As we grow as a professionally and reach the area of project management increasingly, we enter into a world which transcends the limits of patience, the physical and mental strain of a professional in the area of technology. Deadlines and budgets are extremely fair, besides the complex change requests that normally occur in the middle of project and which further jeopardizes deadlines and specially the project cost. This is something common for us in the area of information technology, we are accustomed (with some exceptions) to working in a scenario that drastically changes overnight, where the client goes to sleep thinking about a definition and wake up to another. And the question for us is "should this be something normal?".
I strongly believe that many companies are not concerned with the knowledge of a project manager and thus, in many cases, the simple fact being a professional with a MS ® Project installed on his computer and have the activities controlled, does not quality him as a project manager. A general analysis about companies that still operate in this form of management in their projects always brings a very similar result: overtime for most of involved, discussions with suppliers in an attempt to identify the guilty for problems, discussions among participants, and finally, a zero profit margin. However, there are companies that take this task seriously, put high priority in management and which includes detailed planning stages which: would ensure lower cost, sufficient time and a scope closer to reality. From the customer’s point of view does your company fit this profile?
An example that demonstrates the inefficiency of many customers regarding management:
The client seeks in his team a person with extensive knowledge of business and chooses this one as a leader or project manager. This person, who has all potential to become a project manager, is well organized and works with a well-defined schedule: accepts the challenge. However, this person has no experience, strength to negotiate and the feeling of team productivity (regarding development time). The schedule is set by client with a short-term considering to the number of activities to be developed. The supplier on the other hand, does not want to lose the opportunity and thus accepts the schedule, knowing that his team is allocated in other jobs. The race against time starts, the few hours delay end up turning into days and finally the delivery of documents from client to supplier, with low quality specifications. The project manager tries to remove the obstacles, however, knowing that the timeline is short and that he will need to put pressure on the provider to keep the date, even with though delivering the documentation some days late.
The supplier receives the documentation and accepts the deadline even with the team working overtime, and having a series of doubts regarding the poor quality documentation and getting answers delayed to his questions from the customer. Finally, the supplier assures delivery on the date, but soon realizes problems regarding it: bugs start to appear, arguments over the quality delivery vs quality documentations generates a strain between deadline and the profitability of the project begins to decrease. The collapse begins often during an internal negotiation about the deadline, which who starts the process of management does not have expertise and necessary support to visualize the problems ahead that the project may contain. This happens not only with professionals who are starting at project management area, but also with experienced people, however, who does not have an applied theoretical baggage. Thus, problems are escalated, arguments between suppliers and customers become fiercer, teams are shifted to the war room as the project is delayed over a month for delivery. Finally we concluded that the supplier needed a month more to deliver the project in order to give the customer satisfaction and quality.
Can this be avoided?
In summary, we can say that many companies just fool themselves managing schedules, making compromising delivery and in the end, expecting a profit over something that has been lost during the construction period, the way in which customers are approached, a manner in which activities are conducted and above all, not adapting to the evolution of IT. YES!!! IT evolves and their processes improve as the years pass. A widespread practice recently is called "Lean Startup", which can be linked to project management as a way out avoiding major conflicts and projects turning into failures. Imagine the client having the opportunity of giving a feedback before the beginning of the actual development, for example, participating in the meetings with suppliers and understanding their wishes better. This could be considered as complicated, with possible scope changes (alterations), however, negotiations are more shared and the final project will be as requested by the client. The previous example shows a failure in planning, possibly because of the client's misunderstanding regarding the complexity of the project. Currently companies are adopting to different forms of work, as partial deliveries (which avoid problems like the example in question), which others adopt a pool of project manager (who are usually united to deal with of projects of various areas with a great exchange of knowledge, helping professionals to acquire new experience and also insights to circumvent the problems of everyday life).