Author: Emma Carville

By: Michael Gaccioli, CEO, Managing Partner

Welcome back! Well here we are, Part 4, our final installment of our series Surviving Catastrophic Project Failure. In this section we will take a deep dive into the remaining 4 components that are critical to surviving any failing project. As always, if you have not read the previous three parts of this presentation please go back and have a read. You won’t be successful if you read the last chapter to understand the book, shortcuts don’t work.  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.

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Maintaining other Project Activities

Although you’ll be tempted to work on the problem area of the project to ensure that it is recovering from the spiral as quickly as possible, you must be aware that your attention to the problems might draw you away from the other parts of the project. If those parts are left unchecked, you could find they start to fall into trouble as well. So, you thought your job was easy now that you had talked to the team, then the sponsor and now the client, you would be wrong. It is going to be more difficult. While the project portions that are not in peril may appear to be rolling along just fine, you need to pay attention to them, closely, so they don’t end up in peril. There is no sense in focusing on your problem child and letting others run rampant. In my situation the project portions that were okay drew to a quick close. We were wrapping up the detailed design and we were planning for construction and commissioning. Although the other parts were “within normal targets” I still met with my team regularly and in fact probably walked around and asked more questions of the team with the heighten state of awareness that I was in. So, what can you do to ensure that you stay on top of your “normally running” project portions? A few suggestions are:

1. Communicate with your team about current events.
2. Keep validating work against milestones.
3. Weekly meetings and audits of work
4. Walk around and ask questions (make them aware that you are still around)
5. Keep the team working at the same pace as before, as much as possible.

While these are some first steps, there are others, and I am sure everyone can think of a couple not mentioned. But the challenge of maintaining the work effort is keeping your team focused. They are going to feel the pressure on the project due to the failing portion or failing project.

Project Team Cohesion, Self Esteem, and Stress

The project team will know by now that you have a problem with the project if they may have known before you. They probably also know you will be working on the problem non-stop for the foreseeable future. This knowledge may cause the remaining project team to ease off on the gas or start to slip on their milestones. You need to apply the same project control rigor that you applied to the project portions previously and maybe a bit more.

I would be remiss if I said that my team, the entire team, wasn’t under stress during the project or during the period of the failing project portion. The project had gone through a couple of major changes during the detailed design phase. First the original client project manager left his company. Second, we had a few change notices that modified the scope of the project by adding an extensive amount of work, an additional 1/3, without a change to the end dates. So much for the equilateral triangle of the triple constraints. Then the shoe dropped with the failing of a portion of the project.

Based on my project description you might think or even suggest that if the electrical and control systems portions of this project were going swimmingly and the only ones that should be feeling the stress should be on the team members with the failing process portions. Not exactly. The process team was feeling the heat, they were pretty stressed out since we were grilling them trying get to the bottom of the problems, but these people didn’t live in a vacuum and neither did any team, not even yours. People talk and can see the stress others are under. Stress is like contagion, and it spreads quickly. Think for a moment, of a day in the last week or two weeks ago when you woke up on the wrong side of the bed or had a frustrating commute or conversation in your day. You probably snapped at someone more than likely didn’t deserve it or wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of this any other day? Now imagine two months of this. What can you do? What should you do? Better yet what shouldn’t you do. These are a bunch of questions I asked myself. Based on my experience I have come up with a few suggestions should you end up in the same predicament.

1. Keep a positive outlook and attitude on the prospect of making it through a rough patch. No one likes or needs a chicken little.
2. Do not negatively criticize anything that someone is working on, especially if they are on the recovery team.
3. Talk to each team member one on one. Find out what is troubling them, find out how you can help. They are human after all and could have more going on than just work.
4. Let your team vent. Ensure that the environment is controlled and it’s better one on one.
5. Make sure they get days off. You can’t work 7 days straight and 15 hours a day, without burn out.
6. Set reasonable expectations, the project won’t get better by setting unrealistic expectations.
7. Don’t place blame on anyone for the failed portion of the project. It typically isn’t just one person’s fault. Besides, the buck stops at the PM anyways. You will have more success in getting them refocused and back working to fix the project issues if you don’t.
8. Finally, and most importantly, measure progress in wins, not in losses. Even if it is the end of the world, a positive attitude and reinforcement will be greatly appreciated by your team. And it’s good Karma.

