Feature

Previous feature - More on the Project Assassin - Next feature

Project Assassins

Introduction

A few of the plants in my garden die each year. I find insects on curling leaves, slugs beside shredded foliage and black spots on roses. It is a struggle to beat such pests and diseases, but at least I know my enemy. That gives me some chance of keeping losses to a minimum.

Most projects fail. Why?

The RESTORE project

Arthur is Store Manager and has been pushing for this refurbishment of the storehouse for years. The current layout is so poor that some stock is completely inaccessible without moving other materials. The width of the gangways necessitates manual handling of items. Indeed, things got so bad a couple of years ago that he had to employ three more staff to cope with the rapidly increasing number of orders that they were getting then - extra staff he wouldn't have needed if the refurbishment had already been completed. Now growth seems to have stopped and workload is quite reasonable again. It will be good to get the new stores, but will he still need those extra staff?

BEANS for Finance

Beatrice is Business Change Manager for the BEANS finance system, which the in-house Information Technology group (IT) are implementing. She isn't sure how she got this role but it was probably those bright ideas that she had contributed to the business case. She had been particularly proud of the way she had shown that Finance could reduce the annual budgeting cycle by two months if given appropriate system support. Rather against her expectations, IT were delivering everything that she had said would be necessary. But they had also begun talking about 'baseline measurements' so that claimed improvements could be demonstrated. Could Finance really speed up the budgeting process that much?

Improved sales?

Claude is a highly paid 'process redesign consultant', brought in to rectify the problems in the Sales & Marketing division. He has already made a significant contribution by improving communications between various departments. There should never again be a repeat of last year's fiasco, when a sales campaign targeting 20 to 30 year old males coincided with a product re-branding in pink! The major improvements that he had identified are now nearing completion. There are minor changes that might be worth making and the market for process redesign consultants is rather flat at the moment ...

The XTRA (X2 Replacement Activity) project

Demelsa is known throughout the company as the woman who doubled sales by bringing the X2 to market - it is still the backbone of the company's revenue. In developing its successor, the X3, the new Product Manager was particularly keen to have her on his team. 'With you on board Demelsa,' he had said 'we should easily be able to move the X2 market onto X3s within a year.' The X3 certainly has more features and it is definitely more 'flashy', but will it prove as reliable as the good old X2?

Your projects

Do any of your projects fail? Is it always an accident?