The Show Must Go On

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

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Topics: Lessons Learned, Risk Management, Scope Management

The old saying in theater is that the “show must go on”. It does not matter if someone is sick, the understudy will be called in. If a prop is broken, they will work around it. And if the lights go down at an inopportune moment, the actors might ad lib about the sun going down early. No matter what happens backstage or even on the stage, the performers and the backstage personnel will always maintain the mindset that they must put a show on for the patrons that paid for tickets.

Projects are very much like theater in this respect. It does not matter how many problems or issues occur during the project execution, the project manager and the stakeholders still expect the project to be finished on time. That is why a project manager must have an issue management plan that can handle any problems and still keep the project on track. A key component of the issue management plan is the analysis of the issue, and the analysis leads to the resolution plan. As a final step, lessons learned should be captured from the issue and applied to the project going forward.

It is important to keep in mind that issues are not risks. Risks have not happened yet and they require mitigation plans--for example, an understudy learning the parts of a key cast member is a mitigation plan. An issue is something that has happened and requires a resolution--an actor is sick and the …

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