Welcome to the Points-To-Ponder e-letter

Welcome to the S5 Systems thought provoking monthly e-letter; in these periodicals, we bring you a discussion of the issues and ideas that affect project managers, software managers and project leaders.

WHY DO PROJECTS FAIL?

Is it not customary for us in high tech to see the majority - if not all our projects delayed and many times taking more than double the time initially planned?

Industry Statistics on project failure

Industry statistics speak for themselves - below are some stats related to project management:

Over 80% of the embedded systems projects are delivered late and over budget. Nearly 60% of all IT projects are delivered with less functionality than originally promised (Chaos Study, Standish Group)         Over 85% of semiconductor industry engineering projects are delayed (Numerics Inc.)         Delays of 100 percent are typical for high tech projects, despite the use of project management tools (University of California at Berkeley)         80 percent of all embedded systems projects are delivered late (The Gansale Group)         Of the ten largest defense procurement projects, 70 percent are delivered late and over budget (National Audit Office, UK)

The industry statistics speaks for itself. What is your experience with some projects you were involved with? We look forward to your experiences.

So what are the issues with the ways projects are run today?

In theory, if we create a good plan and follow it carefully, our projects should be delivered on time. In reality, too many uncertainties hit most projects along the way.

	Technological uncertainties
	Requirements change or requirement become clearer as project proceeds
	Dependent software and hardware does not perform as expected
	Vendors do not deliver on time or do not deliver what was expected
	Approvals do not come on time
	Priorities change
	Resource availability changes

The above are some examples of the uncertainties we have all seen in our previous projects. So how can you plan, if you do not know what to plan for and how to plan for such uncertainties?

How do people react to such uncertainties?
As management teams experience uncertainties in their previous projects the managers start to counter uncertainties in their future projects in one or more of the following ways:

Detailed planning and tracking – Companies start to create very detailed and meticulous projects with a lot finer and granular tasks. This unfortunately adds more work into tracking these finer detailed tasks. Uncertainties still occur and cause the project plans to become obsolete even faster since now slippage of smaller tasks causes the project to slide. In short more granular project plans are more difficult to manage.

Adding Safety – Managers after having experience with uncertainties start to add safety in each task before they send the plans upwards. This addition of safety is done at each management layer. Thus project plans become overloaded with safety buffers.

Individual time tracking/Cost management – This is done when each individual and their tasks are managed. This only encourages the starting team to add even more safety, reducing any chance of them reporting any early finishes.

Start early to avoid risk of delays – Managers… because of their previous experience of delayed projects start feeling the pressure to start the projects ASAP. The risk of delay is so high that they feel that not starting right away on any work that can be started would be a lost opportunity. In reality as more and more work is put in progress, the pipeline starts to clog up with bottlenecks. These then make the situation worse as wait times and queues become longe.

How Uncertainties affects current projects?
As mentioned above… how management and teams respond to uncertainties they met in  previous projects. Below is how uncertainties affect a current project:
 
Delays propagate... gains do not – Every time there is a delay, it pushes future tasks causing the project to delay. However, if a task is completed early the dependant task can start only when all dependant tasks have finished.

Gains are not flagged – Although delays are readily flagged in the projects, early finishes are not generally flagged. Since extra safety was added human nature causes this safety to be filled up hence loosing the benefit of early finish. Many times early finishes are not reported because they are afraid that an early finish may become hard commitment next time. In either case, the safety added to manage uncertainties cause the projects to delay.

Student Syndrome – Most people have a natural tendency to procrastinate. With safeties embedded in the commitments, it only becomes more tempting to make a slow start or delay the task to meet the projected dates.

Multi-tasking delays– Many team members are working on more than one project. When delays occur because of uncertainties, many of these members are required to work on more than one projects at any given time (e.g. solving field issues for an older version and design document for a future version). Multi-tasking kills productivity and causes further delays (because of parallel processing, set up/set down costs).

So how projects should be run?
Uncertainty is the way of life, uncertainties cannot be predicted or properly sized so how do we manage projects ridden with so many uncertainties, in an environment where the only constant thing is change and where multiple projects is a way of life