People are people. Stress can have horrible effects on individuals. It can cause family troubles, drinking in excess, under/overeating, high blood pressure, and yes even heart attacks. You need to keep yourself healthy and watch your team. People will literally kill themselves trying to fix a problem. I for one felt the stress of the project failure. Like I mentioned in my opening comments, I was feeling pretty darn good about this project when all hell broke loose. I wasn’t sleeping at night; I would come into the office at 4 am. I was eating then not eating. I even partially broke down in front of the president of our company when I spoke to him about the issues because I felt personally responsible for the failure. You see the way I was raised, as many of you have been was that I am responsible and accountable for what I do or what those in my charge have done. I am certainly not the first one and won’t be the last to feel this way, so imagine those individuals on your team that are at the front line of the problem. Imagine their stress. Take care and handle them carefully because they may be walking a fine line of should I stay or should I go. Trust me, the support that I received from my company (sponsor, managers, and president) Made dealing with the failing portion of the project easier. I was able to get on to the recovery process.

Working to salvage relationships

This may be the last main topic I am going to talk about, but it should not be the last thing you consider. There will be a great deal of discussions after you have identified the issues to your team and to your client and while you are during your recovery efforts. During this time, you will need to have a great deal of patience and practice diplomacy. Your team and client relationships will be put under a considerable amount of strain and stress. Your team members may feel like they are being blamed for a failure and that may not necessarily be wholly true or warranted. The team may not buy the recovery plan, or they may think the solution is unreasonable. Most certainly the client will be unhappy because they are in an unfavorable position of having to deal with a project in trouble. Maybe they thought that this project was going to be a slam dunk, or it was to be their end of career swan song and they were going to go out on a high note. There is a myriad of reasons that can be considered which will cause relationships to be under strain but whatever the reason, you must work to smooth out the rough patches. You need to salvage the relationships to get the work done or to save face with the client and continue to get work from them. Well, how do you suggest I do this? It is not an easy task. I have three suggestions for you that will help maintain or even improve your relationship with the team or the client. Communication, Communication, Communication. Oh, and a whole lot of honesty. You can’t go wrong with being honest.  Don’t try to BS your way through a meeting with the client when you are already in the doghouse. That will not win you any favor with them. The more forthright you are with them the less chance you have in losing and more of their trust and credibility. So, will the team and the client be happy with just communication and no BS? Possibly. It will also take an effort on your part to turn the tide on the problems and help to get everyone back on the same page and continue the effort for a trusting relationship.

There are a few other tips and tricks I have that are beneficial to working relationships in conjunction to communication are:

1. Return the client or team members phone calls/emails promptly. Showing the client that you have them first on your list will go a long way to easing some tension. With the team it will show that you have not abandoned them and will continue to communicate with you.
2. Follow through on what you say you are going to do, and if you can’t meet targets or timelines then you need to communicate that with them directly. It is better to deliver the information in advance and well before any missed deadlines.
3. Don’t deliver the minimum requirements. Although you are trying to get out of your tough spot, go a bit further. You couldn’t please them during the initially identified time frame for this project, so you might want to add a little something to your recover efforts so that they feel like you are really trying. Make sure that it isn’t just for brownie points, make it work something to the client.
4. Take responsibility. This goes far with clients. Don’t cut your team off at the knees in front of your client by blaming them for something when they aren’t able to defend themselves and defend your team when necessary.
5. When specifically dealing with the client and their requirements for discussion with their management, offer to be present to support them and take the burden off them having to explain everything on their own.

Although my last point may not be required, it will go a long way to show the client that you are not going to leave them to their own devices. Not all these efforts are going to work, and you may have to find creative ways to improve the relationship but stick with it. It will take time to rebuild the relationship. Your efforts will not be in vain. SO, my very last tip would be to persevere. It is going to be a tough road to travel, but your willingness and attitude will be key to you and your project.

Project strain, stress, troubles or even failure are not something that we want to deal with as we have previously discussed; however difficult situations or brushes with failure make us better and temper our steel. One of the senior managers that I spoke with about my fear of being terminated said to me that the worst thing a company can do it terminate a project manager or a team member that has failed at a particular task if they show effort and resolve to correct the situation and truly want to be part of the solution. The experience and knowledge that the company would let walk out your door is incredible. The lessons learned by the team or team members, or project manager can’t be taught at school or through a course. These life lessons will enrich the organization and improve project execution and delivery. After thinking about this for a moment, I realized that failure, trouble, or those difficulties all have a purpose. I don’t want to relive any of those situations experienced through the recovery portion of the project failing. But with the tips outlined above if you learned anything it is that a failing project can be recovered.

