Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Preferred Requirements Gathering Techniques - Risk Analysis 5

Risk Assessment for Projects
At least 50% of all projects (if not much more) are not successful in the sense that they do not achieve their objectives, or do not deliver the promised results, or sacrifice the predefined quality, or are not completed in the given time schedule, or use much more resources than originally planned.

There is a multitude of reasons for projects to fail. Projects often come on top of the usual work load and members of the project team belong to different departments, i.e. they have their first accountability to their line manager which often brings them into conflict with the project work. Team members have to work overtime if they want to complete their project tasks. At the end, project work is often sacrificed, and time budgets are often not sufficient.

What is mostly neglected: the occurrence of problems in project implementation increases with the complexity and length of the project.Larger and more complex projects that run over more than a year have other reasons of failure. Often these projects have permanent staff who are released from other tasks and work full time on the project, and well established budgets. However, those projects depend on a large number of external assumptions which influence their outcomes. It is impossible to clearly predict the future and the impact of various influence factors that are uncertain. Many project plans are too rigid to flexibly respond to changing needs.

Common to most projects is the lack of appropriate and transparent communication. Team members (and other stakeholders) often do not share a common understanding of the project's goals and strategies. It is important to unveil these misunderstandings and hidden agendas from the very beginning. The following tool, if applied in a project planning session helps to uncover issues that otherwise might remain undiscussed.

Explanations:

Business Level: Does the project have a strategic importance for the organization?
Length: How long is the intended implementation time?
Complexity: Does the project cover various business areas / objectives?
Technology: Is the technology to be applied well-established or is it a technology which yet has to be developed?
Number of organizational units involved: cross functional / geographical areas, etc.
Costs: estimated costs of the project
Overall risk of failure: How would you personally rank the risk that the project cannot achieve the objectives with the intended resources?



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