Delaying a Project

There will come a time in every organization when someone proposes that a project, specifically your project, be cut. Your hands will get sweaty, your gut will develop a sinking feeling, and you won t sleep well at night. Your poor, poor, project! The one you ve invested months of your life in, the one you ve inspired your project team to work so hard for, and the one you ve sold management on how valuable it will be to the company. Sooner or later, one of your projects may face its demise.

There is, however, a tactic that you can try to save your project from being cut from the company s plans altogether: convince the company to delay, not cut. Delaying a project is different from cutting a project. A delay is a nod from management that your plan is still active, still worthy, and will be resurrected at some point in the future.

The typical cause of healthy projects being cut is a lack of funds. Is your business experiencing a downturn? Are layoffs imminent? How s your stock doing? These are all signals that a project cut may be visiting your team in the near future. Management has a responsibility of managing their project portfolio. If your project is low in priority, it s not difficult for management to give it the axe. Some project managers, when they sense these changes coming, will commit as many funds available to the project immediately to secure the implementation of the technology. For example, a project manager is leading a project to upgrade servers over the next eight months when he senses cuts may be looming. Rather than being stuck with a project without servers, he immediately orders all of the hardware necessary to finish his plan.

If this sounds sneaky to you, that s because it is. This is not a good project management technique because

• It does not follow the project plan or the project budget.

• The hardware may be present, but the team may not be available to implement it.

• It is a waste of the company s money as the technology purchased today may drop in prices over the upcoming months.

• If management wanted to rescind approval of the plan, they have final say.

• It is a reaction to gossip, and not to facts.

You should continue on your project until you are told the project has been halted. There is nothing wrong with talking to your project sponsor about the possibility of your project being cut if you two have a strong working relationship. When the word comes that your project is to be halted, first find out the reason the project must be stopped . If the reason is financial, and usually it is, make a request to change the project status to inactive rather than retired . Make a request to revisit the project in three to six months or after certain conditions are met to reactive the project implementation.

Once the project has been officially delayed, edit the project to formalize the three-to-six month delay. You will then have to break the news to the project team. Share with the project team the same reasons you were given, if you re allowed, as to why the project has been delayed and when the project will reconvene. Make backup copies of any current work done on the project and store them for safekeeping.

Coping with Vendor Delays

If you have outsourced all or a portion of your project, you may be faced with a vendor that cannot complete tasks according to the original schedule. In these instances, you will have to be stern , diplomatic, and reasonable all at once. Some methods you can use to work with vendors :

• Review your contract with the vendor to determine what repercussions you may have.

• Review their practices and recommend methods they can implement to improve the lagging schedule.

• Clearly identify to vendors the impact of the delay on the project scope and the completion date.

• Once a compromise has been reached, share this news with management and the project s customers.

Rebuilding Management Support

Here you are in front of management. Your project is a month off schedule and your budget is nearly gone. You need more time and you need more money to finish. Gulp. If you ve blown the opportunity to complete the project, don t be surprised if you are removed from the project. Sorry. But wait a minute, is this really your fault? Well, there is that whole poor planning results in poor implementation argument, but let s take the benefit of the doubt. Has the project scope changed? Have crucial members of your team left the project? Did you ever really have enough money to begin with?

If you are not to blame, things can be a little easier. Of course, management doesn t want to hear the bad news about your late project and the lack of cash to finish it, but someone has to tell them. The best method is to cut to the chase and tell management what the problem is. Prepare this ahead of time and document your needs. You do not want to go before the company board, the partners , or an executive committee without some plan to present to them. Never go to management with a problem unless you also have a solution. Management is looking for value and solutions in their day ”not your project problems.

Tell management what the problem is in clear, direct terms. Then, in equally clear terms, explain why the problem has occurred. If it was your fault, say so ”honesty is always the best policy. If the problem has presented itself because of the project scope being changed, or other circumstances clearly outside of your control, let management know ”with your supporting evidence.

Once you ve broken the harsh news and presented the honest, direct reason why the problem has arisen, present a plan to resolve the issue. You are now selling management the sizzle of the project once again. Remind management of the value of this project, the investment it means for the organization, and of the time and dollars already committed to progress the project to this point. While the monies that have been invested are sunk costs, it s hard to ignore the commitment invested into a project.

If these executives agree to continue to support your project, you will now have to rebuild their trust. To rebuild their support, you will have to prove to them that you are capable of leading the project team to the conclusion of the project. You ll have to prove to them that you are capable of managing their investment. And finally, you ll have to prove to yourself that you are capable of finishing this project after all you ve been through thus far.

