Don’t Place Blame Yet!
At some point you will have to manage a problem project. You know the ones – way over budget, scope is out of control, significantly behind schedule and/or the sponsor and other key stakeholders are breathing down your neck. These are the projects that keep us up at night! When we are faced with a troubled project and it is our head on the proverbial chopping block it is easy to feel as if we need to deflect blame. We want to point out that the sponsor has changed his mind multiple times about the scope, or that the budget that we were allocated was reduced months ago, or that the schedule was unreasonable from day one. All might be valid objections, but hold that thought for now!
There is likely more than one issue with your project and you need to do your research and gather data before you determine who is to blame.
Over the next few days, we’ll talk about problem projects and have to salvage them. Part II of this series will focus on how to step back and research a project that is beginning to fail to understand what is going wrong and why. In Part III we’ll discuss how to analyze the data you obtain from your research, ensuring you get buy-in and validation from those involved in the project. The final part of the series, Part IV, will focus on developing your solution to the problem, presenting it for approval and implementing it to move forward with your project.
