Lessons learned-deep thoughts on the "Six beats" Project

I was deeply impressed by the "Six beats" project. I used "Six beats" to summarize the project implementation process.

The first shot is called brain decision-making. That is to say, the decision-making process of a project is very casual. Without quantitative ROI analysis, it is just a sense. I feel that the project has a future, or I can see other people. Before deciding to launch a project, many projects do not have a ROI analysis, but seldom consider the difficulties and risks. They simply think about the benefits after successful project implementation. As mentioned above, the boss of EMBA decided to use information technology after being stimulated in the classroom. Although this decision cannot be said to be wrong, however, it is impulsive to make decisions. Before informatization, there was a lack of some practical analysis and consideration from the enterprise, and there was no clear question about what benefits it could bring, what should be done first, and what should be done later. Even some projects are not profit-driven. Especially for projects funded by the State in the past few years, the State has given a batch of money, and enterprises have to pay for them, as a result, try the previous project quickly. Therefore, many projects decide the fate of failure in the decision-making stage. From the first shot, I decided on the sequencer. Should this project be used? How can this problem be solved? On what? How long is the ROI cycle? It is generally unclear about the project objectives. The decision makers blindly think about the bright side of the project's success, so this is the first shot of our typical "Six beats" project, the subsequent risks and difficulties of the project are estimated to be insufficient, which increases the risk of failure.

Since the decision-making process is emotional and there is no investment benefit analysis, the decision makers do not know how much the investment is. When looking for a supplier to negotiate the price, some decision makers even think that ERP is a CD, it should not be worth a lot of money. An enterprise boss once told me: "isn't your ERP a cost of RMB 5 a CD? Why is it so expensive? If you sell 10 thousand or 1 million, you can also sell them. If you want to sell more than a few, isn't it enough ?" There is only one idea in their minds: price reduction. In the past few years, ERP vendors were not clear about the cost of ERP software and the workload required for successful implementation. In the fierce competition, in the face of non-rational customers, there is only one option to place an order, that is, price reduction. As everyone knows, the price of anything has a cost bottom line. By the end of the cost bottom line, every minute the price is lowered, it means the risk of failure increases by one point. Therefore, at that time, many projects had fallen into the miserable situation of losing both suppliers and customers. This was the inevitable outcome of unreasonable prices. Project Manager blog

The second shot is shoulder Pat trust. The project is always to be implemented. The boss of the supplier may not be able to find a proper project manager, so he cannot use the manager as a hacker, choose an employee that is not necessarily competent to support. Call him and pat him on the shoulder and say, "Mr. Li, you are the backbone staff of our company with the most potential for development. If you have the technology and are willing to study it, I will leave this project to you, I believe you have done a great job!" Generally, a grand project kick-off meeting will be held after the project contract is signed. After the meeting, Party A, Party B, and even the supervisor representatives will have dinner together. A few more drinks are inevitable during the banquet. After a few drinks, the supplier boss will solemnly recommend the Project Manager Xiao Li to the customer's boss, saying: "Mr. Li is the best consultant in our company. It's okay to hand over this project to him." This boss tells the customer every time. As a result, the customer boss will give Xiao Li a toast: "Xiao Li, this project will be handed over to you. You can lead everyone to do well. I believe in your level ." Project Management Forum

In fact, this kind of trust carries a lot of blindness, and this blindness is also the sequelae of the first shot. Because the decision makers do not know much about informatization, they can only entrust the project to the persons he thinks and understands. As for whether the person is competent, the boss has not thoroughly investigated the situation, it is not even capable of in-depth investigation. This is what we trust. The authorized person may not be able to complete this task. what's even more terrible is that the authorization is basically not followed and supervised, because he does not understand it, so authorization is done. The greater harm of such blind trust lies in the fact that this is a wrong incentive, and wrong incentives motivate wrong behaviors.

The third shot is the promise of the chest. Mr. Li may not have done such a big project before and is uneasy. After the boss of both parties mobilized and drank a few glasses of wine, he was brave enough to drink the wine, vaguely think that you are quite competent. As a result, I feel that leaders trust themselves. Although there are many difficulties in the project, I still need to make a bold attempt to overcome the difficulties. Think about it. If you are a project manager, Xiao Li, a college graduate who has just joined the work and has no relevant work experience, then all the leaders of both parties trust you, what is your feeling of being a project manager with unprecedented trust?

As a result, Xiao Li, the project manager, was so motivated by the leaders that, in order to reassure the leaders, no matter whether they were in the abyss or in the dark, the Project Manager suddenly came out and said, "Please rest assured the two bosses, this is all about me." In fact, when he said this sentence, his enthusiasm alone is a lack of strength. The Project Manager's commitment lacks confidence and is blind. Therefore, blind optimism will only make the project farther and farther away from the target in the forward direction. Since then, after three shots, I believe that this handsome project manager has put on a pair of red shoes, or simply said that he was promoted to the tar pit. How can he interpret the next story, I think everyone knows.

