“The long & winding road” ... Watch out for those Potholes!
"Where are we going?"
Another way to look at the question of "where are we going?" is to look at the project
goals, or strategies. People tend to like to have some input to the direction and goals
of the project. They like to know where they are going and that their efforts are going
to make a difference. By the same token the project team needs to guard against their
own desires because they indeed can contribute to the derided "scope creep" or can
promise too much to their clients. Clients, as we will discuss later, many times do not
know what they want and need to be educated as to what is feasible and what are
realistic alternatives to their very real business issues. Thus, the challenge of the
project manager is to continually manage the "Project Management Triad".
The Project Management Triad
Many of us in project management are familiar with the constraints of all projects i.e.
dollars / resources (people), scope and time. There are not too many projects that
have neither an unlimited budget nor people sitting around just waiting for this new
project to come along. The scope of any project is in response to a business driver(s)
that needs to be responded to however there are many ways to attack that set of
requirements. Finally, there is the issue of time. We never seem to have enough of it.
The custom build days are difficult to justify especially in today's IT environment
where delivering on the demands being placed on the business units is great.
So how do we manage major or multiple projects? Much of it has to do with the
elasticity of the Project Management Triad. Illustrated below you will see the normal
"triad" when there is a balance of dollars / resources (people), scope and time. The
project team may be on course for the first week or so.
What typically happens is scope creep occurs and/or the budget is cut or available
resources are taken off the project because something else is "hot". So what does that
do to the project that was so carefully constructed with Gantt Charts and reporting
measures.
The key for a project to succeed is to manage client expectations. Easy to say ... hard
to do! Based on personal experience I would conclude that you want to be a good
project manager not a "popular" project manager. As one of my corporate champions
once said to me ... "stay the course!" With all of the pulling and tugging going on
with the Project Management Triad it is no wonder that many projects over the long
haul get off track chasing a new GIS or "better mouse trap" answer. While difficult, it
is always better to set goals and targets, communicate them over and over and stay the
course. Other people including management, your peer group and even the project
team will second-guess the Team's direction and/or course of action.
