This is not a Drill! I Repeat, This is not a Drill!
Think back to your High School days when there was a Fire Drill. The alarm sounded and crowds of people shuffled outside in a semi-orderly fashion. The plan was there, the escape route was clear, and the expected results were known. Only one thing was missing...the Fire!
Fast-forward to your professional life as a Project Manager. A Fire Drill now looks very different. Hardly a day goes by when there is not some type of last minute business emergency. The problem is, this is not a Drill! I repeat, this is not a Drill!!
To complicate things, there is generally not a plan for when things go wrong. The escape route is not explicitly clear and the expected results may be ambiguous...and to make matters worse, there IS a FIRE. Some type of business emergency that requires immediate extinguishing.
What can be done? There are varying forms of Risk Management and Contingency plans that can be in place. However, if you have answers to the following three questions, you'll have a good start toward being prepared for a fire...without a real fire!!
1. Who Needs to Know? - Have a list of people who need to be informed when there is a fire, before there is a fire. Is it just the Project Sponsor? Functional Managers? Your Manager? The entire project team?!
2. When do they need to Know? - You don't want to be tagged as a Chicken Little where people no longer pay attention to what you say because everything is always a fire. However, come up with a plan for when the people identified above need to know something is off track. Is it when there is just a spark? Is it after the first attempt to put it out failed?!
3. When is it Safe to Go back inside? - Once the smoke clears, you need to inform everyone that they can resume their normal activity.
There are certainly more involved ways of preparing for when things don't go as planned, but asking the three questions above will be a good start.!
What are some of the things you have in place PRIOR to problems occurring that prepare you for when something goes wrong on your projects?
Saving Changes...
Great post Jennifer. I'll like to add to create a culture in which people feel free to share problems/uncertainties/doubts/icky feelings with me or team members as early as possible. Early detection :)
Setting clear priorities with sponsor so when swift decision making is needed, all things are in place to actually do that. Saving Changes...
Ajan FofanahHSEA Technical Specialist| Network RailLondon, United Kingdom
Jennifer - Thank you for your information about preparing for a fire. I presume that you are talking about project monitoring and control. Projects are so unique that the probability of having a scope creep is so high. Scope creep in Project management is a situation when things are not going as planned. Well! believe it or not, this is the fire. Now that we know what is the likely fire, how do we know that there is a fire? And how do we extinguish this fire?
There is no way of detecting a fire in project management and extinguishing it without well designed PM processes. Such processes are regarded as Project Monitoring and Control. Therefore, all projects should be closely monitored to detect a fire, and when that fire is confirmed, there should be a change control process to use to put out the fire or retracting things according to the project plan. Most importantly, having or designing a monitoring or change control process should not be reactive, but proactive. As Jennifer rightly puts it, we should all plan what to do in the event of a fire. Ideally, this encompasses who should know, when the persons are to be informed, who can put out the fire and when to put it out, and someone to check that the fire has really been extinguished. This is indeed sound project management. Saving Changes...
"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack."
