Nineteen IT suppliers met the Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude to start the process of reducing the cost of contracts.

The article goes on to suggest that ‘red tape’ needs to be addressed and the government must overcome a lack of trust if suppliers are to meet targets without just cutting costs to the bone or stripping service levels.

“The government wants immediate reductions in costs and ongoing cuts” says the article.

Francis Maude said he was challenging major government suppliers to take costs out of contracts. “Some of this will come from margins, but we will invite ideas on how we can structure things differently to reduce complexity and cost.”

There will no doubt be more articles like this as time progresses and for sure, this will impact on many people – anyone involved in IT, project management or procurement plus of course shareholders.

If you are based in the US you also have some ‘issues.’ Shortly before completing this article I came across the headline: “White House to Review High Risk Projects”. This can be found here.

An extract of the Computer Weekly article can be found here.

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2. Unclear goals and objectives:
Many IT projects are elaborated progressively and in these scenarios project managers rely on rolling wave planning. As a result, the goal of a project may be only partially clear due to a poor requirement gathering in the definition stage of the project. In such case, the scope and schedule developed by project managers cannot possibly be accurate because their objectives are unclear. Defining clear requirements for a project can take time and lots of communication.

3. Poor Stakeholder Management:
Project stakeholders’ interests may be positively or negatively impacted by the project and that is why stakeholders’ influence on the project is the most important thing to consider. Stakeholders who are found later will make changes and could cause delays. Any change that is made later is harder to integrate and is much more costly.

4. Scope creep and Feature creep due to objectives changing during the project :
Uncontrolled and unexpected changes in user /stakeholder expectations and requirements as a project progress always negatively impact a project. This is known as scope creep. Many times new features are added to the project with a wrong assumption that one small feature will add nothing to cost or schedule. This unplanned addition is called feature creep.

5. Unrealistic time or resource estimates:
Many times project managers make costly mistakes while estimating time or resources. One common mistake is made during the creation of the Work Breakdown Structure. Often it is assumed that the time on task equals duration. Project managers estimate the time on task is the time the task will take to complete. How about interruptions? Some may be known and some may be unknown. Do project managers anticipate interruptions? In reality duration is the time the task actually takes to complete including interruptions.
Another common problem is using linear approximation when estimating the schedule For example, if you double the number of developers, you can cut the project time in half. In reality, doubling the number of developers produces a non-linear result.

6. Improper delegation of task and responsibilities:
Many times project managers fail to delegate tasks and responsibilities to the team in such a way that they should fit team members’ job descriptions. When team members are asked to work outside their specialization (often as added responsibilities), they not only go through a learning curve but also tend to lose focus on the project objectives. This always results in confusion among the team members and eventually cost and time overruns.

7. Lack of executive support and user involvement:
IT managers face many difficulties in managing projects and the lack of executive support and user involvement are the two main reasons of IT project failures. Many times IT project managers work as project coordinators or project expediters and without executive support they cannot personally make and enforce decisions. The second reason is user involvement and often the project planners fail to plan human solutions to the very human users that the product is proposed to serve.
8. Failure to communicate and act as a team:

Projects sometimes fail due to improper communication. Many large IT projects are so complex that these projects always require large amount of analysis and work. The project teams are busy doing the analysis, creating WBS, time estimation etc. and project managers do not communicate progress regularly because they believe that progress will not be seen by the executive management or they fear of improper reporting.

9. Lack of proper risk management:
Another potential cause for project failure is the IT managers’ inability to categorize all the risks qualitatively and quantitatively and implement corrective measures.

10. Inappropriate skills:
The rapid changes of the technology-driven business environment and the constant changes of technology make it hard to predict skills the IT department will be needed.
Almost all large IT projects require a diverse range of skills. Many teams lack the breadth, and depth they require. Also dearth of qualified people in the labor market and high attrition rate of the industry add many problems to the projects. Often, projects mangers spend substantial amount of their time in recruitment related activities.

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On my travels to the training venue, I sent a Tweet that read: 

Running project sponsor workshop today. Why are so few courses run for such a key group? Any suggestions? 

