Pinto - Case Study 13.3 (485-486) – “Dear Mr. President -Please Cancel our Project”
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Project Management Journal, Vol. 45, No. 1, 67–75
© 2014 by the Project Management Institute
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/pmj.21395
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ABSTRACT ■
This paper reviews the problems of project
management as reported by 1,879 individu-
als employed in the construction, manufac-
turing, process, and service industries in
North-West Europe over 23 years. Data
obtained by a written questionnaire confirms
that organizational relationships need the
most attention. The data exhibits no trends
over the 23 years. It indicates that many of
the problems of project management are
“institutional”; in other words, they are due
to organizational cultures rather than inher-
ent in project work. The evidence supports
the view that poor discipline at the front-end
of projects results in too much “fire-fighting”
in project execution to overcome problems
that could have been prevented. Prevention
of these institutional problems requires
action at the level of corporate governance,
above the level of project management.
KEYWORDS: project problems;
avoidable problems; “fire-fighting”;
project governance
Evidence-Based Scope for Reducing “Fire-Fighting” in Project Management Stephen Wearne, Management of Projects Group, School of Mechanical, Aerospace & Civil Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
INTRODUCTION ■
M any publications have presented the results of investigations into problems of achieving project objectives, particularly with atten- tion to delays, cost over-runs, poor quality contractual and sup- ply chain faults, their causes and consequences for project and
program successes and failures (Bredillet, 2008). Those studies proceeded with questions to organizations and individuals—including of course project managers—and were planned to obtain information and views on their cho- sen subjects.
This paper is complementary to those investigations; it presents the results of open-ended questions to people in project management on prob- lems that should be studied. The data was obtained about the problems and their causes over 23 years from individuals employed by asset owners, suppli- ers, contractors, and consultant organizations in the construction, manufac- turing, process, and service industries based in North-West Europe.
A total of 1,879 respondents provided data. Their job titles varied greatly, and although titles are an imprecise guide, they indicated that most worked in technical, commercial, and middle management roles for projects. The opportunities to question them were taken when they were entering profes- sional development and post-experience project management programs run by various training and university organizations. Although they were not a random sample of people in these roles in their industries, they had been selected by their employers for courses and were likely to represent their able and more promising employees and thus serve as knowledgeable and constructive guides to the problems. The data was obtained using a short written questionnaire. The questionnaire asked each individual what he or she considered to be the greatest problem of project management, the cause of the problem, and whether the problem was common to both large and small projects. Asking what was the “greatest” problem was designed to force a single statement rather than a list of problems. The first purpose of asking each person what he or she considered to be problems of project manage- ment was to guide course leaders and speakers on adapting their programs to the interests of the people attending them. In this context, valid and reliable information was expected.
The Respondents’ Statements on the Greatest Problems of Project Management The respondents to the questionnaire were free to use their own words in stating the greatest problem. Classification of their statements was there- fore needed to look for changes over time or differences between industrial sectors of employment. For this purpose, a set of categories was chosen, which met these two criteria:
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2007; Meredith & Mantel, 2006; Morris & Pinto, 2004) and they correspond with the factors defined by various authors as the main threats to successful proj- ect management (Clarke, 1999; Cooke- Davies, 2002; Nelson, 2007; Yeo, 2002). It is therefore not surprising that they are dominant in the data on the greatest problems of project management.
More surprising was the relatively small reporting of some other catego- ries, particularly Risk, Quality, and Safety. The word “risk” appeared in some of the statements of the causes of problems of Organization, Time, Project Definition, Change, Contracts, and Cost. Poor quality was mentioned in stating the causes of problems of Organization and Contracts. As stated earlier, Risk, Quality, and Safety were included as separate categories of prob- lems because the practical value of their concepts and techniques had been increasingly emphasized in papers and reports. In reviewing the data obtained, Dobbins (2003) suggested that their low ranking may be because the empha- sis on them in papers and reports has stimulated the development of effective risk, quality, and safety strategies in companies and public authorities—to the point of preventing most or all the potential problems. The low reporting in the Quality and Safety categories may also be because, to people employed on projects, these are seen as constraints
The data in Table 1 shows that 33% of the greatest problems fell into the Organization category and that, together, the two categories Organi- zation and Time encompass 54% of all the statements of the greatest problems. The dominance of these categories of the problems is illustrated in Figure 1.
