Leading Teams and Projects – How to Increase Big Project Success Rates
You should be aware big projects have a high probability of “failure.” The sheer scale, number of stakeholders, and number of teams impacted by big projects lend to disconnects, missed tasks, missed critical deliverables, and integration failure as the series of project work tracks don't seamlessly come together .
While the definition of project failure may vary, project failure usually means the project didn’t obtain the pre-defined organizational objective or work wasn’t completed on time.
In the Harvard Business Review article by Nadim Matta and Ron Ashkenas titled, “Why Good Projects Fail Anyway” Nadim and Ron confirm, “Big Projects fail at an astonishing rate – more than half the time, by some estimates.” Nadim and Ron are not surprised by the failure rate as the article goes on to state, “Complicated long-term projects are customarily developed by a series of teams working along parallel tracks. If managers fail to anticipate everything that might fall through the cracks, those tracks will not converge successfully at the end to reach the goal.”
And project “failure” demoralizes a team and produces stress and anxiety in staff. It impacts the teams confidence and behaviors. Nadim and Ron state this regarding project failure, “And the toll they take is not just financial. These failures demoralize employees who have labored diligently to complete their share of the work.”
To increase big project success rates, Nadim and Ron suggest a strategic approach to reduce the risk of project unknowns and integration risks.
Nadim and Ron suggest layering in Rapid-Result initiatives and teams to combat “white-space risks” and “integration risks” on large scale multi-year projects. Nadim and Ron go further, “The key is to inject into the overall plan a series of mini-projects—what we call rapid-results initiatives—each staffed with a team responsible for a version of the hoped-for overall result in miniature and each designed to deliver its result quickly.”
So, in essence rapid proto-typing of the project deliverables at a much smaller scale upfront with core project teams to learn and adapt the project plan to scale up more successfully for the longer-term overall project.
Rapid Result initiatives intentionally are commissioned to produce measurable results.
So, how do rapid result initiatives work?
Nadim and Ron explain it as follows, “Using a traditional project management approach, you might have one team research and install software packages, another analyze the different ways that the company interacts with customers (e-mail, telephone, and in person, for example), another develop training programs, and so forth. Many months later, however, when you start to roll out the program, you might discover that the salespeople aren’t sold on the benefits. So even though they may know how to enter the requisite data into the system, they refuse. This very problem has, in fact, derailed many CRM programs at major organizations.
But consider the way the process might unfold if the project included some rapid-results initiatives. A single team might take responsibility for helping a small number of users—say, one sales group in one region—increase their revenues by 25% within four months. Team members would probably draw on all the activities described above, but to succeed at their goal, the microcosm of the overall goal, they would be forced to find out what, if anything, is missing from their plans as they go forward. Along the way, they would, for example, discover the salespeople’s resistance, and they would be compelled to educate the sales staff about the system’s benefits. The team may also discover that it needs to tackle other issues, such as how to divvy up commissions on sales resulting from cross-selling or joint-selling efforts.”
So with Rapid-result initiatives the rapid result teams are implementing a rapid proof of concept at a smaller scale to 1) identify disconnects or “unknown problems” upfront, 2) Get greater buy-in with teams resistant to change, 3) Identify lessons from the smaller scale to apply to the larger initiative.
In my many years as a project manager I can confirm the challenges and Nadim and Ron speak about in the article are very typical challenges that all organizations face with large scale projects and initiatives.
I agree with Ron and Nadim that by implementing Rapid prototyping and instituting mini projects of Rapid-result initiatives up front an organization will have a far greater probability of success for big project initiatives.
What I have seen is rapid-result teams provide leaders and managers with measurable results that are used to educate and convince other stakeholders who are initially skeptical to get on board with the goals and support the project.
Many times external teams within the organization who are impacted by the project or view the project goals as unwanted change will either overtly or covertly work against the project and will be hostile to the project objectives.
Rapid-result initiatives that provide real results and show efficiencies convince unsupportive stakeholders to give the project a chance. This in turn gains greater collaboration and buy-in from resistant parts of the organization or teams.
Final Thoughts
Big projects have an alarming rate of failure. Being strategic and implementing rapid-result initiatives will increase the success rate of big projects. Rapid prototyping of project deliverables at a smaller scale provides the quick wins to convince others in the organization to get on board and support the initiative.
Rapid-result initiatives allow the project team to identify lessons from the smaller scale work that can be applied to the big project implementation.
Rapid-result initiatives work in conjunction with other best practices like identifying clear project objectives, having an executive sponsor, and setting realistic expectations.
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