How Project Management Keeps the Light at the End of the Tunnel from Becoming a Freight Train

We have all had projects that kept us up at night. You know what I am talking about. We have had projects without enough resources to complete it on time. We have been asked to add more deliverables without adequate funding. We have been asked to crash schedules. You know the kind of project I am talking about.

What causes projects to fail? Ultimately, a lack of planning almost always guarantees project failure. Also, having the wrong people in the wrong places, handling deliverables will keep you up all night.

I learned a very valuable lesson from a senior project manager who asked me if I knew what a Deming cycle was. As a brand-new project coordinator, I was clueless. So, the senior project manager explained four things to me:

Plan. Do. Check. Act.

How can “Plan Do Check Act” help you with project management?

1. Plan your projects carefully.
2. Do execute the project in harmony with the project documentation.
3. Check to make sure that things are working properly.
4. Act to take corrective action when needed.

Consider this scenario.

A company acquires a new outsourced 24-hour service desk. Before the ink dries on the contract, company staff file numerous complaints indicating that calls were not being answered. To determine the validity of the complaints, the project manager calls the new outsourced service desk number at 4:00 a.m. to see whether or not the call would be answered. Guess what? The call was not answered. The project manager placed another call at 5:00 a.m. Again, the call was not answered. Finally, at 6:00 a.m. a service desk analyst answered the phone but did not handle the call appropriately – did not know the script, did not resolve the problem. The project manager documented all of the irregularities for upper management review.

How could this problem have been avoided in the first place? Prior to the implementation of the new contract for the outsourced 24-hour service desk, someone from upper management should have placed random calls to the service desk to test whether or not someone would answer the calls appropriately.

In summary, most project problems are caused by poor planning. Sometimes we want to believe what we are told because we have too many plates spinning in the air at the same time. But we cannot afford to take things at face value – without checking for accuracy. Try to image the worst-case scenario and have a corrective action plan in place when things don’t go right.

So, if the only light you see at the end of the tunnel is a freight train, remember on your next project to use a Deming cycle before initiating a project.