Cost overruns, scheduling delays, reduced ROI, frustrated customers or team members – these issues can be the result of poor project management.
For some reason we are willing to accept poorly managed projects in so many aspects of our lives. When a public construction project is announced, delays are expected. Nobody ever assumes the project will be finished on time or under budget.
It’s gotten to the point where this is the norm. Projects, large or small, rarely finish as planned. According to a study by Bent Flyvbjerg at the University of Oxford, nine out of ten [projects] had cost overrun, cost overruns of 50 to 100 percent were common, and overruns above 100 percent were not uncommon.
When the complexity of a project is increased, so are the number of variables that can cause delays, unplanned changes, and impact deliverables. However, this doesn’t mean that projects going off schedule need to be the norm. By pre-planning the project thoroughly ahead of time, many time and resource-consuming hurdles can be avoided. This includes learning to Build a Funding Plan.
Pre-Planning is the Key to Project Management Success
The pre-planning stage is often overlooked in terms of importance to the overall project. However, pre-planning is where the project is defined:
- The team is set up;
- Deliverables are established;
- GANTT charts are drawn; and
- Activities are delegated.
Seeing as how the entire project flows from this, it’s hard to believe why this stage is often overlooked or rushed through. In the excitement of getting a project underway, achieving deliverables, and enjoying results, teams may lose sight of how to properly plan and execute on the project. This can lead to increased frustration, delays, overruns, and reduced team morale.
Related Blog: Scope Creep: The Unplanned Cost of Complex Projects
Pre-planning can include a wide array of project-related activities – it doesn’t just need to be team identification, goals/deliverables establishment, budgeting, and scheduling. Pre-planning can and should include a range of other activities, such as reviewing a needs assessment, conducting a ‘desirable and viable’ analysis (i.e. is the project outcome desirable/good for the business and is it realistic?), examining existing processes/products/services, reviewing previous projects, outlining rough timelines, and establishing early stakeholder engagement.
3 Reasons Why Pre-Planning is Overlooked by Project Managers
So, why do people rush through pre-planning? There are many reasons why a project team might rush through this critical stage, but often it boils down to 3 main (and sometimes overlapping) reasons:
1. Excitement to Get the Project Underway
Typically, at the outset of a project most of the team is excited, assuming they’ve been engaged in the development of the project.
This can result in rushed planning meetings, poor role definition, and momentum pushing you in the wrong direction. Once team members get into the project, they may become easily lost, lose sight of the overall goals, or not know where there work fits with the rest of the team. All of this can easily sap the early momentum from the project, cause standstills, lost productivity, and schedule overruns.
Related Blog: How to Inspire Your Team: Communicate the ‘Why’ Behind Action
2. Internal or Institutional Pressure
The project team is handed a project from the board room, VPs and C-levels expect it to be done yesterday, and the project manager feels the pressure. In situations like this the team is entering the project with the wrong mindset.
Instead of working together with internal stakeholders, the project management team is put in a position where they feel like they’re working against their superiors. This could be a project-specific issue or speak to issues within the wider corporate-culture. Either way, the project team is not set up for success and it will be very difficult to achieve the outcomes.
3. External Stakeholder Pressure
Like institutional pressure, project teams may face significant external pressure. Customers want the deliverables as soon as possible, and competitors are moving fast where you seem to be standing still.
So, the project team rushes through the project to get something to market quickly, or they risk losing ground in the market. What they get out there as a deliverable, though, rarely meets expectations.
The Cost of Poor Pre-Planning
Although there are many other root causes of poor pre-planning, the previous three are quite common. At the end of the day the results are the same: budget overruns, schedule overruns, team frustration, client frustration, reduced morale, and complacency.
4 Tips for Improving Project Pre-Planning Activities
So, if pre-planning is so important and it’s so often overlooked – how can we correct this?
It’s not easy to fix the problem, especially when there’s a long-standing track record of poor project management. Institutional history can put you on a path that’s very difficult to correct. There are, nonetheless, ways to course correct and improve project management standards.
1. Engage Stakeholders Early
Stakeholder engagement is a critical component to any project’s success. It’s an activity, however, that can (and should) take place before and after projects. By meeting with stakeholders (which can include project team members, other employees, potential customers, or other project beneficiaries) before and after projects, you can open a line of communication to help set expectations, ensure your perception of a project aligns with others’, and gain valuable intel for future projects.
2. Review Existing Processes and Standards
In many cases, poor planning is the result of bad processes. Project managers can make improvements by reviewing existing project and business processes. By asking the question “What is the environment our project exists in?”, managers may be better equipped to adjust and improve processes to support better project delivery.
3. Conduct a Review
Are you, as the project manager, the key bottleneck? Hopefully not, but by stepping back and reviewing your performance as a project manager you may be able to reveal some issues. Think critically on recent projects – what worked well? What didn’t? how did the team react to your leadership? Go back to your project teams and ask for feedback, conduct anonymous surveys, or ask a superior for help in conducting a review. All of this can help illuminate internal challenges and root causes of roadblocks.
4. Setup a Culture of Success
If you’re in an environment where project complacency is the norm, then you must be the agent of change. This means setting new standards for projects, leading by example, and pushing your team to success. Just a note of caution – this may cause disruption to your team, so going down this path should only be done after you’ve engaged your team and outlined your goals, reasoning, and how it will impact everyone else.
Critically Evaluate Your Project Management Approach
At the end of the day, the goal of improving project delivery success is to reduce stress, improve outcomes, improve team morale, and improve your business. The options I’ve provided here are just some of the ways to look at improving project management standards.
Hopefully this post will give some cause for reflection and critical thought on how you manage projects, and this exercise will help you improve your management capabilities and project outcomes.
If you’ve experienced a breakthrough when it comes to pre-planning and project management, please share it in the comments section below.