pexels-ann-h-45017-15251149

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.

If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter and don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. 

CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

Project Management - 01/27/2025

Closing Out 2024

We love to apply project management concepts to everyday life. As we often say, “Life’s a Project!”. As we launch a new year, you might take a moment to do a "project closeout" on 2024, whether you’ve got a specific project in mind, or just general work effort, or even your personal life. How was the year? Did you accomplish what you set out to do? What did you learn along the way?

We like to borrow from the Project Closeout phase of project management for help in thinking through these questions. Maybe it can be helpful to you too!

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

CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

Project Management - 12/31/2024

Project Management: 5 Principles for Project Success

Title of the article repeated in an image.

Do you find yourself managing projects when your primary role isn’t formally “project manager”?  At work, it could be a new accounting system, marketing effort, or new process. At home, it could be a vacation, a group outing, or building a shed like I did recently. It was as much a project as anything I was doing at work. This is all Project Management.

Regardless of its scope or formality, your project has a higher likelihood of success if you apply these five key principles to your efforts.

  Principle 1: Define What You’re Doing

Anyone who invests time or money in the project should understand the project and its scope to prevent roadblocks or disagreements down the road. I briefly define my projects in two or three sentences.  For example, "My car doesn’t fit in my garage because my bicycles and tools are taking up too much space. I’m building a shed in my backyard so that I can both store my toys and park my car." I like to use "so that" in my project definitions as part of the justification. For more formal projects, I create a one-page Project Charter that includes other key information. This is something very common in project management. In fact, it's so important, we have self-paced course, walking you through it.

Principle 2: Know Your Stakeholders

In the project management world, we call anyone impacted by project outcomes “stakeholders.” Some may know they’re impacted while others may not. The latter group might catch you by surprise later with their opinions and needs, so you want to tease them out and share your project definition as early as possible.  

I use a Stakeholder List to get input on stakeholders and build communication plans. Don’t forget the often-forgotten support teams like legal, finance, or customer success! The earlier you involve them the better in my experience (even if it’s a courtesy heads-up). 

For my shed project, it was obvious that my spouse and the builder cared about the shed. However, did I think about potential neighbor concerns about noise or views? Would my children complain about moving their bicycles to the back?  I spoke to them early to understand their concerns and get their buy-in up front.

Principle 3: Guesstimate the Timeline

Many factors go into estimating the time to complete a project (all of which are likely to change over time). The first trick is to define tasks at the broadest level that’s understandable yet not too difficult to estimate.  When I feel good about the task definition and time guesstimate, I then consider dependencies by asking myself, “Are there deliverables from others that could impact my project tasks?” 

In a home project like building a shed, estimating the task time may not seem like a big deal. However, it might be if you live in a stormy climate. How long will it take to order construction materials? To build the foundation and the structure? Is the contractor available if you're not building it yourself? Will you be done before the first rains?

It's become more and more acceptable not to create exact time estimates for projects. In fact, it’s often unrealistic. However, in my view, it’s worth the effort to sketch out the broadest level of tasks, guesstimate the time to complete them, and understand the dependencies at the outset.  Your stakeholders will appreciate it.

Principle 4: Drive Decisions Effectively

I’ve learned that decision-making is the single most important aspect of a successful project. It’s what throws many projects off course.  Keep tabs on what major decisions need to be made and who is ultimately making those project decisions. 

I keep an ongoing list of open questions and decisions for my projects. Some clients use a decision-making process that includes role frameworks such as DACI (Driver/Approver/Contributor/Informed) to guide particularly complex decisions. Even if you’re not this formal, I always recommend identifying who needs to be involved and who’s making the decision.  Choose a framework that fits the culture and needs of your team and decision-makers.

My shed project had many decisions and questions.  I didn’t really care about the design decisions. As long as it fit in the space we allocated, my spouse was in charge of the design. However, I cared about the spend, so we both needed to approve the expenses. We agreed to this before we began.

