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10 Major Mistakes Your Team Can Avoid
by Adele Sommers
Does your organization
see every possibility as
a “must-win” project, even when it’s
a poor fit for your in-house talents? If so, this is
one of several viewpoints that can blind your company
to potential problems ahead. In Part
1 of this series, we explored how to recognize six
common project traps. In this article, we’ll review
10 major mistakes to avoid (or risks to flag)
when choosing, estimating, and staffing your projects.
First,
it’s important to recognize that your organizational
culture sets the tone for how you approach projects.
For example,
- Does your
company always expect people to do more for
less?
- Does management
routinely insist on or agree to unworkable schedules?
- Are team
members encouraged to underestimate their realistic
efforts?
If so, these are signs that your organization may have
a “must-win-at-all-costs” view of projects.
You may want to consider how idealistic but impractical
expectations could set the stage for project failure.
In
any case, if your business faces challenges with project
budgets, schedule, quality, or features, try pondering
these 10 points the next time you’re considering
a project:
1.
Is the project non-compelling or a bad fit for the project
team?
A
bad fit means that it doesn’t fall within the general
professional or technical arenas in which your company
has accomplishments or your colleagues have expertise.
Note that if your projects normally entail working with
subject matter experts who would supply the information
you need, this is not as great of a concern.
2.
Will the project scope entail operating in unfamiliar
territory?
Even
if it’s a reasonable fit, if a project involves
requirements your team hasn't worked with before, you
could be overly optimistic in assuming everyone can
come up to speed quickly enough to be successful on
the project. You may need to seek outside expertise,
although this can introduce its own risks (see #6–7
below).
 3.
Are project requirements, such as product features,
complex?
A
project that requires many complicated features to interact
correctly vastly increases the potential for problems.
One risk strategy could involve agreeing to phase in
and test the complexity over time. Another could be
to negotiate a reduction in the number or difficulty
of the features to be completed.
4.
Are the requirements pitted against an aggressive schedule?
 Time
limits of some sort exist on almost every project, and
drive nearly every other project expectation. Will there
be enough time to implement the requested features at
the desired quality level? If not, you may want to negotiate
a longer schedule, agree to reduce the requirements,
or phase in some features later. You could bring in
more people, although this will involve more coordination.
5.
Are too few personnel and resources available for the
project?
Project
managers routinely miss sleep at night over what would
happen if key project members were to leave. Or if the
funding or resources were to get chopped or significantly
delayed. It’s one thing to have snafus occur later
in the effort, but it’s another to start off
unrealistically. So try not to underestimate your needs.
6.
Will coordination with many different collaborators
be needed?
Involving
many people means complex hand-offs. If your project
will include client or third party collaborators, how
will people interact? Should all parties remain in  direct
communication? Or should each group have a single point
of contact? Also think about the division of work, and
each group’s responsibilities to the others.
7.
Are the primary collaborators unfamiliar to the project
team?
If
it does become necessary to recruit one or more new
contributors, will you be able to verify whether they
can do the job? If the unfamiliar parties have stretched
the truth about their capabilities, you may be in for
trouble. If there’s a way to have them prove themselves
first, that’s ideal — or else have a contingency
plan.
8.
Are project team members discouraged from raising concerns?
Before
and after the project starts, team members will identify
all kinds of challenges. Do you want people to raise
red flags when they see potential problems, or do you
prefer everyone to keep quiet, maintain a stiff upper
lip, and work 24/7 if needed? The team culture will
determine whether the members verbalize and address
in a timely fashion the many pitfalls that can appear
along the way.
 9.
Are there insufficient review and test cycles in the
schedule?
Allocating
enough time for review and testing iterations commonly
presents a challenge. Regardless of your initial planning,
if project delays begin to add up, what will people
want to cut? Can you afford to reduce testing and still
deliver quality?
10.
Are there no standard protocols for managing scope changes?
When
the inevitable “add-on requests” materialize,
consider how they’ll affect the project. Unless
you have a tool, such as a project change request, to
adjust the official budget and time frame, you’ll
always be at risk for cost and schedule overruns.
If
you answered “yes” to one or more of
these questions, it means that each is an area of risk
that you’ll need to manage to ensure project success.
Either create a workable plan for managing these risks,
or consider whether pursuing the project is in the best
interests of your organization.
Copyright 2005
Adele Sommers
Want to publish this article
in your newsletter or Web site? Be sure to include:
Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the creator of the award-winning
“Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance”
success system at LearnShareProsper.com.
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The
end of October marks the point when most U.S. states
set their clocks back one hour, ending Daylight-Savings
Time. While I mourn the loss of evening light, I'm
grateful for that special bonus. What to do with an
extra hour? Read a book? Take a walk or a nap? Goof
off? The possibilities are endless. Whatever you decided
to do, I hope it was enjoyable and gratifying!
