The Top Ten Reasons Projects Fail (Part 2)
Frank Winters has more than 30 years of consulting and Information Technology experience serving as a project/program manager, consultant and IT service industry executive.
The idea that the No. 1 reason projects fail has anything to do with the project manager is controversial to some. If project managers are administrators whose primary job is to keep track of daily events, this is understandable. But PMs of this sort are incorrectly labeled. They should be called project administrators, or just administrators. The reality is that true project managers have a great deal of responsibility, and therefore should have a great deal of authority to get things done.
If you accept that PMs are responsible for the success of the projects they manage, you probably don't think it's too strange to put a lot of emphasis on project management training and experience. A number of years ago, I was managing a software development project for a client company in the pharmaceutical industry. It was a difficult project because the client organization had not implemented any new systems in many years and the IT department was notorious for not giving the business managers what they needed.
I remember a meeting with the very cynical CIO and what he said: "Software development and the computer programming necessitated by it are unmanageable. We know that eventually something will be produced. It will not be what we want and it won't work and it will always be late."
At the time I responded that it really doesn't have to be that way. And I still believe …
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"Only those who have been in the frying pan are really qualified to talk about the heat." - Winston Churchill |