The Greatest Problems
The categories Organization and Time, along with Resources, Project Definition, Cost, Contracts, and Change, are the topics given the most attention in the literature (Cleland & Gareis, 2006; Lock,
• To use the words that appeared most frequently in the respondents’ state- ments of the greatest problem, for example: communication, cost, time, and resources
• To cover the topics stated in papers in leading journals as important in project management, for example: quality, risk, and safety (Themistocleous & Wearne, 2000; Bredillet, 2008)
Based on these criteria, 11 catego- ries were used to classify the statements of the greatest problems:
Project Definition—including busi- ness objectives, customer’s need, project scope Resources—including personal time, priorities, management support Organization—including roles, com- munications, structure, leadership, teamwork, trust Time—including planning, schedul- ing, delays, time over-runs Cost—including estimating, budget- ing, earned value, cost over-runs Quality—including standards Safety—including health, environment Risk—including uncertainty, risk allo- cation, and risk management Contracts—including buying or sell- ing hardware, software or services, sub-contracts Change—to scope or priorities Inexperience—including lack of knowl- edge
To be brief, the 11 categories are referred to by the first words in the above list in the remainder of the paper.
Some of the statements of the great- est problem fell into more than one category. As reported in a review of the data obtained up to 2004, classifi- cation of each of these was guided by the answer given to the question on the cause of the problem (Hussain & Wearne, 2005).
The Data
Table 1 shows the totals of the respon- dents’ statements of the greatest prob- lem in each of the 11 categories.
Category of Greatest Problem N %
Project Definition 202 11
Resources 222 12
Organization 624 33
Time 399 21
Cost 98 5
Quality 14 1
Safety 0 0
Risk 48 3
Contracts 102 5
Change 121 6
Inexperience 49 3
Total 1,879
Table 1: Numbers in each category of greatest problem of project management.
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Figure 1: Dominance of some categories of the stated problems of project management.
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try. Figure 3 shows the distribution of the statements of the greatest problem of project management stated by the respondents in each of these sectors.
Figure 3 shows some differences between sectors of industry in the reporting of the greatest problems of project management. Outstanding is the clearly greater reporting of the Organization category of problem in the Construction sector. This greater reporting is logical for the sector in which essentially people and their resources move from project to project to deliver to the other sectors as the receivers of the assets constructed. That the Construction sector sees Project Definition as less problematic than do their project customers in the other sectors is also to be expected. The data indicates other lesser differences but shows that the Organization, Time, and Resources categories are dominant as the greatest problems in all these sec- tors of industry.
Year to Year Data Figure 4 shows the pattern of the 1,879 respondents’ statements of the greatest problems in project management over the years of using the questionnaire to obtain the data.
the greater number of people employed on any one project, and Time problems would be greater because size requires more activities in parallel and there- fore more time interdependence. On the other hand, we expected that Resources problems would be greater on small projects because, as in the authors’ and others’ experience, small projects com- mand less attention in companies, and thus may have to “fight” the larger ones for resources. The data displayed in Figure 2 confirms those expectations. The ranking of the 11 categories of prob- lems does not vary greatly with size, but as indicated, Time was stated by some delegates to be more a problem of large projects, and Resources more a problem of small projects. Organization was stated to be less of a problem for the smaller projects, also as expected, but all these differences are small compared with the differences between these and the other categories of problems. The Organization, Time, and Resources cat- egories of problems were dominant for all project sizes.
