Project Management - take time to sharpen your axe

It's also commonly believed project success is measured by the completion of the ‘iron triangle’: scope, time and cost, but project performance should be defined by its outputs, outcomes, and impacts: objectives we all agree to.

All the same, project success is still a game with many “shoulda, coulda, woulda” questions. The projects I’ve been involved in have fallen into the following 3 categories:

• exuberant fanfare

• quiet disappointment

• mediocre acceptance

And not always in that order.

Aesop’s famous fable of the race between the tortoise and hare is a fitting metaphor of project management.

Like the tortoise, I opt for slow and steady wins the race approach. But for many the hare is the epitome of success. That’s why it reminds me of how IT projects typically run.

During many projects, the important things tend to get overlooked, forgotten or neglected in the race to implement successful change that’s defined by a completion date, a budget and by a goal that gets revised over and over.

The ‘successful’ outcome in reality is then handed over incomplete or in various stages of Beta version 3.0 to the unsuspecting inheritors of the project just as the actual project teams move onto their next race, or ride off into the sunset with a glowing feeling of a job well done.

The beneficiary contends to either live with the outcome, fix the ‘successful’ mess or resort to another project to make the wrongs right!

Agile would appear to solve this problem but the reality is with Agile, many organisations are chopping down the tree with a blunt axe.

That is not to say Agile is not useful, it’s just that before the project manager starts populating the Kanban board with tasks, the step that must precede all others is analytical planning, often called discovery or scoping.

It’s common for IT projects to be implementations and project leads tend to misunderstand the full business context of the project and the impact of those changes which can be business-wide.

Thorough analysis is the difference between the desired outcome becoming worth it, or a waste of time, and by it, a successful project is half won.

Unfortunately, Agile is often used to avoid careful planning and preparation.

The fault lies not with the method, but how it is often utilised, for example, unclear understanding and alignment of project outcomes to overall business strategy and goals.

Having a grounded analysis gives the project team the understanding they need to know:

• why they are there

• what they’re trying to achieve

• who’s doing what

• what can, or can’t, be done

• what are the risks

• how much time it will take, &,

• how the outcomes fit with the organisation’s strategies.

Having a brilliant idea and implementing it isn't enough to achieve project success. It often means going ‘agile’ to cover up bad work and hasty choices that cause other sets of problems.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” And so, it goes with technology projects, too.