Project Management – get it right first time
Paul Mason CEO, PMC believes the single biggest reason for projects being late or overspent is ineffective project management. Take any IT project, in any organisation and the rule is simple: Get it right first time is cheaper than doing it wrong and doing it again. So why do so many projects fail first time around? Why do organisations continue to make the same mistakes? And why does poor project management proliferate?
Mason states: “The point is most organisations don’t know where they’re screwing up. Project management failure when you’re delivering change is usually due to misunderstanding the three ingredients for success - time, cost and quality – and turning them into failure. If you don’t get the project in on time, to the agreed cost and to the expected quality you will compromise your investment. The only way to avoid that is effective project management.”
Too many businesses see project management as an extra cost rather than an investment. This is a fundamental error in thinking. Take the project management cost and set it against delivering the project three months late. Costs escalate, time extends and often quality suffers.
Right people, right actions, right time
Retailers consistently give project responsibility to the wrong or inexperienced people. They look at the cost of a project manager, limited understanding kicks in and they see a cost, not the cost of a failed project.
Mason continues: “It’s more than making sure everything goes right, with the right people doing the right things at the right time. That’s too simplistic. The project manager does far more. Prime among these is applying ‘knowledge based on experience’. An experienced project manager knows the road map and where the potholes and bumps are. He’s been down the road before. He will save you time and money. He will also focus on the actions needed to arrive at the right place in the right time. That’s important because without that knowledge you can be sure that they won’t.”
The next time you’re tempted to approach a project from a perspective that says: ‘We can do it ourselves’ or possibly: ‘We can find an IT person to handle it’ – think again. That’s because you have forgotten to focus correctly on time, cost and quality.
Mason closes: “When I see organisations using ‘do-it-yourself’ thinking my response is: ‘Clearly you haven’t done this before otherwise you would not think that way’. Approaching project management expecting any IT person to handle it is like asking your GP to perform open-heart surgery just because he knows something about medicine. A major project impacts the heartbeat of your business. Why leave it in anything other than the safest hands?”
“Project management is a highly skilled role demanding experienced, dedicated individuals focused solely on the project – nothing else will do unless you’re happy to see projects fail and repeat the same mistakes.”
For further information please contact enquiries@paulmasonconsulting.co.uk |
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Take any IT project, in any organisation and the rule is simple: Get it right first time is cheaper than doing it wrong and doing it again. So why do so many projects fail first time around? Why do organisations continue to make the same mistakes? And why does poor project management proliferate?
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