CHALLENGE 1: UNCLEAR REQUIREMENTS
In a poll recently conducted by us in a recognised project management forum, the majority of the project managers acknowledged that unclear requirements are, without a doubt, a top challenge for their projects.
Starting with vague requirements is like heading off on a journey without knowing your destination. You are dealing with the unknown.
The common practice amongst us is that we just bow to pressure from senior management. We accept the ambiguous requirement specifications and proceed with our estimations. Eventually, those projects get delayed, costs are at least doubled, the clientâs quality expectations are not met, and, in the end, the project manager gets the blame.
What would be the best way forward in this situation? Letâs begin with brainstorming some ideas.
Can you challenge your senior management and not commence the project until all of the project requirements are clarified? Is that a feasible idea? Probably not.
You cannot delay the commencement of a project based on the excuse that the project requirements are unclear. Business and IT departments would not want delay in their time to market, or increased costs from extended timescales. In this case, what is the best way forward?
Make assumptions visible
You can start on the project with some tactical assumptions based on your and your teamâs experience, the best knowledge on the domain. You can then build your estimates based on these assumptions. The key point is to ensure that these assumptions are visible to your project stakeholders, by recording them in the standard project documentation.
Log a risk
Record in your risk register that your estimates are based on unconfirmed assumptions. Assign an owner and include a resolution target date. Once the action owner confirms your assumptions, if they happen to be wrong, you can re-estimate with a well-defined change management process. By doing this, you are getting what you want, while managing your stakeholder expectations with tact.
Even if the action owner doesnât confirm your assumptions, despite continuous follow up from you, and on project delivery/testing your assumptions are proved to be wrong, you will have the facts and appropriate project documentation to cover you from the blame game.
Discuss when in doubt
Arrange regular discussions and requirement analysis meetings with stakeholders. Discuss any issues and get clarification. When in doubt, the best practice is to ask.
Be agile
You can go for the iterative development life cycle and start with what you have, reaching out to clients for their feedback at every stage of development. Use this feedback to fine-tune the requirements, thereby hashing out all uncertainties. This will lead to further requirements, due to the holes you have discovered. Describing the functional design, implementing business rules, and getting clientsâ sign off, would cut down on the assumptions.
Use the âcone of uncertaintyâ â narrow down the cone of uncertainty by defining what you can and cannot do. This eliminates any deviation towards the end of the project. As you progress towards the target and tighten the specifications, you can update your estimates and lessen the uncertainty.
You can point out the variance graph to management at any time, indicating the vague requirement as the cause.
Go phased
Donât try to build the whole ship in one day. You cannot expect a product owner, or analyst, to envision the entire product/project during the design phase. Similarly, you cannot build a whole application at once. The best way is to do it in phases. Divide the project into different phases and attack the unknowns. When difficulties are broken into smaller chunks they are much easier to address.
Define good and bad
Analyse and separate out the good and bad requirements. Document what you assumed to implement. This will be the best feedback you can provide to your business and clients, and it encourages clearer requirements in the future.
Buffer on estimates
Last, but not least, have a buffer on the estimates, as per Hofstadterâs Law, to account for requirement changes.
CHALLENGE 2: MISSED REQUIREMENT
Nothing is more challenging for a project manager than a situation where, after successful project go-live, users complain that there is a requirement gap in the final product. Missing a requirement causes bad press for the project and project manager, and can damage the reputation of the organisation. In addition, there is an extra cost to fix, or the requirement to include in the next release, due to the rework around coding and testing.
Based on the criticality of the missed requirement, there could be a significant loss to the organisation in terms of business benefits.
The following ideas can assist in reducing the impact of this challenge.
Manual workarounds
Check if there are any manual workarounds in the system which can temporarily silence the users. In the meantime, the team can work on delivering the missing requirements. For example, if there are reports that users expect to be system generated, this may be achieved with a few support people manually exporting the data to an ExcelÂŽ report. This would be a good interim arrangement.
At the same time, you can try the following to avoid mishaps.
