1. Insufficient resource

The Project Manager was given insufficient resources and budget at the start of the project. If you don't have the level of resources or budget you need, then tell your Project Sponsor quickly.

2. Impossible deadlines

The deadline for the project was always impossible to achieve. The Project Manager should have told the sponsor at the start of the project and fought to have the deadline extended. You not only need to have sufficient time to deliver your project, but you also need contingency in case things take longer than expected.

3. Poor communication

The Project Manager fails to communicate the status of the project to the team and sponsor. So everyone thinks the project is going smoothly until the deadline is missed. You need to tell people early if its slipping. Don't hide it. By telling people you're running late, you give them the opportunity to help get it back on track.

4. Lack of focus

The team don't really know what is expected of them, so they lack focus. They are given a job to do but not told what is required and by when. Everyone in your team should have regular goals to meet, they should have deadlines and you should be monitoring their progress at every step in the journey.

5. Low morale

The project team lack motivation, so nothing is delivered on time. If you want someone to deliver within a set timeframe, then you need to motivate them to do it through reward and recognition. And you need to be highly motivated yourself. Only by being healthy, relaxed and truly motivated can you inspire others to be.

6. Sponsor support

The Project Manager gets very little support from their sponsor. There is no-one available to help solve problems or provide further resource or money when it's needed. If you lack sponsor support, then you need to tell your Project Sponsor about it. Be open and frank with them. Tell them what you need and by when.

7. Scope creep

The scope of the project keeps changing, so you never really have a fixed set of deliverables. Every time it changes, you lose time and resource, so Change Control is critical. The scope needs to be clearly defined and then a process put in place to ensure that change requests are formally approved.

8. Lengthy timeframes

The project timescale may simply be too long. Over time your customer's requirements will change, so you need to break your project into smaller chunks and deliver each as a project on its own.

9. Lack of tools

Not having the right tools to get the job done can also be a problem. Using good quality tools such as templates, processes and a project methodology will lead to project success.

10. Customer involvement

Lack of customer involvement has proved fatal on many projects. You need to involve your customer throughout the project to ensure that what you are building will meet their requirements. Remember, only if your customer is truly satisfied will your project be a success.

Speak with Data

A never ending flow of reports detailed with colourful charts, graphs and oodles of digits is the first thing that comes to mind as soon as we hear the word "Data". Its importance can neither be denied nor misunderstood. This is because 'management is a science as well as an art', and data is what drives every logical and scientific basis toward findings and information.

With each passing day, organizational databases are increasing in number and capacity, and in this situation, the key lies in the efficient management of this data. This combination has led to the widespread use of concepts like data mining and warehousing. Data mining effectively utilises stored information for the purpose of discovering useful associations in hidden patterns and trends, continuously exploring new ways of making all this data a useful asset rather than merely a liability.

The immediate advantage of this approach is the elimination of subjectivity from our information related decisions. This is because we cannot ignore the clear indications from figures. Too much emphasis on these facts and figures can lead to a loss of departmental coherence, causing an organization to break down, however, a cautious usage of this information can bring about extraordinary gains. The pursuit of any cautious method requires that the data is unbiased, statistically accurate, precise, complete, current, non-redundant, and credible in the required framework.

A Data based approach eliminates stereotyping and pre-conceived notions, filtering out the not-so-useful practices from the viable ones. Facts and figures lead to objective judgement - without leaving any room for prejudice. This "Technical Analysis" method uses past figures to predict the future ones, and having been widely recognized as a valuable system in the stock markets, Forex and the commodities markets, it's used today for predicting the probable volume of trading and share price by using past archived values.

The same principle can be very insightful in any judgement of human performance. As we all often find, first impressions are not always the correct impressions. There are often cases where an individual doesn't seem to be useful or productive, but then surprisingly, performs better than the rest. Or in another instance, there may be a situation where someone who is spoken of very highly by others, fails miserably when it comes to actual performance. Here we can see that subjective impressions - unlike the accuracy and reliability of performance data, can often fail to yield any sort of consistently expected results.

In conclusion, a data based approach is definitely better than any form of subjective consideration as the former eliminates any unfounded beliefs which were formed without reason, and it does - so to speak, 'hit the nail right on the head'.

How to Scope your Projects

The "project scope" is all of the things that must be produced to complete a project. These 'things' are called deliverables and you need to describe them in depth as early in the project as possible, so everyone knows what needs to be produced. Take these 5 Steps to scope your projects:

Step 1: Set the Direction
Start off by setting the direction for the project. Do you have an agreed Project Vision, Objectives and Timeframes? Are they specified in depth and has your customer agreed to them? Does everyone in the project team truly understand them and why they are important? Only by fixing the project direction can you truly fix the project scope.

Step 2: Scope Workshops
The best way to get buy-in to your project scope is to get all of the relevant stakeholders to help you define it. So get your project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders in a room and run a workshop to identify the scope. What you want from them is an agreed set of major deliverables to be produced by the project. You also want to know "what's out of scope".
Run the workshop by asking each stakeholder for a list of the deliverables they expect the project team to deliver. Take the full list of deliverables generated in the workshop and get them to agree on what's mandatory and what's optional. Then ask them to prioritize the list, so you know what has to be delivered first.

