This is the second in a series of three articles on project reviews. The first article (in the April 2001 issue of Successful Project Management) answered the question: "What is a project review?" This month we address the question: "Who sponsors project reviews?"
Who Sponsors Project Reviews?
A senior executive-level person usually hires my partner and me. The CEO or President, CFO, or a business unit executive sponsors project reviews. We are almost never hired by a project manager or an IT executive. (I'll explain why a little later.) The person who calls us does not ask for a "project review." Typically this person is not even familiar with that term. He or she most often says something like: "Can you look at our project, and tell us if we have any hope of completing it successfully?"
How Executive Sponsors Recognize They Need a Project Review
An executive's thinking tends to focus on the problem at hand. By the time a senior executive is aware there is a problem with a project, it is usually pretty bad. For example, user management might start complaining loudly about the schedule slipping. The board of directors might start asking tough questions such as why the budget is significantly overrun. Projects get into trouble gradually over time, not all of a sudden overnight--although when the top finally blows off, it might seem like it happened overnight. At this point, an executive may lose confidence in his IT staff and call for outside assistance with reviewing the project's situation.
Emotional Traps That Prevent Anyone from Asking for a Project Review
The project staff, team leads, project manager, project office, and possibly even the CIO do not typically ask for project reviews. They keep thinking they can fix the problems. They have so much hope and belief in themselves. However, their belief can become a trap. They can lose their objectivity. They can lose their ability to notice they need help.
Most executives want to believe their IT staffs can deliver projects successfully. Many do not want to be seen as micro managing nor give the appearance of not trusting their IT staffs. Their belief can become a trap. They can become isolated. They can lose their ability to know what is really going on with the project.
Notice how the two traps conspire to keep anyone from noticing the project is in trouble, and therefore asking for a project review--until, of course, the problems get so bad that someone outside the project starts complaining loudly. Since a senior executive is often the lightning rod for such outside complaints, he or she is the one who asks for outside help.
How Executive Sponsors Might Avoid the Traps
Executive sponsors need to be more actively involved in the project--not just waiting passively for the project manager to bring a problem or decision to be made. They need to shed the notion that this is micro managing. IT staffs, especially CIOs and project managers, need to shed the notion that a project manager should be able to handle such projects without any support from above. A project manager today needs all the help and support he or she can get. This is not a sign of weakness. It is an acknowledgement of the complexity of today's projects. Regular project progress meetings help executives avoid becoming isolated. These meetings also help IT staffs avoid losing their objectivity.
Having regular progress meetings does not guarantee success, but might help an executive sponsor recognize sooner that a project review should be conducted. For example, here are some telltale signs of a troubled project that might be noticed sooner:
- Continual schedule slippage and missed milestones
- Unchecked scope creep
- Excessive staff turnover
- Resources spread too thinly or not available when needed
- Critical skill sets missing from the project team
- Key decisions not being made in a timely manner
- Quality suffering as a priority below schedule or cost.
The Cost of a Project Review
An outside consultant should always be hired to conduct your project review for objectivity reasons--which I will explain in my next article. My partner and I conduct reviews in three parts:
- Gather data by reading project documents and interviewing a representative sample project members, users, and management.
- Analyze data by sorting, categorizing, and prioritizing findings, and then generate recommendations.
- Write report and deliver it in person with a verbal briefing.
As an example, an executive sponsor can expect to pay a consultant team of two people for two to three days of gathering data, three to four days of analyzing data, and two days of writing the report. At a daily rate of $2500, a two-consultant review team would cost between $35,000 and $45,000 plus travel expenses. Additional costs to consider are the cost of the interviewees' time at 60-90 minutes each, plus any administrative help you might provide for the consultants. To get a $2+ million project back on track, this seems a very reasonable price to pay.
In my next article I will answer the question, "Who should lead your project review?"
Wayne Strider is cofounder and vice president of Strider & Cline, Inc., an IT management consulting firm based in Kansas City, Missouri. He welcomes feedback on his article and can be reached at waynestrider@worldnet.att.net. His website is www.striderandcline.com.
© Copyright 2001 Wayne Strider