Principle 5: Be Flexible During Execution

One of the greatest gifts of the Agile software-development movement is the idea of a flexible mindset. Unless you’re leading a project with well-known milestones and tasks, it’s highly likely that your project will evolve over time.  More important than a plan that you stick to is a plan that can respond to change.  

Good project managers create “operating mechanisms” to anticipate and respond to the unexpected. They’ll have a value-added check-in rhythm and real-time risk assessment tools ready to catch and manage issues.

While we had a good plan for the shed project, we ran into unexpected rocks under the surface that required different tools and effort.  Yep, that took more time and labor than we had anticipated.  Luckily, we built a schedule buffer and completed it before the rains!

Start Now and Learn More

Whether you write them down or just think about them, couple these five principles with excellent communication and I promise you will be on the path to project success.

If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. 

CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

Project Excellence / Project Management - 07/10/2023

Six Project Communication Tips for Project Success

You may have read articles on how good project communication is critical to project success. So what is good communication? Here are our best tips to help you become an expert communicator on your project. Some of them even apply in life!

1. Be clear and direct.

    There’s nothing more frustrating for your listener than vague language and rambling. Know that sometimes your message may be difficult to hear, but softening the message too much doesn’t help. What helps is being clear and direct with facts, requests, and consequences. If you’re asking someone to work the weekend, make a direct request (“If you and I work this weekend, we can bring in the date. Are you able to do that?”) instead of a vague statement (“I wonder if there’s anything we can do to help bring in the date”). There’s an added benefit that you’re more likely to get a clear, direct response, too.

    1. Stand in your stakeholders’ shoes.

    Describe the project status or a newly discovered issue from more than just your perspective. Address what your stakeholders care about and what their worries might be, including relevant context, and use specific, straightforward language — not jargon. If you’re sharing the news that your project date is slipping, your manager or sponsor will want to know that you understand why it happened and how you will prevent it from happening again. The same goes for good news. Show that you understand the why.

    1. Create a project communication plan.

    Even if your project is small or doesn’t impact many people, it’s worth your time to identify whom you’ll communicate to and the communication types, channels, and frequencies you’ll use. Your core working team might meet weekly and also have a Slack channel for quick questions and updates. The rest of your stakeholders might benefit from a monthly email update that you post on your project web page, too. And if you’re new to the company or the role, it’s worth checking around for standard communication tools and processes. You may not have to reinvent the wheel!

    1. Get to know the project sponsor’s communication style and needs. 

    If you have a project sponsor, take the time to learn their style and preferences for project communication. Hands-on or hands-off? Slack or phone calls? Lots of detail or just a summary and specific asks? Your project sponsor is your best ally in setting you up for success, addressing any challenges, and ensuring project follow-through, so get to know them well.

    1. Don’t make it personal.

    When there are challenges, describe what has to change through the lens of the process rather than making it personal. For example, instead of making it about you and a teammate (“Why didn’t you tell us you were running late? Did you think we didn’t need to know?”), focus on why being late is a problem, letting the process do the talking (“As a downstream partner, my team is impacted by this project, so we’d like to know as soon as you know that the project has slipped. Can you include us in your communications?”).

    1. Find appropriate ways to use humor.

    If it fits with your style, find ways to infuse a little humor into your project communications. It’ll go a long way to reducing stress, both yours and your audience’s, and makes the work environment a little more pleasant. Ask at least one other person to review your humor for appropriateness, though, and know your company’s culture so you don’t go overboard.

    That’s it! Do these six tips for effective project communication consistently and your projects will run more smoothly.  Here’s to great success!

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

    CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

    Business Communication / Project Management - 10/23/2021

    Why Bother With Project Tasks?

