Common
Barriers to Successful Projects - #8-14
By Raymond
Posch
In this series, I am writing briefly about some barriers
to projects success that are
fairly common in my experience. Here are
the next seven in my list:
- Poor
requirements gathering, analysis, specification – Having well understood requirements
is critical to project success, regardless whether a classical waterfall, iterative cycle, agile, or other
methodology is used. If you do not have the requirements, the team cannot develop the solution to those
requirements. So having a methodology and understanding how to work through it is important. Also, the PM
must determine who will do the gathering, analysis, and specification of the requirements – ideally it
should be done by business analysts who are knowledgeable about business requirements for the type of
project.
- Inadequate planning or poor iteration
through the planning process – (I am including requirements as part
of the planning process.) Good, sufficiently detailed project planning is critical – it clarifies the goals
and business value, deliverables, work to be done to produce the deliverables, risks and mitigations,
resources required, costs, and schedule. Poor planning puts all of those things in
question.
- Mandatory
deadline – A mandatory deadline imposed by
management is usually a bad idea because it's not based on a realistic plan of what it will take to
meet the business requirements of the project. But sometimes there is an important constraint outside the
company's control that can drive a mandatory deadline. If it requires a death march (long hours and
much overtime on the project), the company should incentify the project team
appropriately.
- Not
having the right team – Having the right team means having
team members who can do the tasks well and who have good chemistry to work together. The project manager
should be able to pick the team to the extent possible to ensure that it is the right team to meet the
business goals of the project. This may mean that the PM must do some research into who would be best
choices to fill the various team roles.
- Poor
communication and coordination with team
– This should be self explanatory. Communication and coordination are central to what a project manager does
every day in the life of a project.
- PM
focuses on detailed task schedule instead of holistic project plan and execution – I have seen project managers who
spend an exorbitant amount of time working on the schedule (usually on MS Project or other tool). The
purpose of the tool – once tasks have been identified and estimated for needed skill types and amount of
effort, and dependencies between tasks have been determined – is to help calculate schedules and help you
visualize where parallel activities might make sense. But don’t assume it represents the exact reality of
what must happen, and don’t let it keep you from paying attention to all aspects of the plan (of which the
schedule is just one part). And especially don’t let it keep you from communicating and coordinating with
the team on what work is supposed to be happening according to the plan (and when) and about issues that
might be impacting the work.
- Not
involving the team in the whole planning process – Involving the team improves the plan
and execution to the plan. Why? Because they will own the plan, make it a better plan, and understand why
they need to follow the plan. And not only that, the members of the team will understand how they
can help the rest of the team stay on track, sometimes even helping them perform tasks when they’ve fallen
behind.
Raymond
Posch is publisher of Weekly PM Insights newsletter. See Ray's
bio on our Meet the Experts page. He can be reached at
ray@projectsuccesstips.com.
Filed under Project
Management - General
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