Funny you should ask -- I've just posted one of those ubiquitous "Top 10" lists on my website. It includes......
1) Failure to appreciate the impact of a multi-project environment on single project success. (More...)
1 a) Trying to put 10 pounds of projects through a 5-pound pipeline in a multi-project environment.
1 b) Wasting of resources through dedication to projects, making them unavailable to support other projects.
1 c) Failure of management to provide real guidance on priority of projects before they are planned and promised.
1 c1) As well as the flip side, ignoring rational plans and promises for perceived, but questionable, priorities. As an explanation of this, IMHO, project priorities are part of the initiation phase. Once promised and launched, all project have equal priority -- to complete when and how promised -- and deserve attention only proportionate to the threats to that promise.
1 c2) Another flip side regarding priorities -- failure of management to kill projects when their reason for existence goes away.
2) Irrational promises made due to a failure to take into account the variable nature of task performance. (More...)
3) Irrational promises made due to a failure to take into account the statistical nature of project networks. (More...)
4) Insufficient identification of dependencies necessary to deliver the project. (More...)
5) Focus on (and active management of) only a portion of what should be the full project -- a true bottom-line value adding outcome for the sponsoring organization.
6) Reliance on due-date, train-schedule, and actual-against-budget-to-date performance to drive project performance, resulting in the wasting of any safety included in the project (to account for 2 and 3 above) and in the effects of Parkinson's Law -- Work will expand to fill (and exceed) the time allowed. The whole concept of "time allowed" is a major culprit. (More...)
7) Wasting of resources through underutilization because they aren't the "best resource" for the job.
8) Wasting of the "best" resources through over-utilization, multi-tasking, and burn-out.
9) Delivering original scope when conditions/needs change. Flip-side: accepting changes to scope without sufficient analysis of impact on the project (or on other projects).
10) Multi-tasking, multi-tasking, multi-tasking, multi-tasking, and multi-tasking. Commonly thought of as a key problem in multi-project environments, where resources are expected to address tasks from different projects in a coincident time-frame, multi-tasking also impacts single project durations (and wastes safety) when dedicated resources are expected to wear several hats. (More... and more... and more...)
