It is well established that wearing a bicycle helmet significantly reduces your chance of head injury should you fall.

It’s also not a big leap to acknowledge that texting while driving is an open invitation to an accident.  If you quit texting, put your hands on the wheel and drive defensively, the probability of you successfully getting from point a to point b increases dramatically.

The risks and consequences from riding without a helmet and texting while driving are well known and unarguable, yet many people engage in these activities assuming that they won’t be impacted.

The same human traits that drive people to do dumb things that they know can cause personal injury, appear to manifest themselves in the way many organizations pursue projects.

For those of you ready to click off yet another boring project management post, pause just a second and consider that the success of your firm is likely dependent upon how well your associates execute projects. If your firm is like many/most, you should be worried.

Strategy is executed in projects, and chances are your organization is metaphorically riding without a helmet and texting at the same time.

Every quarter in the opening session of my MBA course on Project Management, the students work in teams to compare notes on successful projects and unsuccessful projects. They consider what made the successful projects work and what went wrong that drove other projects into the ditch.

It should be no surprise that the examples of successful projects are harder to come up with than the seemingly endless supply of failed initiatives.  In all cases, and in all classes over time, the reasons for failure are some combination of the same factors that we all know about.

Common Reasons Cited for Project Failure:

  • Didn’t know who the customer was.
  • I’m not certain that anyone fully understood the objectives for this project.
  • Not clear who was in charge of the project.
  • Our sponsor was too busy to get involved.
  • We kept adding features until what we created didn’t recognize what we set out to create.
  • People who fail in our organization are shot.  No one estimates realistically…they don’t want to be the one to take the blame.
  • It wasn’t clear who was responsible for what.
  • We never heard from the project manager.
  • There was no project charter.
  • People were not accountable to the project team.
  • We would meet every week and talk about excuses.
  • The executives kept interfering.
  • We outsourced this and our partner failed.

And so on ad nauseam.

This is a real list developed over a number of classes by students who work at marquee companies.  If you are reading this and rolling your eyes and thinking, “not here,” you’re probably riding your bicycle down a slippery road with one hand texting and your eyes blindfolded. Watch-out for the truck behind the bus coming around that blind curve.

Like head injuries from a bicycle fall without a helmet and car accidents due to being distracted, every single one of the issues above and the many more that I did not list, are easily prevented by the application of well-established professional project management practices.

Make a commitment this year to improving your Project Management and Project Execution culture.

  • Make it top leadership’s responsibility to support/drive/enable improvement in project execution and project culture.  Formalize the role of Project Manager and make a commitment to introducing the new discipline.
  • Put teeth and power into the role of Sponsor.  Create a culture where sponsors have the political heft to support project teams and put them on the hook for outcomes.
  • Sponsors, see the above point.  You are responsible.  Get to work and start helping.
  • Use Chartering documents and practices to communicate a project’s importance, to establish the identity of the sponsor and the role and authority of the Project Manager.
  • Measure twice and cut once.  Be relentless on the front-end to develop and agree on scope.
  • Stuff happens.  Going from inept to competent in project execution will take time and there will be missteps.  Quit shooting messengers; create a culture that learns from mistakes and from successes.
  • Rinse and repeat.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Project failure generally has its roots in senior management incompetence, ignorance or laziness.  (Redundant for emphasis)!  Of course, senior management likely views project failure as a function of the project team and the individuals.  Chances are, the executives are too busy texting each other about the need to “make some improvements” while they are driving to work. Well, that’s one way of getting some new top management talent.  On second thought, keep texting, execs.