genglehardt said:
That is fascinating. Were the results of your investigation
documented/published? Would you be willing to identify who the senior
consultants were with?
It was a group of consultants brought togther in, I think, '98, by the
Daniel's College of Business at Denver University. I think about 13 or
so were invited, and about 5 or 6 of us became active members and did
some work together for almost 2 years. It was disbanded when the
decision was made by DU's administration that PM should be handled by
another department.
Nothing was published, it wasn't an "investigation". I think I was the
one that brought it up. It was during an effort we did to identify the
major causes of project failure in the experience of the group, which
had over 140 yrs of collective experience in PM. I don't feel I should
give names without notifying the others (and I don't have their names
and numbers anymore). But there was a full-bird Air Force colonel, a
long time auto industry consultant, a software consultant and others.
Of course, my background was in the mining and oil businesses before I
became a consultant. Since then, financial, software, R&D, etc. We had
a lot of varied experience in the room and all were people whose
opinions I respect and trust. No "hotshots". Just a group of
down-to-earth, hard working, honest consultants. I felt priviledged to
be a part of it. I was the junior member in experience, with only about
20 yrs at the time.
Whomever started it, it was postulated that the seeds of failure for
most (say 90%) projects are sewn by the time the Project is 10%
complete. A sort of Pareto's Law as applied to PM. It wasn't a long
discussion, to the best of my memory. We seemed to agree on it pretty
quickly and moved on to the next topic. No one seemed to have much
doubt it was a given. Totally informal.
In my PM classes, I've taught for years that one way to differentiate
an average PM from an excellent PM was their ability to see the problem
before it became obvious to all, before the project was 10% complete.
If you think about the most common reasons for project failures, I
think it will make sense. If your scope is incomplete, and you know
what to look for, isn't it evident, though not neccessarily obvious, at
10%? If you have poor communications, isn't it evident by then? Poor
estimating of time and or costs? And if it's not identified by 10% of
completion, it probably won't be until later in the project, when it's
obvious to anyone, but it's too late to take effective remedial action.
My comments about the 15% postulated by the OP were strictly my own.
But it did seem to possibly correspond to our conclusions in that the
CPI/SPI probably aren't going to get a lot better after 15% of the
project is done. I'd very much like to know where the 15% came from.
