Neil Abrahams, Guest Writer

Project failure is common-place in today's fast pace business environment. There are varying levels of project failure, the most extreme being 'death' or project cancellation.

However, there are many projects that fail for far more subjective reasons. Among the most common are failure to deliver business value and to meet key user requirements, deviations from specifications, lateness or blowing budgets.

Dissatisfaction occurs when the customer's expectations are no with the vendor's deliverables. This happens when the customer has one interpretation and the vendor has another. Project management is the art o expectations with deliverables through a structured and repeatable methodology.

Different definitions of success

Every project requires financial resources, technical resources, senior management sponsorship, definition, scope management, contingency management and, finally, risk and failure management. The sum of all these parts equals 'project management'.

Both the customer and the vendor view projects from different sides of the table, they both have different definitions of success.

The customer's success factors are delivery of business value, on time and within budget with the required functionality.

The vendor's success factors are sign-off, payment and new projects. Based on this, customers should always ensure that the contract term with the vendor's objectives and with theirs.

Payment should be based on milestones that ensure the delivery of business value focusing on the delivery of functionality and features that can be demonstrated.

Why is it so hard to manage a project? Project managers do not have functional control over all resources required. They need to be able to deal with the big picture and details, not to mention the knowledge of when to switch focus between both. This is made more difficult on large projects where interface is required with multiple project managers,vendors and customers.

Project plans

To further complicate matters, project plans are often based on the best case scenarios. Each project is unique and there are no absolute truths that can be applied from one project to the next.

There are many ways to ensure success, the key to which is following the project manager's methodology as set out by the Project Management Institute. But simple solutions such as periodic project meetings to determine which tasks are slipping, helps tremendously.

Try to have senior management participate in weekly meetings. Remember to ensure that issues affecting the project are discussed and clarity is achieved. Ensuring input from stakeholders can be achieved by providing project reports to senior management in both the vendors and customers organisations.

Remember to document everything, starting with the project charter. The project definition or charter is the process of selection and reduction of the ideas and perspectives into a set of clearly defined objectives. These drive the outcome, project deliverables and scope.

This is often delegated to consultants or lower-level managers who often do not have a full grasp of the strategic needs of the business.

The result is often a solution that fails to deliver the very business value the project has been created to provide. A project that is not clearly defined will most likely fail.

Hire experts or consultants to determine prerequisites for success such as any infrastructure requirements or policies.

Manage projects based on the deliverables and scope. It is critical that change requests are documented, as undocumented requests usually end up in scope creep ?— a key contributor to project failures.

Efforts should be made by the project manager to foster a team-based environment between vendor customers and encourage open dialogue at all times.

Most projects in Jamaica are the fixed-fee type where a vendor is awarded a contract to a defined job for a fixed fee based on company and government procurement regulations.

However, it is very common for circumstances to change between the tender submission and contract negotiation and award, both in the external and internal environment - the chief of which is technology with its rate of obsolescence. The lowest price contract determination often does not make allowances for this change.

Companies requesting proposals should ask the vendor to build in contingencies and manage these contingencies ensuring that the project does not fail because of bureaucratic delays.

Neil Abrahams is co-founder of Innovative Corporate Solutions.