Global sales of commercial drones this year are projected to increase 84% over 2015 to US$481 million.
Source: Juniper Research
Once just a remote-control toy for civilians, drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs) have matured into valuable project management tools. Their cameras provide project managers access to big-picture views of project sites, allowing project teams to more easily assess progress, identify risks and manage stakeholder expectations.
Potential project benefits go well beyond aerial photography, however. Organizations increasingly are turning to drones to boost data gathering and worker safety. Indian Railways deploys drones to help generate detailed construction site status reports more quickly for project sites across the country—which helps ensure those projects stay on schedule. Global mining giant Rio Tinto uses drones to inspect equipment and project sites, particularly in difficult-to-reach and dangerous areas that imperil human inspectors, and when larger tools (such as helicopters) would increase cost.
It’s no surprise that global sales of commercial drones this year are projected to increase 84 percent over 2015 to US$481 million, according to Juniper Research. And according to PwC, the global market for drone-powered business solutions reached US$127.3 billion in 2015; infrastructure projects were the main contributing factor. Construction, civil engineering, oil and gas, and telecommunications are all fueling the growth, as these sectors leverage drones to drive efficiency.
Yet the rapid adoption also presents unique challenges for project leaders, says Brett Hoffstadt, PMP, a project management and aerospace engineering consultant from Sacramento, California, USA who helps organizations integrate drones. Regulatory uncertainty and rapidly evolving technology mean drones fly project teams into uncharted territory and force them to prepare for unknowns.
Drones have provided game-changing benefits for cost reductions, schedule compressions and quality improvements," Mr. Hoffstadt says. "But there will be a lot of learning unique to each company and project."
BUILDING BENEFITS
Organizations’ attraction to drones is driven in part by an appetite for data, says Jesper Falk, market director and head of section for mapping and surveying at global engineering consulting firm COWI in Copenhagen, Denmark. When connected to the right mix of computing power and sensors, drones can provide project managers with deep insights to sharpen and speed decision-making and reduce project surprises.
For instance, temperature-sensing infrared cameras can detect weak spots in a building’s insulation or leaks in plumbing or gas lines. Software tools can help project managers crunch that data into real-time project intelligence they’ve never had before.
"The benefit of drones on construction sites is that they are cost-effective compared to alternative methods," Mr. Falk says. "You can collect data in the morning and submit the result at the end of the day; hence, the project manager has within a few hours an overview of the construction site in order to make the right decisions."
What used to take human surveyors hours to complete can now be done in minutes with drones using algorithmic tools to measure volumes—of earth moved, of sand stockpiled, of concrete poured—and more efficiently allocate resources. Mr. Falk says COWI has found that time for surveying and processing has been cut to approximately 20 percent of the time the organization spent for these activities before it began to use drones.
These same programs also can stitch together multiple images to create a comprehensive view of an entire build site, overlaying technical drawings, hydrological maps or other imagery to help mitigate environmental, engineering and design risks. They can also generate precise 3-D models of the build site, allowing stakeholders across town—or around the world—to follow a project’s progress and weigh in on potential risks or solutions.
"When you have a drawing or a map, there will always be some room for interpretation," says Francois Gervaix, product manager for surveying at drone maker SenseFly, Lausanne, Switzerland. "With drones there is no interpretation—it’s a real picture of the real landscape: It’s reality. Sitting in an office with the right information in front of the right people is much more effective than standing in the middle of the construction site."
Data from drones also can provide additional value through re-use and redistribution, Mr. Hoffstadt says. For instance, sponsors and business teams can repurpose photo and video footage from drones for use in marketing materials, he says. It also can be used for future training content and quality control processes. "Project managers who incorporate drones can provide more value to the organization, beyond the execution of an individual project."
SAVINGS FROM THE SKY
Drones also have the power to keep project budgets in line through efficiencies and cost savings, Mr. Falk says. For a construction site of 1 square kilometer (0.39 square miles), hiring a piloted airplane to produce overhead imagery plus a terrain map costs roughly €10,000, he says. Surveyors doing the same work on the ground might cost at least €5,000 and won’t generate any valuable aerial imagery. A drone can collect overhead imagery and data for roughly €3,000, Mr. Falk says.
