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Below I’ve listed 10 “facts”, “myths” and “suggestions” that you should be aware of to improve your odds of project success.
1. Fact: No one can reliably predict the future. The most obvious marker of project failure is overrun time and costs, which to an extent, require us to predict the future. In essence, we begin projects with little hope of predictable success[but this doesn’t have to be the case]. This leads to the next 2 “myths”.
2. Myth: Experts are good at setting estimates. Experts are great at determining the details involved in getting something done, and qualitatively describing the complexity of a project. However, they are no better than non-experts at predicting the end of a project. So, leverage experts to define details and leverage “everyone” and data-driven methods to determine the ETA(estimated time of arrival) and confidence intervals.
3. Myth: Professional Project Managers are good at setting estimates. Like the experts, they’re no better than non-experts. However they have tools for collecting estimates, challenging estimates and following up… so Leverage their tools and techniques.
4. Fact: Project Complexity grows exponentially with degrees of freedom including: people involved, number of tasks, system size, time etc. Simply adding individual task ETAs (Estimated Time of Arrival) will not give you a reliable picture of the overall ETA.
5. Myth: “Under-committing and over-delivering” is a smart project management tactic. Wrong! I think people are too smart to fall for this hack. I’ve found that the best people typically *always over-commit* and *sometimes over-deliver*. I’m not aware of any great projects that have begun by setting unusually low expectations, followed by spectacular delivery.
6. Myth: Good Project Management Implementation leads to successful Projects, ie On-time, On-budget. Wrong! I’ve heard Project Management credited with both success and failure of projects. In my experience, “people” are the main reason why projects both succeed and fail. check out http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/
Now for a few things you should do…
7. Suggestion: Whatever you do —- always collect and save data about estimates! The data will allow you to go back,analyze and test your more quantitative approaches. This brings me to the next suggestion…
8. Suggestion: Project Management and in particular Estimation must be quantitative and data-driven. There are many techniques including monte-carlo simulations, options pricing, portfolio theory, prediction markets etc. Determining the right tool for a project might take some trial-and-error but well worth it. I’ve often employed simple models where I break down the data along various dimensions like person, duration, complexity… You might simply begin by playing around with the data in a spreadsheet.
9. Suggestion: Keep it simple. Do use standard tools and best practices but don’t let that become a project. Too many reports, people, charts, tools etc is no good and only adds to complexity.
10. Suggestion: Make stakeholders/clients part of the process. They should share accountability for the plans and therefore share your pain when targets are missed. Typically, they not part of the process or largely focused on providing requirements. Take their input and leverage their experience… they’ve done projects too:)
One more: Stock your PMO or Project Board with people who will actually give you meaningful feedback… Not just Project Managers, Stakeholders or people you want to score political points with:)
I’m currently researching a few products and techniques and promise to post my findings.(photo via darkmatter)
