It is an overstatement to say that poor project management will bring about the apocalypse. However, it’s no exaggeration to say that inferior project management can lead to a death march – one of those projects which appears to be destined to fail or which requires a stretch of unsustainable overwork. This type of project disaster can be brought on by not protecting against the Four Horsemen of Project Management. Like their namesake from in the bible (described in the last book of the New Testament) or on the football field (the backfield of Notre Dame’s 1924 football team), the four horsemen are something to be reckoned with.
However, these horsemen are a bit different. They ride just as hard and cause as much chaos, but they come under different names. These riders are known as Confusion, Obscurity, Hindrance, and Mismanagement. Once arrived, this quartet can bring any major initiative to a grinding halt or set it off in an unplanned direction. But all is not lost. With strong capabilities, these evil influences can be held at bay.
Confusion
Confusion is brought upon a project by the lack of clear definitions. As one looks to align people with vision, goals, and objectives, it is necessary to be explicit about what is going to be done and what is not going to be accomplished. The easiest way to establish clarity is to develop a definition document. A program charter is a great tool to leverage. Be careful: not any template will do. To ensure everyone is on board, one needs a good structure to define what is in scope and what is out of scope. It should be easy to navigate, easy to read, and easy to communicate across the organization.
Obscurity
Without visibility to what is being done, where the initiative is going, or what it will take to get to there, any project may struggle to measure its progress. To ensure that all stakeholders and team members understand what the state of progress is, an easy-to-understand status report with essential information is required. A status report of detail-level item-by-item review reflecting what-I-did-this-week (that helps justify the team size or expense) is not useful. Status reporting is not about proving that the team is busy. It’s about showing that the team is making progress.
I am a big fan of progress health metrics, milestone dates, performance metrics, and high-level business value-oriented progress notes. Summarized in one page (literally!), the status report is useful to clearly spell out for any stakeholder the most important information about where the project is at. It may not contain all the minute details, technical information, or personnel issues, but it can convey measurable progress.
Hindrance
The impediment to a project moving forward is often clear direction, as noted above in Confusion. However, another key component for clearing the path is the creation of meaningful metrics. Without business alignment, a project may go off the tracks, take on a new course, or it may be cancelled without cause. By establishing alignment to clear business values, and by setting up the appropriate controls and measures to demonstrate the realization of the value, a project can better demonstrate what it is contributing and how well it is doing.
The typical measures of On Time and On Budget are not irrelevant. However, without context, these two metrics are relatively meaningless to the typical sponsor or executive. On time and on budget to do what!? Has the project been broken down into component accomplishments? I think that any leader would appreciate the relevance to on time, on budget. For example, “the new store work stream is on-time and 10% below budget having opened three of three planned new locations…the remaining 6 locations are currently on track….”
Let us not hinder our progress by obscuring what it is we are doing. Be straight forward. Be exact and be measured. If you are behind, call it out with specifics and note how you’ll get back on track. You may be surprised how well an honest report will build your credibility.
Mismanagement
A loss of control puts any vehicle into jeopardy. The same is true for any initiative. While governance is sometimes organized as a series of hierarchical steering committees, that may not always be sufficient. Governance includes the methods, processes, templates, and tool that enable the initiatives success. The focus on enablement is key. PM activities that are dictated by the PMO in an effort to clamp-down on controls and bury teams in endless paperwork, meetings and check points is no more helpful than toll-booths located on the highway every mile. In other words, governance that slows progress, is frustrating, is very costly, and is not as useful as governance that accelerates and enables.
True governance should be focused on the empowerment of those delivering projects, not on those overseeing projects. Processes should streamline delivery. Templates should ease and enable. Tools should only automate what has been proven to work effectively in a manual fashion. With these structures in place, governance will provide help to those delivering and visibility and control to those masterminding initiatives.
Implementing strong controls and processes is a great way to keep catastrophes from happening. However, we must be careful not to implement rules that offer little or no value. To quote U.S. aerospace businessman and former Under Secretary of the Army Norman Augustine, “If sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.” Let’s do what is right to add definition about where we are going, make our progress clear, measure along the way, and govern appropriately. With that level of focus we can keep the horsemen away.