Sky-High Value
Across a range of industries, drones are giving project teams higher aspirations. The global market for drone-powered business solutions reached US$127.3 billion in 2015, according to a 2016 PwC report. These sectors led the way (in U.S. billion dollars): Such cost savings allow drones to fly more frequently, offering project managers fresher data and imagery at more regular intervals. For COWI, that has allowed project managers to, for instance, double-check the volumes of earth excavated and moved by a contractor and help a road authority ensure its signage and markers were placed correctly on a new stretch of highway.
"In one excavation instance, it took us only 19 minutes to fly out and check," Mr. Falk says. "And there was quite a big difference between the volumes of earth on the constructor’s invoices and the volumes measured by the drones." A drone helped monitor refugees entering Macedonia from Greece in December 2015.Using drones makes measuring the progress of the project easier—and occasionally creates unintended benefits, says Erwin Schreiber Chalén, PMP, project and systems supervisor, Entel, Lima, Peru. Mr. Schreiber also operates InkaCoptero, a business that uses drones to help project teams gather aerial imagery.
For example, the imagery Mr. Schreiber captured for a large dam construction project was designed to give project teams up-close views of a work area that is difficult to access through conventional methods. But the same imagery also prompted the project team to notice that excavation trucks were having to make several difficult maneuvers to both access the project site and turn around and exit. That imagery helped the team develop a new route that reduced driving costs, driving risks and the time it took to remove excavated materials.
"You have another view when you’re using drones," Mr. Schreiber says. "The team couldn’t notice all that from ground level."
UNKNOWN TERRITORY
The proliferation of drones across industries and projects only will accelerate as regulations restricting their use continue to ease, Mr. Hoffstadt says. But even as they become a new normal, project managers and their organizations should weigh potential benefits against new risks, complexities and costs.
Agriculture is the second-largest sector for drone use."Introducing drones to your organization also introduces a new procurement source—it’s essentially bringing an aviation operation into your business," Mr. Hoffstadt says.
Project leaders must contend with a host of compliance issues and safety liabilities, spurring the need for organizations to invest time and money in training project teams so they understand the benefits and the risks of drones. "You have to manage stakeholder expectations about this," Mr. Hoffstadt says. "It’s not like buying a new printer. It’s a new class of operations."
Whether a project’s use of drones is handled in-house or outsourced, project managers will be responsible for challenges that they must price into their project assessments, Mr. Hoffstadt says. "Finding or training people with the right skills, working with new stakeholders—such as local air traffic control—and integrating new tools and processes into your budgets and schedules will be a significant effort."
For instance, both the commercial drone industry and the regulations that govern it are so new that vetting drone operators remains difficult, as lengthy track records are rare. For multinational organizations, regulations that vary around the world complicate matters. As industries and governments incorporate drones into their projects in different regions, a customized risk management approach is best.
"If I’m managing a project to develop a piece of land, I want to make sure my drone operator isn’t going to bring risk to my project," says Lindsay Mohr, CEO of drone training and compliance consultancy AirMarket Inc., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Those risks include controller errors that cause the drone to crash and injure people, damage property or—in a worst-case scenario—collide with manned aircraft, he says.
"Regulatory requirements are top of mind for any enterprise or institution that’s thinking about integrating drones as a project tool. The Shells, the BPs, the big corporations, the governments—they need an assurance process that limits their liability."
Regardless of any potential risks drones might introduce to a given project, their benefits are proving too great for organizations and their project teams to ignore, Mr. Gervaix says. For instance, his team is working to develop a system where a rotation of drones can monitor a project site nonstop—generating information in real time, any time a project manager needs it.
"We’ll have drones flying longer, further and more automatically, and expect data from the air to always be flowing. On the construction site, we’ll take it for granted."
When we take the PM role apart, we have these facets. Each is a role in and of itself. A project manager need not play each of them, though they all must be played:
Direction
Administration
Facilitation
Communication
In addition to these roles, project managers may play others. They may act as performers of any kind - business analysts, technical writers, etc. - depending on the needs of the situation. Direction And Authority
Direction is associated with thought leadership and authority. Every project needs a clearly defined direction and a clearly defined director.