To begin once more, meet with your project team and discuss why and how things got off track. Look for reasons why you let down the team, or the team members let each other down. Address these issues and then promise they won t happen again. You ll need to return to your WBS and the PND to determine what tasks are lagging and how the team can regroup and attack the plan with gusto once again.

Focus and Refocus

Okay, your project has changed either through internal or external forces. You ve made changes to the project plan, worked out details of the change, and are ready to move forward with the project. Put the frustration of the project change process behind you, rally your troops, and charge ahead into the project plan.

You now have to take on the role of an even more active project manager and ensure that the team is not discouraged with the change of the project plan. You will need to speak with the team members that the change has the most impact on to ensure their commitment and ongoing support.

You will also need to increase your level of communication between the team members and management. You want to keep all parties informed of the process of the project and your continued dedication to it. Some project managers are tempted to keep a low profile after the change process ”either out of embarrassment or frustration. Hiding it is not a good decision, as now you need to be seen and heard .

Renewal of Commitment

A change in the project plan, whether your fault or not, requires a change in you as well. After one of the most frustrating aspects of project management, changing the plan, you need to rekindle your excitement for the original project vision. Often, especially on long- term projects, it s easy to drift away from the excitement that surrounded the first few team meetings, the kickoff meeting, and reaching the first milestone.

The fact is, the business of project management is not always the most exciting business. But, the day-in, day-out tasks and review of work completed and work that needs completing are what gets the project from an elaborate plan on a whiteboard to a living portion of a business. Rekindle the excitement, renew your commitment to the project, and lead your team to victory!

From the Field

Interview with Anne Walker

Name : Anne Walker
Title and certifications: Enterprise Project Manager, MCSE, PM Certified
Company: Convergent Computing
Years as an IT project manager: 7

Anne Walker is an Enterprise Project Manager for Convergent Computing, a nationally recognized consulting, technical services, and IT staffing organization. For the past seven years, Anne has managed simple and complex technical projects, which include a 30-site, 7000+ users, enterprise-wide migration of all equipment, e-mail, data, and applications. Anne has been largely involved with developing internal project management processes for Convergent and past employers .

Q: When does a project manager know that a project plan has to be revised?

A: The project environment is dynamic by nature. It is practically impossible to prepare for all aspects of any one given project, and inevitably things do not always go as you had planned. Any good project plan should have objectives that are clearly defined prior to getting started on the actual work so that when things do go awry, everyone knows what the objectives are and can make decisions around them. If those objectives are in risk of not being met, the project plan needs to be revised. In essence, you need a road map that has concrete objectives that can easily be followed to get to some destination. If, during the project that destination changes or the project, is going in the wrong direction, you go back to the road map and make modifications.

Q: How can a project manager guard against scope creep while still allowing for some flexibility in a project plan?

A:

When developing the project plan, project managers should strive to identify not only the work that is to be done within the project, but also what is not to be included. By having what is not to be done defined, the project manager can ensure those tasks do not get included in the project. The project manager should also work with the project sponsor and stakeholders to get this identified early on and in doing so will find out what parts of the project can and cannot be flexible. For example, a project may have a timeline where there is absolutely no flexibility; however, there may be flexibility in the budget. In this instance, you would have flexibility in adding more people to the project to meet the timelines or paying a premium for expedited deliveries to meet an inflexible schedule.

Q: What process should be in place to control proposed project changes?

A: First, project managers should plan on project changes; they happen no matter how well project plans are defined. Any changes should be tracked as you work toward successful completion of the project. As you track changes, you will be building a historical record that will be invaluable if any disputes arise as the project is finishing or completes.

On a recent project, the customer wanted all changes tracked and entered into a database. A change request form was developed and policies were put in place so that any changes had to be submitted via this form and then approved prior to an actual change occurring. Each change request form had to be approved by the key stakeholders of the project via a weekly meeting where each request was reviewed.

Q: What is the most difficult part of changing a project plan during the implementation phase?

A: During implementation, most people involved in the project have their heads down and are focused on completing the project plan. Communicating any changes to the plan can be difficult because you have all kinds of work happening and probably people working in different areas. Overcommunicating is the key to making this work, so utilize all means of communication you have.

Q: How does a project manager address budgetary concerns, such as a budget increase, once the project has been approved for implementation?

A: This truly depends on how much budget flexibility has been incorporated into the project plan. Good project managers will incorporate a percentage of flexibility into the budget depending on the complexity of the project. For simple, noncomplex projects, the percentage may be 5 percent; whereas for large, complex projects, the percentage may be 15 percent.

