Should CANCELLATION be 11th management field in PMBOK?

Governance Information Technology Using PMI Standards

AYDIN SATICI IT ARCHITECT / SENIOR PROGRAM MANAGER| DIGITTION Cary, Nc, United States

Most scary thing for project managers and project sponsors is to cancel project or to talk about cancellation of the project, so that, most of the time, nobody wants to open the door for cancellation subject, but we must. Why? Let me give a real example.

“5 years ago, an insurance company commenced a transformation project containing core insurance software implementation. They planned to complete the project in 12 months with $11Million budget. At the end of three years, the project couldn’t be completed and cancelled with $45Million loss. They spent 4 times more than budgeted amount of project.

- Why didn’t they cancel the project at the end of 12 months when they understood the failure or at the end of 16 Months or when they spent $15Million or $22Million?

- Why they waited for three years and spent $45Million instead of $11Million?

- Because they didn’t have cancellation plan.

- Because they didn’t have cancellation criteria and constraints.

- Because they didn’t talk about cancellation constraints at the beginning of the project, especially in the planning phase of it.”

It might be a good debate subject to make cancellation as 11th subject title in project management body of knowledge. If the projects mostly fail and companies lose millions of dollars because of late cancellation of the projects, we have to think about and discuss about the cancellation subject more and I think we have to include it into project management body of knowledge.

None of the projects are commenced to be cancelled, but the project managers should seriously and carefully consider and discuss cancellation constrains with sponsors or steering committee of the project at a specific time. Cancellation constraints and criteria don’t need to be public to all project team. It is well-enough that PM and sponsors know cancellation conditions. May be, you have also similar examples of projects that caused millions of dollars loss because of late cancellation of it. If you have, please share your story in comments section of this article.

Posted: Feb 8, 2018 11:13 PM

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Curtis Smith Project Manager| Sarasota County Government Parrish, Fl, United States

Feb 08, 2018 11:50 PM

Replying to Eric Simms

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You raise an excellent point. Projects should have an escape clause in the form of a cancellation plan. This would allow the creation of objective criteria Project Managers could use to help decide when to cancel a project. Many US businesspeople negatively regard canceling a project as ‘quitting’ or ‘failure’, so they tend to continue projects instead of cancelling them. This often occurs when a high-level executive sponsor is trying to avoid being associated with a failed project. Cancellation criteria would help keep ego out of the cancellation decision by giving stakeholders a way to cancel a project without losing face. I'm going to begin including a Cancellation Plan as part of my projects.

The challenge is that Project Managers don’t decide when to cancel a project. Project sponsors or executives do that. The PMs challenge is to draw out and document an expression of conditions that would make cancellation a better decision than continuing. You’re right that no one wants to be associated with a failed project, so decision-makers need an “out” that will help them frame cancellation as a smart choice in the face of adverse conditions. It may be helpful to remember that Thomas Edison tried,and rejected, about a thousand different materials for a light bulb filament before he found one that worked. He didn’t fail a thousand times. He persevered, and found a thousand things that weren’t the further waste of time and expense. No one would dare claim Edison wasn’t intelligent and forward-thinking.

Posted: Feb 9, 2018 8:31 AM

Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Good governance is not just about the projects chosen to continue, but the ones to kill off. As Kiron says, thorough KPI reporting is necessary, and this is where a lot of smoke and mirrors occur.

Posted: Feb 9, 2018 5:10 PM

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Should CANCELLATION be 11th management field in PMBOK?

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