Not surprisingly, I had no takers. 

So, why so few development opportunities (courses and workshops) for this important group? 

In February this year, Arras People published a report called Arras People Project Management Report 2010.   In their report, they found that senior managers lack of support contributed to project failure. 

Scouring the internet as I frequently do and looking at back copies of magazines shows there are articles about  this topic – not enough – but sufficient to give you a feeling that the training and development of senior managers is an untapped area. 

In my 16 years as Director of Project Agency we have run  courses for sponsors (see http://bit.ly/dcOXjX ) but, very few compared to courses for project managers. This is not for the want of trying. Much energy and effort has been put into convincing and influencing senior managers of the need for this type of training. 

So, what can be done to try and develop such an important group? I clearly do not have all of the answers however here are a few suggestions: 

1. Pressure from project managers – on a couple of occasions a few project managers have returned from a training course and debated the topic with senior managers with a workshop for them resulting 
2. There are many competency frameworks in use and maybe there is a link to one for sponsors. Clearly the performance appraisal process will need to identify development needs based on the framework 
3. Critical incidence – projects do go wrong! However, how many companies really examine what went right and what went wrong? If the Arras survey is to be believed then some of the errors will be down to a lack of senior managers’ engagement. This would need to be rectified by some training and development activity 
4. Conferences – I speak at a variety of conferences and this is one way of attracting attention of senior managers to the need for training in this area 

I believe the project management industry has not made the progress that it should have done. So, what suggestions do you have for engaging and influencing and ultimately developing this group of staff?

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They save you time

On every new project, you have to fill-in documents to plan, track and report on the status of your project. The process of filling in documents, takes time. Especially when many of the documents are a one-off.

By using templates, you can save time completing project documents. Well written templates should already be pre-formatted with all of the sections, tables, charts and forms you need to fill-in. This way, you can avoid having to spend time formatting your documents and purely focus on filling them in. On average, most people save 25% of their time completing project documents, by using properly formatted project templates.

They give you direction

The first step most people go through when they know they have to create a project document, is to search the internet or their file folder to work out what it is that needs to be included. But if you use good quality templates, then they will direct you through the steps you need to take to create each project document. Direction is important because if you go down the wrong track with your document, your project will be at risk. Proper project templates will keep you headed in the right direction, by making sure you complete the right content at the right time.

They make it easier

In short, a good quality template will make the task of creating a project document, as easy as 1-2-3. You don’t have to stress about what need to go in your document, how to format it or how to write it up. The template will tell you what information needs to be entered and where. And it should include practical examples to help you along the way. This makes your job easy.

They boost your quality

It makes sense that if you’re completing a high quality template, that you will generate high quality documentation. If you want to generate documents of the quality that professional project management consultants generate, then use project templates that match this level of quality. By using top quality templates to deliver top quality documents, you will boost your project success.

They give you confidence

Have you ever been asked to write a document that you’re unfamiliar with or have never written before? If so, then by using a template, you will have the document layout, tables, charts and completion instructions at your finger tips. All you need to do is to fill-in the gaps. By using templates to complete new documents, you will gain a higher level of confidence in your work, helping you to excel.

Jason Westland has been in the project management industry for over 15 years, manageing multimillion doller projects. Jason now owns a company who specialise in project management templates and can be found at http://www.method123.com

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Well, there are some major assumptions that need testing in the above words:

 someone needs to do it; I am still coming across projects where the scope of the project is identified, agreed but not managed. So, whether you are a project sponsor, project board member, project manager or team member. Take responsibility and protect what has been agreed.

 protect the project scope; why bother? I have assumed of course that the scope of work has been agreed. If this is the case then the scope needs protecting. I see too many projects where scope creep seems endemic. (Scope creep, amending the scope of work to be done without an agreed process to check that the ‘new work’ is worth doing)

A lack of protection around the scope is a clear risk. It is also a governance one – who can make the decisions to change the project and how.