    I've worked with enough tech companies and startups to know that projects these days have to move fast and be ready to change course on a dime. While PMI (Project Management Institute) style planning is a good fit for many industries, the question "Why bother creating and estimating project tasks?" is firmly targeted at those of you who work and thrive in highly changing environments. Why not just plow through the project? Really? Might there be people (like perhaps your stakeholders) who want to know when your project will be done? Does anyone care if you're on track or not? Are there competing priorities? Is there a deadline? If the answers to these questions are "no," then kill the project. Otherwise, invest a little time to identify, estimate and manage your project tasks at the outset. Expect your first swag at tasks to be a bit fuzzy at first. You can get clarity by digging into what the tasks are and how long they might take. It's not realistic for anyone to think that you're going to be perfectly accurate. Like anything, you will refine the project as the team delves into the work.

    How detailed to make Project Tasks?

    How far should you break down the project work? A common rule of thumb is to break the work down to the level at which you can estimate effort. Another answer is, "it depends on your role." As a project manager, I like to get to the level at which I understand dependencies. As a team member, I break it down into more detailed "chunks of work" and create a hierarchy of tasks using an outline. I keep going until I feel like I understand what it will take to do the work. By the way, I never communicate task level detail to leadership. Leaders usually want milestones, a nice summary of the tasks being managed by the team.

    How do you estimate how long tasks will take?

    You have your tasks, now it's time to estimate how long they will take. I leverage past experience and projects to make my estimates - whether it's in my toolkit of experience or someone else's. I nearly always learn something new when I talk to peers and experts to help me with my estimates. One common estimating technique is called "t-shirt sizing," borrowed from Agile project management. The idea is to make your best guess at whether the effort is small, medium or large before assigning detailed estimates. I strongly suggest that you define the t-shirt sizes at the outset. For example, Small is 1-2 days worth of effort, Medium is a week and Large is unclear but at least 2 weeks. T-shirt sizing is often done by a small, knowledgeable group. Finally, don't confuse effort vs. duration. Be clear and consistent. Are your estimates for hands on time (effort) or calendar time (duration across the time available to do the work)? Project management software helps you manage both.

    Are you done?

    NOT YET. Identifying the project tasks and estimating the effort and duration is just the start. However, if you do this well, the rest is easy. I used a shed project as an example in earlier posts. It applies here as well. Task estimation may not seem like a big deal for building a shed. However, if you live with the potential of rain and snow it may be very important. How long will it take to order the supplies? How long will it take to build the foundation? The structure? Even the smallest of projects has many nuances and dependencies that impact how long it will take. As my partner in crime, Jenny Warila, and I say, "If you go slowly to go fast, then you will deliver higher quality with less spin in the end." The art is in the level of detail you go into as you break down the work and estimate the effort. Not too refined, but not too high level either! As they say, LIFE IS A PROJECT. Go practice!
    Find this and other free resources at cwtrainingandconsulting.com and if you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. 
    CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.
    Project Management - 09/26/2018

    Gaining Project Buy-in that Sticks

    Welcome back to Debbie's series on the 5 key principles of project success. The first principle is having a concise project definition.  The second principle is gaining project buy-in that sticks.

    What is buy-in?

    In the context of managing successful projects, "buy-in" is full support of the project. That support can be expressed in many ways. In its simplest form, it's a stated commitment to support the project - either through written or verbal communications. Taken further, Buy-in is expressed in the form of resource commitments of people or budget.  This can be also show up in the form of prioritization. As a project leader, you ideally want support to be explicit and announced.

    What drives buy-in?

    The single most important factor that can help you drive buy-in is understanding and managing your stakeholders. A stakeholder is anyone who contributes to or is impacted by your project. Don't forget, stakeholders can be internal to your organization or external, such as vendors or agencies. They also may not know that they stakeholders - some are conscious of it. Others are not. Many project managers will do a formal stakeholder analysis to identify and understand their stakeholders. There are many frameworks out there, but to help you get started, ask yourself these 4 questions:
    • Who are the key players?
    • What are their views on the project…supportive, neutral, resistant?
    • What is their impact on the project…direct, influencer, affected?
    • What does success look like to them?
    Once you understand your stakeholders, develop a plan to manage and communicate with them. Focus on the most influential. Those people whose opinions and support matter a lot to the project - both negatively and positively.

