adminGroup, Gartner, Carnegie Mellon University, PMI and others all point out the same reality that projects are often late, over-budget and fail to deliver the appropriate product they were designed to produce.
In fact, some projects do not produce any product at all. In this article, I would like to explore the reasons why organisations and individuals fail to learn from failed projects.
Anyone involved in project management will probably have had the misfortune to have been involved in or to have known a project that failed.
Careers can be destroyed, finger-pointing is the order of the day, recriminations fly, blame is apportioned by everyone to everyone else, relationships break down, trust is damaged, and people who were friends become enemies.
It can be argued that what organisations are doing to hold people accountable for their negative/counter-productive behaviour on projects, is causing more project failures because project teams tend to hide negative information about the project, paint a gloss picture when in fact the project is in trouble.
Last month, I was invited by the Computer Society of Zimbabwe to an educational exchange in Harare, with a view of answering the burning questions: Can ICT projects be managed?
My advice to the ICT professionals at that function was that although ICT project complexities are lumped up under technology, organisational politics and business, it is human habits and behaviours (the people) that cause ICT projects to derail.
The tendency to find scapegoats and then move on without an honest post-action assessment causes us to perpetuate the bad behaviours and not learn from the project mistakes.
Speaking at the same occasion, the Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe regional strategic partner, Mr Jurie Smith, who was in Zimbabwe to conduct PRINCE2 training of the first group of twelve participants, challenged the ICT professionals to be honest in providing project progress reports, as project failures tend to be sudden, “all the wheels suddenly come off”, when in fact signs of failure would have been detected much earlier. Projects do not disintegrate in one day there are signs of degradation and decay before they are considered hopeless, and these must be reported in an honest fashion.
Human beings by nature do not learn from other people’s errors, but from their own experience!
In other words, being optimist, we believe that disasters only happen to others; hence we fail to learn from mistakes of others on projects.
Project Lessons Learnt
Capturing lessons learned is of vital importance. Unfortunately, it is often forgotten at the end of the project – people just want to move on to the next assignment.
By assigning an individual on the project (ideally an individual trained in capturing lessons learned) to lead the capture of lessons learned from the beginning of the project, and tracking throughout all the stages of the project, you will not feel so pressured at the end to fit it in.
The more mature the project management function within the organisation the more likely that lessons learned are captured, internalised and applied to all future projects.
Effective transfer of knowledge from lessons learnt is not solely for other project teams, but also to the organisation as a whole.
These organisations that are more mature will capture lessons learnt not just from the project team, but also from customers, contractors, and other internal staff.
Do you capture lessons learnt? If you do, how effectively do you capture them?
We all have good intentions to do so, but often do not get around to effectively capturing lessons learned from projects.
Often, if we do try to capture lessons learnt, we do so at the very end of the project – getting the team together to try to remember what worked and what did not.
With short projects – maybe just a few weeks in duration – this might work well some of the time. Just catch them before they are off to the next project.
For longer projects though, it is difficult to wait until the end to attempt to capture the lessons learned.
Too often team members are ready to move on, or they have forgotten much of what should likely be captured. Better to track lessons learned throughout the project, as much as possible.
By tracking these situations throughout the project, everything is fresh in your head as it has just occurred.
You can then compile the information at the end and develop a more comprehensive lessons learned.
Organisations need to develop procedures where project “lessons learnt” are reviewed before implementing a new project; in this way I think there would be a better chance of success.
Organisational Culture
Organisations do not learn from project failure because they do not want to.
I have seen time and again where people know what the problems are, they know what is required, what steps should be taken, but because there is this desire to implement the project at a particular time that basic project management principles are ignored. In some organisations, it is politically incorrect to accept that a project failed. The normal practice is to find scapegoats and keep looking for the “right people” to perform the next initiative.
It takes maturity and evolution for an organisation and its executives to accept the failure (without punishing anyone) and to make a joint effort to learn the lessons from the failure.
In my opinion, it is very important to focus on the human side of the issue. Having an open team communication would lead to lower defence mechanisms.
In progressive companies, project teams “lunch and learn” on a weekly basis, in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.
The main purpose will be to gather as much information as possible, and learn from mistakes and successes.
- Robert Taruwona is the President of the Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe (PMIZ) Send your views and comments via email; [email protected] or [email protected] website link www.pmiz.org.zw
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