Getting started fast on projects

In lots of organizations, starting fast on projects is a disease. They talk about being dynamic, aggressive and fast to market. What they're really doing is turning loose a project teams that starts work on the first few tasks with very little idea of where they are headed or how they will get there. No wonder that 80% of these projects fail. Anybody else see this going on?

Best Regards,

Dick Billows PMP, GCA
4PM.com

Managing with just due dates

Lots of project managers complain about executives who pluck due dates from the sky with no consideration for:

• the work to be done,
• the availability of the team or
• the other projects that are underway.

That kind of due date setting leads to high failure rates but the project managers are also to blame because they give executives only one corner or dimension of the project to quantitatively manage.

These PMs don't quantify the scope, risk or budget so the executive only has one dimension to manage that has hard-edged data. Read the article about Project having 4-Corners and cure your executives of the dates only disease.

Best Regards,

Dick Billows PMP, GCA
4PM.com