Causes of project failure - lack of central control

Photo: The PC-9/A is the two-seat single-engine turboprop aircraft that is the major basic training aircraft for the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The PC-9/A is best known to the public as the aircraft flown by the Air Force Roulettes in aerobatic displays at major events throughout Australia.

This post continues my short comments that began with Causes of project failures - responsibility without authority on the common reasons for project failure.

Some years ago the Australian Defence Forces began the development of a new basic trainer aircraft. The project ran over time and budget, a not unusual result with a Defence project. In this case, the over-run was so bad that an Inter-Departmental Committee was formed to review the project.

The Committee concluded that the project should be cancelled. Instead, Australia purchased the Pilatus PC-9.

A core problem with the project lay in the absence of central control. The Air Force as client kept wanting changes to the design of the plane. There was inadequate central control to resist these demands. The core design was never frozen, while costs blew out.

How often have you seen this, where the client keeps changing its mind?

Causes of project failures - responsibility without authority

Recently I had cause to look at some projects that had failed or were, at best, on the point of failure.

In my series on project management - see Project Management for Professionals - entry page - I looked at some of the steps involved in effective project management. Here I did not deal with one of the main causes of project failure, the allocation of project management responsibility without authority.

You cannot run a project properly if you do not have the authority to do so. Too many organisations allocate project management responsibility, but are not prepared to over-ride existing decision structures in the way required to make the project work.

I do not have a solution to this. It just is.

The only advice that I can give to project managers facing this problem is the need to be prepared to drive things through, to force decisions. If the organisation will not meet the requirements dictated by the project, then you really have no choice but to stand down.

Associate attrition in law firms - five bottom lines

I was rather struck by the quote from Bruce MacEwen:

The problem, in a nutshell, is attrition. Despite increased salaries and bonuses, more (professed) attention to work/life balance and associate development, more indisputable investments in stress management, concierge services, and day-care, by years three to four anywhere from 30 to 50% and more of associates are out the door.

This problem is not unique to the US, nor just to law. The reasons are complex and relate to the way many professional services firms are managed.

Bottom line one: too many firms take all the fun out of work.

They do so in all sorts of ways. Too much emphasis on narrow performance measures. Too little emphasis on recognising personal success. Limited grant of real professional autonomy. The list goes on.

Bottom line two: firms are inconsistent.

How many firms have you seen where a real gap exists between the firm rhetoric and the way that performance is actually measured? How many firms have you seen where a firm emphasises perfomance while actually accepting the opposite, especially at partnet level?

Bottom line three: give the guys a break.

Unrelenting pressure can destroy anyone. There has to be a balance. People require time to recharge, to gather their strength. This is especially true for the best performers, even if those performers themselves do not always recognise the need. So look for ways to give your best people a break.

Bottom line four: make things easy.

The single biggest impediment faced by many associates in getting their job done is their superiors. And here the biggest problem is the availability of scarce supervisory time. If you waste your associates' time, they will leave.

Bottom line five: recognise that your associates have a career outside your firm.

This one is hard. How do you invest in and support people who might leave? The answer is that you must.

We live in a cynical world. The reality in most western countries is that staff no longer have an automatic loyalty to the organisation. We - public and private institutions - have told them that they must look after themselves and they have taken us at our word!

In this world, trust must be earned and re-earned. Ignore this fact, and you will lose your people.

Project Management for Professionals - entry page

Now that I have again started to write about project management, I thought it sensible to establish an entry page that would bring together my various posts on project management. Later I will add linked themes to introduce you to related issues.

The posts are not intended for the professional project manager, already skilled at the craft. Rather, I hope that they will provide an introduction to the ordinary professional or manager in a professional services firm interested in the way that project management can help improve performance.

The Project Management Posts

• 2 October 2006. Multidisciplinary Working - Introduction
• 28 November 2006. Project Management for Professionals - Introduction
• 4 December 2006. Project Management for Professionals - What is a Project?
• 6 December 2006. Project Management for Professionals - Conceiving and Defining the Project
• 8 December 2006. Project Management for the Professionals - Planning the Project
• 4 December 2007. Project Management for Professionals - Implementing the Plan
• 3 January 2007. What Lawyers (and other professionals) appreciate
• 17 January 2007. Towards a Discipline of Practice - the Ndarala challenge
• 18 January 2007. Project Management for Professionals - Completing the Plan
• 28 August 2007. The Use and Abuse of Standardisation - Introduction
• 5 March 2008. Project Management in Professional Bodies

Project Management in Professional Bodies

Well, back from my break and ready to go again.

Several years ago I was involved in the introduction of project management approaches across an organisation.

The idea made a lot of apparent sense. Much of the work of the organisation, a significant professional body, was in fact project based. Application of structured project management approaches should improve efficiency at project level, while also making the organisation's work more transparent and accountable.