I am sure that the next project will be one of the furthest things from your mind while dealing with your current project ebbs and flows, but the effort that you put forth in tough situations such as this will be a defining moment in your career.

Thank you for joining us on this 4-part series Surviving Catastrophic Project Failure. No one goes into a project expecting it to fail but it is important to manage expectations that occasionally things do not go according to plan. We hope that this series has been insightful and that you can walk away learning from mistakes made in the past and work towards being better Project Managers every day.

As always, your comments and feedback are welcomed. If you have further questions or an experience to share with us, please feel free to contact us, Info@BTIEng.com.

Until next time, we wish you success.

By: Michael Gaccioli, CEO, Managing Partner

Welcome back for part 3 of our series Surviving Catastrophic Project Failure. In Part Two we identified the 8 Key Components that are crucial to Surviving Catastrophic Project Failure. In Part Three we take a deep dive into the first 4 Components. If you haven’t read the previous two parts, please go back, and have a read. You won’t be successful if you read the last chapter to understand the book, shortcuts don’t work. 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.

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Part 3: The First 4 Components

So, let’s dive in and I’ll show you some of the major components that I feel are a part of surviving a project that is in trouble or worse, failing.

1. Identifying that something is wrong.
2. Determine your current state.
3. Informing project sponsor
4. Inform the client.
5. Maintaining other project activities
6. Project team cohesion
   1. Team self esteem
7. Becoming the informer not the solution provider
8. Working to salvage relationships

Based on my project or any typical project that may be in trouble; what went wrong, why did the problems elude me, the client PM, and the rest of the team for so long? Let’s look at this and pull some of those how to survive lessons out of this project so that we can become better project managers. First things first, we need to determine if something was going wrong.

Identifying that something is wrong

At the beginning of the project, I was connected to the team. I knew everything that was going on and I was providing status reports to the client PM regularly. We even recorded our weekly conferences! So how did the process portion of the project slip away? Well like anything else, looking back you can see all the signs.

1. Over confidence
2. Excessive detail on a particular task, but vagueness on others
3. Protracted time in information gathering.
4. Too much time spent on seemingly insignificant/low value of work.
5. Silence

It isn’t about the team remember. As a PM you need to be asking the right questions and have the right people answer those questions. So, tip number one, avoid questions that provide the one-word response also known as closed questions:

1. How are things going?
2. Are you having any problems that you need help with?

Most importantly we as project managers need to ask the right questions. How many people have been told what the right questions are? How many people had to figure them out by themselves? Well maybe not all the right questions, but the ones that I have figured out for myself, the hard way are:

1. What part of your work is causing the most grief?
2. With respect to the project scope can you tell me what the client is expecting?
3. Can you show me your plan to complete this work?

I am not too sure if anyone reads magazines much anymore, but an article from March 2011 on the Project Management Network really stood out to me. “Raise the Red Flags” by Sandra A. Swanson, interviewee David Walton, managing partner of Bestoutcome (a project management consultancy in Slough, Berkshire, England), identified some great questions that should be asked of us all as project managers in an effort to identify problems:

1. Is there anything keeping the project team up at night?
2. Are there any roadblocks that you (as the PM) can help remove?
3. How is the sponsor handling his or her role? (Are they engaged or overly trusting?)
4. How are you keeping stakeholders engaged and supportive?
5. If it was your money, would you still do the project?
6. How much contingency is left in terms of money and time?

These are all great questions for sure. A lesson I have learned from the project portion that crashed and burned, is all about asking questions. This is my second tip; if you don’t have the answer to your question or the answer is not provided clear and complete, then stop what you are doing, no matter how urgent your immediate tasks are and start looking for the problem(s) because you and your team have your signal light on and are about ready to make a wrong turn. One key factor in finding out about any ongoing issues or problems within your project is communication between you as the PM and your team. It is crucial that your team feels comfortable to approach you about any issues so that a solution can be found. If you are unapproachable or start to ask them projecting questions like “why they let the situation get so bad”, then you are instilling fear in your team. Remember fear of failure leads to procrastination which leads to more problems and the cycle repeats.

