allPM.com :: Are You On The Right Project? By Amro Elakkad, PMP

Are You On The Right Project? By Amro Elakkad, PMP

Published on Thursday, July 01, 2010 - 03:40 PM

So, you get a call from your PMO manager and she wants you to be managing a project that has already started. You are told that the last project manager was moved to another project. You jump right in and start catching up and following up. But wait, how do you know you are on the right project and what can you do about it?

This scenario is not farfetched, as many of us, in one capacity or another got involved in a similar situation. And while it can be exciting to jump right in and start making things happen, you might want to assess first, the health of your project. After all, you don’t want to build on an already poorly laid foundation.

So what can you do to assess the health of your project?

Meet with your sponsor(s). Make sure to get your sponsor’ feedback as to where does she thinks the project stands. Ask the sponsor to qualify her answer. Why does she think the project is in good shape or in bad shape? The sponsor should judge a project status by real indicators and not just based on a gut feeling. Things like “I feel we are going in the wrong direction”, or “I think we are doing great”, are not good enough answers.
Meet with your stakeholders. Get the story straight. Meet with the rest of the team, including your core team, your extended team, your business clients, and your vendor. Ask for feedback on the project. You will be surprised to how one member might think the project is doing great and another think it is heading for disaster. If you are not getting the same story from all participants, then clearly there is something wrong.
A ship with two captains? Your project should have one leader and one leader only and that should be you, the project manager. Yes, there is the executive sponsor, who set the high level strategy and directions, but when it comes to managing the day-to-day activities of the project, there is one leader: you. Any deviation from that, and you should know that the project is already in trouble, or poised for trouble.
Seek a sponsor. Is there a sponsor for the project? Is he involved and reachable? Does he know the criticality and scope of the project? Without a sponsor, your project lacks strength and you bet your scope will change more frequently than other projects. On the other hand a project with a sponsor that does not understand the scope or the priorities is as bad as not having a sponsor.
Who is doing what? Meet with your team and ask them for their roles and responsibilities. You will be surprised of what people think their role is. A technical lead might think he is in charge of the project, but has no idea how to manage projects. A business sponsor might not really understand how his directions or the lack of, might seriously impact the project.
Don’t look only at the schedule or the cost. Perform an EV analysis instead. Just because the schedule tells you that you are ahead of the time to deliver, does not mean that your project is indeed in good health. Same thing with the budget/expenditure. Maybe you are ahead of schedule but have spent all your budget money. Or maybe you have not spent that much money because you are behind schedule. Performing an Earned Value analysis is one sure way to find out the real status.
Got risk? Look for the project risk management plan, or of the lack of one. Examine the risks identified by the team and consult with your team on the status of these risks. Are your risks clearly defined? Are there risk owners? Do you have risk mitigation plans? If any of that does not exist, you know you have some serious work to do. If your project lacks a risk management plan, then do one as soon as possible. A project without a risk plan is a project that is waiting for a disaster to happen only to find out that there is no mitigation for it.
Assess motivation. Is your team motivated? Are they frustrated and can’t wait to get off the project? A good project usually reflects on the team members positively. A project team that is making progress and meeting deadlines while having fun in the process is a motivated team that reflects a healthy project.
Look for consistency. Read emails and status reports. Are you getting a consistent story or are you hearing so many different versions of any issue/item? A troubled project lacks consistency and breeds confusion.
Look for a project charter or a kick off meeting: a project that is of good visibility, would, most likely, have had a kick off meeting and a project charter. These are essentials to set out directions and establish the project manger authority.
Ask if you could meet with the ex-project manager. Why did he leave the company and was it related to the project? Get the ex-project manager’s perspective on what went wrong with the project.
Check for change management procedure: a project without a change management procedure or with an improper one might be slowed down with many changes. This will eventually alter the scope of the project tremendously and will push back your delivery date, impact your cost and create a resource overloading problem.
Look for clues: examine your issues and action items. If the high priority items are open for more than a month without no apparent progress or resolution, if your issues, actions and risks do not have owners, or if everything is assigned to the project manager or the sponsor, you got a problem.
Look deeper under the hood. Examine the schedule and the escalation path. Tasks that are on the critical path and that are late should be the ones that are escalated for action. A non-mature project shows behaviors that are non-productive such as escalating non-critical items, or spending so much time on low priority issues and actions.
Examine the budget. Look for the financial sheets or the Governance documents, if there were ones. Examine the overall project budget and how much of that was spent. Compare that to the progress made on the project. If you have spent most of your money, with little progress, or if there are clear items that are not accounted for in the budget, you have an issue.

