4 Barriers

A barrier is anything that restrains or obstructs progress or access—a limit or boundary of any kind. In project management, barriers stand between the project manager and project success. Project managers today face more barriers to project success than ever before.

The Sin

One barrier to project success arises from the very definition of project success. In the 1960s, the early days of project management, success was measured entirely in technical terms: The deliverable product either worked or it didn’t. During the 1970s that narrow definition expanded to include schedule, budget, and quality requirements, which became known collectively as the triple constraints of project management. During the 1980s the definition of project success expanded further to include customer satisfaction, and during the 1990s project success also came to mean maintaining the organization’s work flow and corporate culture.

Another barrier to project success is the increasing complexity of projects. No longer can project managers achieve project success solely through their own efforts. Projects are more interconnected, more interdependent, and more interrelated than ever before. The businesses that conduct projects have become more complex as well, participating in more alliances with strategic suppliers, networks of customers, and partnerships with allies and even competitors. The usual project deliverable is no longer a stand-alone product used by a single customer; instead, projects are delivering systems for enterprise-wide use by groups of stakeholders with different needs.

The widening gap between employees and their executives in understanding project management also poses a barrier to project success. The international business guru Tom Peters has said that “all work is project work,” reflecting how pervasive projects have become. As more and more employees understand project management and work in organizations that are increasingly project-based, they are frustrated by executives who don’t understand project management adequately.

A Case of Barriers

A case in point is perhaps the most highly publicized software failure in history: the infamous Virtual Case File (VCF) project conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The VCF was supposed to automate the FBI’s paper-based work environment, allow agents and intelligence analysts to share vital investigative information, and replace an obsolete automated system. Instead, the FBI claims that its contractor on the project delivered 700,000 lines of code so bug-ridden and functionally off-target that the bureau had to scrap the $170 million project.

Various government and independent reports, however, show that the FBI, lacking IT management and technical expertise, shares the blame for the project’s failure. Specifically, a devastating 81-page audit released in 2005 by the Department of Justice inspector general, described fatal shortcomings at the FBI that can be categorized according to the three barriers to project success: an expanded definition of project success, increased project complexity, and the widening gap in understanding the discipline of project management.

The VCF project expanded the definition of project success, as well as complexity and scope, well beyond the traditional database-type boundaries with which the FBI had experience. The project expanded to include virtually all corners of the FBI and to involve enterprise-wide connectivity and functionality for 12,400 agents working out of 56 field offices and 400 satellite offices using 13,000 computers that were not capable of running modern software. The project was undertaken in an environment where the executives knew so little about project management that they assigned a person who had no IT project management experience as the VCF project manager.

Danger Signs

Recognition and screening require that at least some key individuals—if not the majority of employees—within the organization have sufficient project management experience and maturity to understand and be on the lookout for these barriers to project success. An early warning in the VCF project came from a member of the development team who questioned the FBI’s expertise, the contractor’s management practices, and the competence of both organizations. A security expert working for the contractor expressed his objections to his supervisor in fall 2002. He then posted his concerns to a web discussion board just before the contractor and the FBI agreed on a deeply flawed 800-page set of system requirements that doomed the project before a single line of code was written. His reward: a visit from two FBI agents concerned that he had disclosed national security secrets on the Internet.

Solutions

So, how can a project manager break through these barriers? How can a project manager achieve project success when that term has come to mean so many things that extend beyond traditional project boundaries? When the level of project complexity has ratcheted up so greatly? When more and more educated project managers are confronting executives who don’t truly understand project management?

The simple answer is that project managers cannot keep doing what they have been doing and expect to succeed. The traditional control-based approach toward managing projects is becoming less effective. Under that approach, project managers sought to plan, monitor, and control the project. What could not be controlled could be influenced, and what could not be influenced could at least be surfaced and addressed.

Today, project managers must increasingly forge partnerships with executives who can help surmount barriers. For better or worse, project managers are highly dependent on executive leadership. Project success now depends on getting executives to help project managers overcome barriers. Instead of taking a passive approach by waiting for executives to determine project managers’ needs, it is much more proactive and effective for project managers to tell executives what they need to be able to tackle project barriers.

Getting executives to proactively facilitate project success by helping project managers overcome barriers is an incremental and cumulative process: It does not happen all at once, nor does it occur in all elements of the organization or with all executives at the same time. Since this support requires certain behavioral changes, it is usually evolutionary. Executives and organizations have spent years becoming who and what they are. The good news is that the cumulative effects of modestly paced, genuine change are enduring. Those who understand the critical, dependent relationship that is necessary between project managers and executives have joined the evolution.

Tips for Executives to Help Project Managers Surmount Barriers

Organize and manage work as projects. Project managers can feel like fish out of water when they work in an environment that does not organize and manage work as projects. Much of their effort may be spent trying to convince and educate stakeholders about the merits of project basics, such as requirements, baselines, schedules, and configuration controls.

Pick the right projects. Picking the right projects can be as sophisticated as strategic portfolio management or as simple as selecting only the projects the project managers and teams have the capacity to conduct. Fewer projects are usually better—they allow project teams to spend more time per project, increasing the odds of project success.

Follow a written project plan and ensure that projects are based on documented requirements. Project managers need adequate time during the initial project phase to build baseline documents, and they should be held accountable for continuous, controlled revisions to those documents throughout the project life cycle.

Require that cost estimates have a written, definitive basis. Project managers must be able to manage the scope of their projects, and the key to scope management is a clear, mutual understanding of what is considered in-scope and what is considered out-of-scope. Providing a written estimate reduces the odds of a scope-related misunderstanding and also provides project managers a powerful method of supplementing their authority.

Ensure that project resources are commensurate with needs. In return for managing their projects according to plan, project managers look to their executives to ensure that project resources are commensurate with needs. If resource shortages or changes occur, project managers should submit an impact assessment to executives—in an environment free of undue pressure to absorb the change or simply do more with less.

Engage middle management, and establish job definitions and performance standards. By holding middle managers responsible for supporting project managers, and by ensuring that career progression and growth align with best practices, executives will create a long-lasting and sustainable project-based culture.

Behave like an executive and ask the right questions. Executives can demonstrate their commitment to a project-based culture by behaving like executives and asking their project managers the right questions. By making a commitment to support project managers, executives will attract, retain, and build project management excellence.