project failure

Sep 7 2009   11:00AM GMT

Top 5 reasons of Project Manager getting fired

Posted by: Jaideep
Software Project, project manager, Project Management, business knowledge, project team, team member, software product, product meeting, project meeting, customer meeting, technical depth, technical knowledge, project feedback, team feedback, customer feedback, project failure

Project Failure: First failure will downgrade the level of next project to be given to the project manager. Not only this, but it will also trigger hidden cameras in the organization that start monitoring each and every step of project manager. These hidden cameras could be top management or some selected down the line people working with project manager.
Customer Feedback: Organizations are taking customer feedback very seriously. A remark by a customer regarding a project manager – “I want this project manager to manager all my future projects ordered to you. Infact if you don’t depute this person as project manager, you don’t accept our orders” triggered such a magic that it immediately presented the project manager with an out-of-turn hefty increment. On the other hand a customer CEO sent a confidential email message to the CEO of projects organization stating – “We don’t want the current project manager to be seen in out campus with immediate effect” put a very big question mark on project manager’s capabilities.
Project Team Feedback: Sometimes even if Project fails project manager is able to survive if project team and customer give a positive feedback. Then the reasons are different which are beyond the control of project manager. But if project fails and feedback is also not very positive, all axes will fall on project manager’s neck.
Lack of Technical Depth: A shallow or artificial demonstration of technical depth will not help for long. Although project manager has not to do technical activities on his own but his depth of knowledge will definitely help in driving the project in right direction and meeting targets.
Lack of business knowledge: Sometimes smart team members manage many a weaknesses of their project manager if he has demonstrated his strength in certain areas. But the lack of business knowledge is something that will certainly affect the product built, customer confidence in product and project manager’s knowledge. And if project manager is not clear about the business concepts of the customer, his presence in project, product and customer meetings will not be as effective as it is supposed to be.

May 4 2009   9:40AM GMT

Roles of Vendor and Customer Project Managers to avoid Project Overrun

Posted by: Jaideep
Project Management, Software Project, project organization, project sign-off, project completion, project overrun, project failure, project time, project revenue, project approach, project metrics, project progress, Project Plan

Project management is a joint effort of vendor and customer teams. Project Organization members have to play their respective roles timely and religiously to get the best of the results. Both have to go hand in hand right from the start of the project till end and even beyond. The relationship does not end with the successful completion of the project. Rather a new journey starts with the project sign-off. The baby borne by the vendor team with the help customer team changes the hands with the project sign-off. If these responsibilities are not well understood well in advance, it may lead to overrun and may end to the total failure. To avoid a project overrun the vendor and the customer have to trigger the alarm well in advance as soon as they sense a sign of overrun arising out of any reason.

At Vendor end the core responsibility of project manager is to train the customer project manager in project management so that customer project manager takes the lead in project and ensures that there is no overrun in terms of time and revenues.

At Customer end the customer Project Manager has to be pro-active in his approach to escalate the matter to his top management in case he feels in advance that project is going to overrun (with reasons identified and agreed upon mutually). Some suitable metrics can be used as project plan to trace the progress of the project in accordance with the project plan.

Apr 20 2009   10:05AM GMT

Role of customer project manager at customer site during implementation stage

Posted by: Jaideep
project manager, Project Management, project implementation, implementation phase, project lead, project ownership, UAT, business study, business need, software training, implementation process, implementation plan, project team, Risk Management, Risk Plan, post implementation, process owner, reconciliation, transaction entry, project sign-off, project closure, project failure, project success

The customer project manager has to take the lead and ownership of product as soon as it is launched at customer site for implementation. The UAT, training and implementation process can only be effective in case customer project team gets fully involved into each and every activity of the implementation phase. Infact the implementation plan prepared by vendor project manager should be the responsibility of customer project manager to execute.

Customer Project manager and management has to clearly understand the risks involved during the business study, implementation and post implementation phase as highlighted by the vendor Project Manager and to act thereupon to overcome those risks with suggestions from vendor project manager.

These risks could be in terms of consequences involved:

if requirements are not complete and well defined,
the involvement of users and process owners during business study, implementation, UAT, masters creation, transaction entry, reconciliation etc.,
if sign-offs not happening in time, etc.

Even if the sign-off is given and product is not put in use, there is a chance of project failure at both ends.