    When are you there?  

    You've achieved buy-in when your key stakeholders have a good understanding of your project objectives, they agree that the project is worth the investment of organization resources, and they lend their full support to the project. Getting there is not always easy, but the first step is acknowledging that gaining buy-in is important and worth your time. Did you enjoy this article? If you enjoyed this article, LIKE, COMMENT and FOLLOW at the top of this page to be notified when I post my next article. If you missed the overview, check out my previous post, 5 Key Principles of Project Success.  Next up is clear task estimation.
    Find this and other free resources at cwtrainingandconsulting.com and if you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. 
    CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management skills boosting workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.
    Project Management - 04/12/2017

    What's in a Project Definition?

    Welcome back to Demystifying Project Success, a blog series on the 5 key principles of project success.  The first of 5 key principles to any project's success is a concise project definition.  
     

    What's in a Project Definition?

    You might ask, why bother with a project definition? It gets all team members on the same page, aids decision-making along the way, and provides something to validate against at the end of the project.  A good project definition communicates goals and outcomes in a concise manner that is easy to understand by all parties.  
     
    Consider three key aspects to a concise project definition:
     

    Easy to understand

    A good project definition is easy to understand by all consumers of the information.  Think about well written websites - they are short and to the point.  They are also understandable by a wide range of readers.  The same goes for your project definition.   
     
    Think about your extended audience. Will executives skim the content?  Will poeple who don't work in your department read it?  If so, choose language that is not overly specific to your function. For example, if you are working on an engineering project, be sure to describe it in a way that is understandable by finance and other business functions.  The reverse is true as well.
     

    Appropriate level of detail

    Try to keep your core project definition to 2-3 sentences.  Consider the format, "We are doing this project BECAUSE xxx SO THAT yyyy."  The "because" statement is the problem you are solving; the "so that" statement is the outcome you hope to achieve.
     
    In my shed project (that I referenced in my first post), I might write, "I am building a new shed because I want to move my boxes and tools out of my garage so that I can store my car and exercise equipment in my garage."  I could add the target end date, "...by November when the rainy season starts" to make the timing clear.
     
    Avoid a detailed business case or specifics of how you will conduct the project.  If you need those details, put them someplace else.  Do not include them in the core definition. If you have a project that is large in scope, it's ok to go a little longer - maybe a short paragraph for why and a short paragraph for the outcome.  

    Verification

    Does your project definition provide the project team and stakeholders with enough information to verify the outcomes?  If my goal is to build a shed to store my boxes and tools, how do I know whether I am successful when I am done?  Try to include verifiable metrics in your definition.   If you cannot measure, then come up with something that will help you verify success.  
     
    In my definition for my shed, I said "large enough" to store my tools.  If I were to be more rigorous, I would measure the volume of the tools and boxes, add a little buffer and include the size of the shed in my definition.  If I could not measure the volume, I would know I was successful when I try to move my boxes and tools.  Obviously, measuring would better ensure success.
     

    Get Concise Now

    In the end, I might end up with a definition for my shed project that is short, sweet, and to the point.  Not only that, it's easy to say in hallway conversation.  
     
    "I am building a 10x10 shed because I want to move my boxes and tools out of my garage so that I can store my car and exercise equipment in my garage.  My goal is to complete the project before the rains begin in November."
     
    Regardless of whether it is required, write down your project definition.  Say it out loud to someone who is not connected to the project.  This is a great test of whether it is concise and easy to understand. 
     

    Learn More

    If you enjoyed this post, please FOLLOW our page and COMMENT.  I would like to hear from you and exchange ideas!  To hear when I publish my next article, please click "Follow" at the top of this page.  If you missed the overview, check out my previous post, 5 Key Principles of Project Success.
     
     

    If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter and don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs.  Contact Us and we will help you find the right learning solution for you and your business.

