Killing Projects – All it takes is “Chutzpa” Part 2

In my last posting I focused on when we should “pull the plug” on a project?  When you are faced with at least one or more of the following three conditions.

 1. The business objectives can’t reasonably be met within time, cost, and resource constraints identified at the outset.

 2. Other alternatives have a better return on investment

 3. The business objectives (i.e., project objectives) have been OBE (overcome by events)

 Let me offer examples of each of these.  In the first instance, there was strong debate in the United States, based on the Columbia shuttle disaster, if manned space flight was worth the costs and risks given that much of the scientific, medical, and engineering objectives could ostensibly be met with unmanned flights.  In other words, many people believed that the cost (money and human lives) of the Shuttle programme was simply too much to bear compared to the value the programme returns.

 In the second instance, Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, announced that it was abandoning a $1 billion custom medical records project.  In its place, Kaiser launched a replacement $1.8 billion project to acquire and implement a relatively new commercial software solution for its needs because it had a more favorable return over the project’s life. 

 And, in the third example, RCA should have abandoned the SelectaVision project when they observed that VCRs had taken the public by storm rendering their product virtually obsolete even before it hit the shelves.

 To kill projects based on one or more of these three situations requires us to be ever vigilant about our market place and to continually question our approach, not so much to distract us, but to ensure we’ve chosen the right route.  If we start straying from the value baseline, it’s time to make some hard choices.  That takes chutzpa, a Yiddish term that is defined by Random House as “unmitigated effrontery.”[1] A better definition is one by example.  Chutzpa is the young man who has thrown himself at the mercy of the court for murdering his parents because he’s an orphan!  Does your organisation have the fortitude and discipline to abandon a billion dollar project only to launch a $1.8 billion project in its place as Kaiser did?  Now, that takes chutzpa, and some pretty sound data.

 Unfortunately, what I have observed is that projects that should have been killed a long time ago are finally killed simply because management—or clients—get tired of throwing money down a “rat hole.”  Hardly a metric we can graphically depict on a PowerPoint® slide or discuss intelligently at project review meetings! But anyone who has ever owned an old car knows exactly how it feels. 

 How do we avoid the “rat hole” approach to project portfolio management?  Here are some tips to get you started in the short term.

 Tip #1: Conduct an inventory of your projects
There’s a good chance you don’t know just how many are underway and the level of resources they are consuming.

 Tip #2: Determine if each project has a project sponsor
If not, look hard at killing the project.  If there’s no sponsor, why bother?  If people scream “we really need this,” identify a sponsor and hold that person and the project manager accountable for the value baseline.

 Tip #3: Demand to see the business case for each remaining project
Conduct a meeting with each project manager where the focus of the conversation is on the business value of the project and whether the value baseline is being met. Begin each meeting by asking each project manager: “Give me 5 reasons why we shouldn’t kill this project”

 Tip #4: Reprioritise the project portfolio based on Tip #3
Select the projects that are going to return the most to your organisation and concentrate on getting those done and achieving the value identified.  Put others on hold. 

 Obviously, the long term solution to project portfolio management is a broader organisational initiative requiring the establishment of committees, strategic review teams, and the attendant processes and procedures that make such groups work effectively.  You cannot, and should not, wait until the organisation comes to grip with this issue before actively ferreting out those projects that should not continue, and those that should not be started in the first place.  Money is a precious resource in these tough times and it has to be invested wisely.  Remember, all it takes is chutzpa!

[1] The Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition, 1980.

Tags: Business Objectvies, PMO, Programme, Project, Project Management, Project Management Office, Project Portfolio Management