Project Management, Programme Management

Having largely rewritten the MBA Distance Learning Project Management course material for University of Durham, for which I have been a DL tutor since 1994, there is a lot of new material that I could share. But I cannot share with you the course material itself.

We will be presenting short articles on Project Management, Programme Management, and Risk Management.

Introduction

With so much media attention on high profile largely public sector projects, much of the focus is on three questions:

Why do projects fail?
Why do costs escalate?
Why do they run late?

What we then need to pose, and try to answer, is the fourth one which is largely unasked:

What can we do to prevent this?

We can start with an example that should be familiar to all of us. As individuals we often embark on projects of relative simplicity, and we always consider costs and timescales. Things like redecorating, or holding a massive party. And we never run over budget or take longer than expected do we? Be honest. Of course we do. Human nature gets the better of us as we:

Are optimistic: we expect things to go well, and plan to do much more in the available time than is really practical
Allow interruptions, for tea breaks, or a well-earned drink.
Find things we had not expected to, and they take longer.... odd things like snippets in newspapers that catch our attention, the very newspapers we are using to catch the drips from our now static paintbrushes.
Change our minds. The colour is wrong; we change the position of a wash-basin, the type of taps, the door handles and what about having a separate shower?

In a nutshell, on average people don’t plan well, and do change their minds. For a simple decorating job the extra cost probably doesn’t much matter. Compared to the hassle of disruption, the extra week or more of tiptoeing round obstacles, and not using one of the rooms might be bearable. But suppose we applied this approach to the real world of work, what would the repercussions be?

There would be disruption of customers, suppliers, staff, and the costs associated with it: lost profit, lost sales, possibly lost customers, and, if the work is sensitive and in the public arena, a lot of unwanted attention in the media with the extra cost of PR to set out the position, to try to still the storm clouds. I can recall a job almost 30 years ago where the cost of delay was estimated at £2 million per week. Happily, that one came in on time and on budget. Why?

We had a clear goal, clear direction, stakeholder buy-in and management support
We recognised that there were risks, and had contingency plans to deal with them
We planned the work in detail, when it reached the appropriate stages.
We had highly qualified people with good equipment to help us
We had delegated authority so that we could act quickly on anything that happened that was not as originally expected
And we had a great team arrangement, with clear roles and responsibilities.

These principles can be applied to any project, series of projects, or whole programme. A vital component in success is understanding what might go wrong, in recognising the risks and managing them.

If you have a project in mind and would like to discuss it with someone please contact us.

Risk Management

Risk Management is located here

Procurement and Tendering

Procurement and Tendering are located here

References

All references are here