Project Management Articles from the Project Management Advisor™ |
Project Management Articles -
Project Management Screw-Up 7 - We Didn't Involve The Right
People
Excerpted
from The
Project Management Advisor - 18 Major Project Screw-Ups And How
To Cut Them Off At The Pass
(Prentice Hall, 2004)
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Some years back I worked on a process
re-engineering project at a large industrial manufacturer.
The project went on for several months and it looked as
if things were going quite well.
Then, a person that I’ll call “Hack” showed up on the
project who reported to one of the divisional VP’s.
Hack came into the project with a negative view of the
project and, after spending a couple of weeks on the project,
was successful in convincing the divisional VP that the project
should be shut down.
The project team packed up and was out of there that day.
In looking at the situation, had we involved Hack earlier
in the project we could have made some fundamental changes in
the direction which would have put the project on a path more in
line with management expectations and avoided wasting time &
money on the project.
Chances are, there has been a Hack on one of your projects who
showed up, disrupted everything and either slowed down or derailed
your project completely.
It could be that it was the wrong business decision to shut
the project down, but it could also be that it was the
right thing to do because
the project wasn’t addressing the collective need of the customer.
Regardless of right or wrong, it is very important to know
who to involve in your project to better ensure success and avoid
the waste and frustration of a stalled project.
So, let’s talk about the people, or
stakeholders, who aren’t
assigned to the project but can materially influence its outcome.
In my experience, stakeholders generally fall into two
groups: customer stakeholders, or those you help, and supplier
stakeholders, or those who help you.
Your customer stakeholders primarily are going to be your
customer population and their associated management.
At the end of the day, they are going to be the ultimate
judge of your end product and will be your ultimate measure of
success. Your supplier
stakeholders can be quite varied.
Technical support personnel, consultants, and third-party
software providers are all examples of supplier stakeholders.
As you design your project, you’ll need to think about the
types of help that you will need and enlist support from your
supplier stakeholders to help ensure success.
How it happens:
There is not clear definition on who the customer is –
Getting your customer list right and making them aware of
the project early on is super important in avoiding project
stalls and fire drills because someone is bent out of shape
because they weren’t included.
Something that I’ve learned (again the hard way) is that
you very well could be doing everything right on your project
and that the project is being done for all the right reasons.
However, if someone was not included (but should have
been) in the project at the beginning and “finds out” that the
project is going on, you have a situation on your hands.
You not only need to orient them to the project and get
their commitment, but also smooth ruffled feathers because you
didn’t include them in the first place.
Many times things work out OK, but you’ve taken time away
from other activities to deal with a fire drill that could have
been avoided had you better defined the customer list at project
onset. .
Others
who could help with specific issues on the project weren’t utilized
– On one project that I was the business owner, an employee
relatively new to the company was working on a critical project to
aggregate worldwide financial planning information and report it to
senior finance management.
He did an outstanding job of defining the information
requirements, setting up the reporting infrastructure, and managing
the team members assigned to him to complete the project.
He came up against a project issue and was working hours on
end trying to get the issue resolved among the project team.
When he raised the issue to me, I asked him if he had
contacted the group in the company that had expertise on the very
issue he was trying to solve on his own.
End of the story is that he solicited help from the group and
they resolved the issue that afternoon.
Knowing who can help you get through tough project issues can
save you tons of time and frustration and avoid wasting precious
project resources.
The
people who can torpedo a project weren’t identified and managed –
Just as in my “Hack” example above, it will help you immensely
to know who is likely to create trouble for your project.
When I was a consultant doing a project in a particularly
political or contentious environment, we would review the customer’s
organization chart with the customer project manager and identify
friends and foes of the project.
With project friends, we maintained the relationship with
them by keeping them briefed on project progress to ensure that they
remained friends.
With the foes, we would take deliberate steps to meet with the foe,
review the project with them, understand their reservations, and
attempt to let them put their thumbprint on the project to make it
more palatable to them.
Sometimes this was successful where a foe became a friend of the
project, but other times the foe remained a foe and we had to rely
on the project sponsor to help us manage the foe.
Either way, know who can hurt you and actively manage the
relationship with them.
Warning Signs:
You’re getting a lot of questions from other stakeholder groups
on what you’re doing – Sometimes this could simply be that
stakeholder groups are curious about your project and find it
interesting. This
could also mean, though, that there are stakeholders that should
have a voice in your project and are currently not being heard.
Be aware of assessing the degree of involvement that
other stakeholder group needs to have on your project and be
open to involving them based on business need.
Uninvited stakeholders start showing up at project meetings – So
you’re in a project status meeting and a stakeholder that has
previously not been associated with the project shows up.
It very well could be that the stakeholder has a need to know
what’s going on and they just need to get up to speed on the
project. It may
be the right thing to involve the stakeholder, but avoid allowing
the stakeholder to hijack your meeting and wasting time of other
participants by getting a project briefing during a time where other
project business was slated to be discussed.
Project
issues are taking longer than expected to resolve �� If team
members appear to be spinning their wheels on a project issue, it
could be that they are not involving the right subject matter
experts and are attempting to wrestle the issue to the ground on
their own. Take
the time to work with them to make sure that resources available to
them are being utilized appropriately.
Turning it around:
Communicate, communicate, communicate – I’ve always found
that, unless there is specific confidentiality constraints that
forbid you from discussing the project outside of a small group,
communication on what you’re doing to different stakeholder
groups is crucial.
Have a standard pitch that you can give at a moments notice to a
group of people which describes the project.
Know
who to call - As I mentioned above, don’t slog through issues on
your own if you don’t have to.
Whenever I run up against a difficult issue on a project, my
first thought is “Who can help me resolve this?”
Be continually seeking out subject matter experts to help get
you through problems.
It not only makes your life easier, it better ensures a more
successful project completion.
Right-size project involvement – Just because someone wants to
be involved in a project (or shows up as an uninvited stakeholder)
doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a business need for them to
be involved.
You’ve got to make conscious decisions on who is involved in a
project and to what degree they are involved.
Their involvement could be as an interested party that gets a
briefing on some periodic basis.
Then again, their involvement could be as a decision maker
because the product you are producing will have a direct impact on
their business.
Let
your project sponsor help you – When defining your stakeholders,
use your project sponsor to help you with the identification.
They will likely know the organization better than you and
can help ensure that the right people get involved in the project.
You may also need your project sponsor to help you with a foe
that is creating problems for you.
Be open
to adjusting the focus and scope of the project –
Take Aways:
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Know who your customer is and involve them up front
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Know who can help you get things done; don’t try to do everything yourself
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Know who can torpedo your project and manage the relationship with them
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