In some projects or programs, the PM acts as chief architect and strategist with the power to make decisions regarding compliance, quality, and technical direction. On a surgical team, the lead surgeon decides whether and when to operate, where to cut, how to proceed, etc. They direct the rest of the participants.
In other situations, an individual or a small (two or three person) team may play that role. That was the case in the Manhattan project where the scientist, Oppenheimer, and the Project/Program Manager, Leslie Groves, shared the role.
Some project managers may have authority to make spending decisions within a budget, and others may have to go through multiple levels of approval for each expense.
Plans, objectives, quality criteria, standards, methods, designs, and process, are subject to approval or may be developed by the director. For example, the director would have the authority to take an agile as opposed to a waterfall approach to the project.
While the director may not have the ultimate authority, there must be some. Major decisions, where major is defined for each situation, are escalated to executive sponsors or higher-level authority, everything else is under the authority of the director. Clearly defining this authority at the earliest stages of the project avoids conflict later. Everyone knows whom to go to for what decisions and what decisions they can make on their own.
Administration
Administration is the application of tools and techniques to plan, monitor and control the project or program. The project manager is responsible for making sure that there is a plan and that the plan is kept up to date so that at any point in time it is an accurate prediction of the outcome.
The administrator must have strong knowledge of the nuts and bolts of project and program management - creating a charter, assessing and describing roles and responsibilities, establishing a communications plan, using the tools, task analysis, scheduling, budget creation and management, resource planning, data collection, reporting, and change, issues and risk management.
The administrator may be responsible for creating the project management process or following an existing one, with more or less flexibility.
Administration is where project managers spend most of their time. Overall administration can take around 10% of total project effort. That's about half a work-day per person per week.
The administrative role, particularly in large complex programs, may be performed by more than one person. For example, a person from a finance group, with budgeting, accounting, and financial reporting may be responsible for budget management. The project manager, in that case, would be responsible for integrating budget data collection, reporting and analysis into the big picture of the project as a whole - providing estimates, authorizing and making expenditures, and comparing how much has been spent to what has been accomplished. While two people may be contributing to the task of administering the budget, they must be unified in playing that role.
Content management is another part of administration. It is to make sure that documents are stored and managed in a way that enables easy access and effective collaboration. In a large program, a librarian, reporting to the PM would take on that work.
PM administrators are not the only ones involved in project administration. Each performer is responsible for reporting their time spent on tasks, accomplishments and issues. This often involves attending status meetings, preparing status reports and posting issues and change requests.
Part of the administrator's job is to make life as easy as possible for the project performers while providing all interested parties with a clear and accurate picture of what is going on and what they might expect going forward. The effective performance of the administrative role will leave an audit trail - a history of the project.
Making life easy for the performers means establishing processes that take minimal time and effort to submit time and progress information, address risks and issues and to prepare reports. Without this information, the PM administrator cannot do their job.
Facilitation
Facilitation literally means to make things easy, or at least as easy as they can be. The facilitator is a guide; a neutral party, who works to help people come to a common understanding of their objectives, plan the way to achieve them and execute the plan.
For example, a project manager playing the facilitator role will help a performer, team or team leader come up with a realistic schedule, considering task dependencies, estimates, risk assessments and resource availability. The facilitator does not do the planning or execution. That is the job of the performer or team lead. Though, the facilitator may also be playing other roles and be a team member or performer.
The facilitator together with the administrator provides systems and procedures that make administrative and direct content work productive.
A project management process that uses toolset that enables a single entry of time, cost and task data and generates status reports at multiple levels of detail would facilitate administration. It removes the need for each performer to write a status report while enabling a clear picture of what was supposed to happen, what really happened, how much it cost, etc. Of course, no tool is yet able to say the cause of whatever occurred. The system would facilitate easy recording of the causes of slippage. The facilitator makes sure the data is used in performance analysis and future planning.
Communication
Communication is a foundation for the other three aspects of the project manager role. It is through communication that direction, administration, and facilitation are carried out. It is the connective tissue. It involves reporting, building and maintaining relationships, transferring knowledge, diplomatically and objectively navigating accountability and quality assurance, and more.
Any PM must be able to communicate well. At the same time, part of the communication role can be performed by a designated spokesperson.
Conclusion
Know the nature of your PM role to make sure you have the right people with the right skills in place to play that role.
