A study by R. Ryan Nelson,
Professor at the University of Virginia aggregates
the knowledge gained from 99 retrospectives conducted in 74 organizations
reveal the most common mistakes and suggest best practices for more effective
project management. The projects studied have ranged from relatively small to
very large (multi-billion dollar). This study has pulled out some very
interesting statistics showing 45% mistakes are people and 43% are process
related leaving behind the product mistakes 8% and technology being the lowest
with 4%. With an odd but in line with the statistics, none of the top 10
mistakes was technology related, which means technical expertise by itself rarely
ensure project success; instead, project managers should be, first and
foremost, experts in managing processes and people. The next interesting
findings was that scope creep couldn’t make on top ten despite it is cited as
one of the biggest problem in project failure, however, it is to be noted that
people and process related mistakes occupied on top ten indeed dilate the scope,
which suggests that project managers should pay attention to it. The last
interesting finding is that the top three mistakes occurred in approximately
half of the projects investigated, which are (1) poor estimation and/or process
scheduling means failure in sizing or scoping the project, estimating the
effort and time required (2) ineffective stakeholder management means
challenges in managing the involvement and expectations of diverse stakeholders
and (3) insufficient risk management refer to failing to identify possible
risks and prioritize them to plan and monitor accordingly. The remaining seven
mistakes are in sufficient planning, shortchanged quality assurance, weak
personnel/team issue, insufficient project sponsorship, poor requirements
determination, inattention to politics and lack of user involvement that are
presented in an ascending order. Among the top ten, the team came up with
recommendation for top seven mistakes that occurred in at least one-third of
the projects. For first mistake the team suggested to develop time boxes to
shorter and smaller the projects that are easier to estimate, then create a
work breakdown structure to help size and scope projects and finally a project
management office to maintain a repository of project data over time. To
improve stakeholder management the team suggests to use a stakeholder worksheet
and assessment graph, this tool helps to prioritize the most important
stakeholders whose need have to be fulfilled that determine the success of the
project. For risk management project team can use a prioritized risk assessment
table, big project can employ a risk officer to play devil’s advocate—to look
for the reasons that a project might fail and restrain managers and developers
from ignoring risks in their planning and execution. For a better planning a
comprehensive project charter, clearly defined project governance, and
portfolio management are essentials. For quality assurance automated testing
tools and daily build-and-smoke tests are helpful, it is a process in which a
software product is completely built every day and then put through a series of
tests to verify its basic operations, which will save time by reducing the
likelihood of three common, time-consuming risks: low quality, unsuccessful
integration, and poor progress visibility. And finally for better project
sponsorship it is pivotal to identify the right sponsor from the very beginning
then securing commitment within the project charter and managing relationship
during the life of the project.
prepared by: S. R. Khan
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