News & Views

July 15, 2009 from ProjectTimes – “In most organizations, project management is practised on an exception basis. We only think of it seriously when the project is in big trouble. The need for project management, and in some cases, even its existence, is acknowledged only when we are squarely faced with the reality that the project is out of control…”

It is not surprising that, even today, many organizations think of Project Management as just another overhead, full of meetings, administration and paperwork that they can ill afford. It is only in the last 20 years that project management has gained recognition as a management discipline and embraced by professionals and academics as a core competency for managing projects.

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – This article provides a compelling set of reasons why companies should adopt a formal and structured approach to managing their projects.

After explaining the 10 key characteristics of a project, the author rightfully points out that projects are ‘full of uncertainties and risks’, and that most companies make a concerted effort to manage a project only when the project is in ‘big trouble’. In our opinion, this is tantamount to buying car insurance after you’ve been involved in an accident!

The article points out that the failure of many projects can be traced back to the absence of one or more of these 10 project characteristics i.e. projects are ‘hastily started and poorly executed without a proper foundation, a business need, a sponsor, a customer, a risk assessment or completion criteria. It is no wonder that they are headed for the rat hole right when they started’.

The author also states that ‘implementing quick-fixes in lieu of formal project management is like sending a novice pilot on a flying mission. With little training and experience, the pilot is expected to learn the fundamentals the hard way, in the midst of a crisis, and to fix the problems while the plane is still up in the air! Surely, we cannot succeed with this approach, be it with flying or project management’.

Our decades of experience has taught us that projects such as selecting and implementing business software are often plagued with costly and painful problems and unrealized expectations that could have been substantially if not totally avoided with proper project management.

So if you decide that the success of your project is important enough that failure is simply not an option, ensure that you adopt and promote formal and proven project management practices. Remember, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’!