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Gopal Kapur

An upper-level executive has a "vision" and the project manager has no idea what is needed except there is a December 15 deadline

Surprises of any kind are a bad thing in project management, said Gopal Kapur yesterday in his GTC project management class in Atlanta. Even seemingly good news like "I'm done three weeks ahead of schedule," he explained, "means you will have a guy who has nothing to do but walk around, talk to people and make copies of Dilbert cartoons." If predicted, planning could make better use of his time.

Kapur -- founder and president of the Center for Project Management -- peppered his presentation with humor, stories and examples from such fields as cooking, air traffic control and guide-dog training. Project management methodology, it seems, is not just for IT.

"Why is project management important?" asked Kapur. "Have you experienced unsatisfactory outcomes, schedule overruns, poor quality, wasted talent, a 'high body count,' or damaged reputation?" While most people don't mind working hard, he explained, they do mind working hard for no or poor results, and agencies will lose good staff from lack of proper management. Poor results will also cause "ad hoc" project teams to spring up -- "after all," they ask themselves, "how much worse could we do?" Quite a bit, as it turns out.

Kapur polled the mostly government audience for a sampling of project management issues. They included underfunding, unrealistic deadlines, prioritization, scope creep, managing a portfolio and fixing a damaged reputation -- to which Kapur replied sotto voce: "change name."

Intelligence, Kapur said, means looking at the past to predict the future. It also means doing research on the "facts of life" about failed or troubled projects. "It's not done," he said, "because it's seen as a negative thing. But if you have a restaurant and out of every 100 buns, three are bad, and you have 100 customers coming, you don't order 100 buns, you order 110. If you have a car that loses one quart of oil every 100 miles and you are going on a 300 mile trip, it seems like a good idea to take three quarts of oil with you." Likewise, if historically, 10 percent of your organization's projects fail, project managers need to calculate the failure/challenge rate in terms of budget exposure. One will always work to reduce the failure rate, but it should not be ignored in a rush of ill-founded optimism. In fact, he said, it is preferable to catch and fix or stop troubled projects than to continue to drag around some comatose project that just won't die.

Intelligent Disobedience
Too often, said Kapur, project managers go along with a bad project or accept too many projects because they feel they can't say no. Restaurants accept only as many diners as they can serve. Doctors with too many patients turn away new patients, and air traffic controllers tell feeder airports not to send any more planes if they are jammed up. Often, said Kapur -- to much laughter -- upper level executives have a "vision" and the project manager has no idea what is needed except there is a "December 15 deadline." Nevertheless, they feel obligated to begin work immediately.

Kapur said "intelligent disobedience" is a concept used in training guide dogs for the blind. The light changes and starts beeping, and the person signals to the dog to move forward into the crosswalk. The dog is trained -- if it sees traffic coming, or an obstruction -- to disobey and not move. Disregarding a direct order for a just cause is a highly regarded trait in dogs, said Kapur, as those dogs that cannot disobey lead their handlers into a disaster.

At the very least, he said, questionable projects must themselves be questioned as to a number of fundamental points that include:
  • What is the strategy link?
  • What are the specific benefits?
  • What are the implications of doing nothing?
  • What are the measures of success?
  • How realistic is the deadline?
  • What are the run-away triggers?
  • What are the shut-down conditions?
After all, said Kapur, "do you take your house deed and the title to your car with you when you go to the gambling tables?" Asking such questions of a project will very often cause untenable ideas to disappear, he said.

The Solution
Kapur rolled out a project management portfolio template which includes everything from the right questions to ask, to defining project complexity and filtering out "half-baked ideas." The aim is to help bring more projects to a successful conclusion. And, of course, even success was defined.

Kapur said he has proposed sharing project management portfolios inside and among government organizations to reduce the amount of work on redundant projects and to increase the amount of information exchanged and lessons learned.
Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.