Determine your current state

So now what? You are in deep, or you are in really deep with the problems that you are facing with your project or in my case the portion of this project that is beginning its death spiral. As you can imagine or are experiencing, that can cause you to lose focus and start to drift from that high of self-actualization you were once on, back to the safety level in the hierarchy of needs that we spoke about earlier. Back to the act of self-preservation, but you can’t slide backwards, you must fight your way out of this difficult situation. Yes, fight, because the urge to run and hide will be all consuming. You must resist the temptation to pack up that box and sneak out the back door before anyone on the team notices. You need to try and find a solution to the problems that are plaguing your project. How do you do that? Well quite simply, start asking more questions. Well maybe it isn’t that simple? Maybe there is more to do? Or is there? Not everyone is good at asking questions or possibly not asking the right kind of question. Maybe you’re apprehensive about conflict. All I can say about that is it is a bit too late to deal with your insecurities. You need to confront this situation head on, or it will eat you for lunch.

If you have found yourself in this situation, one of the first questions that you need to ask is, “Realistically, where are we at?” After your team or project lead tells you where they are at, the immediate follow up instruction, even before you say “Thank you” is “show me how you determined that level of completion”.

You need to completely understand where you are, or aren’t, before you even think of fixing anything. There is no sense in trying to find a solution until you know how bad the situation is. If you ever think that you understand completely, you don’t. Trust me, you don’t. You have been blind before you might be blind again. Take notes or record the conversation so you can refer to it. Go away and think about what has been said. Remember you are in a situation where you may not be completely focused. Once you have gone over the conversation and demonstration in your mind and you have worked out where you truly are against the project deliverables, formulate other questions to validate the initial response from your team. You need to be able to query your team repeatedly, if necessary, about what they have just said to you and what the status is of the project. You need to ask them the program question from different perspectives so that you can truly validate what they are telling you. This isn’t about cruelty or being pig headed, it is about getting the facts straight. You will need to enter what could be the lions den. You are going to have to let the project sponsor know what’s going on. In my case the walk to the sponsors office was nothing short of surreal. “That is tip number three, validation of what your team is telling you.

Informing the project sponsor

Now that you feel you have a better grasp of how deep your problems are, you’ll need to tell the project sponsor. I imagine that many of you may be thinking to yourself or saying to your neighbor that you should tell the sponsor that something is wrong first. I would agree and disagree with your point of view. I agree the project sponsor needs to know as soon as possible, but disagree because the first two things that is going to come of their mouth will be how bad is it and why did it happen?  So, sprinting off the project sponsor to tell them something is wrong will be good but you’ll have no useful information for them so they can start to help you out. Yes, there is an argument for at least letting them know something is up and you are working on getting all the facts, but having as much information before the conversation happens will save you a lot of grief in running back and forth between the sponsor and the team. So, there I was information in hand and walking straight to the door of the project sponsor. Have you ever seen a movie where the hallway or corridor seems to get longer, infinitely longer as the would-be murder victim walks or runs down it and they seem to be making no forward progress, well that is what it felt like. I dreaded the conversation I was about to have. Just a few days before this moment I had a project audit with the sponsor and I was telling him that everything was moving forward, we had a couple of challenges, but nothing out of the ordinary and all was moving forward as planned. Now I had to go tell him that we were way behind and that our budget was almost spent on their section of the project. I am sure now you know exactly where I would be on the hierarchy of needs.

Now having mustered up enough courage to talk to the sponsor, what are they going to say and what are they going to want to know? Well first, your sponsor (or if you happen to be a sponsor) is worth their weight in any rare earth mineral, they will say what mine said to me.

“Thanks for letting me know about the problem, now tell me how bad it is?” If a project sponsor starts to freak out, it probably isn’t going to be a smooth ride to the finish line. Not that it is going to be a smooth ride while recovering the project, it will certainly help with the personal stress that you will have to manage.

As a side note, if you are a sponsor, take note that project managers don’t purposely try to make projects fail. If you are upset or freak out on your PM, you run the risk of a couple of things will happen. First, you’ll put added stress on your project manager that they don’t need at that time. There will be enough after the problems are resolved to have this discussion. Second, you may end up losing your PM. Yes, they may quit since they may feel so bad about the situation that they feel they need to fall on their sword, or they fear that the situation will become untenable or too much to bear personally. This is a real risk that all sponsors need to take heed of. We are all in this together.

