Project Management 101 : 6 Ways To Derail a Project

Posted by Melissa Summers on Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Gary V. is VP of Production at ePrize. He's been managing projects and people for 15+ years, using his Virgo—based organization techniques, and his vast communication skills to break down complex scenarios into easily executable chunks. You can find him on Twitter @yorbacus.

At ePrize we run hundreds of digital promotions and social loyalty programs every year. To get those projects from concept to completion involves many different people within the company. From the sales team to client development to creative to software engineering and so on. This is where the Project Manager comes in, coordinating all the working parts of a project to make sure everything and everyone can smoothly put a promotion together.

Successfully executing a project is a topic that's been well covered in books and on the web, but I've found there are 6 things you can do that will inevitably take your project off the rails.

1. Don't identify the universe of activities

When you are scoping a project there are often ancillary tasks that should be scheduled in addition to just writing code. Do you plan on testing your code? Then make sure that is scheduled. Will you need to roll your tested code to the live environment? That needs to be in your universe of activities as well. Making sure you have all these items identified up front will save you for scrambling at the end of your project.

2. Don't define what done means 

If you are painting a room are you done when the paint is on the walls, or are you done when the paint is on the walls, the tools are cleaned and put away, and the furniture is back in its place? The same goes for software development. Making sure that everyone knows what done means will save you pain.

3. Try to conquer The Wild West

Just because you think a 200 hour project can be done in a week doesn't mean you should commit your team to such an aggressive commitment. Make sure your team understands what is in front of them and you have their buy in on the timing. Teams are more successful if everyone understands what is required and can provide their input to the process.

4. Don't let the experts be the experts

As a Project Manager your role is to pull everything together from a documentation standpoint, making sure everyone understands the timing and scope of work, keeping the team on task, and providing status updates and feedback on a regular basis. Your job is not to write site copy or do creative design. There are experts on your team that are really good at that so let them be the experts.

5. Don't communicate to others in a manner that suits their needs

Your project's stakeholders will all require information on their project, but they all will not need the same information or frequency of communication. Your project management counterpart on the client's team will need to know where things stand on a daily basis, but the VP of Marketing may only want a weekly status. There are also people that will only want to know when the project goes south. A good communication plan will ensure you don't become noise.

6. Over plan for contingencies

A good risk management plan is a great place to put your project's contingencies, but you shouldn't try and plan for every contingency that comes up during planning. People will often say something like "One time I remember when the internet went down and users couldn't access the site. We should cache the site on each user's machine so this won't be an issue". While adding in that contingency to your project scope will solve that scenario, it will also add additional time and cost to solve a problem that will most likely not occur. It is better to have a solid risk management plan that identifies potential risks and their respective probability and impact. Any high risks can be planned for and the others can be reviewed on a regular basis.