Be creative. Adapt the role to the people available and the needs of the project. For example, if you have a great administrator who doesn't have the capacity to direct, craft your team to make the best of the situation. Define roles and assign performers, so all of the facets of the PM role are covered to accommodate project needs and consider individual capabilities
Define the Scope: The first, and most important, step in any project is defining the scope of the project. What is it you are supposed to accomplish or create? What is the project objective? Equally important is defining what is not included in the scope of your project. If you don't get enough definition from your boss, clarify the scope yourself and send it back upstairs for confirmation. While the example is slightly off the business topic, we can all relate to a wedding reception. In planning a wedding reception, you may have as your scope: prepare a wedding reception for 100 guests, complete with dinner, open bar, wedding cake and a live band for dancing by a certain date at a cost not to exceed $20,000.
Determine Available Resources: What people, equipment, and money will you have available to you to achieve the project objectives? As a project manager, you usually will not have direct control of these resources, but will have to manage them through matrix management.
Understand the Timeline: When does the project have to be completed? As you develop your project plan you may have some flexibility in how you use time during the project, but deadlines usually are fixed, as in the case of the wedding reception. If you decide to use overtime hours to meet the schedule, you must weigh that against the limitations of your budget.
Assemble Your Project Team: Get the people on your team together and start a dialog. They are the technical experts. That's why their functional supervisor assigned them to the project. Your job is to manage the team.
Detail the Work, Part 1: What are the major pieces or components that have to be created to complete the project. For example, a wedding reception requires at a high level: a reception hall, food, drink, a cake, guests and entertainment. Of course, each of those larger items can be broken down into many additional items. That is the next step.
Detail the Work, Part 2: In our wedding reception example above, you likely have a team or person in charge of different components. Work with your team members to spell out the details necessary to achieve each major item. The person in charge of food must understand the options, the cost limitations and make selections that support achieving the scope. List the smaller steps in each of the larger steps. How many levels deep you go of more and more detailed steps depends on the size and complexity of your project.
Develop a Preliminary Plan: Assemble all your steps into a plan. A good way to do this is to use a precedence table identifying what items must precede other items. Formal project management practices call for developing what is termed a network diagram and identifying the critical path. While this may be beyond your needs or knowledge level, the core issue is to sequence the activities in the right order and then allocate resources against the activities. Questions to ask include: What happens first? What is the next step? Which steps can go on at the same time with different resources? Who is going to do each step? How long will it take? There are many excellent software packages available that can automate a lot of this detail for you. Ask others in similar positions what they use.
Create Your Baseline Plan: Get feedback on your preliminary plan from your team and from any other stakeholders. Adjust your timelines and work schedules to fit the project into the available time. Make any necessary adjustments to the preliminary plan to produce a baseline plan.
Request Project Adjustments: There is almost never enough time, money or talent assigned to a project. Your job is to do more with the limited resources than people expect. However, there are often limits placed on a project that are simply unrealistic. You need to make your case and present it to your boss and request these unrealistic limits be changed. Ask for the changes at the beginning of the project. Don't wait until it's in trouble to ask for the changes you need. However, if your project involves a wedding, do not expect to be successful asking for many significant changes!
Work Your Plan, But Don't Die For It: Making the plan is important, but the plan can be changed. You have a plan for driving to work every morning. If one intersection is blocked by an accident, you change your plan and go a different way. Do the same with your project plans. Change them as needed, but always keep the scope and resources in mind. Monitor Your Team's Progress: You will make little progress at the beginning of the project, but start then to monitor what everyone is doing anyway. That will make it easier to catch issues before they become problems.
Document Everything: Keep records. Every time you change from your baseline plan, write down what the change was and why it was necessary. Every time a new requirement is added to the project write down where the requirement came from and how the timeline or budget was adjusted because of it. You can't remember everything, so write them down so you'll be able to look them up at the end-of-project review and learn from them.
Keep Everyone Informed: Keep all the project stakeholders informed of progress all along. Let them know of your success as you complete each milestone, but also inform them of problems as soon as they come up. Also keep you team informed. If changes are being considered, tell the team about them as far ahead as you can. Make sure everyone on the team is aware of what everyone else is doing.