Track and trace
This idea is inspired from the logistics of an organisation, such as DHL. DHL provide a reference number to every client with their shipment. The client can use this reference number to track where their shipment is, and if/when it reaches the desired destination.
We can apply the same logic in this case, where you can reference each item of your detailed project requirement and start tracing it at every major deliverable. For example, to check how a requirement is managed in your design documents, in code, in test scenarios, in test scripts, and in deployment plans, and to track it through the entire life cycle.
This will give you the confidence that all the requirements are now covered as part of delivery.
Client workshops
Facilitate workshops between your clients and your technical team. This encourages two-way communication and helps explain to your clients how the requirements are managed in the product. At the same time, it gives the client the opportunity to question any trivial requirements, which might have been missed in your teamâs presentation.
CHALLENGE 3: DELAY IN DOCUMENT APPROVALS
In an average complex project, the number of deliverables/documents created should range from 50-100. It is a mammoth challenge to get all these deliverables organised, shared with reviewers, reworked based on review comments, approved by clients, and baselined in the document repository. If you have experience working in a matrix project organisation, then you will be aware that it is far more complex. The resources allocated to you might be shared, have different line managers, have their own priorities, or not be fully allocated to you. These are a few of the many challenges.
Many project managersâ pet peeve is that they usually get the review comments on the final day of the review period. So either you have to delay the project to work on the review comments, or extend the work timings to accommodate them.
The following ideas can assist with managing this challenge efficiently.
Prepare a RACI for each deliverable
For each deliverable of the project, prepare a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed). A RACI is a tracker which shows who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed of a deliverable/document. You can share a RACI with the relevant people, so they are aware, up front, of their responsibilities. You can even share the timescales for each and every deliverable.
Block reviewerâs/approverâs calendars
The most efficient way to get the reviewers/approvers to review your document is to block out time in their calendars for the review workshop. In these workshops, your team can walk through the document with the reviewer and make amendments at the same time. At the end of the workshop, make sure the approver signs on the dotted line.
CHALLENGE 4: SCOPE CREEP
Scope creep is one of the top five reasons why a project can fail. To define scope creep, let us consider a construction company which is building a house for a client, with a well-drafted plan. During the clientâs visits to the house, new items keep getting added to the plan, for example, building a wardrobe, an extra sink, more power outlets than planned initially, etc. The engineer implements the changes without documenting them on the plan and, once the house is built, there are several issues faced by the construction company:
- The house layout in the plan, and what has been built, do not match.
- The company incurs loss because the extra items bought are not charged back to the client.
- The extra electrical outlets cause a voltage trip, or load shedding, resulting in more costs to the construction company.
Who is to be blamed here? Is it the client, who has not adhered to the process of putting forth their request in the correct manner? Is it the construction team, which has taken the request without informing the construction company, or documenting the changes? Is it the construction company, which has not put forth the process and trained their resources for situations like this?
Does this sound familiar to you? If you apply this in an IT project management scenario, clients request extra features, or changes in features, directly of the team, without checking the end-to-end implications.
Scope creep causes increased cost, effort and time. However, you cannot go back to the business owner and ask for additional money, since you have not followed any process, or laid out any plans to manage this.
How can you manage this challenge?
Put change management processes in place
All changes requested by business/clients/users are to be requested officially, and recorded in the relevant project documentation. This will enable impact/cost/timescales analysis to be completed. Based on approval from the budget owner, work on change requests can then be completed. It is important that all team members are aware of this process.
Learn to say âNoâ and teach to say âNoâ
Although it is beneficial to meet all client demands possible, and to keep the relationship in good health, there comes a time when you, or your team, canât be the âYes manâ any longer. There are some clients who will try to get things done quick and dirty. They will not follow any process, and will directly approach you/your team. It is important to be assertive and say âNoâ in such situations.
CHALLENGE 5: UNCLEAR RISKS AND ISSUES
It is important for a project manager to track project issues, risks, assumptions and dependencies. Sometimes it is very challenging for a project manager to keep them up to date, as well as log them in the appropriate place. It is a very common problem to have the project issues and risks logged/reported int...