Quite a while ago, I wrote a piece entitled, “Too Many Projects Chasing Too Few Resources,” where I exhorted executives and organizations to adopt a rigorous project filtering process and to discover the power of the word, “No,” when it comes to project selection.
Project inflation…the spread of too many projects and the heaping of them upon the tormented and torn few is a formula for disaster. Unfortunately, work force reductions and pressures to reduce costs, improve processes and to innovate all fuel project inflation.
A colleague described the scenario in her firm as follows: “It seems like we are reacting in knee-jerk fashion to what’s going on in the economy and our industry by saying “Yes” to anything and everything that looks like it might cut costs or improve operating efficiencies. I get that, but we’re literally accepting and launching every project that comes along and we have even fewer resources to execute these projects than we did a year ago.”
Yep, the projects always trickle down from somewhere up there in the rarefied air where things look and sound good in theory. Conscientious project managers always raise the resource issue and according to my colleague, that discussion often ends up with a reprioritization of existing in-process projects (moving the deck chairs) or the OK to outsource to fill the gaps.
These short-sighted solutions of course are another step towards chaos:
- Frequent reprioritization drives project team performance and morale into the porcelain bowl.
- Adding contract workers (outsourcing) can be fine, but it increases communications and administrative complexity exponentially.
- Project inflation overstresses the project management resources and often breeds a wickedly complex matrix of project responsibilities for the people doing the work.
- Fueling recovery, renewing our firms and strengthening our ability as a firm to compete are critical goals right now, and developing project selection discipline is an absolutely critical ingredient in achieving those goals.
As a starting point for gaining control of the chaos, consider these Project Filtering suggestions from my earlier post:
Ask and Answer:
- Why are we doing this project? What are the assumptions that made it seem like a good idea before and are they still valid?
- Is it a must-do or compliance initiative?
- Is it strategic? If yes, you should bounce it up against the current-state strategy and determine whether it is still relevant today. If not, kill it.
- Is it an operational improvement? If yes, can you connect the operational improvements to something that impacts strategy and customers…even through one or two degrees of separation? If you cannot connect it to something that allows you to serve customers (internal or external) more effectively, consider killing it.
- Do we have the right balance of strategic and operational initiatives?
- Are we evaluating projects based on a combination of objectively developed financial and non-financial criteria? Does our evaluation approach allow for reasonable comparison AND selection of alternatives?
The Bottom-Line:
Stop the torrent of trickle-down projects that dilute the effectiveness of your resources to something approaching gridlock. Adopt a strategic project selection and portfolio management process or prepare to run in place while the world passes you by.
Great Blog. This type of situation is happening to me right now in the industry that i am in. It is a highly customized industry that can be very expensive and time consuming in terms of production. A couple of years ago we were definetley more selective in the jobs we actually agree to take on. Now, we are taking on way more projects than we every did. Although small in their general size, they still take time. After reading your blog however, i feel a little more secure in bringing up some suggestions to start re-evaluating our project selection. Thanks for the insight.
Art,
I really like how you followed your article from yesterday on the lack of confidence displayed by individual’s in today’s workplace with the posting today on chaos caused by project inflation. The pressure that faces us in today’s working world really does provide an environment that makes it easy for individuals to lose confidence. When one is pushed into saying “yes” to all projects it’s like he loses his backbone and essentially his confidence. I believe that when there is a pressure to accept all tasks and projects, as an individual and as a company it is easy for one to lose their sense of self confidence as decision making is taken out of one’s hands and is instead made by the factors of one’s situation . I believe that a great way to keep (and grow) one’s confidence in today’s world is to properly evaluate all projects that pass in front of us and (as you recommend) ask questions, do a strategic analysis and start feeling better about what you can offer your team!
Danielle, it is definitely a balancing act that firms walk. Diligence can save the firm from making some critical mistakes at this point.
Kristen, thanks for linking the pieces. I cannot claim that I did that by design, but the two may be more complementary than I thought. Great advice for helping boost individual and team confidence.
Thank you both for reading and commenting. -Art