The Bottom Line:
You do not have to be a formal project manager to lead a project initiative. However, you should apply the tools and logic of project management to the work of clarifying your objectives, detailing the work, building a team and executing and monitoring the work. Best of success!
No matter where you are on the project, no matter how well or how poorly things are going at the moment, there is always something you can be doing or should be doing to improve the project. It can be very easy to start going through the motions if the project is on auto pilot or even if it's going horribly wrong. You know that “giving up” feeling when you're on a sinking ship? Don't do it. Fail or not, you will regret it. Do your best and you may salvage something good out of even a very bad project experience. People will likely remember you did your best.
Here is my list of 11 different best practices that you could be doing to improve things a little or a lot on the projects you are currently managing. Give one a try...or better yet...do all of them and see how much things improve...
Ramp up status reporting. No matter how good you're doing at status reporting, chances are you can do a little better. Maybe add a dashboard to the project status you are already producing – an nice informative one that shows project health at a quick glance. Your executive management team will love it and your customer likely will, too.
Consistent meetings. Be consistent with meetings. Don't cancel unless someone dies. Even if you have nothing new to say, have a five minute meeting to go around the room and make sure everyone is still on the same page. Make sure nothing is falling through the cracks.
Actually pay attention to risk management. Yes, actually do risk management and planning. Issues always come up and some of those were likely overlooked risks that you could have done some planning for in advance.
Plan for cybersecurity. As part of your risk management planning, think about cybersecurity. Is there anything sensitive on your project that could cause you or your customer a lot of pain and sorry? Be aware...be aggressive. Hackers are always one step ahead of you and everything – repeat everything – can be hacked. Even the car you drive home from work.
Double the customer interactions. Are you reaching out to the project client often enough? Maybe, but double your interaction with them. It will make it even less likely for them to disappear when you need them for an important decision or piece of information and it will increase their satisfaction level. Trust me on this one.
Meet with team members individually. You meet with your team weekly – daily in some cases on agile projects and development efforts. But do you meet with them individually. You may find out details about the project and the work they are performing that you needed to know but would never hear in the group setting. Do it.
Take the project to senior management. Keep senior management informed on your project. Send them the status report every week. Incorporate a nice dashboard view as mentioned above so they can see what they want in 15 seconds.
Meet with accounting. Connect with someone in accounting. Financial management is just plain hard for many individuals – personally and professionally. Connecting with someone in counting can help you get actuals faster, help you with our project budget planning and forecasting and help you stay on top of that profit margin.
Know legal. Your organization has a legal department. Know who is in there. Use it for your project. Have them review change orders, vendor agreements, project sign off and approval docs and anything else potentially formal, binding, and final on the project. It could save your neck - and the corporations neck - in the end. Why take unnecessary chances or go down alone?
Run more efficient meetings. Running efficient, effective, timely and meaningful meetings is the key to getting stakeholders in those seats for every meeting you call. No-shows hurt productivity, information sharing and decision-making – and that is what project meetings are all about.
Always follow up on critical communications. Your goal should always be to have every stakeholder on the same page. So follow up on project communications like meetings, status reports and status meetings/calls. Make sure everyone left with the same understanding. Send out your notes from these types of communications and ask for 24 hour responses from everyone.
Summary / call for input
Project management best practices are just what they sound like – actions taken in the best interest of the project, team and customer to hopefully give everyone the best chance at success. What's your take on this list? Do you agree? What would you add, delete or change about it? Please share and discuss.
Project teams are in a constant state of communication via email, videoconferences, telephone calls, texts, face-to-face discussions and even nonverbal interactions. Whatever media they use, project teams will increase their chances of achieving their goals if they develop successful strategies for keeping everyone informed about what’s going on.
Here are some tips for communicating effectively during the course of a project.
1. Meet regularly
Hold regular strategy meetings for the entire team. This gives everyone an opportunity to be present while project activities and changes are being discussed and creates a level playing field by giving all team members a chance to voice ideas concerns and share status updates. To reduce wasted time, try to limit meetings to 50 minutes; that gives everyone a few minutes for administrative work or downtime — or simply a chance to get to the next meeting.
To ensure that meetings stay on schedule, do the following:
Assign a timekeeper.
