Surviving Catastrophic Project Failure

By: Michael Gaccioli, CEO, Managing Partner

In 2011, I had the privilege of delivering a presentation at the Professional Development Conference of the Project Management Institute – Southern Alberta Chapter (PMI-SAC). My presentation, centered around project failure, garnered significant attention, as it was a departure from the conventional; who talks about project failure?  I have broken the speech that accompanied this presentation into sections to allow you to read and take in the lessons learned from my experience in manageable sections. As time moves forward these lessons are still very valuable and serve me well. While the project that had failures was executed at another company, it has significantly influenced the training protocols and the way we execute projects here at BTI. All your comments and insights are welcome. We continually strive to refine our practices and we hope that this presentation proves as insightful and valuable for you as it has been for all of us at BTI.

Good afternoon and thank you for attending this presentation. I am sure that you will agree when I say that there have been some interesting and enlightening topics during this year’s conference. I know that I have attended some great presentations that were both thought-provoking and interesting. I hope that my presentation will live up to your expectations.

While I enjoy presentations, I sometimes find that I am left wanting more. I seem to feel that I am lacking something useful. A tangible set of tools or tips that relate to a problem or an event that I may experience in my projects or career. Sure, it is great to hear about methodologies, but what about project experiences. And not just the good experiences, but those experiences that people learn something from. In preparation I asked other project management professionals and myself questions like; What have you taken away from a particular presentation or conference? What tools or information can help me with who I am as a project manager today and tomorrow? I am not only looking for inspiration. That is easily found in motivational speakers such as Mark Tewksbury or Debbie Muir. What I am searching for, as are many of you, is how to be a better project manager now. Maybe that is too much to ask for, but in today’s world of 10 second sound bites and snippets of information, that’s what the demand is and what is expected from our sponsors, managers and yes, our clients.

Today, many of you might be here to listen to a story of a project that has gone seriously wrong, while others may be interested to learn about what happened and why. I am presenting this topic because failure, as painful as it is, is probably the best way to learn, grow, and become a better project manager. If your objective is to learn quickly, this is the only way to learn. However, I also want to explore why it is that there also seems to be a lack of willingness on the part of project managers; and people in general, to admit that something they have done has gone wrong or that something is going wrong with their projects or with their work.

“We all dislike the truth of saying that we aren’t progressing as well as we hoped we would at a particular task or that we have failed or partially failed at it. We fail to realize that we should think of this as the ultimate tool or method of learning and using it to teach others what we have learned from this experience.“

Project failure has been and continues to be a topic that I am interested in exploring further. By exploring project failures, I can understand what to look out for and grow as a PM. Although, the one thing I haven’t heard from any presenter is if their project starts to fail, how do they bring it back or how do they survive the experiences?  How do they deal with the issues of an angry client and their employer while trying to reel in the failure? I question whether I am a good project manager because the majority of what I hear during presentations or in publications is how wonderful other projects are. When a project starts to drift from the plan and then accelerates in that direction at light speed; there seems to be no manual on how to bring the project back into equilibrium. I listen to presenters at conferences or read articles in various magazines about how wonderful their projects are going and how much money they saved and so on. The reality is that many of you in this room right now are dealing with a project issue that is causing you grief, maybe not to the point of failure, but a grief none the less. So why is it that there is no literature or coverage on failed projects? I suppose it doesn’t sell magazines, but boy does it pack a conference room. I am not sure if people are sadists and like to see how people fail or if they are like me and truly curious and interested about pulling little tidbits of information and wisdom that will help them avoid the pitfalls that befallen the presenter.

By no means am I going to provide you with the holy grail of project management or am I claiming that I have wisdom, but what I will share with you is something that others may shy away from, my failures or near misses. Why failures? Simple. As I mentioned before the only true way of learning about how to do anything, effectively, is by experiencing difficult times or failure. Don’t get me wrong, if I could avoid these difficult situations or failures I would, but you can’t always avoid it. Now, I am not saying that I am going to show you how to fail or am I suggesting that you should go out and fail your project. Those would be counterproductive, what I am saying is that you should not be afraid to fail.

In my career as a project engineer and project manager I have been exposed to many aspects of projects; that includes project failure and at the time seemingly catastrophic failure. When dealing with a project that is failing or an aspect of the project that is failing there are more things to consider than just the schedule. During our time together I will present to you what I believe are some of the key considerations of a project failure from the first inkling that things are going sideways to the all out “I can’t sleep at night because I am afraid I am going to lose my job” project failure.

Some of the key topics that we will be discussing are:

• How do we work?
• Maslow
• Fear of failure and procrastination

Next time, we will learn about the project and set up what I believed at the time are the eight (8) key components of surviving a project failure. Until then, I wish you success.