Step 3: Fleshing it out
You now have an agreed list of deliverables. But it's still not enough. You need to define each deliverable in depth. Work with the relevant people in your business to describe how each deliverable will look and feel, how it would operate and how it would be supported etc. Your goal here is to make it so specific that your customer cannot state later in the project that "when they said this, they really meant that".

Step 4: Assessing Feasibility
So you now have a detailed list and description of every deliverable to be produced by your project, in priority order and separated as mandatory / optional. Great! But is it feasible to achieve within the project end date? Before you confirm the scope, you need to review every deliverable in the list and get a general indication from your team as to whether they can all be completed before your project end date. If they can't, then which deliverables can you remove from the list to make your end date more achievable?

Step 5: Get the thumbs up
Present the prioritized set of deliverables to your Project Sponsor and ask them to approve the list as your project scope. Ask them to agree to the priorities, the deliverable descriptions and the items out of scope.

By getting formal sign-off, you're in a great position to be able to manage the project scope down the track. So when your Sponsor says to you in a few weeks time "Can you please add these deliverables to the list?", you can respond by saying "Yes, but I'll either have to remove some items from the list to do it, or extend the project end date. Which is it to be?". You can easily manage your Sponsors expectations with a detailed scope document at your side.

The scope document is the Project Manager's armor. It protects them from changes and makes them feel invincible!

Is Your Business Really About the Customer?

Everyone talks about how customer friendly their business is; the customer is job one or how their business is all about the customer. We would all agree that without the customer you would have no business at all. Yet, who really comes first, the customer or your business?

Your policies will tell you a lot about your relationship with your customer. Let’s look at a few common business policies.

1. Minimum order size Translation: your customer wants to order less but you insist that they order more.
2. Credit Limits. Translation: your customer wants to order more but you are afraid you will not get your money.
3. Two week turnaround. Translation: your customer wants their order now but you think it is not cost effective for you to process their order right now.

All three of these example policies are about your business, not your customer. They arise because well meaning operational decisions are made regarding equipment, staffing, or financing. If you are thinking it is impossible to ship smaller quantities, eliminate credit limits or shrink turnaround times, then maybe you have just found a paradigm.

Lean thinking focuses us on the customer and provides us with a paradigm that is not about what we can’t do. We can use lean tools to design processes that are aligned with the customer and not just the business. Strategy implementation requires us to prioritize based on the customer’s requirements.

Your business may introduce constraints, which are short term barriers to providing the customer with what they want. To stay in business for the long term you will need a strategy that uses continuous improvement to constantly break down your business barriers and move toward the customer at every turn. Thus, using new paradigms allows us to break free of our self imposed constraints and deliver to the customer what they really want and not just what we are constrained to provide. Isn’t this the strategy you really want - one focused on what the customer really wants?

10 Tips for Project Success

1. Starting out:
Make sure that when you start out your customer defines their requirements in depth. You need to know exactly what it is that must be delivered, to who and when. Make it specific, write it up formally and get them to sign it off. This document will become the basis upon which to measure your success.
2. Customers:
Involve your customers throughout the entire project life cycle. Get them involved in the analysis and planning, as well as execution. You don't have to seek their approval, just keep them informed. The more you involve them, the greater their level of buy-in and the easier it is to manage their expectations.
3. Timeframes:
Keep your delivery timeframes short and realistic. Never agree to lengthy timeframes. Split the project into "mini-projects" if you need to. Keep each mini-project to less than 6 months. This keeps everyone motivated and focused.
4. Milestones:
Break your project timeframe into "Milestones" which are manageable pieces of work. Add delivery deadlines to your milestones and try to deliver on every deadline, no matter what. If you're late, tell your customer about it as early as possible.
5. Communications:
Make sure you keep everyone informed by providing the right information at the right time. Produce Weekly Status Reports and run regular team meetings. Use these Project Management Templates to save you time.
6. Scope:
Only authorize changes to your project scope if there is no impact on the timeline. Get your customers approval to important scope changes first and then get their buy-in to extend the delivery dates if you need to.
7. Quality:
Keep the quality of your deliverables as high as possible. Constantly review quality and never let it slip. Implement "peer reviews" so that team members can review each others deliverables. Then put in place external reviews to ensure that the quality of the solution meets your customer's needs.
8. Issues:
Jump on risks and issues as soon as they are identified. Prioritize and resolve them before they impact on your project. Take pride in keeping risks and issues to a minimum.
9. Deliverables:
As each deliverable is complete, hand it formally over to your customer. Get them to sign an Acceptance Form to say that it meets their expectations. Only then can you mark each deliverable off as 100% complete.
10. Your team:
Great projects are run by great teams. Hire the best people you can afford. Spend the time to find the right people. It will save you time down the track. Remember, good people are easy to motivate. Show them the vision and how they can make it happen. Trust and believe in them. Make them feel valued. They will work wonders.