If the BP Oil Spill Were a Project…
Posted by Brad Egeland
If the BP Oil Spill were a Project, would the cleanup and well capping process be going differently? I’ve been asking myself this question a lot this week so I figured it was time to put words to down and see what our readers come back with.
I have to believe that British Petroleum (BP) actually is treating this issue like a project, but I’ve never seen so much back to back failure in any project I’ve ever managed or witness from a distance so it’s truly hard to believe that PM best practices are being applied to this one.
Here are the facts we have so far:
- Oil has been flowing freely for 46 days so far
- A low end estimate of per day oil flow is 210,000 gallons
- That’s 9,660,000 gallons spilled over the 46 days
- The White House has just sent BP a $69 million bill for cleanup efforts
These numbers are amazing and shameful all at the same time. And there’s almost no end in sight due to BP’s repeated failures to make progress on capping the well.
Questions we have to ask?
- Did BP do on-going risk analysis?
- Have laws been broken?
- Should any BP executives still have their jobs when this is finally over?
- Do you think the BP Project Manager will ever get another gig?
This may not be the case, but each new attempt to cap the well or channel the oil flow to a surface ship seems to be a new shot in the dark and continually ends in failure. It’s easy to say that customer confidence is at an all time low right now for BP. Each new attempt needs to be treated as a separate project – or at least a separate sub-project with planning already in the works for the next attempt. Potential issues need to be reviewed, risk analysis and risk mitigation discussions need to be happening 24/7.
June 2010 PM Survey: Managing the Project – Part 1
Posted by Brad Egeland
I’m seeing June as a multiple survey month and then I’ll probably tie all of the results into one summary article near the end of the month. I’d like to take a look at how we go about managing our projects.
As always, your participation is greatly appreciated and highly needed to make the results meaningful. And as usual, the surveys are still very short meaning you can take them in less than a minute.
For the June PM survey on Managing the Project – Part 1, please go here.
This Part 1 of the June survey will look at three things:
- The most important characteristic of a good project manager
- The biggest reasons for project failure
- The extent to which we conduct lessons learned sessions
May 2010 Survey Results: Equipping the Project Manager
Posted by Brad Egeland
The results are in for the May PM survey on equipping the project manager. The response rate was very good – many thanks to our readers who responded because without you there would be no survey and no fun follow-up analysis.
In terms of surprises, in my opinion there were four key surprises that I will describe in my run down of the results below…
Formal PM Methodology
Here’s the first surprise: only 53% of the survey responders indicated that their organization followed a specific project life cycle or project management methodology. That means that 47% are basically ‘winging it.’ While that’s ok on occasion, it’s very difficult to realize long term organizational and project success without some sort of consistent, repeatable process in place. Nearly half of our survey responders don’t have that and that’s concerning.
PM Software
No big surprise here … 58% use Microsoft Project as their primary tool for managing projects. What was surprising is that a full 26% are not given any specific tool to use when managing projects. Back to the ‘winging it’ concept… not good. 11% indicated that they utilized a web-based PM tool and 5% indicated that they use some desktop tool other than MS Project to schedule and manage projects.
A Project is Not a Work of Art
Posted by Brad Egeland
Process is important in project management and being consistent, having repeatable processes, and usable tools are all part of the necessary components to project management.
But beware of overkill.
You’ll find, as you go through life, that not everyone values things the same way you do. And not everyone values things the same way logic tells you they should. You and I both know that project management is important. It’s what I would consider to be a critical piece to any project. Done right, and it can greatly increase your likelihood of project success just through maintaining best practices. Done wrong, and it can kill a project because people relying on that project management component will find that things weren’t managed well, budgets were overrun, deadlines are therefore missed, and customer satisfaction is low. It’s about meeting expectations and fulfilling a key role for the benefit of the project.
Now consider that not ever customer cares about project management they way we think they should. Some may even consider it an unnecessary expense. When those professional services organizations provide customers with resource prices and they see the project manager bill rate of, say, $150/hour, they may hit the roof.
Three types of customers
Some see the benefit, others have a hard time stomaching paying that much, and still others may completely despise the project manager seeing them as useless overhead managing something they could oversee themselves. To those, I say let them try because you’ll likely never please those hardliners until they’ve had the chance to fall flat on their faces all by themselves.
Is Project Planning a Task?
Posted by Brad Egeland
One interesting issue to consider is whether or not planning itself is a task in your project. I am definitely of the opinion that it should be and that it definitely must be. The problem many of us encounter – at least it has often been my experience – is the process of Sales closing the deal with the customer without project management input and then handing it off to project management to execute.
While that sounds good, the problem is that Sales often thinks the process they went through to gather very high-level requirements, draft a very high-level schedule, and put together a customer quote – i.e. final price – is all the planning that is needed. In reality, the planning has just begun….
Behind before you start
When a project is handed to you in this fashion, you are immediately behind before you even start. The tasks involved with planning for the project, preparing for kickoff, exploring the statement of work (SOW) in detail, and gathering your team takes time. However, Sales has failed to put adequate – if any – time into the estimate and original draft schedule for these crucial activities. Skip them and you’ll end up with inadequate upfront planning which will likely lead to significant project problems and scope creep later in the engagement. Perform them and you’ll be over time and over budget right from the start and your customer will start to see that … and they’ll start to be very concerned … right from the start. Behind the eight ball immediately. Ouch!
Preparing to reset expectations
While change orders are scary things to bring up with the customer – especially on Day One of the project, you must, as the project manager, begin to reset expectations as quickly as possible.