    Business Communication / Project Management - 11/08/2016

    Demystifying Project Success

    Have you found yourself managing projects when your primary role is NOT a project manager? As a friend and co-worker once said, "Life IS a Project" and we all want project success.  Regardless of your role at work or at home, there are always projects to be accomplished. At work it could be a product launch, product promotion or product development. Maybe you're in operations and are more focused on the back office success of the company. At home, you could be planning a vacation or a group outing of some sort. Maybe it's building a shed.

    Management of your project can be as formal or informal as fits the people affected by the project and the scope of the project.  However, any project has a higher likelihood of success if the person leading the project thinks about these 5 key principles that cross all methodologies, scope definitions and interested parties.

    In this article, I am going to highlight the 5 key principles to any project's success. This is a kick off to a series that will go more in depth on each of the principles.

    What are the 5 key principles of Project Success?

    Principle 1: A Concise Project Definition

    Whether you are building a shed or launching a new product, it always helps to have a concise project definition. The reader of a good project definition understands why you are doing the project and its ultimate outcome. Think of it as a summary of your business case. For example, "My car does not fit in my garage because my bicycles and tools are taking up too much space. Therefore, I am building a shed in my backyard so that I can store my toys and park my car." I always like to be sure there is some form of "so that" in my project definitions.

    Principle 2: Project Buy In that Sticks

    Most successful projects start with support from those who are impacted by the project - whether they know it or not. There are often conscious stakeholders and unconscious stakeholders. Conscious stakeholders know about the project and often either support, do not support or are indifferent about the outcomes. Unconscious stakeholders do not know they should care about the process or outcomes of the project. These are the folks who might catch you by surprise down the road!

    For my shed project, it is obvious that my husband, the builder and I all care about the shed project. However, do I need to think about my neighbors? Will they care about the noise or the impact on their view? What about my children? Will they support the move of their bicycles?

    Principle 3: Clear Task Estimation

    In a simple example like a shed project, task estimation may not seem like a big deal. However, if you live in a region that gets rain and snow it may be very important. How long will it take to order the parts; is the contractor available; how long will it take to build the foundation? The structure?

    Clear task estimation is not synonymous with accurate task estimation or even thorough task estimation. Much like project definition, it is more important to clearly communicate the meaning behind tasks and estimates than to be exact in their estimation at the outset. For example, are your tasks tied clearly to outcomes? Are they understandable? Are you estimating effort or duration?

    Principle 4: Flexible Project Execution

    One of the greatest gifts of agile software development is the idea of a flexible mindset. Unless you have a project that has been done before, with well-known milestones and tasks, it is highly likely that your project is going to evolve over time. More important than a plan that you "stick to," is a plan that can respond to change and a project manager who has the mechanisms in place to understand how the project is progressing.

    In my shed project, although we have a good sketch, I need to be ready for the plans to change once the building begins. This is very typical in home remodels, for a different example. Once you pull off the sheet rock, you never know what is behind the walls. Once you start doing the work, you can expect surprises. A good project manager is prepared to anticipate change.

    Principle 5: Effective Decision-Making

    Decision-making is not one of those things you find in all of the standard project management approaches. However, I have found decision-making to be the single most important aspect of a successful project. It is critical to know who is ultimately making the decisions that impact the project. I like to keep a list of "open questions/decisions" that have to be made for project success. Some companies use decision-making frameworks to guide their projects.

    In the shed project, who approves the spend? Who approves the design? The location? I personally do not care about the design, for example. As long as it fits in the space we allocated, my husband can design it however he wants. However, I do feel that we have a budget and I am an "approver" of the ultimate spend.

    Start Now and Learn More

    Whether you write them down or think about it in your head - applying these 5 principles can help any project get started on the right foot towards success.

    Would you like to go more deeply into the 5 principles of project success?

    If you enjoyed these tips, sign up for our newsletter and don’t miss a future post or learning event announcement. CW Training and Consulting specializes in hands-on, interactive project management workshops - either off the shelf or customized to your needs. 
    Project Management - 09/14/2016
    path


    Copyright 2025 CWTC ©  All Rights Reserved