I read an interesting statistic the other day that painted a woeful picture that most businesses programs and projects fail to deliver against their initial schedule. A quick look around the web would confirm this ( for example here,and here for starters).
Discussing this with a colleague over coffee, my friend’s response was – “you project managers are always overly optimistic, your plans are rarely based in reality”. As delayed projects cost money plain and simple I have to say I was a little horrified at their reaction.
Clearly there is no shortage of example projects that have failed (some disastrously) from small projects to mega ones. But, given that planning is at the heart of Project Managers core process surely we get it right most of the time, no? If not then why not?
The planning fallacy (as described by Daniel Kahneman and Dan Lovallo) is often used to explain this. This term describes our tendency to underestimate how long things take and cost in reality. A projects team ability to deliver their projects end product gets exaggerated at the start of the phase and before you know it the team believe their own hype and promise something that in the light of day isn’t possible.
The reality of this condition is that financial budgets get blown and customers get disappointed.
Of course it feels heroic to set yourself a target that super-man would be proud of but in reality, failing isn’t a nice feeling.
So what steps should you be taking to avoid this? Here are our 6 tips to avoiding project planning fallacy and producing better project plans.
1/ Peer review your plans
Allowing your project plan to be peer reviewed (ideally by someone outside of the team) provides the opportunity to highlight any aspects that might be overly optimistic. Obviously how you act on these results is down to you (but a failure to consider input provided may prove…well…a…bit daft…).
2/ Be realistic
During planning stages, we all tend to get a bit carried away and think we can deliver the world in 5 minutes. This is especially true if we have bosses to please who might not be happy with the truth of how long the project will take. The key message here is stand by what you believe you can honestly deliver. You know if you’re being overly optimistic so don’t build in schedules that you know you can’t deliver before you even start.
3/ Use experience to establish plans
Tied to the above. If you manage projects for a living then it’s highly likely that you’ll have some experience in producing plans. Experience is vital in building accurate project schedules. It gives you perspective on what’s worked previously and of course what hasnt. Is the schedule reflective of what you’ve achieved previously? If not why not?
4/ Set a baseline and measure yourself against it
While 1 in 3 projects don’t’ have a baseline it’s critically important. A baseline offers you a fixed view of schedule and allows you to monitor progress (and the performance of your project). This coupled with a realistic work breakdown structure allows you to a clear view of progress against plan giving you a concrete steer in how accurate your plan is.
5/ Brainstorm your dependencies
Perhaps more of a tip for the overall plan but those plans constructed in isolation rarely succeed. One thing that I like to do is to discuss the likely project dependencies with the team and the customer. What issues are we likely to see? Have we captured all the work to do? Where you have suppliers delivering into your project have you built in their schedule? One of the most common reasons I see for broken schedules is that the PM hasn’t been aware of when suppliers were delivering into it and guessed (and was wrong!).
6/ Get someone else to write your plan.
Yes, I know this might sound a little out there but evidence shows that were someone else forecasts tasks over confident schedules are likely to be much diminished (or vanish completely). Obviously, the trick is finding someone that can do it, but it can really work.
I hope you found the list useful and that you give some of them a while. Got some tips/tricks on avoiding schedule catastrophe? We’d love some feedback in the comments section below.