Sectors of Industry The delegates were employed in the Construction, Manufacturing, Process, Services, and Utilities sectors of indus-
rather than variables in project deci- sions. As a result, the problems are expressed in terms of poor organization or project definition and the conse- quent impacts on time, resources, and cost. The practical result is that Risk, Quality, and Safety are not themselves seen as great problems.
Change was also not stated to be a major category of problems. Some 6% of the answers fell into this category. The word “change” appeared in a few statements of the causes of problems of Organization, Project Definition, Time, Resources, Contracts, Cost, and Risk. Changes are not necessarily negative in impact or “tragic,” as pointed out by Terwiesch and Loch (1999) in a study of change orders in an engineering orga- nization; rather, they are parts of the process of development of a project and coping with uncertainty. Changes can thus be opportunities for real improve- ments to help achieve project objec- tives, but they can greatly affect the planned use of resources, budgets, and schedules. Leading authors consider that controlling changes is therefore a major task in managing projects, but they do not present it as the greatest task or problem (Hass, 2003; Meredith & Mantel, 2006; Turner, 2009).
Size of Projects In answering the questionnaire, 64% of the respondents stated that the greatest problem they had defined was com- mon to large and small projects. A minority stated that the problems dif- fered depending on the size of the project. Of this minority, 75% stated that the problem they had defined was more a problem of large projects, and 25% stated the problem occurred more often in small projects, as shown in Figure 2.
Many authors state that the needs of small projects are different from those of large projects (for instance Loftus, 1999), but no reported studies have pro- vided quantitative data. We expected that Organization problems would be greater on large projects, because of
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Figure 2: Greatest problems of project management—Comparisons between large and small projects.
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Comparable Data Mantel (2003) reported the responses from over 500 U.S. project manag- ers when asked about the single most important problem they faced in their day to day work as a project manager. Coping with change was the absolute majority response. Those U.S. project managers were questioned during the late 1980s and early 1990s, overlapping with the start of collecting the European data shown in Table 1. Economic or mar- ket fluctuations over time seem unlikely to explain the apparent differences between their statements. Mantel sug- gested that the difference in responses may be due to the wording of the ques- tions asked. His guidance to the U.S. project managers defined “importance” in terms of “the amount of trouble the problem causes you as a manager,” rather than in terms of potential or actual economic impact on the project. They were asked for the issue causing them the greatest managerial problem in their role. The European respondents were asked about the greatest problem of project management, not the same question, and they responded more in terms of the consequences of problems of Organization and Project Definition and their impacts on Time, Resources, Contracts, Cost, and Risk. Mantel (2003) commented that among the U.S. project managers coping with change was often described in terms of problems of com- munication.
In a review of studies of causes of IT project failures, Nelson (2007) followed other earlier studies in grouping them into four categories: People, Process, Product, and Technology. He found that people and process mistakes were dominant. Motivation and relationships appeared to be the largest influences on the People failures, corresponding well with our Organization category as the greatest problem. Nelson found that wasted time and optimistic underesti- mating appeared to be the largest influ- ences on Process failures, corresponding to our finding that Time and Resources are the next greatest categories. Nelson
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Figure 3: Greatest problems of project management—Comparisons between industry sectors.
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Figure 4: Greatest problems of project management—Comparisons between year clusters, 1991 to 2013.
As illustrated in Figure 4, the relative importance of the categories of the great- est problems fluctuated, but the same categories of problems—Organization, Time, and Resources—remained domi- nant over the 23 years. The fluctuations could be due to differences in the proj- ect work of the respondents from year
to year, for example, as projects pro- ceed from stage to stage from feasibil- ity studies through to completion and hand-over. The general result significant for defining the demands on project management is that the data exhibits no trend for any of the categories to become more or less dominant.
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project management education, train- ing, and assessment.
“Organization” as the Greatest Problem
Because Organization was the larg- est category of greatest problems reported by the 1,879 respondents, the 624 responses placed in this category were reviewed to see if they constituted two or more distinct categories, which should be considered separately.