Draft an agenda and send it to all team members prior to the meeting.
Ask team members to be prepared to discuss the agenda items.
Unless urgent, table any non-agenda issues raised, with the understanding that they will be up for discussion later.
Schedule the next meeting in advance, and keep a record of discussion items to be carried forward.
2. Be inclusive
Make sure you don’t leave anyone out when you invite people to meetings or send out reports about recent developments. If you’re not sure whether certain people need to be involved in a meeting or kept in the loop about the latest project activities or updates, err on the side of caution and include them. It’s always better to gain more input from more people than limited input from just a few team members who are regarded as key players.
[Related: 8 quick ways to increase your PM knowledge]
At the project kick-off meeting, ask the team members about their communication preferences. One option is to use project software that includes a portal that can serve as a central hub of communication. Compared with relying on email and an assortment of other communication tools, a central portal decreases the likelihood that people will be excluded from conversations that are important to them.
3. Be transparent, clear and concise
Communication can be time-consuming in any form. You can avoid wasting other people’s time (and your own) by being transparent, clear and concise. Prior to picking up the telephone, typing an email or scheduling a meeting, take a moment or two to consider the following:
The purpose of the communication.
The audience. (Are they team members, executives, vendors, clients or other stakeholders?)
The desired outcome.
Whether you will need to refer back to the conversation later or provide details of it to others.
Whether, in light of the factors above, you’re using the best medium for the type of communication you have in mind.
Try to get your message(s) across in ways that are easy to understand and accessible to everyone concerned.
4. Show some respect
People are put on project teams for a reason. Whatever their roles, all members serve an intended purpose and bring intrinsic value to the project. Regardless of title and position in the organizational hierarchy, all participants should be expected to show respect for their fellow team members and should be held accountable for their behavior.
It’s natural that the opinions and thoughts of higher-level project participants may be given more weight than those of junior team members. But that’s a mistake. Even if they disagree with people who outrank them, all team members should be able to freely communicate their thoughts, opinions and concerns without fear of ridicule or consequence. Great ideas are great ideas, regardless of who they come from.
Similarly, when scheduling project activities, every team member’s competing responsibilities and time pressures should be taken into consideration. Teams cannot remain strong if they have weak links in the chain of mutual respect.
5. Recognize that being right may be wrong
On the surface, getting everyone to see that you’re right might seem like a big win. But such a “victory” can have far-reaching consequences if it affects the attitude or morale of other team members. Project teams are just that — teams — and therefore there’s little room for any member, regardless of position, to put a lot of energy into proving that he or she is usually right. Your need to be right can end up alienating others to the extent that they stop communicating altogether. Such a breakdown in communication causes the team to function at a less-than-optimal level.
[Related: 6 tips to ensure you meet project deliverables dates]
No project can be successful with a team of one. Egos need to be checked at the door when team members are communicating with one another.
6. Use online collaboration tools
Collaboration tools help streamline project management and facilitate the process of collaborating with team members and other stakeholders.
“If you’re looking for a free and easy way to communicate and collaborate with team members — in the same office or across the globe — consider giving cloud-based project management tools a try,” says Patti Rowlson, founder and marketing director at PR Consulting Inc.“Online project management tools are great for keeping everyone informed and up to date on a variety of project types. . . from keeping a sales pipeline moving to organizing volunteer efforts.”
Of course, collaboration software alone won’t guarantee that your team will communicate openly and efficiently. Whatever medium you use, communication will only be as good as the communication strategies you adopt.
Moira Alexander is a co-founder and director, information systems and technology advisory, at Conture Business Advisors. She is also a project manager and contributor for Price of Business Talk Radio 1110 KTEK (home of Bloomberg Radio), Houston, Texas. She has 18-plus years in business (IS&T) and finance for small to large businesses in the U.S. and Canada.
Projects are often the offshoot of crisis situations. They kick-off in circumstances that inherently prevent success. In most instances, very little is done to assess the organisational culture and ensure a healthy environment—something crucial to the desired objective.
Instead, the management team often assumes that 'all is good'. The focus is to kick-start the project as early as possible. Such a mindset ignores the very things that ensure everything really is 'all good'.
