Two invisible killers that cause project failure

Based on my personal project management experience and life experience, I think it makes sense to say that "It is easy to hide, and it is difficult to defend against it. In terms of project management, it means that relatively large and obvious problems are often easy to identify, better to prevent or solve, and projects are generally not easy to fail in these areas; however, trivial problems that are relatively small and often occurring are usually hidden and difficult to prevent and control, and they will eventually kill the project. It is like a big tree that has not fallen down in the lightning, but eventually died in the mouth of a group of small insects.

 

Now I want to find out the two major invisible killers that cause project failure: Scope spread and over-commitment.

 

"Over-Commitment", the most common is that the development team cannot withstand the pressure of the customer or superior manager, at a certain level (such as 40 hours) during the working hours, the company undertakes a large amount of work (for example, 60 hours), resulting in overtime, low project quality, and chaotic management, the final result is that the team cannot fulfill the original commitment or the effect is greatly reduced. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, two of which are the key: 1-the customer or superior manager will want to do the most things in the shortest time with the least money, therefore, the Team often puts forward some excess requirements. 2-it is difficult or impossible for the team to reject these excess requirements because they want to have a good performance or want to meet the challenge.

 

"Scope spread" usually means that the customer or superior manager sets a deadline, for example, this Friday, and then keeps asking for new requirements or changes before the deadline, for example, add some small functions or effects, change some implemented parts, or insert several bugs, etc.
In the end, the accumulated workload of these small changes, coupled with the workload that should have been completed, is greatly beyond the original scope, and the team thus cannot reach the goal in a timely manner within the specified period. I think this is the biggest invisible killer of project failure, because it is the most difficult to identify and control. The reason is actually understandable. On the one hand, there are few customers who require no change (the people we serve are always hard to clarify their needs at the beginning, over time, he will always come up with new ideas, or change some ideas, or abandon some ideas), on the other hand, including developers, we all hope to improve this version as much as possible in a limited time ". In this way, a lot of unexpected work is coming out without knowing it. In the end, it is time-consuming to worry about project management and quality, and it is difficult to freeze the submitted version.

 

Of course, as summarized in other articles above, there are still many problems that may increase the risk of project failure. These two killers are only part of the cause, our project management efforts should promptly identify all these risks and take appropriate measures.

 

The above is my recent experience report, hoping to help you.