If your company decides to undertake a new effort - whether it be establishing a new education, planning a new service or upgrading an existing product - is this project as a project. It's about people, assets, resources, schedules, requirements, testing, tuning and deployment, and a number of other activities.
You may have have seen this phenomenon up to now: The projects are risk magnets. Why is this so?
Obviously, there are several factors involved. Project ManagerRisk is a process that seems too little of entrepreneurs and project managers to understand. As a result of the projects often have problems with understaffing, schedule overruns, cost overruns and unmet needs. This article (the first in a series) explains six common traps that, if they can not fully recognized, lead to unpleasant surprises.
Here is what I have observed over many years both as project leaders and participants:
1. Every project is different in any way, shape orShape from the past.
If all your projects were exactly the same, you can just a cookie-cutter approach to crank 'em out without any sleep at night. Although projects can be some similarities, a new project could very easily introduce several new, unknown elements that throw you complete your sense of balance - often without realizing it, your shares until it is too late.
2. The projects are often constrained by finite conditions.
Next could listenRestrictions such as "We only have $ 1200 and three weeks to close all 18 training sessions for this project." (What? You think that should be based on the requirements that you heard so far under this project take a year and a half and cost three hundred grand!)
Speaking of constraints, we must ask is not unusual for promoters or clients, for 1) low cost and 2) rapid completion, and 3) high quality and 4) many functions in the final project results. Although itunderstandable to the largest value for the money, unless the project is blessed with an endless schedule and an unlimited budget, compromises will be necessary.
Usually, it is possible to achieve only two or three out of four of these goals in a typical project. The drawbacks could limit the number of features that limit the quality, or both.
3. People chronically underestimate their time and effort.
Whether because of a perceived social stigma or a cloudy crystalBall, men generally have a difficult time, realistic estimates of project. Given the number of unknowns project to come up with accurate predictions can be difficult. (Smart project managers know this and often add a buffer from the records of the actual experiences of the past derived, commonly known as "fudge factors" project bids.)
To make matters even more complicated, people often feel more "to reduce the truth" - that is, regardless of their already low pressure calculations to minimize them say itshould, when read together an offer. If management pushes people underestimate this way - perhaps for fear of losing the project - the risks can easily overwhelm and even destroy the success of the project.
4. Project requirements tend to be fuzzy at the beginning.
Whether you're talking to a customer, your boss, your colleagues or your customers to find out what the project was to produce what they say, first it sounds as clear as a bell in some areas but verysketchy in others. First clarify the fuzzy parts might be able connected many conversations with many people, and introduce a lot more time than anybody ever.
5. Always shift in demand over time.
The minute after you have cemented the requirements with everyone's agreement that begins "Scope Creep". This means that the project needs, you can expand shrink, or morph into something completely different! These situations arise because the act creating the new can produceResult (or a series of results) that exceed or differ from what people imagine can be the beginning of the situation. And even if the team before it secures to print include "add-ons" can expand the scope of its borders.
6. Almost everything about the project is dynamic!
Apart from changing the requirements, can also find many other things to stop, start, or fluctuate during the project. Experienced people can leave and new people coming on board. Budget Committee could get hacked too.Receive timetables could be reduced, or - even worse sometimes delayed -. Resources can evaporate or not to enter into the right shape. Politicians can steal and assist to remove, or require this critical steps such as testing. The list goes on and on.
Studies of failed projects have shown how difficult it can be to identify any red flags before they occur. Unbridled optimism is the ability of each block to see clearly. However, approached by an iffy project can be better than letting egosRule.
What should I do? As we have seen, projects, some very dynamic variables. Often work under tight budgets and schedules. People tend to time, effort and resources charged. Often need to expand, reduce or change. And the shifting circumstances, it can pull the blanket up under plans for all. Add them together, and many projects are "cooking with a recipe to fail.
But it must not be so. You and your team can learn to avoid tooProject pitfalls carefully to the cause-effect relationships between these six important keys!