But I digress, so what is it that a project sponsor is going to want to know? Well, a few key items are going to be asked about.

1. What is the problem?
2. How far off the project milestones are we?
3. What is the project budget and where are we compared to where we should be?
4. Does the client know? (More on this later)
5. Do we have an action plan to deal with the issues? What is the plan?
6. Do you have the team’s buy in and cooperation with your plan?
7. What is the mood on the team?
8. What is this going to cost?
9. Do you need anything from me to help with the recovery or your plan?
10. Keep me informed (daily, weekly, or hourly) On how things are going?

Whew, now your head will be spinning, it might not be a firing line like I just said, but it will be tough. Based on your responses the conversation will take on a life of its own and you’ll delve deep into the project issues. Be prepared to spend a lot of time with the sponsor and be prepared to have the questions repeated. They need to know how the problem, solution, and the path forward are going to affect the bottom line of the project, the relationship with the client, the impact on the team and the other project/company employees. Oh, and did I mention too corporate bottom-line?

This brings me to tip number 4, be prepared and listen to your sponsor. They have more money than likely been down this road at some point in their career. However, if they freak out, they probably haven’t dealt with this solution, but listen to them anyway and they will have some good advice either way. Now that you have let the project sponsor know about the issues, you are going to have to talk with the client and let them know about any issues or delays that will affect the project. This isn’t going to be a pony ride.

Inform the Client

Now clients can come in all different shapes, sizes, and demeanors. Depending on your project criticality to the client’s overall operation or profitability you may have an easy time identifying the issues or you will be roasted at the stake. Regardless of what the conversation will look like or what the outcome will be, the client must know, and you had better be prepared for some difficult conversations.

During my project I had to make first contact with the client about the problems and quite frankly after the team couldn’t demonstrate what they had completed or the progress that the client thought we should have made, he already knew there was an issue. In a way that was a relief, but at the same time, I was afraid of what I would be walking into. The problem was, like me, he didn’t know how bad it was until we discussed it.

The way that you approach this conversation will determine how the remaining portions of the project work will go and how the recovery will unfold. The client is going to want to know a couple of key bits of information. First, they are going to want to know if the project deliverable(s) will arrive on time. In my case the portion of the project that was in a tailspin was not critical to the plant operation of to the bottom line of the company, but the answer was still no. Second, they are going to want to know what the expected cost for this delay will be. After that you can bet that you are going to get the “how could you let the project get so bad/delayed/behind.” I know clients for the most part is well meaning, and they are looking for answers rather than just pinning a guilt trip sort of question on you. You must be prepared for this question. It is going to come. In some cases, the client will tear a strip off you and others they will understand. They may have even determined the potential for this problem in their risk analysis and already have a plan formulating in their mind about how to help in the recovery. Either way, tell them the truth. If you have had a good working relationship with the client from the beginning of the project, then this conversation should be a bit less painful than if you haven’t been communicating with them. You need to be open and honest with the client. And that is tip number 5. There is no sense in sugar coating it at this point. Give them everything you know so they can prepare for a discussion with their project sponsors or stakeholders with the information you are providing. They too are not going to be happy about talking with their sponsors. Essentially you are going to have the same questions asked by them as the project sponsor asked. Be patient and make sure you keep them informed about your path forward. Get them involved in the recovery and the recovery will likely go smoother. The client isn’t hoping you’ll fail, but rather they are counting on you to succeed. The important thing about getting the client involved and having these discussions is to inform them, but one of the warnings you have to heed is that you don’t forget about the other portions of the project.

Thanks for joining me on this journey, exploring the first 4 Components that I felt were important parts of surviving a project in trouble. Next time we will conclude this series with the final 4 Components and wrap up with any insights and lessons learned.

Until then, I wish you success.

By: Michael Gaccioli, CEO, Managing Partner

Welcome back for part 2 of our series Surviving Catastrophic Project Failure. We are going to take a dive into the project. This section will set up the eight (8) key survival tactics that I have taken away and use to this day if something starts to become problematic. If you haven’t read the first part, please go back, and have a read. You won’t be successful if you read the last chapter to understand the book, shortcuts don’t work.  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.

