Dealing with Shifting Goal Posts

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.

  Portfolio Management   Strategy  

When the project portfolio is approved, frequently as part of an annual planning process, the intention is to deliver a suite of initiatives that will collectively achieve the goals and objectives of the organization for that period. Some planning processes are more robust than others, but ultimately the portfolio is designed to contain the projects that will give the best chance of delivering what the organization needs. However, sometimes the corporate priorities change unexpectedly and the projects that were approved at the start of the year are no longer appropriate for what the organization is trying to achieve.

Clearly this has some significant potential impact--new projects may need to be initiated, other projects may need to be cancelled or deferred and some initiatives may see significant changes in scope, schedule and/or budget. Often, these changes aren’t handled well. In this article, I want to look at some of the issues that need to be dealt with as well as consider some best practices.

Be decisive
By definition, a change in corporate priorities are going to have wide-ranging impacts--if a corporate acquisition occurs, then a whole host of integration initiatives will be required, new users and departments will need to be supported, etc. Even for less dramatic changes--a shift in product focus or a determination to become more conservative due to…

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