Last week Ty Kiisel posted a blog about pulling the plug on a good project gone bad. It got me thinking about a project a former employer initiated a few years ago. I was brought in late in the game and asked to review it from the sidelines, as my director suspected the project was going badly, the vendor was off track, and the company was wasting money.
I reviewed the project and found a number of issues that needed to be addressed, but as is typical in the case when project management is spread out over too many people or non-existent, I heard excuses and a reminder that I was not the PM. So I contributed content when asked to do so, watched the work "progress," and wondered at what dollar amount someone would cry uncle. It actually took another year and about a million dollars to get to that point; a shame really – it was a very good idea, just executed very poorly.
The point here is that this project went way over budget and way off schedule because of one thing. Ego. The CEO. who gave the thing the thumbs-up in the first place, was simply not willing to see or admit that it was just not working. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to just give up whenever things get difficult. I’m just saying there is a point when you’re throwing good money after bad and it’s time to review your options.
As Ty mentioned in his post, all project based work should have a solid start-to-finish plan; and that plan should include an exit strategy in case things just don’t work out. Also, it is never a good idea for a company to hire an outside vendor and then not assign project management oversight to an internal person. In this case, the vendor answered only to CEO, and neither he nor the SVP of Marketing were willing to admit a mistake had been made and the project was a failure; it was only after both were let go that the project was abandoned.
Have you experienced anything like this? How far have you seen an ailing project go before someone recognizes a problem exists and is willing to pull the plug?
