Lessons learned from a failed or successful project
Marcus UdokangProject Manager| Aivaz ConsultingCalgary, Alberta, Canada
No impact analysis, no active project governance, project sponsors not effectively involved from the outset, or maybe the sponsors are fully engaged from the beginning of a project? These could be signs of a project failure or success.
What is the most significant lesson you have learned from a failed or successful project? Saving Changes...
In my opinion, every factor can contribute to a project's success or failure.
Few examples:
- No clear understanding of the objective / business value targeted by the project.
- Ever changing scope (saying "Yes" to every requirement) or unclear acceptance criteria (how to know scope is achieved?)
- Miss to identify & engage key stakeholders
- Waiting too late to communicate on an issue or major risk
etc. There can be many more.
I personally experienced a project where the client wanted every feature on their legacy application being replaced onto the new one being developed....the team ended up re-creating the same application with a new look & feel (and eventually was never used by the client). The project finished on time & on budget but didn't yield the expected business value. Would you call it a success??... Don't think so. Saving Changes...
Marcus UdokangProject Manager| Aivaz ConsultingCalgary, Alberta, Canada
@Mayte, certainly appreciate your view.
Marcus Saving Changes...
Marcus UdokangProject Manager| Aivaz ConsultingCalgary, Alberta, Canada
@Soha, @Mohit, many thanks. Appreciate your responses.
Andrew SoswaTechnology leader| Leading global financial institutionElk Grove Village, Il, United States
Marcus, I think you provided a mix of project reporting objectives and business KPIs. If you evaluate projects based on project reporting objectives (i.e., Earned Value, Scope, Schedule, Budget, governance, all documents nicely archived, Lessons Learned completed, etc.), they don't equal to business value (i.e., resulting product working up to customer satisfaction without major issues, delivers ROI, accepted by exec stakeholder, etc.).
Lesson learned (retrospective) from failed project? One business objective of the project was to deliver a project according to Agile methodology. During the first week, I found that this major consultancy renamed its top-down management/decision making and waterfall project methodology with Agile terms. What they wanted was 'pivot' on a dime while keeping their existing processes. We delivered the product but could not complete the secondary business objective - we went from Agile Scrum, to Agile whatever, to wagile, then to waterfall at the end.
Successful projects have standard criteria; small budget, small team, minimal scope, and short schedule with a huge ROI. They achieve customer satisfaction quickly, and they usually turn fast into a profit and real increases in the throughput. Saving Changes...
The art of establishing open communication from the beginning stage of any project is the foundation for success. Many projects have been taken over and lead to completion during COVID-19 by another PM assigned midway due to a lot of shake ups, but the Project and the newly assigned PM has been helped by other surviving project team members to provide the new PM needed background and where to inject PCR if needed, and launch the rocket for accomplishing the mission. Saving Changes...
Adela TataruSenior Project Manager| Self EmployedVancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I took over a project where the sponsor who actually initiated the project never wanted to get involved in anything and dismissed any attempt to exchange with him (formally or informally). The project was a technical must do that needed nevertheless the implication of the business. Without the support of the sponsor, it was hard to get on board everyone and sometimes get the right resources for the work to be done. However the solution was to find the stakeholder who would support us and in the end we delivered on time and budget but not without some frustration along the way. Saving Changes...
