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A project involves devoting effort, capital and human resources to achieve the satisfactory results expected. Early detection of the project not being carried out as well as desired is essential, it is imperative to take steps to improve the measures and its development in order to avoid any unnecessary costs.

In order to improve the management efficiency and detecting problems earlier, or even before they occur, it is essential to have a specialized project management software. Thus, in a simple and economical manner, improving the efficiency of your work an reducing your costs.

There are signs that allow for early detection if a project is not developing properly. In this article we discuss some of them.

1.- Spending too much time solving problems

Obviously, one of the most fundamental tasks of the project manager is to resolve project issues as they arise.

However, the best project managers are not the ones that solves problems, but who best avoids problems.

Anticipation is an essential characteristic of a project Manager and is related to their ability to predict the risks that may occur during the execution of a project, the impact the risks can have on it, and their occurrence.

Stopping the progress of a project because there has been a problem which needs the project manager to provide a solution. This leads to a delay in the delivery of the project and requires additional effort. This can be avoided if the project has been redirected so that the problem is avoided or there is a quicker solution to the problem which has been planned prior to implementing the project, avoiding improvisation at the time of submission.

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2.- Customers constantly ask for results

A customer who fully trusts you asks not for project results, but trusts that you perform the management of the project in the most appropriate way.

However, since the customer is primarily interested in the project achieving the expected results, it is reasonable for him to ask to be adequately informed of the development and implementation of the project.

Therefore, planning should include checkpoints at which the customer is informed of the results achieved so far, so he can see for himself that project management is still appropriate.

You can also use cloud resources for sharing real-time updates on the progress of the project. This way, the customers can see for themselves at any time how the project is developing.

If you do not use these resources, you can resort to more traditional methods, such as making periodic meetings. In this case you must be careful with the frequency and duration of the meetings, seeking to improve the efficiency and utilization of both your teams work time and your customer’s time.

Transparency generates trust between the project manager and the customer that will be beneficial for both parties.

3.- Workers spend too many hours

If the project is properly planned, employees should only be actively working in the allocated work time that has been planned prior to the implantation of the project, neither more nor less.

If less time than expected is used to execute the tasks, this could mean that the quantity or complexity is insufficient, therefore you should review the relevant work of each of the team members or assign any member of that team to another project.

However, if the opposite happens, it means that workers are overworked. This has negative consequences in both the short and long term.

In the short term, this will mean that tasks cannot be developed at the satisfactory level required.

In the long run, the employees will most likely end up burned out from being overworked, which will decrease productivity and, above all, creativity.

If there is a specific need, you can and should ask the team members to make an extra effort, but this should not be the norm. If so, project planning has been inadequate and must be reviewed.

It should also influence the work methodologies. It is possible that the workload is correct but the way to do it is not optimal.

4.- Too many changes to the project

If customers constantly demand more changes and this prevents you from staying on course for the project, it means that there is a planning problem.

In these cases, the most convenient way to deal with this would be to meet with the customers and talk to them about what they believe the purpose and scope for the project is. Once everything is clarified, the project should go ahead.

Proceeding aimlessly with the project, is a waste of resources and effort and will in turn decrease confidence that employees have in you.

Rethinking the project with the customers will allow you to plan it properly and find the solution together that is most satisfactory.

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A professional business is only as successful as the projects they do for their clients. Whether they are short or long term, making clients happy is the focus of the company. If projects fail, the business can lose their source of revenue. This, in turn, can end the business.

As your company continues to grow, the risks that come with not managing it effectively do as well. Right now is when you need to focus on avoiding three deadly project management mistakes that managers continue to make!

1. Failing to effectively communicate with clients

According to the results found in a recent study conducted by Accelo, communicating with clients is one of the most important influences that determine whether a project will be successful or not. Over 90% of the participants believed that e-mail is one of the top communication methods to be used while working on projects. The reason this may be the case is because many companies don’t have access to project management tools or softwares that provide them with alternative options. Therefore, they are left with less effective choices such as e-mail.

Solely relying on e-mail is stifles productivity because it creates silos between teammates. Project members have more difficulty quickly communicating with one another because e-mail is built for communication amongst only a few individuals, making it hard to share important information without creating long chains of communication.

As your team begins to grow and you have more work and projects in your hands, it will become increasingly problematic to try and keep track of all of the information being passed around and ensure everyone is aware of even the smallest project details. The solution isn’t to completely replace e-mailing. You should integrate a project management software that will work side-by-side with e-mailing by providing teammates with an alternative platform they can use for immediate communication and collaboration, saving e-mail for less urgent work.

