Regardless of what an organisation's project management structure is, one of the greatest fears and potential problems a project manager faces is the dreaded "unexpected project". This event often becomes a CIO's nightmare as well, as it's often his or her decision on how to handle staffing needs, adjust timetables, and determine what must be put on hold to tackle the new effort.
Determining how to reallocate project resources in order to achieve organisational goals and deal with an unanticipated project can be difficult to manage. I'll look at the issues associated with this type of event, and project management best practices that can enable success.
Best practices in project approvals
Project management usually begins with effective planning of defined projects that are typically approved by executive or senior management. The process of approving and defining projects is often an established and refined procedure that involves several analyses. These include ROI, payback period, present value or decision tree analysis, or methods such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process, or other decision support systems.
Due to their unscheduled nature, unexpected projects are often shortchanged when it comes to this type of rigorous analysis and approval. However, the more analysis and approval you can work into the unexpected project's timeline, the more successful it will be.
Be especially wary of "sacred cow" projects, which typically occur when a powerful enterprise player simply mandates that a new and unexpected project is needed. No analysis is traditionally performed on sacred cows, making them even more difficult to manage.
Sacred cows aside, most unexpected projects typically stem from changing business conditions. But no matter what prompts a new project, it is the project team that is tapped to effectively achieve the organisational goals of the new project while maintaining the current projects on its plate.
The options to choose from
There are several ways to meet the demands that an unexpected project brings:
- Crashing
- Fast tracking
- Constrained resource scheduling
- Changing expectations and deliverables for other projects
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