The statements in the Organization category referred to problems of author- ity, delegation, influence, interfaces, procedures, relationships, and related issues. A random sample of 1 in 20 of these statements is shown in Table 2. The word “communication” appears in many of the 624 Organization state- ments, but was used mainly to embrace a variety of related problems rather than form a distinct sub-category. Few of the problems as stated could be classified as relating only to structure, systems, leadership, or to other possible sub-cat- egories. Therefore there appeared to be no practical value in considering sub- divisions of the Organization category of problems. This conclusion is consis- tent with the academic and managerial literature on organizations; structures, systems, and leadership are the three sub-headings commonly used, but with emphasis that these are interdependent (Handy, 1999).
The respondents’ references to communications support the view that lack of attention to systems may be one underlying cause of problems. This has been observed elsewhere as a common weakness in engineering and other industries (Parnaby, Wearne, & Kochhar, 2003). Structure, systems, and leadership all need attention. Defects in any one of these are not compen- sated by the others. In other words, all organizations need some structure of direction and accountability, systems for information flow and decisions, and personal skills in relationships between individuals and groups. It is the relative importance of structure, systems, and leadership that varies with the culture,
to answer questions based on a list of topics presented to them rather than choose openly. They were not required to select one topic. As a result, most top- ics scored over 50%. Again, those results are therefore not directly comparable with the data presented in this paper, but they are consistent in that their top ranked topic Leadership corresponds with the top ranked Organization cat- egory of problem (as shown in Figure 1). Although all the above studies asked different questions in different indus- tries and at different times, the results obtained complement the conclusions drawn from the 1,879 statements of the greatest problems. The classification of these statements can thus provide an empirical typology for further research into the problems of project manage- ment and their causes.
Project Management Bodies of Knowledge In their respective Project Management Bodies of Knowledge (PMBoKs), the Project Management Institute (PMI, 2006), the International Project Mana- gement Association (IPMA, 1999), and the Association for Project Management (APM, 2012) list sets of topics or skills they consider to be relevant to educa- tion, training, and assessment for proj- ect management. The data reported here confirms the common view reflected in these professional bodies of knowl- edge and in textbooks that the tasks of project management encompass the range of topics classified here as Organization, Time, Resources, Project Definition, Cost, Contracts, Change Risk, Quality, and Safety. All the categories of problems reported above are covered in those project management bodies of knowledge. The data therefore does not show that the bodies of knowledge need revision. It indicates that the problems are similar in all the roles and industries represented, so that the same core top- ics should have greatest attention in all of them, although some topics are seen to be more prominent in practice and need greater attention than others in
found size to be the largest contributor to Product failure, along with ambi- tious goals, requirements gold-plating, and feature creep, corresponding to our findings on Project Definition and the secondary effect of project size. Nelson found that optimism and switching during a project were the greatest contributors to Technology failures, cor- responding to our ranking of Change.
Surveys conducted in the United Kingdom and the United States to deter- mine the knowledge needed for com- petence in project management have shown that some project management topics are seen by practitioners as more important than others (Morris, Patel, & Wearne, 2000; Morris, Jamieson, & Shepherd, 2006; Smith, 2003). The equivalent Organization topics scored most highly in those surveys, but the respondents to them had been asked to give views on what should be known and understood in project manage- ment, rather than state the problems experienced. They were asked to answer questions based on the lists of topics presented to them rather than choose openly. Also, they were not required to select one topic. As a result, 35 top- ics out of a total of 44 scored over 50%. Those results are therefore not directly comparable with the data presented in this paper. They do support the obser- vation that some categories of problems of project management are more promi- nent than others and the Organization category is highest among them.
Samples of professional engineers in various industries in the United Kingdom questioned in 2002 stated that some managerial skills were more important than others in their work (Dudman & Wearne, 2003). Similar results were obtained earlier from professional engineers in Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Western Canada. All these engineers indicated that what were classified as ‘Leadership’ skills were most needed in their work, relative to other busi- ness skills and techniques. In those sur- veys the respondents were also asked
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displays a random sample of 1 in 100 of these statements classified in this way. A question mark indicates those not classed as either institutional or inherent.