2. Ineffectively tracking your budget

While the logical choice would be to connect a timesheet with your project management software to prevent this from occurring, only 30% of managers choose to do so. That’s right, once again Accelo found that approximately 69% of companies are left in the dark by manually calculating the time and budget needed to complete a project. This can easily lead to long delays and financial catastrophic failures for projects.

Even though this may seem to only impact individual projects, it has the potential to do damage to the entire firm in the future. Projects will need to be consistently monitored with the help of a project management tool. It’s important to understand how your budgets are impacting project success and whether or not the project is profitable. Knowing this information will be extremely beneficial when planning sales approaches for future projects.

Since payroll is one of the biggest expenses for most companies, losing track or creating an inaccurate picture of employee resources and time can be catastrophic. As a project manager, you have to make sure you do not take on any new projects or clients without knowing how much staff you have. Employees can easily end up overworked and stretched to their limits, missing deadlines and exceeding budgets.

3. 3. Not managing all projects- even the short ones

For the most part, professional services have relatively short projects that need to be done. The majority can often be completed in under 3 months. However, this creates a common misconception that short-lived projects require less effort and have a small impact on the company if they fail. In return, over 27% of service projects end up going over budget. And since Accelo found that the average profit margin of firms is approximately 15% per project, this would mean that failing at a single project could wipe out all revenue and profitability for that company for an entire year. All in all, the business would need to then have two successful projects in order to make up for the money lost in the unsuccessful one.

All growing businesses need to take a step back and re-evaluate their project management team. See if any changes need to be made and consider implementing new technology into the business to help ensure success in the long run.

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Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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"The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate."

Thomas J. Watson Sr., Founder of IBM

While this quote is by no means dogma, nor a desirable way to obtain success, a plethora of companies have had to experience, and learn from, great failures. Finding and scrutinizing reasons for failure is a crucial part of the project management cycle. Here are three examples of the most disastrous project failures in history:

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Fail 1- Denver International Airport's Automated Baggage System

Who failed?

Denver International Airport (DIA), the largest airport in the United States by total land area, and the 6th busiest by passenger traffic.

What were they trying to achieve?

In 1991, DIA attempted to remodel and upgrade the arduous, time-consuming luggage check-in and transfer system. The idea involved bar-coded tags being fixed to each piece of luggage that went through 'Destination Coded Vehicles'. This would fully automate all baggage transfers, integrate all three terminals, and reduce aircraft turn-around time significantly.

Why did they fail?

We know that the five key variables all project managers have to deal with are scope, time, cost, quality, and risk. If each of these had a check box next to them, DIA would have a big, fat, red cross in every single one.

When DIA contracted BAE Systems to develop the automated baggage handling system, they completely ignored BAE's projected timelines, instead stubbornly sticking to their unrealistic 2-year schedule. The project was underscoped, and management took on unnecessary amounts of risk. Perhaps the most detrimental decision was to not include the airlines in the planning discussions. By omitting these key stakeholders, features catering to oversized luggage, sport/ski equipment racks, and separate maintenance tracks were not designed appropriately or at all.

Large portions of 'completed' works had to be redone, the airport opening was delayed by 16 months, and losses of approximately $2 billion were incurred. The entire project was scrapped in 2005.

Fail 2- The NHS' Civilian IT Project

Who Failed?
The National Health Service (NHS), England's publicly funded healthcare system, the largest and oldest in the world.

What were they trying to achieve?
The project aimed to revolutionise the way technology is used in the health sector by paving the way for electronic records, digital scanning and integrated IT systems across hospitals and community care. It would have been the largest civilian computer system in the world.

Why did they fail?

If you were to pinpoint the project's major downfall, you would need a lot of pins. Contractual wrangling plagued the NHS from the outset, with changing specifications, supplier disputes and technical problems pervasive throughout the project's doomed existence.

Unrealistic expectations of both timelines and costs were not helped by inadequate preliminary research, failure to conduct progress reviews, and a clear lack of leadership. The project has been referred to as the 'biggest IT failure ever seen' and 'a scandalous waste of taxpayers money'. Estimates of the damage inflicted upon British citizens fluctuate, currently hovering precariously around the £10billion mark.

While the benefit of hindsight elucidates how the politically motivated nature of the top-down project was never going to suit the localized needs of the NHS divisions, it is yet to be seen whether the ambitious project will ever be re-attempted.

