‹ Back

On more than one occasion I have had to pull a project out of the fire, put out the flames, let it heal then bring it home. 

 

Why do projects go wrong? Given that I want these articles to be short and punchy, I can't give you an exhaustive list but at the centre of most broken projects are dysfunctional relationships within and across teams. 

 

This typically  manifests as poor communication, poorly managed structure and emotionally driven decision making. For an organisation or business function you have the luxury of time to turn this around.

 

If you have a time bound project that has consumed part of its available time inefficiently, the challenge is significantly larger. 

The place to start is not in the project. You start with project governance. 

 

The common theme when I step into projects is that the business problem that triggered the investment has been driven by the leaders in the business. These leaders tend to be the owners in smaller organisations or executives in larger organisations. 

 

Focusing on the smaller organisations, what I have found is that where there are multiple owners involved, there are often subtle differences in their expectations and understanding of the business problems driving the investment. Given the entrepreneurial nature of owner operators, there is a tendency for the original scope of the project to ‘wander’ in different directions as their individual understanding of the solution evolves.

 

This is a project manager's nightmare!  How can you hit a target if the target keeps moving!

 

So step one is to fully unpack and document the business problem, and get the strategic decision makers to sign to it. Create a baseline that you can work to. This will enable any new ‘bright ideas’ to be assessed separately and funded accordingly. Trust me, this is not as easy as it sounds and requires some challenging discussions. On more than one occasion I have come close to not surviving this step. On one occasion I stepped away due to the resistance to change at that senior level.    

 

Next step. Take the egos out of the decision making. Introduce quantifiable metrics to weight decisions on. Fold them into a Terms of Reference or Project Charter. Get the senior leaders or decision makers to sign this. You will refer back to this document often.

 

Step 3. Form a cross functional project governance group. For large projects, look to get external members with Quality Assurance experience into the group, ideally as chair. This will balance out any internal biases and allow the governance function to be process led. 

 

Let’s assume you have all that in place but the project team tasked with delivery isn’t working. In my experience this is typically either because the previous PM (assuming you are replacing this function) did not set clear roles and responsibility, did not communicate well or was battling strong personalities within the project team or the business.

 

Where I replaced the previous PM, my default strategy was to ask each project member individually to describe the business problem that we were collectively solving. Often the result was general misalignment or no understanding. That is the first problem to solve within this group. If we are all travelling down different paths, what is the likelihood of us arriving at the same place at the right time?  

The next problem to solve for this group is being clear who is responsible for delivering what. On more than one occasion I have found people working on the same problem, even though they might be sitting beside each other. Within this, it is important to understand how you pass your work to the next person cleanly. This takes documentation and lots of discussion but adds significant value to the process. 

 

That leads into communication. Do not expect that people will have ‘the right conversations’... they won’t.

As a leader you need to frame up these conversations and invite them to contribute. They will only share what they think is important, not what you know is important. 

 

Pull the above together and hold people at all levels accountable and you will have a chance of delivering your project outcomes through better team engagement. There are of course many layers of nuanced challenges below the content above but nail these fundamentals and you will have the tools to deal with the details. 

 

To set expectations, this is tough. You need to deploy all your diplomacy skills, all your negotiation skills and be prepared to hold your ground. Importantly, do not compromise your standards otherwise you will have to deliver off a weakened base. 

 

My last comment is that if you have a person within the team that is clearly not compatible with the wider team, just move them on. If you can’t, your project is likely to fail.