Jumping the Shark

 

Jumping the shark is a widely used idiom – to describe a moment in the evolution of a television show, characterized by absurdity, when a particular show abandons its core premises and begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery. A few good examples of these in the history of American television serial drama include the famous Prison Break, Heroes and Lost. In retrospect, these dramas should have stopped after the initial successes instead of dragging on to more seasons where we witnessed sharp dip in viewership. In project management, sometimes we do come across projects that turned bad, with long delays, evading quality and forever changing targets. Such projects will eventually eat up the organization’s coffer. The key question is – “When should we drop a project that turned bad?”. It is like buying and holding on to a share with plummeting share price – it is always a tough decision to make on the ‘right time’ to let it go. I have seen many project managers and steering committees holding too long on failing projects resulting in unrecoverable monetary losses, exhausted team, frustration and undesirable impacts and delays to other projects.

There are various reasons why people like to hold on to failing projects relentlessly. It could be ego – “Failure is not a word in my dictionary”. It could also be due to job security – “This project can’t fail, else I will lose my job”. Sometimes, it could be just tenacity that pushes the envelope – “Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there”, said Josh Billings. Whatever the reason is, we still need to decide whether we should fix or kill the project. Below are a few points to take note when you are considering whether to drop a failing project.

Strategic alignment: Business strategy changes every now and then. When a project is dragged ad infinitum, it is wise to check back if the objectives of the project are still aligned with the business strategies. We need to review the business strategies and reprioritize the problematic project with other projects in the portfolio to decide if it is still worth to continue with the project.

Return on investment (ROI): Even if the project’s objectives are in alignment with the business strategies, we still need to estimate the amount of effort and money that we have already thrown into the project and those that we have to invest further in order to bring it back to life. We need to ensure the overall amount of money, we have spent and yet to spend, is well justified over the benefits that we are going to get in return. Watch out for your ROI in both short and long term plans.

Capability and capacity: Assuming that the problematic project meets the ROI and strategic alignment, we still need to assess whether the resources we have in the current project team or organization have the required knowledge and capability to complete the job. Even if we have the capability, we also need to consider if we have the capacity to do it and whether it will have any drastic impact on other projects in term of resource contention. The bottom line is we need to be realistic and know our limits.

What other points you would consider when deciding to kill or not to kill a failing project?

Sometimes we have to be honest with ourselves and have the courage to admit that the project is beyond the value of fixing, at least not without burning out another pile of cash that exceeds the equivalent business benefits. Do not take it too personal to drop a bad project. There is nothing too wrong to let go if we have done our due diligence of assessment. Most important thing is we have to learn from our mistakes and move on.