Projects at large organizations often fall short of completing on time or on budget. Experts often point to reasons like time constraints or the lack thereof, minimal customer involvement, poor requirements, inability to control scope, poor quality control, and lack of project structure for reasons why projects fail. However, these reasons are simply the result of larger issues and ignore the true cause. Here are 5 reasons people tend to ignore:
1. Budgets are too large or flexible
When projects have a never-ending budget, bad things happen.
a. Large budgets lend themselves to increased scope. If your original plans were to fix a toilet, a small budget forces you to stay within scope and fix the toilet. A large budget quickly spirals into a 5 year project plan that includes grandiose plans to redesign 500 bathrooms with super-flush Kohler toilets.
b. Large budgets have a tendency to throw more people at a problem. When you can't resolve an issue, a large budget allows you to throw 30 people at a problem instead of the the necessary amount (in the case of toilets, only one man is needed. His name: Terry Love). More often than not, adding people causes even more problems and increases the budget exponentially.
2. Project managers have become glorified administrative assistants
This may not be the case at all organizations, but many companies have such structured project guidelines that the structure itself dictates how and when certain actions need to take place on a project. The project managers have almost no responsibility and get in the way of progress. They spend countless hours doing worthless tasks in Microsoft Project as they move milestones around like they are rearranging furniture in the living room. They no longer have any respect in meeting rooms; most of them are note takers to make sure all participants receive meeting minutes.
3. A one-size-fits-all project methodology
Large organizations adopt specific methods to guide projects to a successful completion. Most of these methods are total crap for the specific project at hand. These one-size-fits-all methodologies are no different than the no tolerance policies that have infected school districts and Human Resources departments. They remove logical decision making and ignore circumstances. Whether a project has a budget of $50m or $10k, it doesn't matter to a large organization. The same methods must be used during the project. Likewise, no matter the type of project, whether it's fixing a toilet or implementing an enterprise-wide financial system, managers and employees must follow the same guides and templates to methodically move their way through a project. Methods like Six Sigma's project tollgate process result in small projects spending 50% of their budget on unnecessary steps which are intended to ensure project success. At the end of the day, they are the exact reason for its failure. These one-size-fits-all methods severely cripple projects and lead to the continuation of large organizations bleeding money.
4. Large organizations have a cover-your-a** culture
Projects that have a get-sh**t-done (GSD) approach may run into a few SNAFUs every once in a while, but projects with a cover-your-a** (CYA) approach focus on making sure blame is shifted to other parties and the project goes nowhere quickly. Documentation (or "deliverables") suddenly transforms into printed proof of no fault.
5. The boy who cried deadline
False deadlines are deadlines which are created out of thin air. They aren't based on a realistic assessment nor are they based on requests from a client. They are usually the product of a lazy manager or executive. After several false deadlines are not met, employees realize there are no consequences to missing deadlines. When you finally approach a real deadline, employees won't know the difference and they'll continue doing nothing.
What can large organizations do to resolve these problems?
Nothing. Resolving these issues will give birth to new issues, and the cycle will continue until the company is eventually dead. Large beasts die slow deaths.
Best of luck!
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Life in The Cubicle by Dudley B. Dawson
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Comments
#2 Right on brother, right friggin on!
This argument is complete mesh. On the surface it looks solid, but take a closer look. The whole thing is filled with holes!
The biggest problem at companies is using what you describe as a get s$#t done style. When everyone does that, the entire company becomes disconnected. Eventually you're left with a company that has no synergy. It's as if every department operates as its own company.
You are far better off dumping millions of dollars into a failed project to ensure it gets fixed than you are taking on the attitude that things just need to get done quickly.
Ensuring a failed project gets fixed? Sounds like a true bureaucrat. This is a guy I want to manage my next failed project.
Let's be honest here...it's usually a girl who cries deadline. Not a guy.
@ C. Robinson: WT*F! You deliverable-B*S fan! when in h*ll is more important FIXING than DOING? With the get-s*-done approach the things, actually, GET DONE, so there's no need to FIX screwed up things.
With all due respect to Fido and MikeW, fixing failed projects is quite common at large organizations. The reason why they break isn't due to any of the reasons above. They fail because their vision does not cast a wide enough net. A project requires planning. Just making sure you resolve your short sighted internal problems do not answer the larger corporate issue at hand. Big projects require big plans and big budgets. It isn't the reason they fail.
C. Robinson - That's kind of the point of my article. You can try fixing these problems, but in the end, your biggest problem is that you are a large organization. AKA - you're screwed. You aren't actually fixing anything. You are simply delaying the inevitable.
So, your answer to the world's problems is that we should just let them work their way to the point of death because it's inevitable and we shouldn't waste our time trying to save things?
So basically you are saying we should ignore climate change and just let ourselves ruin the planet?
What in the Funke are you smoking Easy Answer? How did you get any of that from this article? Climate Change? World's problems? What the fuch?
People with an inability to control their SCOPE should switch to Listerine. The instructions are right there on the label: take a little in your mouth, rinse it around, then spit!
Why is there a need for a project manager, methodology or even a deadline for this task? I suppose if someone were to leave SCOPE in their mouth for a few hours the alcohol would eventually have an impact on one's gums...but, setting a "deadline" is probably overkill.
Yet, any article with a LIMAHL reference can't be all bad.
Sounds pretty miserable. I especially noticed how Project Managers have become glorified administrative assistants "They spend countless hours doing worthless tasks in Microsoft Project as they move milestones around." Perhaps sometimes what they move around are not so much milestones as millstones. Visionary leadership and team building skills are much needed here!
Gotta say mate, you sound like an advocate of SCRUM more than anything.
Chris - All of these problems exist with SCRUM as well, except the number of false deadlines increase. And, SCRUM is a perfect example of how companies use a one-size-fits-all methodology. SCRUM may work great for one project but horribly for another. But many companies force the same methodology on all projects.
If it was not obvious from the end of this article, I am only an advovcate of one thing -- small businesses. Everything else is just a small business that grew too big and is now dying a slow death.
I could not disagree more with this article. If any PM is doing admin tasks, they aren't a PM but an Administrator. Too large of a budget? What business sponsor would approve too large of a budget, and if the budget is to large and unmanageable enough diligence was not completed to estimate the true costs of implementation. CYA is in every culture, accept it. I have had to work with pointless deadlines, but managing soft deadlines keeps people progressing - it is up to the PM to manage the deadlines and push when appropriate. Pick a company and you could find instances where your points are valid, but this is likely the exception and not the norm.
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