Most Common Project Mistakes
I was leafing through a copy of "Project Management for Dummies" the other day. Even though I'm a certified Project Manager, I still like to read this kind of stuff. Sometimes there's some really interesting tips one can pick up.
When it came to the section of anticipating the most common project mistakes, I was not only pleasantly surprised, but also motivated to write this post. This book echoes my personal experiences frighteningly well.
I've been involved in many projects in a non-PM role (disclaimer necessary - it wasn't my fault what you're about to read). On many of these projects the biggest mistakes are a perfect mirror of what the book says. The top 2 points being:
1) Jumping directly from the conceive phase to the perform phase.
That means you have an idea of what the project will be about, but no proper plan. Likely you're under time pressure and/or budget constraints. There will be hundreds of excuses to skip the planning stage and just jump into work right away.
That's like starting to program a website without a decent spec. I'm not saying this is not possible, however I have seen projects costing 3-4 times their budget because of this. Not to mention delayed go-lives, and sometimes even total abandonment.
2) Omitting the start phase completely
This means you have a plan, but you fail to define procedures and relationships, formalize tracking and reporting systems, assign manpower, etc.
I've seen what happens when a key player on a project leaves - it's messy - trust me. You need to be able to accurately measure and communicate where you're at in the project, and have lots of fail-safe procedures just in case. The person who came up with the phrase "expect the best, but plan for the worst" did so with reason, I'm sure.
The above 2 points can account for 15-20% of a project's cost, but leaving them out can open you up to exponential increases in project cost later. On a $100k project, you may be tempted to save $20k and jump right into the work, but you'd be better off taking that $20k and buying lottery tickets. Maybe you're lucky and win a few million - enough to pay for all the scope creep and emergency measures to keep the project going.
I'm not trying to be cynical, but I've been witness to many real-world projects.
-Andreas
Posted: 2009-05-11 17:21:51
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