The fourth shot is to beat the table. Because there is no focus on the process, the project manager is struggling in the project and the company leaders of both parties are not aware of it. No one asks what the project looks like. One day, one of the leaders suddenly found that the progress of the project was far from their expectations. In fact, the leaders did not have a clear goal, but only had a vague portrait of the project's results. When he suddenly feels that the project looks very different from the portraits in his mind, he will inevitably be furious. "What are you doing? After a long time, the project looks like this !" I once participated in a project as the implementer's senior management, and the customer's boss told me very bluntly: "Your ERP project has been implemented for so long, like the two tailors in Emperor's New Clothes, I don't know what you're doing if you're bored in the room all day and have sex with the computer." At this time, the members of the project team were all wronged, because they had done a lot of work and encountered unprecedented difficulties, but the leaders did not know, but only saw an unsatisfactory result. Xiao Li, the Project Manager, once made a commitment on the wine table, but did not expect this to be an embarrassing situation. Think about it carefully. This embarrassing situation is inevitable. From the very beginning, it is doomed that the boss will clap the table on this day.

As a result, many project managers are accustomed to adopting the ostrich tactics, that is, to conceal problems and difficulties, so that problems and difficulties are accumulated day after day and become bigger and bigger. When the explosion of problems becomes bigger, it is irrecoverable. The project manager was once happy to gain the trust of the boss, but did not expect to get more trust and criticism in the end! The project objectives are unclear, the progress is lagging behind, the necessary organization guarantees and resource support are lacking, the necessary plans and milestones are lacking, and necessary communication is lacking, insufficient risk awareness is the cause of today's embarrassing situation. The boss took the case because he did not understand the process and was also an ostrich tactic. He also called the "turnkey project ".

The fifth shot is to beat the ass and leave. The boss's anger cannot solve the problem. The result may make things worse and worse. The boss lost his temper and shot the table indiscriminately, but the boss was addicted to it. But as a project manager and employee, they also had their countermeasure, that is, they beat their ass and leave. Why are people leaving? In this society, no one is a contractor, and the IT industry is so easy to find a job, the boss will leave without appreciation. It is understood that the IT industry, especially technical personnel, has frequent job-hopping, and some people have even changed jobs several times a year. This is also an impetuous industry, where it enterprises dig corners between each other, I have dug up the salary level, but I have dug more unfinished projects. The worse the mentality of practitioners, the worse the talent environment.

Xiao Li, the project manager who has been severely criticized, may have two options: 1. simply resign, fail to do this well, lose the trust of the boss, and wait for it to have a good future. simply quit to another organization, looking for opportunities again; or from now on, we have to put aside our capabilities and stop acting as a zombie.

There are also some technical personnel who lack the necessary sense of responsibility and mission. The project aims to study new technologies, study new technologies for better job hopping, and put the success or failure of the project to a secondary position, even in the most critical part of the project, I resigned to ask the boss to raise his salary. It is the best choice for Project Manager Xiao Li to beat his ass and leave, because the project is a mess and hard work may lead to more and more difficulties, there will be more and more complaints from customers and their own bosses, but all these troubles will disappear as long as you quit and quit, all the difficulties and all the troubles can be pushed very cleanly, just like we have formatted the hard disk, rebuilt all the directories, and re-entered everything. That's so easy.

What's terrible is that it will become a habit to take a bid and leave, because it will take off all responsibilities and dance shoes at once, and job hopping may also get a high salary, as a result, a project manager who just takes a shot and leaves his job may leave the job after the new work unit encounters difficulties.

The sixth shot is a thigh shot. The project results after the fifth shot will surely make everyone disappointed. The Project Manager shot his ass and left him so that the biggest loss in the whole process was our poor boss. He could only beat his thigh and regret it. At this time, from the decision-making layer to the Project Manager to the project team members, everyone was heartbroken, but helpless. The boss of both sides will pat his thigh and say, "Oh, I have known this. Why !" This is a typical "Six beats" project.

The problem is that after "Six beats", I did not learn the lesson. In the subsequent projects, I repeated the "Six beats" exercise again ......

This "six-shot" movement is very typical. You can review the projects you have done in the past few years. Do those projects follow this "six-shot" pattern, or are you experiencing a similar "Six beats" project, or some companies have experienced such a "Six beats" project and become stunned, for a long time, you can't forget the pain of project failure, so you can never miss ERP.