On Project Completion

“What obstacles do project managers face to successful completion of an Information Technology project?”

Project Management and IT Professional

Successful completion for me does not mean a project was delivered on time or on budget it means that the projects goals were accomplished. A successful project is one that produced deliverables which met or exceeded the stated business goals.

For me the biggest obstacle to a successful project is the misstatement, understatement or misunderstanding of goals. I have worked at many companies and completed many projects and most of the stated business goals dont always seem to make it to the Project Manager. Often times the goal presented to the PM is "implement this" instead of achieve goals 1,2,3 through the implementation "of this" which goes to explain what the business is really trying to achieve. I am often forced to re-interview the stakeholders to be able to produce a statement of goals that is shared with and periodically reviewed with the project team.

Other common obstacles:

Scope creep – this is fairly common and is caused primarily by a poor understanding of the goals which causes scope statements to be incomplete. Typically discovery of this is not made until much later and almost always results in more work. The addition of business goals on the other hand is also creep but schedules can and should be renegotiated to accommodate.

Resource allocations – Ask any PM is she or he has ever had too many technical resources on a project. Chances are no. Often times other factors are used to set target delivery dates when the actual primary driver should be the availability of resources.

Schedules – There is never enough time or resources to meet project schedules and this often results in poor work. Quality and innovation always suffer the most from this. If there is barely enough time to check in the often buggy code, how innovative do you think it will be.
There are many other obstacles of course but do feel free to contact me to discuss.

MüTō Observation:

For example, the basic inability of a project manager to communicate clearly can lead to 'scope-creep', and a misunderstanding of the requirements, or worse yet, the loss of understanding of what the 'danged business objective is!'

Its tantamount that a Project Manager understand the business objective; At least in its native form. It may be a big leap between the understanding, and their particular project, but at least they would know WHY the project is important, and then they can communicate that importance to the rest of the team. Without that understanding the entire team would be working in a vacuum, and could never be properly motivated.

On Motivation

“What obstacles do project managers face to successful completion of an Information Technology project?”

Senior Management Consultant;

“I think there are potentially lots of answers to this but for me they all come back to it being a good idea at the time that no one really tests and excessive egos. My favourite project is a good example of this for despite the mountain of documents describing in minute detail what the requirements where the requirements and solution were fundamentally flawed. The idea was based on a marketing demonstration and the chosen technical solution was infeasible. Anyone who said so was told they were wrong and to do what they were told. The end result after the business and technical sponsors left was that the project ground to a halt and sits unloved by all. In the end a business idea and solution should be sustainable in their own right and not survive simply because of the egos.”

MüTō Observation:

You’ve managed to describe nearly every project I’ve encountered. If left to its own devices, a project will be ill-conceived from the get-go. Blame it on communications. Or more succinctly put, un-chaperoned communication. The Chaperone, in this case, would be the Project Manager.

Fundamentally, the main responsibility of the Project Manager during the ‘planning’ of a project is to be the Facilitator of all discussions. Questions to the suppliers like “Do you understand the requirements?” and to the sponsors like “Does the solution feel right to you?” will go a long way to make certain everyone is on the right page.

Sponsors do not want to fail. Ego’s can be used positively to support success! For example: “I’ll shut-up once you tell me whether you can describe the solution at a high level.” Will go a long way towards either an open discussion…or a change of jobs.

One of the hardest things a project manager has to do is “choose their battle.”