Are you Reading the Risks Right or is it Target Missed? – a Case Study | Project Management

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A high-tech company in the travel industry has bagged a contract from a reputed Client for data migration with phased delivery over a period of ten quarters.  

The project plan was created based on the requirements available. Since the project spanned in time, the data points presented covered only a year, which was deemed good to start by stakeholders.  The visibility was for only one year and hence the limitation with data available – which is expected and accepted in this kind of engagement. The budget for the said timeline was apportioned. The team identified to undertake the project was present in different locations as a strategic call.

The Pain Point

It will be the assumptions that will turn out to be the worst of risks. The stakeholders agreed it was a long tunnel but not quite certain about the length.  Since it was a time bound, the requirement gathering was focused for the first quarter as agreed by the stakeholders and signed-off.

Assumptions can become one of the major risks. The team initially settled on a framework only to change after the first sprint. The change would impact the team composition calling for ‘sourcing’ soon after launch that sent the human resources scrambling for talent. The need of the hour is never met and that’s the lesson learnt and hence due diligence paid to the selection from talent pool.

With new resources inducted, there was already burn on time and cost, the knowledge transfer turned out to be to be too steep and the project plan revisited to factor the changes. There were different verticals within the team which started concurrently, and it was the approach of the scheduled milestone that sent the alarm bells ringing as one of the core development team failed in meeting the deadline and thereby derailed further developments adversely impacting other teams as the output will be the primary feed for them to move forward. It had a typical domino effect shaking the entire team.

When the causal analysis was conducted, the results unearthed many issues that seemed to be swept under the carpet. Communication weren’t open and transparent; accountability absent and leadership clueless as team members tried passing the buck and concerned about safeguarding their position. The most baffling will be the lack of attention to basic details. There should have been a single point of contact for escalation; People Management and Stakeholder management. The root cause clearly spells poor communication and lack in understanding.  The bottleneck undoubtedly was communication management. Clearly the opportunity would have been squandered if not for the milestone. It was the worst wake-up call for a company known for its intellectual capital and track record.

Analysis revealed that the actual against planned in the project plan left a gaping hole and lacked foresight for risk mitigation particularly  to problem faced   as such a scenario was never contemplated.  How? That’s why the absence to attention on basic details. Too much rode on assumptions.

The impacts due to the imbalance resulted in

# changes in the team composition which proved too expensive at that point in time as investment and Knowledge Transition and team ramp-up

# Conflicts in the mid-management

The squabbles stressed the need for conflict resolution through effective people management and stakeholder management.

Troubleshooting

It was back to basics about team-building with open communication, more transparency and greater accountability.  The team met frequently till all onboard were on the same page. Having ceded grounds, it’s more prudent to save and salvage and move on. Since it was the first milestone, the impact on the short-term goal was severe and long-term could be contained. The positive impact can be captured as

# Commitment from the stakeholders on requirements and delivery

# Transparency /Clarity  to all the stakeholders

Recommendations

• The Plan B that somehow missed the plan should be prepared.
• The alternate scenario for worst cases should be assessed and addressed.
• The assumptions must be studied again and stakeholders should provide clarity in closure.
• The team should be cohesive and engage effectively to expedite delivery.
• The Start of the Day and End of Day of meeting must analyze the day’s target and plan for next day deliverables.
• The leadership to introduce SPOC and take stock at regular intervals (smaller intervals as possible) till things are streamlined and then schedule the standard stand-up meetings

Scope Creep – slippery slope

 image courtesy: https://ownersrepny.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/scope.jpg

(A personal account of the perils of scope creep)

As Jobs puts it ‘we can only connect the dots afterwards’. That’s the benefit of hindsight? Well, if you have that as foresight, it makes you a visionary. Las Vegas was just a desert till one guy redrew the map toasting success on the sand dunes, and Vegas couldn’t have been just conjecture then.

When I took over the reins, the project looked promising. Communications were open and the client very forthcoming in comments. One look at the team composition and my hopes were inflated: a trusted hand, a familiar figure and a total stranger, rest of the crew comprised of tester, Us Ex, web developer. The lead developer is more of a man-Friday as we have engaged in couple of projects and hence a tried and tested chap. It looked good and should have soared to great. We could spot the shore. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride!

We prepared the plan, sized the effort, scoped the requirement, and swung into action. The progress too was pretty much in line. We built a good rapport with the client and the stinkers were sporadic. The plan and progress almost matched with some slippage. A qualified tester got onboard and it was a shot in the arm. I had several sessions with the team and joint calls with client in understanding the requirement.

The long evenings, late nights, brainstorming sessions, soaring rhetoric and sizzling arguments, and not to miss the cat-fights, we saw it all as a team. The phone would suddenly scream followed by a volley of questions growing in decibel, and my team mate would politely hush her husband ‘I will be leaving in 5 minutes’. Remarkably, she taught me what I can never achieve no matter how much ever I aspire – that patience and politeness in answering an agitated call.  

Perplexingly the problems and posers kept piling, and from then on, we prioritized issues as critical, major and minor with color red, yellow and orange respectively. An open document was created and shared with client. And the bug count closely monitored with status reports both at start and end of day. The fixes left me vexed; flummoxed by failure after failure as I knew for sure that the bugs will be reopened.  I chewed my finger nails all the way to my knuckles and went bone dry when the count refused to climb down. We dragged out weary souls and worn-out soles day-in and day-after licking defeat in the hope that ‘we lost the battle but will win the war’.

The client is not to be blamed completely as for the team goofed up pretty bad inmanaging the scope. A little here and a little there and the result wasn’t scope creep but a bloated scope with too many ‘bells and whistles’. It wasn’t the foot in my mouth but the whole leg. Chewed more than we could swallow? It wasn’t time to wallow in self-pity. But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the team; for myself and then DH Lawrence hit me hard where it hurts the most ‘I have never known a wild animal feel sorry for itself’. May be I am ‘domestic’ – heck, man is a social animal, if it can be used as a disclaimer. The client squeezing hard and the management make it clear about the climbing cost, the noose was tightening. The stakeholders had a simple mandate – the timeline. Problems and philosophy are a pair.When you muck-up big time, be prepared for your back to be blackened.But as they say if the progress is as per the plan, then there is something wrong with the plan. Then why plan? [we will discuss as a different thread]

 Tell me something, only Results count? Is it? I checked this quote by Jacoob Riis who, it seems, coined it for me.

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before - Jacob Riis.

Results count but efforts can’t be discounted.

We narrowed down the action-items as in-scope’ and passed it around, armed ourselves with facts and figures as counterweight.  We managed to complete the project but not in the prospect and promise we had pinned our hopes, rather it was mixed-feeling of bitter-sweet that the final handover happened. Post the delivery, when we did the causal analysis, the scope creep sank our boat. Expectedly CRs (Change Request) were raised but they were either counted in as ‘courtesy’ or ‘cost-free’ who didn’t treat it binding as billable. 

It was a lesson learnt about clearly recording your scope and securing a sign-off on the deliverables and we became more conscious and cautious about the creep in succeeding projects. It was indeed a slippery slope!

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