The move failed. There were significant short term gains, but application collapsed because the transparency and accountability created came to be seen as a threat to the authority and autonomy of the organisation's governing bodies.

Part of the problem here lay in the fact that many "decisions" were not in fact decisions at all. Some reflected political and professional interplay within the profession and were really markers of that interplay. Others fell in the "it seemed a good idea at the time" class.

The governing bodies were quite comfortable with all this because the process accommodated all the personal, political and professional differences to be found in any profession. The introduction of project management approaches failed because the transparency it created interfered with the internal political processes.

A break to recharge

I am taking some weeks off from posting to recharge. I expect to be back on line at the start of March.

The Year Ends

This will be my last post for the year, apart from some part completed previous posts that I still have to finish editing and bring on line.

In addition to clearing the post backlog, over the Christmas break I hope to take the time to properly review all the posts I have written since my introductory post on 3 July 2006. Some are ephemeral, but there are also threads that I would like to review to consolidate and extend what I have learned.

To all those who have visited and especially my regular readers, I wish you the best of the season. May 2008 be personally and professionally fulfilling for all of us.

Welcome to Visitor 12,000

Welcome to visitor 12,000 from the United States who came to this blog through a google search on sample manager appraisals.

The Australian Prime Minister and Evidence Based Public Policy

This post continues my series on the application of evidence based approaches in professional practice.

The new Australian Prime Minister has been placing great emphasis on the role of evidence in policy development. This is not just a matter of rhetoric.

At a Commonwealth-State officials meeting a week back, Commonwealth officials stated that with the new Government they were in a position to consider new things. However, they also commented on the PM's demand for evidence to support new policy proposals.

This type of demand is not, of course, new. A wide range of approaches have in fact been developed by Governments and researchers to try to improve decision making within the public sector.

Cost-benefit analysis is an early example, becoming popular during the fifties and sixties. This approach attempts to measure the costs and benefits expected from a project expressed in present value terms, allowing judgements to be made as to value.

Program evaluation is a second example. This discipline evolved in the US during the sixties because of the need to assess outcomes from major social programs introduced by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Program budgeting emerged during the same period, coming out of the US Defence Department. This approach attempted to express Government activities in terms of programs with sets of defined, measurable outcomes. Widely accepted, it forms the core of the input-output-outcome approaches so common now in public administration.

While evidence based approaches are common in public administration and in the professions surrounding public administration, it is not clear to me as a sometimes practitioner in the area that they actually work very well. In fact, I would argue that they are now having adverse effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of Government policy and programs.

There are a number of reasons for this.

To begin with, public policy involves more than simply measurable outcomes. Most policies and supporting programs involve a mix of objectives, some of which are not capable of easy quantification.

Then, too, the range of variables involved is wide, the interactions between variables uncertain.

But there is also, I think, insufficient focus on the effectiveness of various professional practices and their supporting tools. Put simply, we do try to measure outcomes from programs, but we do not assess the relative effectiveness of different ways of developing policies and programs. In this sense, public administration is a little like medicine before the development of evidence based medicine.

Clients are people too - looking after the client

In my last post I spoke of the need to recognise that clients are people to with their own needs, personalities and places within the organisation.

I now want to extend this analysis, focusing on the needs of clients as people working within organisations.

The management and business related professions as a whole face a problem. Too few of us have actually worked in management roles within organisations, too many of us have spent our whole careers in particular professional slices. Among other things, this can make us insensitive to the practical and political problems faced by our clients.

All organisations have their own structures, processes and cultures. We know this. In fact, many of us advise on ways of changing structures, cultures and processes.

Yet in all this, we can forget that our clients as people have to operate within organisations. To them, the structures, processes and cultures are a daily reality. Their ability to operate in an effective fashion depends critically upon the way that they are perceived within the organisation.

To illustrate by example.

A well recognised individual usually has power and influence extending well beyond their formal position. This makes it easier for them to do things.

Conversely, a poorly regarded individual's power and influence will normally be less than that notionally attached to their position. Their ability to do things is consequently reduced.

As consultants, we generally notice this because it affects our ability to do a job. If our direct client is well regarded, things become easier. Poorly regarded, and we strike delivery obstacles and road blocks.

How does this relate to our role? At one level, these are just things that we have to work around if we can. At a second level, we should never forget that that what we do affects the position of our direct personal client within the organisation.

If we do well, then the position of the individual client will improve. If we stuff up, then their position is likely to be damaged. So over and beyond but still subject to our professional obligations, I think that we have a responsibility to look after our clients. We need to be sensitive to the fact that failure on our part affects not just us, but also the client as a person.

This does not mean breaching professional standards. Rather, the requirement to be sensitive to the needs of and and to look after the client should be seen as one element in those standards.