Allowing for the uncertainty about the meaning of some words used in stat- ing the causes of problems, the results indicate that more than 75% of the prob- lems are due to institutional practice within organizations rather than inherent in their projects. Many of these problems of project management could therefore be avoided, or at least reduced by early attention to their causes. As a result much of what is called “fire- fighting” in project management—urgent actions on prob- lems that should not have been allowed to occur—could be prevented. To do so requires action on the pre-project pro- cesses of assessing ideas and oppor- tunities to improve project birth. The evidence supports the arguments in sev- eral recent papers, notably by Williams and Knut (2010), Edkins et al. (2012), and Samset and Volden (2013), for improve- ment in the “front end” decisions on project objectives, implementation, and risks before pro jects are selected for implementation.
The words used by the respondents in their statements indicate that these institutional problems are due to corpo- rate culture and decisions. They shape a project but they are above and out of the control of a project manager. They indi- cate the lack of a system that manages the management of projects, a meta-role needed at the corporate level in organi- zations. The corporate control required is akin to the brain’s hypothalamus function, as suggested long ago by Beer (1972). In other words, project sponsors’ organizations need what is now called “project governance” to provide “the structure through which the objectives of the project are set and the means of attaining these objectives are deter- mined” (Turner, 2006). The institutional problems reported in the data are strong evidence in support of the need for orga- nizations to pay attention to their cor- porate project governance advocated by
Greatest Problem of Project Management—Sample of Statements of Organization Problems
Managing information supply
Management understanding of what is involved
Getting the balance between delegation and monitoring
Ensuring others complete their tasks
Knowing all the facts, too few people, time
Get a good mixture on teams, common goals
Other people, their actions, behavior at planning
To keep control over outside partners—client, suppliers, subcontractors
People not doing what they said they would. Realistic plans are not accepted
Lack of procedures and organization support
Communication and moving parameters
Improvements never get followed up
Getting results on time from people—people management
Co-ordination of all involved parties. Lack of central focus & information. Timing
Getting the workforce to buy in
Lack of communication or miscommunication!
Conflict of interests
Communication between teams/customer—supplier/etc.
Maturation
Alignment among the team on; processes, responsibilities, decision authority
Integration of diverse work package to deliver an optimized system which relies on very high
levels of inter workstream communication
Definition & recognition. Image—some project managers give a “bad” name to project managers.
It’s not an exact science. Striking the right balance
Managing interfaces between internal & external stakeholders
People management
Management or influence without direct authority
Communication—lack of communication, proper communication between PM and the client, PM
and Engineers, QS’s, etc.
Communication. Technical support
Getting project management team and stakeholders to share/accept project mission
Lack of understanding of projects by stakeholders
Interface with all stakeholders in functional organization
Table 2: Statements of organization problems—Random sample of 1 in 20 (of 624).
the uncertainties of the work, and the size and autonomy of an organization.
Are the Problems Inherent in Project Management?
Risks to projects can be classified as institutional, meaning due to how their organizations manage their projects, or as inherent, meaning due to the nature
of projects (Wearne, 1997). Applying this distinction to the data, all the respondents’ statements of the causes of the greatest problems of project man- agement were reviewed to classify them as either institutional (e.g., “Lack of in-house control systems”) or inher- ent (e.g., “Number of people involved and complexity of project”). Table 3
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chains, safety, and project definition. All this should have reduced the impact of the problems and increased confi- dence in anticipating them. Yet, over the 23 years of data, these same categories of problems appear to remain the main tasks of project management. The word “unique” is used in some definitions of a project, but many writers have observed that the life cycles of all types of projects are similar. So too may be the categories of problems that need anticipation and control through any project.
The product or service produced from a project is the result of work by other people. Compared with the time and cost techniques first thought to constitute project management, it comes as no surprise that the great- est need is attention to organizational structure, processes, and leadership.
