Why projects fail

I have been on a few failed projects and a few successful projects. A project fails because of many reasons. The reason for this post is because I have been letting this blog slide and I hope to be more regular. Also there is an excellent presentation by the people at Head First. I loved the line "Don't go in the basement" as it happens in horror movies. Seriously, people still do go to the basement. These guys have a nice sense of humor.

If any of the projects that you worked on has not failed, stop right now and leave. There is no reason to spoil a good thing.

The four ways that the presentation mentions is

• Things the boss does
• Things the software does (or doesn’t do)
• Things the team should’ve done
• Things that could have been caught

According to me there are a couple more

• The project did not get enough support or did not get the right team - there are times that a project is created because the boss makes a bad call, and that is mentioned in the first reason, but my explanation is, sometimes a project is designed because of market pressure or "We gotta do something". Lackluster support is given, company weight is not put behind product and sales and marketing is flat. This is one where there is an A-Rod and a Jeter but the rest of the team is not that good or on the same page. The whole team (those involved) has to be behind the project 100%
  
• Project Attrition - Many key members leave the project. This is self explanatory.

What can you do? Review, check, recheck, gut check, progress check, status check, mood check, attitude check. Watch people in the team, there will be signals and notice if the level of communication steadily tapers off, this is a warning sign.

A recipe for success?

I found this blog while surfing around, have not had time to look at the blog in detail or do not know anything about the author (david anderson) but I loved the recipe for success

Recipe for Success: Focus on Quality, Reduce Work-in-Progress, Balance Capacity against Demand, Prioritize

I think that this works very well. Nicely put.
http://haloscan.com/tb/agileman/Recipe_For_Success
http://www.agilemanagement.net/Articles/Weblog/RecipeForSuccess.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/03/11/david-anderson-s-recipe-for-success.aspx
Here is a commentary and interpretation on the above recipe for success.

Good new

I have passed the PMP. More to come later

Review of the free PMP Headfirst exam

The exam that the head first folks have put out is quite nice. The questions are a nicely put though a little on the easy side I thought. Maybe because I am used to Rita Mulcahy's hard questions.

There were a couple of questions that were wrong. By wrong I mean, they clashed with what the PMBOK says. For example, the scope management process, according the PMBOK, its scope management planning, scope definition, create WBS, scope verification and scope control. That is the way that it is laid out in the PMBOK. But according to the head first guys it should be scope management planning, scope definition, create WBS, scope control and scope verification. Well, I assume that PMBOK is right. There was another question that was of the same nature. Overall, I think 4-5 questions were either wrong or they did not make sense. But, I am not a PMP so my opinion could be wrong.


Overall, I would recommend taking the exam, one, coz its free and two, coz its very good. I would rate this exam over the Whizlabs exam. Also, do grab the Head First PMP book, it would not be a waste of your time. It make learning the PMP fun. Keep this as a second book that you should read in the tail end of your preparation.

Free PMP Exam

Head First PMP Free Exam and Exam PDF for the pdf.

Thanks to the head first folks for doing this, excellent time for me personally. I am enjoying their book, will post a review when I get some breathing room.

On preparation for pmp

Its been quite for a while on the blog. One of the reasons I stopped writing the chapter reviews was that there was already a lot of good information out there for potential pmp candidates. I would not be able to add too much value.

So I figured I add value by writing about what is not out there, such as how to finish the PMP application. Be sure to allocate at least 10 hours of time for the application. It is quite involved and requires a lot of information.

Here are some tips:

• Use this template. It is very good. I kept it around at work or at home and when I had some time, I went in and punched in the hours. Make sure that your figures are at least in the ballpark for the 5 process groups. For me, the executing process group was around 38% and closing was around 8%. Can't say whether this is fine, but since my application got accepted, I would say they might accept it.
• At the end of each project that you do, there is a 500 word limit to describe the deliverables on the project on the PMI application website. I read somewhere that you could just write what you did on the project as a deliverable. Here are some examples:
  
• SignOff from Customers, Delivered Task to team members, Design Program and System Process Flow, Fixing bugs in programs and its documentations (as Lessons Learned), Inspect Quality of deliverables, Listed Required Skills and Resources, Maintain Change Request Database and Follow Ups, Maintained Checklist of Program and Customisations, Maintained Deliverables Status, Measure and Control Deliverables, Organised Team Meet, Participated in hiring of required resources, Project Plan, Quality Test, Rectify if any errors, Regularly Updated StakeHolders, Resource Allocation, Resource Risk Analysis, Studied and Documented End User Requirements (Scope), Studied, Designed and Documented Interface with Legacy System, Support Development of Software Applications, Testing of Deliverables, Weekly Status Report
• Remember, these are just examples, use your own! Most of these were copied from a yahoo group post (that I cannot find), I used my own that were similar but more project specific.
  

• It is better to provide more hours that the 4500 they ask for. I provided more, but these hours were within the last 6 years
• Here is a useful document
  
• Its take PMI a week to get back to you
• I was not audited (yay) so I do not know how that is like

The PMI application is long and tedious and one of the longest applications I have filled, but a good application process, they want you to really think back and evaluate what you have been doing with your career.

Do not lie on the application because if you do get audited, you will not be able to back the numbers.

Update on PMP prep

Whizlabs: I had signed up for Whizlabs exam prep a couple of months back. I finally finished 4/5 exams with a passing percentage. I sent whizlabs the results and now I have my 36 PDUs. Whizlabs gives you 44 PDU's total. I will finish the 5th exam later on during the studying process.

Overall, the whizlabs exams were fine. I was not overly impressed by them. I get irritated by grammatical errors when I am reading, though I guess I might be making tons of those errors myself. Second, the exams were designed in certain areas to take a sentence from the PMBOK and ask a question that relates to that exact point. So unless you remember what was written you cannot get the question right. I hope the actual exam is not like that.

PMI: I registered on their site and am now trying to finish the application process thats quite long.

Head first PMP: Just got the book, gonna try and see whether it is any good.