Syed Waqar Hussain

The simple question is that where and why things can go wrong and how to prevent that from happening?

In software development industry there was a joke something like that client can only ever choose two solution three features; lower cost, performance and reliability. Unfortunatley though, the joke has become quite normal and routine requirement of clients.

There was a report called “The Chaos Report” published from Standish Group in 1995 regarding IT project failures. According to the report, 31% of all software projects are cancelled prior to completion, 53% of them face delays and cost overruns, and only about 16% are ever successful. Morever, an average software project runs late by 222%, goes over-budget by 189% and delivers only 61% of the required functionality, a worrying statistic, not much has changed to this day. It turns out, thakfully, that this scenario is preventable.

Due to some major issues, a mjority of which can be attributed to poor project management. Following are seven of the most serious mistakes and pitfalls that a project manager must avoid in order to give the project and the team a greater chance of success.

Poor Communication

Normally all including me have been a part of several projects where our client requests for something and we give something else. It just because of poor communication. Communication is very important part which holds everything together in place. Good communication ensures that all stakeholders (users), customers, developers, sponsors are on the same point. It is neccessary that the project goals are clear, common and well-understood; assumptions are kept at a minimum and that project progress is communicated properly. Everything should on right place such as risks, consistency delays and changes and everything. Importance of communication can not be highlighted.

Project managers must spend their 90% of the time cimmuncating with the team.

Requirement Analysis / Finding / Defination

It is basis on several things such as scope, cost, need, schedule resources and qulaity. You must heared that the weak foundation is always risky in future. Mostly project managers run away from it try to implement project without any proper requirement investigation. In this kind of process they lost their efforts, time and costs of implementation. Study and senior project management guys proved that spending one week in reuquirement analysis in initial stages is better than reworking in future.

Inadequate Planning

Detailed and efficient planning is not a easy task, but believe me it is totally rewarding. I am not saying that people do not plan thier projects but still we feel that level of planning is insufficient. Often neglect but some managers use same project plan for all project which could be different in approach.

Planning each and every aspect of project in complete detail from beginning to end could only work if one has a crystal ball. In the real world, most projects, by definition are supposed to be progressibely elaborated, that is the project unfolds and becomes clearer with time. The suggested solution is such cases is to employ rolling wave planning a technique which recommends performing an approximate high level estimate of the project and detailed estimated of the project and detailed estimates only for the requirements and activities being worked on.

People Management

Team is always great asset for the project managers. They must be fully motivated, focused and organized, the team can even achieve unrealistic targets. It is required to know each memeber of team in terms of skills, and their best utilization; with proper delegation, empowerment and and enabling environment, the whole could actually be greater than the sum of its parts. Now days human resource management has become very important part of project management.

Acquiescence

Stop it, you can not accept any user request and sponsor directives without a much protest or negotiation. This also involves agreeing to unrealistic demands and deadlines at the outset, despite being aware of the ultimate outcome.Effective and efficient negotiation can lead your project towards success.

Repeating Previous Mistakes

Surprising repetition of ineffective practuces and mistakes is the majore reason why project the world over the continue to fail. To be hones, the general things are very well documented but not many seem to benefit from them. Each organization has its own environment, constraints and mehdologies and in a number of them, there are no processes to recoird lessons learnt from projects undertaken in the past.

Documentation of lessons learnt should be carried out throughout the life of the project and must be consolidated at the end. And if a project fails completely or ends up being canceled, a post-Mortem is crucial.

IT projects today have become a critical part of our infrastructure and lives. There is a lot at stake begine each of them huge investments, orgnaisation startegies, careers and reputations. Some level of failure will always be there and is probablu essential for progress. however most of the failures that occur are avoidable. These six deadly mistakes are core areas where things can go wrong. Eliminating them may not gurantee success on every project, but it will snure the removal of the biggest possible obstacles.

Thanks to

Statistics over IT failure

Project failure statistics

Rolling wave planning

Xoheb Shekih – Spider Author.