The data obtained over each series of programs made it possible to look for trends in the underlying causes of the problems. Rather than showing any clear trend, so far as represented in the data, the greatest problems appear to be enduring characteristics of project work.
The growth in industrial and profes- sional attention to the needs of proj- ects indicates much more awareness of the potential problems and how to manage them. Wearne (2008) summa- rized how industry, public services, and the project management community have learned from their experience and ideas backward in time, starting over 30 years ago with attention paid chiefly to delays and cost over-runs delivering projects. Since then, much attention has been directed to quality, organizational behavior, risk management, supply
the Project Management Institute and the Association for Project Management (2011), particularly on directing the pro- vision and use of “appropriate methods, resources, and controls” for projects. The concept of the project management office (PMO) is now well recognized for providing guidance and support to the management of project execution (Bolles & Hubbard, 2012; Cuthbert, 2012; Pemsel & Wiewiora, 2012; PM Solutions Research, 2012). It could first be applied corporately before project selection.
Conclusions The first purpose of the questionnaire was to obtain feed-forward to guide edu- cation and training leaders and speak- ers on adapting their programs to the interests of the people attending them.
Sample of Statements of the Causes of the Greatest Problem of Project Management Inherent or Institutional
Difficult to quantify until well into project Inherent
Different groups have different priorities and ways of working Institutional
Lacking experience or knowledge. Conflicting ideas of parties involved Institutional
Top management targets, and resources changes during project ?
Business unwilling to instigate R&D on a long enough timescale Institutional
No common understanding Institutional
Others require my time, work load Institutional
Lot of work is unique and forecasting based on subjective criteria Inherent
Individuals not understanding system of work Institutional
Under resources—Staff—Skills Institutional
Lack of communication with these third parties at the early project stages. All must have visibility to the plan and regular
contact with the project manager to update on progress
Institutional
Conflict of priorities and differing objectives Institutional
Understanding all the linking procedures and owners interpretation/expectations Institutional
Mostly due to very diversified source of people, different priorities & cultural aspects, poor implementation of risk
management processes and interface management
Institutional
Pressure to meet stage gates at prescribed time intervals. Deliverables become snapshots in time regardless of their
quality at the time of gate review
?
Significant pressure on market due to very high activity level in our industry Inherent
Different objective and priority from other parties Institutional
Structure & business strategy alignment Institutional
Team ownership of the promised dates Institutional
Table 3: Causes of the greatest problems of project management; random sample (1 in 100 of 1,859 statements. Note: No cause stated by 20 respondents).
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Asking about their causes has indicated that many problems could be prevented by directing greater attention to corpo- rate systems and decisions at the “front- end” of projects. What is needed may be well recognized within organizations. Priority in further research could there- fore be given to how external forces con- dition institutional practice and how the PMO concept can be applied to improv- ing the decision processes that launch projects.
The data reviewed here is what the respondents reported at the time. Statements of current problems do not necessarily represent future needs, and as Morris warned (1998), the problems of projects as stated by employees do not necessarily correspond with what their employers recognize as impor- tant for their business. The people who provided the data perform or lead the work that influences the success of their organizations’ investments in projects. If what they said is correct, corporate actions are needed to reduce the prob- lems. If what they said is wrong, corpo- rate systems need to learn why they are wrong. The delivery, quality, safety, and cost of new products, processes, and services depend greatly on the mem- bers of project teams such as those represented by these people. Corporate actions that don’t appear to address the greatest problems as seen by them could fail for lack of support.
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Stephen Wearne is Senior Research Fellow, Management of Projects Group, School of Mechanical, Aerospace & Civil Engineering, at the University of Manchester and former- ly employed in the engineering and project management of large hydro power and nuclear power projects in South America and Japan. Professor Wearne is Emeritus Professor of Technological Management, University of Bradford and the author and joint author of books and papers on project organization, joint ventures, procure- ment, and the management of urgent unexpected projects. He can be contacted at [email protected]