The management team must keep an eye out for early signs of challenges. Identifying these makes it possible to smooth the rough edges just in time to build the desired synergies and promote organisational goals.
As the project manager, you must use what was learned from prior experiences to identify symptoms that lead to the looming bottlenecks that spell disastrous outcomes. You're not, however, doomed from the get-go if you embrace the right mindset—one that sets your project team firmly on the path to success.
What does the right mindset look like? It's one where you're conscious of the early warning signs of failure. If you understand the warning signs, achieving the desired outcome is much more likely to become a reality.
From my own experiences, I've noted these 10 warning signs that your projects underestimated what's needed for success—with consequences that damage the final outcome and benefits.
1. Disengaged Stakeholders
Stakeholders' perception of success and failure is pivotal in deeming a project successful. If stakeholders are disengaged and alienated, it will likely lead to your team not accomplishing the desired results.
Thus, you must seek the buy-in of key stakeholders and/or a wider population of end users. Without seeking stakeholder involvement, you run a risk of stakeholder resentment towards the endeavour. Why? Stakeholders are unlikely to value the initiative and, instead, see it as a wasted exercise.
2. Ambiguous Scope or Business Case
This is one of the most common mistakes that project teams make. I call it the 'cowboy' approach to initiating a project. You're not performing thorough due diligence and planning. This matters because business case and project scope pave the way to a common understanding that promotes the project mandate and defines the desired outcome.
Thus, you must capture the intended objective in a very concise and easy-to-understand format. Why? Business requirements and rules help define the project scope. They're pivotal to declaring a project successful upon completion.
3. Inexperienced Project Team
A project is often the outcome of a crisis scenario that requires people to 'think on their feet'. This ability is inherent to a gifted few. Most people must rely on prior experience to cope with adverse factors associated with a project.
Thus, you want seasoned professionals that enable the project team to perform based on their conditioning and exposure to factors that influence project execution. But here, having the right seasoned professionals is crucial. Why? A mismatch between the depth of team experience and magnitude of project complexity can—and often does—translate into a lack of confidence and its related ineffectiveness.
4. Dysfunctional Project Team
Projects embody a plan greater than just the mere components that comprise the resources required for execution. A befitting synchronisation is critical to optimising resource use and ensuring seamless implementation. Thus, projects are greater than the sum of their parts—the people and processes that make up the project. In the true sense, there's no magic formula to attain the desired outcome.
Thus, you must embrace and encourage close collaboration, knowledge sharing and team spirit. All three are crucial to project success. Why? If the project team is dysfunctional, fragmented and antagonistic, communication will break down, leading to an atmosphere that strains project execution.
5. It's Not the Right Time to Do It
Nothing can be worse than bad timing. Sometimes it's just not the right time to do a project. There's plenty of possible reasons for this. Maybe the organisation doesn't have the appetite for it. Maybe the end users aren't ready for the change. Maybe it's … you get the picture.
Thus, you must be cognisant of X by doing Y. Why? If the environment or timing isn't right, then the project is akin to a fish struggling to survive in shallow water.
6. Disqualified Vendors
Quite often, organisations fail to perform a rigorous vender assessment to gauge the suitability of the supplier and the solution. The vendor selection process is, by necessity, a diligent activity—one that should never be undermined. Thus, you must access—and scrutinise—the ability and capability of a supplier to deliver an effective solution. Why? This is one of the most critical factors to ensuring project success.
7. Unhealthy Client/Vendor Relationship
Project managers tend to neglect client/vendor relationships. They presume the relationships are unshakable—making it easy to take crucial relationships for granted.
Thus, you must understand the dynamics of a healthy working relationship. Pay attention to signs of imbalance before things start to break off. Why? Think about it this way. If the relationship with your spouse is not going well, then buying a house together will be a bad proposition. An unhealthy client/vendor relationship will eventually have an adverse impact on the project outcome.
8. Power Struggle
Performance and recognition delineate a power struggle within the team, which can be fatal and adversely impact the project. A power struggle dilutes the focus of delivering the desired objective.
Thus, a delicate balance to maintain the power dynamics within a project team goes a long way towards delivering consistent results. Why? Power struggles divert energy to fuel in-house fights—energy best spent on achieving project outcomes.
