With the high rate of failure in project management that 2 out of 5 projects fail and the larger the project, the more failure it experiences. There are some reasons what symptoms tell us project management is going wrong. While the commonly failing reason includes lack of management support and unclear objective, it suggests ten intangible warning signs to look out here:
1. Lack of interest. They have to make it sure if everybody really agreed to where they are heading for and check if they have shared same goals and objectives when conflict occurs. Positive environment helps project management to be successful.
2. Poor communication. If there is formal and informal lack of communication, it can be the warning sign.
3. Lack of velocity. Velocity is key concept in successful project management because it makes tracking progress easier along with imposing a feeling of success and team morale. Jim Johnson of Standish group says that one of the classical signs a project is in trouble is that things aren’t moving.
4. A “no-bad-news” environment. Everybody does not want to hear about bad news. However, if there forms the environment not to spread bad news, the bad news can be slow to reach people and result in fatal outcome to miss the opportunity of correcting that. The acceptance environment of bad news should be established by leaders and CIOs to prevent awful result later on.
5. Concrete signs. Some of the warning signs are visible and obvious. Good organization providing executive visibility has less tendency of pop up trouble in the last minute of the work.
6. A lot of overtime. Overwork is usually used by project manager because it is fast and easy way to fix project management to keep the schedule while no workers welcome it in reality. When team members’ health condition deteriorates, it can be another sign and result of overwork that the project is going bad.
7. Diversion of resources. It can be usually seen that the resource, commonly people, pull off from the project to work other things. Time and resources are limited for the project, so they should be controlled and managed wisely.
8. Ratios trouble. Compare the budgeted time, money and schedule with actually spent or implemented results. It easily let you know where you are and where you should be.
9. Milestones aren’t met. It is better to set the milestone weekly with small piece to get the feedback and concrete result which enables avoiding the risk in the future. The lines of code written are classic example to measure process.
10. Scope changes. For example, requirements can change and it itself is not bad. However, they have to be checked what requirements changes and why they changes to keep the project management in healthy way.
All of the 10 things mentioned above are just sign, and does not mean that project has failed or is about to fail. However, they can be good indicators that needs close attention from project managers and people in the position of responsibility to avoid failure of project management.
Cook, R. & Johnson, S. (2007). How to Spot a Failing Project. Retrieved from http://www.attask.com/images/library/CIO_Article.pdf
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