reasonable fit, if a project involves
requirements your team has never worked with before, you could be
overly optimistic in assuming everyone can come up to speed quickly
enough to be successful on the project. You may need to seek outside
expertise, although this can introduce its own risks (see #67
below).
3.
Are project requirements, such as product features, complex?
A project that requires many complicated features
to interact correctly vastly increases the potential for problems.
One risk strategy could involve agreeing to phase in and test the
complexity over time. Another could be to negotiate a reduction
in the number or difficulty of the features to be completed.
4. Are the requirements
pitted against an aggressive schedule?
Time
limits of some sort exist on almost every project, and drive nearly
every other project expectation. Will there be enough time to implement
the requested features at the desired quality level? If not, you
may want to negotiate a longer schedule, agree to reduce the requirements,
or phase in some features later. You could bring in more people,
although this will involve more coordination.
5. Are too few personnel
and resources available for the project?
Project managers routinely lose sleep at night over
what would happen if key project members were to leave. Or if the
funding or resources were to get chopped or significantly delayed.
Its one thing to have snafus occur later in the effort,
but its another to start off unrealistically. So try
not to underestimate your needs.
6. Will coordination
with many different collaborators be needed?
Involving many people means complex hand-offs. If
your project will include client or third party collaborators, how
will people interact? Should all parties remain in direct communication?
Or should each group have a single point of contact? Also think
about the division of work, and each groups responsibilities
to the others.
7. Are the primary
collaborators unfamiliar to the project team?
If it does become necessary to recruit one or more
new contributors, will you be able to verify whether they can do
the job? If the unfamiliar parties have stretched the truth about
their capabilities, you may be in for trouble. If theres a
way to have them prove themselves first, thats ideal
or else have a contingency plan.
8. Are project team
members discouraged from raising concerns?
Before and after the project starts, team members
will identify all kinds of challenges. Do you want people to raise
red flags when they see potential problems, or do you prefer everyone
to keep quiet, maintain a stiff upper lip, and work 24/7 if needed?
The team culture will determine whether the members verbalize and
address in a timely fashion the many pitfalls that can appear along
the way.
9. Are there insufficient
review and test cycles in the schedule?
Allocating
enough time for review and testing iterations commonly presents
a challenge. Regardless of your initial planning, if project delays
begin to add up, what will people want to cut? Can you afford to
reduce testing and still deliver quality?
10. Are there no
standard protocols for managing scope changes?
When the inevitable add-on requests materialize,
consider how theyll affect the project. Unless you have a
tool, such as a project change request, to adjust the official budget
and time frame, youll always be at risk for cost and schedule
overruns.
If you answered yes to one or more
of these questions, it means that each is an area of risk that youll
need to manage to ensure project success. Either create a workable
plan for managing these risks, or consider whether pursuing the
project is in the best interests of your organization.
To download the related checklist, click here.
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About the Author
Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is author of Straight Talk
on Boosting Business Performance: 12 Ways to Profit from Hidden
Potential. To learn more about her book and sign up for more
free tips like these, visit her site at www.LearnShareProsper.com
This article may be distributed freely on your Web
site, as long as this entire article, including the links and full
About the Author section, are unchanged. Please send
a copy of, or link to, your reprint to Adele@LearnShareProsper.com.
Copyright 2005 Adele Sommers, The Enterprise Prosperity
Guild, All Rights Reserved.
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