Picture this: Your business is innovating. You’ve got a new project idea, and it’ll make all the difference to your company’s workload, making your team happier, your customers spending more, and the profits roll in. You’ve adopted the role of Project Sponsor.
But it’s been months, and your project schedule is off track. You can’t seem to launch anything, and customers are growing weary of your current technology, be it a website, app, or system.
What’s going wrong? And how do you establish a plan of action to correct the course?
Sign 1: Scope Creep
Scope creep occurs when a project starts with a clear set of features and requirements but continues to add new features over time due to feedback, new ideas, and problems. It quite literally creeps in.
Before you know it, what was once a 10-point project is now a 50-point beast with no signs of control.
How to manage Scope Creep:
- When starting your project, define your outcomes.
- Ensure the outcomes match the tangible features of your project. For example, do you need a customer portal to help users track previous orders? The outcome is Customer Retention, and the feature is a portal.
- List your features within the outcomes and their sub-features. For example, a customer portal needs login, accounts, a list of previous orders, and an action, such as re-ordering.
- State what your project does not need early on. For example, your customer portal does not require the ability to chat with support via a chat widget – at least, not for this version.
- Version out everything extra: sometimes new ideas are good, but they need parking for later. Do not be afraid to say, “Yes, we will add that in the next version” to stakeholders.
Sign 2: Communication Breakdown
Communication between you and your stakeholders (customers, the board, etc.) is essential so everyone understands what you have proposed and what you intend to complete.
Projects fail when the people involved do not know what is going on.
Red flags indicating a communication breakdown:
- Stakeholders are unsure of progress. When will it be “ready”?
- Your design and development resources are unsure what they should be working on.
- Customers are becoming agitated with the current technology.
- The project is drifting without much leadership.
Improving Communication
- Define how you intend to communicate with the team: use Trello, Slack or a tool like Asana or ClickUp and stick with it.
- Communicate with stakeholders every week about progress, both good and bad. Do not be afraid to keep people in the loop—they will appreciate it regardless!
- Define the project team members and who to go to to answer specific questions.
Sign 3: Missed Deadlines
- Why missed deadlines are a serious concern
– How to spot a pattern of delays
– Techniques for getting back on schedule
Missing a deadline might not be the end of the world, but the pressure it puts on you as a project owner can be immense. Delays have a knock-on effect and will impact all future aspects of your tech project.
How to avoid missing deadlines and what to do if you run over:
- Make sure your project has realistic deadlines and that the tasks set to the team compensate for errors, mistakes, illness, and real-world problems.
- Consider the team’s true capability: if something can be done in 2 days, what happens if something goes wrong?
- Always have overrun time within your project scope.
- Hire a project manager to keep things on track. If you are the project sponsor, avoid being the PM.
- If a project is running over, take a moment to rewrite the timeline. In most cases, it is very unlikely you will be able to get back on schedule without compromising quality. Be realistic—it will save a lot of stress.
- If the deadline is strict due to another business objective, decide what to cut from the feature list. Do you really need X and Y, or can they be pushed to a future version?
Sign 4: Budget Overruns
Scope creep is directly related to budget overruns. New ideas cost planning, design, and development time, and they can have wide-reaching impacts on a system if they change how something fundamental works.
Most project sponsors are given a budget limit from their business, either as a capital limit or a specific budget from management.
On average, projects go over budget by 45%. If you have £10,000 to play with, can your company afford a further £4,500 for overrun? In most cases, the answer is no.
How to mitigate budget risks:
- Reserve: keep 20% of your budget as backup. Aim to complete the project while it is still intact.
- Create a list of unknowns and tackle them as soon as possible. An example of an unknown may be the reliance on a 3rd-parties API to perform an action that appears to be doable but hasn’t been tested.
- Get costs for all aspects of the project: each feature and sub-feature.
- Ensure your team knows exactly how long they have for each feature, and encourage open communication to identify the problem early on if a module is running over.
- Use project management software to help you identify problem areas early.
Sign 5: Team Disengagement
Nothing kills a project faster than a lack of enthusiasm for the work.
If your team is overworked, stressed, and under pressure to hit launch targets, it will burn out fast. Be aware of team members who overpromise due to initial enthusiasm.
Once a team becomes disengaged, bringing the project back on course is difficult, and all previous signs will start to appear.
Strategies to re-energise and refocus the team
- Reduce the scope: if a project has gone on too long and isn’t showing signs of launching, it may be time to pull a feature or two.
- Incentivise your team: if you are close to completing the work, speak with managers to see what can be done to re-energise the team.
- Is everyone on the same page? If your team doesn’t understand why they are doing what they are doing, then they won’t share your energy. Explain why this project exists and what you hope to achieve.
Correcting the course is possible!
Swift action on your part as the project sponsor can quickly right the ship. It’s entirely possible to save a failed project from total disaster.
The sign of a successful project isn’t the outcome but how it got there with minimal issues. Tackling those issues as they arise will keep things running smoothly for all involved.
If you are stuck, consider what components are missing:
- Are the team clear on the objectives and outcomes?
- Do you have someone central who is the single point of communication?
- Do you need a separate project manager (or two) to keep things on track?
- Have you stuck to the project plan, or have other influences taken it off course?
The best strategy is to be aware of potential problems before they even impact your project.
At Riselabs, we’re your tech safety net, ensuring projects run smoothly so you can focus on being an innovator in your company.
If you have a project at risk of going wrong, reach out today and see how our expertise and experience with 100s of projects can help re-align your goals and save you from being another project failure statistic.
