I've been thinking about why these mistakes happen on projects and I started out by saying that projects
are difficult but nevertheless you know what why don't people get Project Management right.
Why did mistakes happen.
And I think there are four main reasons and I think the first reason is that people just don't know
how to plan projects they've never been taught and they've never been showed it.
You don't get taught it at school.
I was taught project management as part of my engineering degree but it was quite badly taught tonight.
I didn't really pay attention at all I was a student back then and I probably wasn't paying attention
properly.
So I think a lot of project managers are just dumped in the job or devolves into a job perhaps they
don't even call it a project and they're not called a project manager.
And so they don't know how to do it.
And I think it's really hard to reinvent the wheel.
I mean this stuff is quite tricky and it's taken a hundred years of project managers really thinking
about this to perfect the process.
So you'd be amazing if you could reinvent the wheel and do all this out of your own head.
So it's not your fault that you haven't seen this stuff before.
You know things like having to do post-its before a Gantt chart I mean that's quite a tricky idea.
And even most project management books don't tell you that you must do the post-its and then the Gantt
Chart never jumped straight to the Gantt Chart.
And quite often people have software that kind of semi runs the Project for them and they don't realize
that actually software is only a drawing to software can't do everything for you.
So they rely on the software without really understanding the process and then they wonder why the project
hasn't gone very well.
So I would be quite suspicious of software that that claims to do my project management for me.
You know imagine some software that could go.
Or you have missed out two tasks or are you can't possibly do that in three weeks it will take four.
I mean I would love some software that does that but I just don't think it's ever going to exist or
don't forget before you do this task you must do this task software can't know that.
So you have to feed all the information in.
And in the end the software is only going to be a drawing tool and perhaps a communication tool.
So if you're relying on software to do it for you then don't you have to draw that Gantt chart and you
have to do the Post-Its before that.
So I think that's the first reason why projects often go wrong is just that people haven't been told
how to do it.
Now the second reason why these mistakes happen is that projects seduce you in and you think oh yeah
quite a quick job of getting this new machine so I would just clear that space in the factory or get
the right guys in to do the wiring.
And before you know it you're planning the whole thing in your head and you don't have a proper plan.
And I think it's really it's quite forgivable to be drawn in and you almost don't realize it is a project
until too late and it's become really complicated.
And at that point you should think right.
Actually I need to get shot for this and it's never too late to plan.
You know don't think oh I'll start it now.
Even if you're halfway through a project or maybe you inherit it from somebody else you could still
think right.
Let's just stop and let's just do a list of all the stuff we still need to do and let's get it in order
and let's draw it out as a proper Gantt chart so we all know where we are.
It's never too late to plan I think the third reason why these common mistakes happen is that people
think I haven't got time to plan and I've had people say to me Look you know just get on with it don't
bother with a plan and just just stop buying stuff just start digging holes or whatever and that's crazy
isn't it.
Because how long will it take you to produce a project plan.
And I reckon you can plan a project in a couple of hours.
Obviously depends on the size of it.
If I was going to put a rocket on Mars I might spend the whole day doing that plan.
But for most projects all you need really is a bit of a brainstorm of tasks put them on post-its remove
them.
It's going to take probably half an hour to get the post-its in order.
Make that into a Gantt chart that might take another 20 minutes and I reckon in an hour or two you can
get a really good plan and that's going to pay back massively throughout the rest of the job over the
coming weeks months even years.
It's going to give you less stress.
It's going to save you money it's going to save you time.
It's can avoid mistakes.
So you would be mad not to spend a couple of hours planning upfront but haven't haven't got time to
plan is a common reason why projects go wrong.
And I think a final reason why these mistakes often happen is that sometimes there's nobody in charge
of a project you know hasn't been named as a project as such it's just a job that's happening and everybody's
kind of involved in doing bits of it and there's nobody in charge of making sure it happens.
So you know you might be expanding into a new country and there's probably sales people selling and
you know people redesigning the product to be suitable for the new country and there's probably somebody
in finance working out the costs and maybe there is no overall project manager.
And then you don't have a plan and then everything falls apart.
So every project should really be listed and there should be one person accountable not shared between
several because that's going to be messy.
There should be one project manager that can only be one.
So I would say those are probably the main reasons why these mistakes happen and they're perfectly understandable
that nobody's fault really.
But the main thing is now we know what the top 10 are.
We can make sure we don't fall for any of them.