quantmleap

Meredith Levinson from CIO.com quotes Rob Prinzo, CEO of project management training and consulting firm The Prinzo Group, saying the following:

Identifying problems with IT projects before they get out of hand really isn’t that hard. All you have to do is ask project team members where they think the project might go wrong.

The notion that the path to saving a failed project starts with polling the team members for their educated opinion, about what might be going wrong, is not well thought through to say the least. Not that project team members should not be consulted with, alongside other relevant stakeholders, to gauge their relevant perspective. This does not need to be elaborated on as this is part of the ABC of project management and is just part of the ongoing communication approach exercised by the project manager.

To consider though that this will be the first thing the project manager does to ascertain the current position is to ignore the basic traffic lights a project manager has at his/her disposal, arising directly from the ongoing monitoring of progress against plans. Should the plans be sufficiently elaborated and well articulated (as will be the case should proper project management is executed)  there would be no reason NOT to know that things are not progressing as well as they should have, in which case asking the team members for their opinion will be more about the WHY the project is behind and WHAT can be done to fix the situation (and not about DO WE HAVE A PROBLEM).

It is not the first time I see consultants coming up with half-baked ideas, attempting to popularize untested and plain wrong ideas. Good consultants would encourage their clients to adopt and implement proper project management discipline, one that will ensure that the basic project management principles are in place. It is more than likely that if the basics get covered the need to ask people for their perception of reality will no longer be required.

Think about it!

Related posts:

1. KISS – Keep it simple stupid