If the budget is fixed and the project manager sees that an increase will be needed to successfully complete the project objectives, the project manager needs to identify where the increase in budget is needed and work with the stakeholders to rectify the problem. The stakeholders may decide to cut costs on one level of the project to meet the budget increase needed, or they may work to get the increased budget improved.

Q: What is the most difficult portion of revising a project plan?

A: It is to have everyone buy into a necessary change and have everyone impacted understand what necessitated the need for the change. In order for projects to be successful, the people who are out there doing the work need to understand and get behind any plan changes that are necessary.

I was working on a large migration project where our customer was swapping out all hardware and had ordered new hardware to replace the old. In order to keep to our schedule, the new hardware had to be onsite and installed prior to the actual migration date. Even with contingency and risk plans in place, we had to change a couple of planned migrations due to hardware either not arriving or hardware failures that even the manufacturer could not overcome .

Think through your schedule, remember the defined objectives of the project, and work to meet those, rather than only focusing on one piece of the project, which in this example would have been just fixing the schedule. Had we done that, we may have not had a successful migration for those sites because we would have had to use people who did not understand the technology or the migration process. One of our project objectives was to not impact business users, and utilizing new people would have set us up to not reach that objective.

Q: Have you ever experienced a dangerous change in the project plan?

A: Yes. In one instance, we had a site of 700+ users, workstations, laptops, servers, applications, mail, and data to be migrated over a weekend . A team of 10 engineers in various roles was already on site and prepping for the migration. Over 100 volunteers would be arriving in a couple of days to assist over the weekend. I won't go into detail, but you can imagine the amount of prep work that goes on even prior to the team arriving, and then it really kicks into gear once the team is onsite.

A storm hit and we lost power for one full day during that weekend. We were in contact with the site management and always presented them with options and what the results of choosing those options would be. A point came where we had to decide to keep moving forward or to roll back so as not to impact the day-to-day business that needed to get done. With that many people onsite, everyone just wanted to keep going forward and looked for ways to do that. People lost sight of the higher-level project objectives and only focused on the short-term goal ”getting the work done over the weekend. Bringing that large of a group to the realization that we were going to have to reschedule that site's migration was like getting a freight train to stop on a dime.

Q: What can a project manager do when a project has to be delayed due to circumstances outside of the project?

A: The best a project manager can do is to be calm and get people to focus on options for moving forward rather than focusing on circumstances outside of their control. People will look to the project manager and will mirror what emotions are coming from that person.

You have three options: the first is whether or not you can do anything about whatever is delaying the project. If you can't, you need to realize there is nothing you can do to change what is happening and look at what options you have. The second piece to consider is if you have influence over what is occurring. If you can influence what is happening, maybe you can change the circumstances.

The third thought is that you do have control over what is happening and should exercise that control. When this opportunity presents itself, project managers should use good judgment and practical sense.

Q: How does the project manager regain the trust and respect of management and the project team should a project plan have to be revised?

A: Honesty and open communication with management and the project team is key. Also, deliver what you say you are going to deliver and build the reputation of being reliable and on top of issues. Always be looking ahead and planning for what may be lurking as the next problem and be proactive rather than reactive.

Q: When working with an IT integrator, how can a project manager ensure that the vendor is on schedule and that changes to the project plan are limited?

A: Project managers need to know up front that much of their time will be devoted to ensuring that all integrators, whether they are hardware vendors, software resellers , or staffing agencies, get on board with the project and understand deliverables and deadlines. The earlier the integrators are involved, the better they will understand the project deliverables and can get behind them. The integrators can also better understand what they are to deliver and what is expected, and it gives integrators an opportunity to let the project manager know what they can and cannot accommodate. Setting up regular meetings throughout the life of the project with key integrators is a great way to communicate any changes or updates to keep them on board. It also gives the project manager an opportunity to get status updates from the integrators. If meetings are not possible, request weekly status updates from the integrators.

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring project managers?

A: Project managers need to have problem solving, administration, and interpersonal abilities in general. Aspiring project managers should look at their own personalities and understand what drives them and how other people interact with them. Being a people person is not necessary; however, you will need to understand how to motivate and influence people. Along those same lines, you may be asked to develop team members and facilitate teamwork and cooperation. You may have to deal with conflict and should be skilled in conflict resolution. In order to handle many of the pressures, you should be emotionally stable and open to change. If you don't enjoy working with people and would rather be behind a desk, project management is probably not for you. You also need to be organized and able to balance or multitask many activities.

Also, aspiring project managers should get some training. There are classes available at universities, certificate programs, and also vendor training. If your goal is to manage technical projects, get some technical training around your product interests. Having technical knowledge goes a long way when you are working with technical experts.