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Part 2: The Project

We all hate to admit failure or be responsible for a failure. To understand why we really don’t like to talk about or admit failure; we need to look at our own psyche. This stigma comes from a place that is deep with us and is depicted most effectively by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Most of you have probably heard of Maslow and his theory, but for those of you who haven’t or have forgotten, Maslow theorized that there were five basic levels of Human needs.

The base of this hierarchy of needs are the survival requirements, these being the most of our needs and the foundation of our requirements for life, things like food, shelter, water… The highest level of need is self-actualization. Essentially this highest level fulfills the need to achieve a “Zen” like status. This is where you would be comfortable with who you are, what you do and what you stand for. Although Maslow’s theory has been rebuffed for being too individualistic and not considering the collective in his theory, I am going to disregard those for the purposes of this discussion, because really, it’s all about number one now, isn’t it? Out of all of these needs it is the second level that we will revert to the most. Safety. The security of body, resources, and employment. Interesting that employment should be so low on this hierarchy, right? Well not really. Employment and by extension money means we have some sort of security in life. Security to buy food, provide for our families and when this is threatened, we start to become fearful.

It is not a stretch to think that as we fear our job or the ability to support our family, we start to regress in the hierarchy of needs back to the safety level. Some people even try to protect themselves by not acknowledging an impending failure. They try to avoid the inevitable or don’t disclose the problem(s) to others such as sponsors or stakeholders. Not being a psychologist, I am going to blame this on our parents and educators, because they aren’t here to defend themselves. Seriously, if you think about it, when were young we undoubtedly did something wrong, got yelled at, were grounded or worse spanked. The learned or acquired reaction would be to hide or avoid the thing we did wrong or what we perceived as wrong, to avoid this consequence. This is obviously the wrong reaction. Thanks mom and dad. So how does this relate to the topic at hand? Well fear of failure or worse the act of failing causes us to sink back from the self-actualization or self- esteem plateau that we may have been at and depending on how severe the problem is we begin to worry about ourselves and our family and yes drop right back to protect the safety of all we hold dear.

I read an article recently about research into the fear of failure at Carleton University in Ottawa. The article provided me with some insight into aspects I wouldn’t have thought about otherwise when dealing with fear and Maslow’s theory.

The article entitled “Fear of Failure” discusses the relationship between fear and procrastination and how the fear of failure is one of the main reasons for procrastination. As a procrastinator, this seems like a reasonable assumption. The underlying theory of this article is very interesting and relates perfectly to what will be discussed in this presentation. One of the researchers at Carleton, Adam McCaffrey presented some preliminary data from his thesis. Under the supervision of Dr. Timothy Pychyl, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton. McCaffrey (Adam) measured the fear of failure and the relationship it has with procrastination. He measured its effect when considering the notion of vitality. Not surprisingly the higher the measure in the fear of failure the higher the prediction of procrastination, conversely the higher procrastination. From these findings McCaffery and his team considered the relation between the fear of failure and procrastination when considering a measure of competence or our feeling of being capable. It turns out that even though we have a fear of failure, if we feel competent, we are less likely to procrastinate, thus getting on with the job at hand. Simply put, if we feel like something is going wrong or we have done something wrong, we are less likely to deal with it. We want to turn a blind eye and hope that it will go away, but if we feel like we are competent to deal with the situation at hand, we will try to solve the problem, even if we might still fail.

It may sound like I am rambling about our inner workings and psychology, but it is necessary to understand what makes us and our teams tick for us to understand or appreciate why a project can fail or what challenges we will be faced with.

Now, let’s look at the project details that I was managing that took a turn into a very unpleasant detour.

Here is the set up.

• Project: A natural gas processing facility control system migration with an operations simulation training system
• Duration: 1.5 years
• Project manager: yours truly
• Team size: 32 engineers/technologists at the high point
• Project value: $9.7 million (total install costs)

I took over the control system migration project at the beginning of detailed design phase from another PM and I felt this was going to be a great project to manage. The control systems were a known entity to our team as they have done this work many times before. The team was amazing! We had some real superstars in the engineering business at the time. Lead control system engineer, one of the most intelligent and respected control system programmers I know with years of experience behind him. This guy is a no-nonsense kind of guy, but he would be the very last person to tear your head off if things are a bit rough. Lead electrical engineer was intense, analytical, and meticulous. The lead process control engineer was respected and crazy smart. These engineers were known for their expertise and knowledge and they are also strong willed and independent when it comes to how they execute their work. All three had very different personalities and required a different approach to communication and although I could see some challenges with these guys and getting information out to them, I was on cloud nine. I had a team that could knock the project out of the park, and this was going to be an amazing job.

