Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, 7th Edition

Part IV

Managing the Realities of Projects

Complex projects arise from situations not only of complexity but situations where some degree of uncertainty is present. As you learned in Chapter 1, that uncertainty can be the result of a goal, or solution, or both that are not clearly defined. Annual surveys conducted by the Standish Group report on the top 10 reasons for project failure. At or near the top of every list since the surveys began is lack of senior-management support. You might think of that support as pertaining only to individual projects, but it also extends to the infrastructure that is put in place to support projects. A category called User Involvement was added for the first time to the 2007 survey, and it topped the list as the major factor for project success. And finally, Stakeholder Management was added as a 10th Knowledge Area in the PMBOK Guide, 5th edition, and will have major impact as well.

Part IV covers the four most relevant topics to effective project management and to the success of even the most complex of projects:

• Prevention and Intervention Strategies for Distressed Projects—I describe many of my experiences with such situations. You will see that by judiciously applying what has already been presented in this book, you will have taken a big step toward preventing projects from becoming distressed. But even at best, some projects are destined for the distressed pile. Maybe that was built in from the start, and no one noticed or could tell. In ...