OK, so now that you realize your project is in trouble, what can you do about it?
Aside from the obvious solution of declining to manage the project (assuming you have a choice), here are few things you need to do immediately:

Do not panic. Your team and sponsor(s) are looking up to you to fix things. If you panic, it will show and this will be counterproductive to your future work. Your calmness and confidence will spread to the rest of the team.
Assess and communicate. Get all the facts straight, assess the situation and then communicate it to your sponsor, who might not be aware that the situation is bad.
Gather the team and deliver the news. You need to get everyone on board. Your project team and stakeholders need to know the true story. Your sponsors need to know that not everything is rosy. However, when you deliver the news, you also want to have an action plan. More on this below.
Be honest. Do not hide facts as they will eventually show up. This is a time you need to gain the trust of your sponsor and stakeholders. After all, this is a situation you inherited and you will attempt to fix.
Have a plan. Imagine that you are starting the project from scratch, except that the project is in an escalated mode. Put together a project plan that includes elements for communication, risks, time, finance, scope and quality. Be prepared with your plan and get your team on board by discussing and explaining the plan to them.
Get some money. If your project is lacking funds, then work with your sponsor to acquire more funds. Your sponsor should be your best source to go and get more money.
Start managing what matters most. Start focusing on the critical items and the high priority issues and actions. Resolving these and getting them back on track will help your project in a long way.
Show leadership. Your project is already in trouble. Now everyone knows that. There is no benefit to be negative about it, as there is a lot of work to be done. Your leadership during these times, showing that you have a plan and leading the team towards that end goal will help steer the project in the right direction and will help restore the team morale.
Watch for interdependencies. Focusing too much on the project at hand, might make you lose focus on some interdependencies with other projects. Your sponsor should be able to help you with these interdependencies as they might complicate the resolutions, or might work to your advantage sometimes. Maybe the work that is needed for certain component of your project is already being carried out as part of another project. At that time, all you need to do is to make sure you are in the loop to know about the time frame of that component to coordinate it within your project’s timeframe.
Regroup. Examine your team structure and make changes if needed. Move people around, have them co-partner on different aspects of the project or reassign responsibilities. Study the team dynamics and work with it or around it.
Manage your risks. If there is no risk management plan, then work on having one immediately. If a plan exists, then examine it and make adjustments if needed to focus on the most likely, high impact items, as well as select less likely, high impact or most likely, low impact items.
Put together a RAM (Responsibility Assignment Matrix). It is very important to redefine or re-emphasize who is doing what, who is a primary, secondary or resource on any of the project components. Make sure you construct this RAM working with your stakeholders. You need them to be on board.
If everything else fails, then call me. No, not really, but the point here is that you might want the help of a more experienced project manager, who would ideally also know the intricacies and complexities of the organization. This will help you navigate resources faster and deal with issues resolution.

Getting involved in a troubled project is never a project manager’s first choice. However, if you get involved with one, now you know how to assess the situation and how to get things under control. Good luck!

© 2010 allPM.com

Amro Elakkad (M.Sc., PMP) is a project management speaker, coach, and consultant. He has over twenty two years of experience in the information technology, financial, engineering, education, and government industries. Amro has implemented and managed projects and programs exceeding USD $17 billion in value. He has special expertise in troubled projects, risk management, scheduling, and estimation in the global arena. Amro has published numerous papers and articles in project management-related magazines and conferences. He can be reached at a_elakkad@yahoo.com.

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