9. Personal Agendas
The project objective should be the sole criteria to drive a focused agenda. However, it's not uncommon for people to walk into a project with personal agendas. They may intend to use the project as a platform to attain personal gains.
Thus, you must ensure the objective stays focused on the organisation. Why? Personal agendas create a substantial risk. They potentially derail the project—which was launched with an intention to deliver organisational objectives rather than anyone's personal agenda.
10. The Project Is a Political Manoeuvre
Anyone who says that organisational politics have nothing to do with a project is, quite frankly, being naïve. Projects are often driven by political manoeuvres. They can be used as tactics to divert attention from the 'elephant in the room'. They can be used to pretend to be fixing the problem.
In reality, there might not be as many broken pieces as being portrayed to camouflage a political manoeuvre. Be aware of any underlying politics. Assess that the pieces really are broken. Why? The project could be running under pretences to achieve a defined outcome.
Final Note
These tell-tale signs may have different interpretations based on their magnitude and timing. Hence, an effective evaluation of the impact—one that also formulates a resolution—yields better understanding of the root cause. It empowers management to avoid project failure.
What about you, our readers—do you recognise any of these signs your project is doomed? What other signs do you look out for? Let's discuss.
You may be great at your profession. You may have a spectacular list of achievements. But if you lack a few essential soft skills, you won't get too far - in your personal life or professionally as a project manager. Like it or not, social skills are essential survival skills. They let you adjust to varying environments.
To develop people skills, you need to be able to do three things: demonstrate principled behaviour, build relationships and develop strong communication skills. Being a people-person doesn't come naturally to everyone, of course.
Many people have introverted personalities and prefer being "on their own" with everything. Asking for your own personal space once in a while is okay. But being an entirely reclusive person can hurt your potential to go above and beyond - in both your personal and professional life.
The bottom line - you need people in your life!
Despite your personality type, you can find ways to improve your interpersonal skills to build better connections at work (or elsewhere). To become a team player. To improve your reputation. To strengthen your social skills. To strengthen your relationships on projects.
Ready to do all that and more? Try these six ways to develop and improve your people skills.
Smile Often: Positivity is a magnet. Regardless of how you feel, be on your best behaviour and put on a smile. People-persons manage to control their inner emotions by not only appearing happy on the surface, but also making sure others around them are happy. Greet and smile at anyone you see. You might be surprised when you get the same positive behaviour in return.
Be Considerate and Caring: It's hard to find people who genuinely care for you. That's why this attribute is something that makes everyone tick. How can you be considerate and caring? Show empathy during good times and bad. Offer a helping hand. Ask people about their day. Actively listen to what they have to say - and respond. Appreciate people. Thank them for the little things they do. Just let them know that you are someone who really cares.
Don't Pick Favourites: Reclusive personalities tend to "pick" their people. Whatever your preference, just don't be picky if you want to be a people-person. Social personalities don't differentiate people (outwardly). They don't act like one person's opinion matters more than any others. Also, try not to discriminate or gossip about people you don't like. To be a team player, you need to treat everyone the same - no matter what type of response you get in return.
Resolve Conflicts: Part of being a socially active and friendly people-person is trying hard not to create enemies. This doesn't mean that you won't find people who challenge you and disagree with your views or opinions. Conflicts are inevitable. The way you react to those conflicts, however, is what's important. Be able to resolve conflicts through effective communication and by handling situations properly.
Improve Your Communication Skills: Being able to communicate carefully can be quite a task. This seriously affects relationships no matter how strong they are. Want to be a good speaker? Don't speak when it's not your turn. In other words, listen when it's your turn to listen. Choose your words carefully by not blurting out every thought. Avoid dishonesty. Keep your words clear and concrete to avoid misunderstandings.
Make Sure People Have a Great Time With You: What do people like most in other people? Certainly, you have to be kind, caring, considerate and all of the above things. But other personality traits have the power to make someone highly popular. The ability to make others laugh definitely attracts people and puts a smile on their faces.
This is also a great way to put down barriers other people often put up to avoid "relationship building". Use humour (though not in a rude, inappropriate way), and watch how much it changes your interactions with people.
There you have it. Six easy ways to change the way you communicate. Now you're ready to take your people skills to the next level - both personally and in all your projects.
