Will your project be a success? We'd all like to know the answer to this question at the start of any project. Short of hiring a clairvoyant, what can we do?
First, read this article by Peter Osborne: Giving Projects a Clean Bill of Health. Peter says, "common pitfalls could easily be avoided by undertaking a 'health check' regularly and acting early on the intelligence it provides."
Second, spend 5 minutes with our Health Check Tool to see where you might need to concentrate your efforts to help secure a successful outcome for your project.
Don't wait until something is fundamentally wrong with your project before you carry out a health check. Find out now where your problems might lie.
I'd like to get some views on the Health Check Tool. Is it useful?
Duncan
Will Your Project be a Success?
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Mohamed.Benmerikhi
- Expert Member
- Posts: 57
- Joined: Thu 20 Sep 2012 10:19 am
- Location: France
Dear Duncan,
This is the million dollar question. The thing is, tools for health checks are useful to the extent that complexity is relatively low. In other words, a significant number of components in the WBS are materialisable according to known processes. However, in projects of high complexity such as R&D projects whose progress is dependent solely on the results obtained, it would be difficult to foresee any kind of progress, and consequently success. I believe, in this respect, success criteria would have to be defined by taking into account the complexity of the final results or deliverables.
So to answer the question, a number of contingencies must be accounted for. Not to forget that projects success criteria are based on a foreseeable state of the world. I mean that at the start the world is at the given state and by the time the project ends, the world would have changed to a certain extent. Thus, the efficiency of health check tools is highest if nothing much changes in the project external environment. (Sorry if this seems a little philosophical)
Regards
Mohamed
This is the million dollar question. The thing is, tools for health checks are useful to the extent that complexity is relatively low. In other words, a significant number of components in the WBS are materialisable according to known processes. However, in projects of high complexity such as R&D projects whose progress is dependent solely on the results obtained, it would be difficult to foresee any kind of progress, and consequently success. I believe, in this respect, success criteria would have to be defined by taking into account the complexity of the final results or deliverables.
So to answer the question, a number of contingencies must be accounted for. Not to forget that projects success criteria are based on a foreseeable state of the world. I mean that at the start the world is at the given state and by the time the project ends, the world would have changed to a certain extent. Thus, the efficiency of health check tools is highest if nothing much changes in the project external environment. (Sorry if this seems a little philosophical)
Regards
Mohamed
Health check tools can help, but a project manager should have the ability to go deep inside the things, assess and analyze if an unfavorable situation can graduate to a potentially threatening risk or issue with the passage of time which can ultimately fail a project. Such tools can give him a true view of things, but ultimately he has to think of right solutions and apply them timely. So the success of a project depends a lot on his intellect, evaluation and his ability to make quick and firm decisions.