It’s not easy to quantify failure in any field. However, some markers are unmistakable. For one, if you don’t meet the goals set at the beginning of a project, you’re bound to fail. If the project’s completion doesn’t achieve the desired result (monetary or qualitative), you’re looking at a failure. If the project consumes more resources than it delivers in the long run, it’s also considered a failure.
However, all these things depend on how well a project is managed. Unseen factors and unaccounted variables appear everywhere, and they’re unavoidable. However, failing to plan is a mistake that can easily be avoided at the inception of a project.
Poor Planning
Failure may be the easiest to recognize when the project is ending. However, a great project manager sees all the signs in the beginning. Poor planning can unravel everything within the first few steps. When people don’t know what to do, roles and resources aren’t properly assigned, and deadlines are being missed, it’s chaos.
All this usually devolves into fights and results in the project being put on hold or revised. It can result in huge losses for project managers and the firm. Massive losses can also result in massive lay-offs. Project managers can then end up with greater challenges. If they do get another chance to complete the project, they must do so with perfection. Otherwise, their clients will turn away and never look back, and the firm will be left without resources.
Disconnected Controls
You can’t use a screwdriver to hammer a nail nor a hammer to put in a screw. Using disconnected tools can sometimes become the biggest hindrances in a project. Similarly, using incompatible software or hardware can act as major roadblocks. While conversion software has come a long way, there can still be major problems with clashing formats. Converting from PDF to text documents or using clashing video formats in the same files can result in bottlenecks.
These can cause major problems with project management that end up delaying the entire project. The solution for this is to choose one coherent ecosystem for all your needs. Making that decision can be hard since most of your employees will have a particular preference. However, choosing a homogeneous set of tools and processes and then adding on to them is cleaner. This way, you’ll be choosing programs to fit your system rather than an entire system to fit one program.
The Lack of Templates and Automation
During your career, you may come across many project managers. There may be good ones and bad ones. How do you know if a project manager is good or bad? The answer lies in the project template. A good project manager will learn from experience and create templates and rough plans to tackle every project. Those who don’t care about their job will not.
The best project managers will realize that templates need to be created for repetitive and mundane work. These templates will serve as rough blueprints to navigate through the projects. These can be the schedule for every workday, recording minutes of meetings, and even scheduling phone calls. The need for large scale templates for projects is what birthed Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the first place. Today, AWS provides large-scale templates and office CRMs to major corporations and government entities.
To create templates, you need to monitor all types of projects- even the ones that failed. The carcass of a project that failed can be dissected to form the basis of templates. These templates can include the use of certain tools, certain specific protocols to be followed, etc. Hiring an OBM (Online Business Manager) to centralize, document and automate for your business can be a game-changer in the way your business operates and takes a ton of stress off of you.
Poor Risk Management
While some risk is involved in each endeavor, there are risk standards that each project has to follow. Certain percentage points over the acceptable amount of risk problems are bound to occur. If risks can be avoided, they should be and if not, they should be minimized. If all else fails, they should be prioritized.
Of course, there will be times when risks aren’t fully anticipated, but project managers should learn from those events. Risk management needs to be second nature to project managers since their job relies on getting a project past them all. There is a risk that construction workers can get hurt on the job. There are risks that the project won’t be completed on time. There are even risks that import duties and trade agreements may affect project profitability. However, great project managers account for most of those problems when they’re on the horizon.
There is also such a thing as reactive risk management which can be effective at mitigating sudden risks. However, it’s undertaken with such lethargy most of the time that it becomes ineffective. Effective risk management plans and educating the project team on handling and reporting failures are great first steps. Once you’ve laid out the plan, execution is always a little smoother.
Scope Creep Planning Failure
If there was a list of what project managers should avoid, scope creep planning failure would top that list. The parameters of the project may be clearly defined, but they may ultimately give way to chaos. As the name suggests, the scope of the project creeps up on you when you least expect it. Factors that cause scope creep include inept analysis of the project’s initial requirements, oversimplification of the project, and bad communication. Other factors can include bad risk analysis and a lack of testing for the result. As you can imagine, scope creep can either occur on new types of projects or those with a larger scope.
However, managing scope creep isn’t impossible. It involves getting everyone on the same page for starters. The vision and priorities need to be in order. If everyone agrees to the parameters set and adheres to the set plan, everything should proceed accordingly.
Communications Failure
Communication between project managers can be a major problem within departments. Channels of communication when set, shouldn’t be bypassed. That creates areas of uncertainty and can lead to infighting. It can also lead to problems with deadlines and members of the team being caught unawares.
Avoiding this pitfall is quite easy if the focus is kept on uniform communication channels. If a specific hierarchy is established and people stick to their roles, this shouldn’t be a problem. However, that’s something that needs to be enforced rather than relied on.
All these problems are quite common in project failures. However, through discipline and planning, most of these can be taken care of.
To find out more about our OBM services and how an Online Business Manager can help you centralize, document and automate your business, schedule a Client Discovery call with us today.
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