Week 5 Project

Page 1 of 1 MGT3035 Fundamentals of Project Management

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Impact of a Prolonged Project There are numerous instances which depict how one can be committed to a project that should not be completed. One such instance is the designing and building of Hercules, a large cargo aircraft designed during World War II. At the beginning of World War II, Howard Hughes’ company was assigned the task of designing a very large cargo aircraft to transport wartime materials and troops across the Atlantic Ocean. However, the project faced numerous delays related to technical, supply, and political issues. These delays pushed the completion of the aircraft project beyond the end of the war, past the time when it was really needed. Ideally, the project should have been hauled after the war ended. However, Howard Hughes was determined to complete this massive airplane, and Hercules took its first and only flight on November 2, 1947, two years after the war. The airplane had no viable commercial application and became a museum piece in Long Beach, California. As you can see, some projects take on lives of their own. They continue to exist only because of the momentum built up from their prior existence. Some projects that should be closed continue to exist because of psychological reasons. There is a well-studied human behavior that does not give up even when all available information points to an inevitable failure. Obviously, managers don’t get rewarded for failed projects; they get rewarded for successful ones. Though you may consider rational decisions as being driven by economic or similar logic, organizational politics plays a crucial role driven by an equally powerful rationality. Thus, many times projects continue to exist for career advancement reasons, as well as job retention reasons. The reasons for the continued existence of projects, makes it clear why planned project closure is an important and overlooked phase of the project life cycle. Though it sounds odd, project closure should start in the planning stage. That is, planning efforts should document how the project will be closed. Knowing closure requirements, right at the beginning, precludes detrimental surprises and helps avoid scope creep. You have learned about project audits. Project audits may be done at any time; this is especially true for large projects with many external stakeholders. Audits at critical, periodic review points, determine whether or not the project will continue. This certainly applies at project closure; auditing a project at closure may even be a fiduciary responsibility, not just a good management option.