So, here is a simple process to help you manage scope creep or requests for change. It is by no means perfect and you will need to put your head above the parapet by suggesting completing of a change request form. Download a brief PowerPoint presentation here and some hard copy documents.

“Scope creep is a sick illness treatable only by saying no.” This quote came from a project manager who decided to challenge the ‘request’ from a senior manager to include something in the project. I suggested he should avoid saying NO but use the process. He did and focused on the process in the presentation and it worked!

Get the presentation here and some free templates! 

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• does each project fit with the overall objectives?
• what are the priorities within the overall list?
• are there some nice to have rather than essentials? 

We had an interesting debate and I suggested that cuts to the list would help focus on delivery of the overall company agenda.

 A little later I looked on line at the BBC website and cutting was the key word: “Coalition government axes £2bn of projects” screamed the headlines.

 The group looked on reading and you can find out more here.  

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Saturday saw me drive all of 15 miles across London (which took me 2 hours!) to see my favourite rugby league team the current champions Leeds Rhinos. They were playing Harlequins and had a much changed side with 8 players out (international calls and injuries).

It was a great day out with Leeds winning 42-22 – a wonderful result with so many regular 1st teamers out. The reserve players played really well.

At the press conference afterwards the Leeds Coach Brian McClennan was asked:

“How did you approach this game? Did you see it as a potential opportunity or a banana skin with all the reserves?”

McClennan reply is interesting. Look at some of the things he said:

“I turned it over to the players”

“I said, this is your baby, you work it out”

“The players took a lot of ownership on their roles; they took a lot of ownership on how they would play.”

So how does this link with project team roles? I have written many times about problems with roles in project management. Only last week on a project management training course I ran a project manager suggested he did not know who his sponsor was and this was having a negative impact on the project. Link this with a survey by Project Agency. We have asked project managers whether their roles, responsibilities, and levels of authority are clear in our projects. Almost 60% who have answered suggest this is not the case.

Here is a shining example of a situation where personnel changes demanded clear roles and a coach who though giving them their head, ensured that all bases were covered. Oh for the same in projects!

Well done the Rhinos –  the players, and the coach. A great victory and a great example.

See post match comments from Brian McClennan here

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News reports suggest that the previous Labour Government were overoptimistic in their planning estimates.

Cut now to projects. I hear all the time that senior managers demand delivery of a project by a certain date. But, the issue for those involved is that the date is usually widely optimistic.

So, what can be done? During a recent project management training course we discussed this in some detail and came up with a number of possible options.

• plan the project and then present this to your senior manager showing the problems of delivery
• use the quality, time cost triangle to show the impact of delivery to the date required with the resources (people and money) available
• show the plan without risks and then with risks highlighting the impact of trying to deliver the project by the due date
• reduce quality of the overall project saving valuable time (clearly not an option for some, a possibility for others)
• the tongue in cheek suggestion of asking for more resources and showing the impact of no resources on the project

Of course, these suggestions are based on the people involved, the project and the company!! However, I also suggested that project managers sometimes need to raise their heads above the parapet. In other words, challenge the demand to deliver when it is clear that you cannot. I did however preface this comment that project managers, like all managers need to develop their influencing skills. This is just the opportunity.

So, what suggestions do you have for dealing with the demand for delivery by a date that is overoptimistic? I would be interested to hear!

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This led me to ask (knowing the answer) whether the organisation kept a list or directory of times that tasks take. The body language of those on our project management courses was very interesting….it screamed “of course we don’t.”

I also asked whether at project closure estimates of times within the project plan are reviewed for accuracy. I got the same reaction

If companies want to deliver projects effectively then they need to be able to take as many short cuts as possible. By this I mean having to hand a list of agreed estimates (or ranges of estimates) that will help those who have little or no project management experience or even the experienced project manager.

Now I am not suggesting that these become the minimum times more a range that can be used in putting the plan together. As someone suggested, “project management is like a game of golf – be realistic and reconsider your plan after every shot.” Estimates are no different.

Finally, yes we do include how to estimate on our project management training courses however a lot of anxieties could be allayed if companies kept records of times for projects or stages or activities.

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