We were starting up the detailed design. The skies were blue, the birds were singing with rainbows and sunshine with the team was skipping through the halls to get to meetings and discussions (figuratively of course). Project reports were coming in from the team and I trusted my engineers implicitly. They were on top of the project and their respective work effort. They knew what work had to be done and getting it done. We all are loving life. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?

Well not exactly, in retrospect, there were warning signs. Who can really say that there were warning signs that early in the project? A little slip in getting a status here and issues of normal or expected magnitude there. Nothing too major or so it seemed. The requests that I made to show progress appeared to be of satisfactory quality, but as I would find out, they were not. As engineering progressed the little items that made me think, “dig a bit deeper on this” didn’t get that attention. At the time it didn’t seem necessary and there was always something more important to be done. All the engineers on the team were expressing that there were scope issues that needed to be handled and I was dealing with them in the appropriate fashion, discussions with the client, status reporting of the progress and meetings with the team and as required, change notices. I knew very well what the electrical and controls engineer were talking about because that was my background. I didn’t know exactly what the process engineer was talking about to the comprehension level that was needed.

At the beginning of the new year the client project manager that started the project left the project and the company and a new one took his place. Let me say that a change in the project manager is never easy and when issues start to rear their head, that’s the last thing you need. The education of the new project manager took up a considerable amount of time and status reports and checks took a back seat to ensuring the new PM was up to speed on the project and how we were managing his budget. At this point things felt slippery. I was not getting the warm fuzzy feelings from one part of my team, but we discussed the slippage that was occurring and decided that we could handle them internal to the project. Then it happened, the new PM wanted to see for himself how things were going. Confident, I set up a meeting and the team was to present their work. Control lead and team, no problem. Electrical lead and team, no problem. Process leads and team, uh-oh, not so good. The client PM and I had a chat and he felt that something was amiss. After his departure I checked it out and sure enough with the added pressure of the client PM’s request the problems started to fall on the floor and pile up and started to get deep. A new meeting was booked with the process team and client PM to demonstrate the work completed and still the process team couldn’t display what they had accomplished in the past 8 months. How could these problems have gone this far without me noticing? 

Time to bring in the big boys. I discussed the issue with our office manager, my boss and told him how bad I thought it was and it was bad. I tried my best to dig into the problems, but the stress was mounting. I was trying to manage the other two portions of the project, but the team was feeling the heat from the client PM because of the failing portion of the project. The only saving grace about the failing portion of the project was that it was not mission critical. This was a nice to have on the project rather than a need to have. The team could feel the pressure. We had to separate the stressors from the controls and electrical teams that were being produced by the process team, not an easy task. Senior management from our company and the client were involved at this point and let me tell you, those sleepless nights I spoke about in the introduction, wondering if I was going to lose my job didn’t last a few days or a week, but two long months and even after that I was still looking over my shoulder for months. There was no indication from my boss, or senior management that I was going to walk the plank, they were very understanding, and I am thankful still to this day. One of the senior managers gave me some sage advice and insights as to why, I will share that tidbit with you later. Eventually we managed to agree on the scope of completion and cost splitting for this process portion of the project. Reduction in scope, expert help, lots of cash and many late nights for all involved finally brought the end of this portion of the project, successfully, but I guess that depends on your definition of success.

So, let’s dive in and I’ll show you some of the major components that I feel are a part of surviving a project that is in trouble or worse, failing.

• Identifying that something is wrong.
• Determine your current state.
• Informing project sponsor
• Inform the client.
• Maintaining other project activities
• Project team cohesion
• Team self esteem
• Becoming the informer not the solution provider
• Working to salvage relationships

Based on my project or any typical project that may be in trouble, what went wrong, why did the problems elude me, the client PM, and the rest of the team for so long? Let’s look at this and pull some of those ‘how to survive lessons’ out of this project so that we can become better project managers today! First things first, we need to determine if something was going wrong.

Thank you again for joining me on this trip down memory lane and learning about failure. Next time, we will dive into the first four (4) key components of surviving a project failure.

Until then, I wish you success.

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.

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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.