Fail 3- IBM's Stretch Project

Who Failed?
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the multinational technology and consulting corporation that consistently lies in the upper echelons of global brand ranking lists.

What were they trying to achieve?

In the late 1950s IBM set out to design and build the world's fastest and most technically advanced computer, the IBM 7030 Stretch supercomputer. The computer would be 100 to 200 times the speed and performance level of its nearest competitor, thus 'stretching' the existing limits of computer design. This ambitious and impressive target resulted in its price being set at $13.5 million.

Why did they fail?

The project leader, Stephen W. Dunwell, later recalled that what made the project so complicated was that "many more things than ever before had to go on simultaneously in one computer." Engineers faced a conglomerate of challenges in designing and manufacturing many elements of the ground-breaking system; a load-sharing switch which would allow the use of transistors to drive the ferrite-core memory was amongst these problems.

The overly optimistic forecasts meant that project timelines and costs were severely overrun. Additionally, when the first working version of the Stretch was tested in the early 1960s, it was only 30 times faster than its predecessor. This was seen as a dismal failure, and the price of the systems that had already been ordered were cut to $7.78 million, below cost price.

There was a silver lining, however. The manufacturing, packaging, and architectural innovations Stretch had fostered were the cornerstone to many of IBM's future developments, and helped catapult them to the forefront of the industry. If such lofty expectations had not been set at the time, perhaps the project could have been a success. Alas, Stretch is resigned to the history books as being part of 'project management failure' lists such as this.

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As we have seen, the project life cycle comprises the set of phases into which a project is organized. Depending on the organization in question and any overlapping between phases, various types of project life cycle can be defined: predictive or classic life cycles define the product and deliverables at the start of the project; iterative or incremental life cycles adopt an approach that gradually increases or expands the product in steps; and adaptive or flexible life cycles develop the product through numerous iterations, with the scope for each iteration only defined at the start thereof.

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Predictive, classic or planning-focused life cycles

Predictive life cycles (also known as classic or planning-focused life cycles) are those in which the scope, deadline and cost are determined as soon as possible in the project life cycle and efforts are focused on meeting the commitments established for each one of these factors.
These projects are normally organized into a series of sequential or consecutive phases, where each one is focused on a specific sub-product or activity. Normally, the work undertaken in one phase is very different to all the rest and so the project team will vary according to the phase under way at any given time.
From the start, project management focuses on defining the scope and drawing up a detailed plan of the necessary activities. From there, work is focused on following the plan. Any project scope change must be managed explicitly and usually leads to a review of the plan and formal acceptance of the new plan.
Predictive life cycles are chosen when the product to be delivered is well-defined and relatively extensive knowledge exists on how to build the product. This has traditionally been the most common work model but does not necessarily suit the circumstances of all projects and organisations.

Iterative or incremental life cycles

Iterative or incremental life cycles are those in which the activities of the project are repeated in phases or iterations and understanding of the product by the project team increases in each one. The iterations develop the product through a series of repeated cycles that successively add functionality to the product.
At the end of each iteration, a deliverable or set of deliverables will have been produced. Future iterations may improve said deliverables or create new ones. The final product will be the accumulation of functionalities built up during the various iterations.
Iterative or incremental life cycles are chosen when it is necessary to manage vague objectives or considerable complexity, or when the partial delivery of the product is key to success. This type of life cycle enables the project team to incorporate feedback and gradually increase the experience of the team during the course of the project.

Adaptive or flexible life cycles

Adaptive life cycles, also known as change-focused methods or flexible methods, respond to high levels of change and to ongoing participation by the interested parties.
There are two basic models for this type of life cycle, those focused on the flow (for example, Kanban) and others focused on iterative and incremental cycles (for example, Scrum). Very clear limitations are set on the concurrence of activities (Work in Progress) for the former and on very rapid iterations (between 1 and 4 weeks) in which the work is done for the latter (Sprint).
In flexible models, the overall scope of the project will usually be broken down into a set of requirements or projects to be undertaken (sometimes called Product Backlog). At the start of an iteration, the team defines the functionalities to be tackled in that cycle. At the end of each iteration, the product should be ready for review by the client. This type of life cycle requires teams to be highly involved and the sponsor or client to provide constant feedback.
Generally-speaking, flexible methods are chosen in environments that change swiftly, when the scope is unclear or when the value contribution is highly variable and with highly involved teams.