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Living the Nightmare: A Project without Resources
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
I want to tell you a story, and it’s a cautionary tale. I could call it a case study, but that’s not where the value of this lies. I want to tell you a story about a six-month project that I ran with just one assigned resource: me. I’ll share the pain (and the mistakes), but I’ll also try and share some constructive lessons. Hopefully none of you are ever quite in this position, but I think you’ll be able to relate to at least some aspects.
The scenario
A year before I was asked to lead the project, the organization committed to complete a business transformation within 18 months. They did some analysis and planned out some of the tasks that would need to be completed, but didn’t actually do anything. The head of the group was asked for a progress report after 12 of the 18 months, and I got an urgent phone call.
I was left with six months to complete all aspects of the project, which involved approximately eight different functional areas in 10 different geographic locations. However, because the project hadn’t been built into anyone’s corporate objectives it wasn’t seen as a high priority, and as I was trying to kick the project off mid-year, everyone was already focused on the projects that did make up their personal and group scorecards.
The best that my sponsor could offer me was that he …
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"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty." - George Bernard Shaw |