January 2025 - CW Training Consulting

Three Questions to Assess Your Risk of Project Cancellation

One of the biggest frustrations I’ve experienced as a program manager is seeing my project get canceled. It’s painful to have put thought, time and energy into what I believed was an important initiative for the company, only to have it be deprioritized, defunded, and scrapped. Has this ever happened to you? And how can you protect your projects from project cancellation?

Some reasons for project cancellation are out of your control. Maybe the business environment has changed, or a competitor has moved into your domain. Perhaps the project was counting on a technical breakthrough that didn’t pan out or an external partner that couldn’t follow through.

On the other hand, some of the power is in your hands. Are you running the project effectively? For example, are the goals and vision of the project clear? Do you publish and meet most of your milestones? Listen effectively to your project team and keep your stakeholders up to date with progress and challenges? Manage risks, scope creep and budget constraints?

If you’ve got a good handle on the project execution, there still may be a risk of project cancellation. This can happen if the project is not aligned well with the overall priorities of the organization or if it’s competing with other projects that are more critical to business success. To determine the risk from this internal misalignment, ask yourself these three questions.

Question 1: How does your project contribute to the strategic direction of your organization?

If there’s a list of prioritized projects, does your project appear on it, or contribute meaningfully to one that does? If you don’t have a clear idea of the strategic priorities of your organization, it’s absolutely worth your time to track it down. It may require a conversation with your manager, or the product or marketing manager in your domain. Understanding how your project contributes, and showing that tie to strategic objectives at every project review and conversation you have with stakeholders, will go a long way toward keeping your project prioritized and funded.

Question 2: What level of commitment do you have from managers of needed resources?

I once worked on a project that had a strong strategic tie to the company’s objectives of saving money in server hosting. However, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the manager of a critical team to provide the people resources I needed to execute the project. The project soon fell apart, because no matter how strategic the work was, it could not succeed without the properly skilled people working on it. Without buy-in from the people who control your resources, your project is at risk. Get that buy-in, or raise the issue with your sponsor promptly. (You can read more about this project failure and what I learned from it in this blog article.)

Question 3: What do your stakeholders think about your project?

Declining stakeholder support is a key risk factor. Your project sponsor may still be on board with your project, but everyone else may have started to doubt the business case, or the technical foundations, or just have moved on to the next business challenge. Keep your stakeholders informed, showcase successes, highlight that strong strategic alignment, and if you notice waning interest, ask about it. Enlist your sponsor in helping uncover the reasons for the declining support. It’s better to cancel the project quickly if the project is doomed than let it drag on wasting your team members’ time, energy and enthusiasm.

Project cancellations happen. Sometimes it’s the right thing, even if it’s painful. Ask yourself these three questions regarding your projects and you’ll have a better sense of the risk of cancellation. You can either shore things up or move decisively to cancel it.

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Prioritize Multiple Projects with this Project Prioritization Template

If you're a project manager (by title or not), you may need to prioritize multiple projects that compete for resources. How do set project priorities? I start by using this project prioritization template to rank order projects and guide decision-making about where to use resources.

I’ve worked at Fortune 500 companies that took months to plan their next year, debating over how to prioritize multiple projects. Did those plans stick? Of course not. We would start the year in a perfect symphony of tactics aligned to strategy from the CEO’s office down to the front line managers. As time passed, recommendations of “Tiger Teams,” market shifts and project learning would result in justifiable shifts in project priorities.

I’ve also worked at startups where it felt like strategy shifted weekly, impacting project priorities along with the strategy changes. Maybe a large customer comes in with product demands or a strategy fails to bring in revenue. Pivoting is good but the cascading effect on marketing, operations and finance sends those teams into a stress ball of spin.

So where’s the middle ground for front line teams executing a shifting strategy that impacts how you prioritize multiple projects? How do you start out 2025 with a clear yet flexible plan for your projects? I do it by putting my program management skills to work.

Prioritize Your Projects

It’s common practice for Program Managers to prioritize projects with a running list of projects or initiatives for their client teams. This is useful for resource allocation and as an input to on-going assessment of projects against goals. Jenny and I carry this practice over to our partnership and any gigs we lead as program managers.

I use this Project Prioritization Template as a starting point for stack ranking projects. It's meant to be strategic, creating a framework to help decide which projects to resource and whether you’re working on the “right” stuff. The key is to relate your projects to your strategic priorities. If a project isn’t aligned to your priorities, drop it from your list.

Here’s an example of a project priorities list you might have for a marketing team: Project Prioritization Template to help prioritize multiple projects.

A Living Project Prioritization Document

Your Project Priorities List should be a living document! Of course, priorities to shift as the organization learns so I create operating mechanisms to prioritize projects on a regular basis. These aren’t in depth project reviews, but Priority Reviews. You'll want to make sure the right people participate in the review - those who can add value and can help decide whether to add, subtract, or re-prioritize projects.

Time your Priority Reviews based on the time horizon of the projects and organization culture. Marketing teams may meet more frequently as they learn from customers and the market. Product teams may meet less frequently. Make sure the review is useful!

Start 2025 Strong with Prioritized Projects

You’ll be well-positioned to start 2025 strong and achieve your goals by creating a prioritization framework that helps your prioritize multiple projects. Use it to maintain, review and adjust throughout the year. The key is to be intentional, flexible, and open to learning and adapting along the way.

Find this and other free templates in the at cwtrainingandconsulting.com and if you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter and don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement.