Why Any Project Longer Than 12 Months Will Fail

How to Avoid the Crossroads of Despair

Stop reading if;

• All your projects are all smooth sailing. This article is not intended for mythical creatures.
• You are building a cost effective nuclear fusion reactor. Take your time. Humanity depends on you.
• You are hurriedly preparing a mini-budget for a large economy. I am not Kwai Chang Caine. I cannot help you.

Everyone else, this is not a drill. Something has to go live in under 12 months. Maximum 18. It doesn’t matter how big the program is.

Your project is only ever successful if it goes live. The longer you are not live, higher the probability of it failing. Failure comes in many forms. It could be one of or a combination of; project decommissioning, individual and organization repetitional damage, funds wasted, time wasted, trust irrecoverably lost, careers ruined or you facing an existential crisis.

(I will not bore you with project failure statistics. That is the easiest Google search that exists.)

If you plan for longer than 12-18 months, there is a very high probability it will end up at the crossroads of despair. Scope increased, resources dried up and cost blown up. Now you must pick a path. Demolish scope and alienate business that is already taking a beating in the market, create resources out of thin air or look for implementation shortcuts and compromise integrity. I know what crossroads are. Yes there is a fourth path. But you certainly cannot go back the path that brought you here, because there are no time machines. (It would be quite the irony if your project was to build a time machine. An amazing time travel paradox.)

Everyone is frustrated. You are scapegoat number one.

How does this happen?

The external reasons are easier to spot, even if people stubbornly refuse to see them.

Everything you build is to be used by someone (your client, your client’s client and so on). The environment in which they use your product ('product' in the general sense of something produced) changes. People’s tastes, macro and micro economic conditions, regulations, geo-political climate, the actual climate. They all change.  That translates to change in scope. More time goes by, more things change. That’s more work. More of resources (time and materials) burnt doing things that do not contribute to the end goal. Going fast nowhere.

More subtle are organizational reasons.

It is common to have a senior management turnaround cycle of 2 - 3 years. Your sponsor would typically have been 6 months in to their cycle before signing off on a sizable program. The last thing you need is to lose the sponsor before you have a tangible result, and get a new one. All new senior managers want to leave their own mark. At worst that can mean your program is deemed sunk cost and is canned. At best, you and the team have to spend precious time and effort re-securing sponsorship.  Senior managers also tend to bring in their own people. Those people also want to leave their mark. That usually comes in the form of changes to process. Possibly audits and external consultants. All costly and potentially deadly disruptions.

Longer duration also increases the possibility of losing good people from your team. Not just natural turnover. High achievers tend to get frustrated not seeing tangible results. Disruptions (in the form of retraining and unsettling team chemistry) are the worst enemy of your momentum.

Your organization’s strategic focus and priorities change to fuel organic growth, due to M&As and in response to those external changes we talked about. Don’t be a victim of strategic refocus. It’s easy to kill something that is not real. Things are only real if they are live.

Benefits of going live early

On the flip side, an early go-live can serve you in many ways.

• It is the best insurance for the investment. Nothing like getting in production to know if you are heading in the right direction. Earlier you find out, better it is for everyone.
• It will force operations to be sorted out. (See below.)
• No bigger morale boost to the team than seeing something they created being a real thing in the real world.
• Your sponsor and other relevant senior managers will hit their strategic objectives. (See above about the precarious short life cycle.) You will be the angel from heaven that delivered their bonuses and share options. There is no corporate credit worth more than that. None.
• This empirical proof of success will let you get on with the rest of the program with minimal pressure, interference and undue risk.
• It’s the best antidote to career stagnation. You and the team will be seen as people who get things done. Plus, it allows you to move on and do other new and interesting things.

How to Succeed

Now, how.

• Get an authoritative (in action and in remit) hatchet man (ideally from the business) who can mercilessly trim scope. This is the one favour you must call from your sponsor to source for you.
• Have operations representatives involved from the beginning. Not doing this is the surest way to discover rework later. More important, their sign-off is often key to launch. Don’t hit that block.
• Build a high performing team.
• Know what business you are in. Do not get buried in the mire of delivery. You will make better decisions and relate better to (and therefore influence) other decision makers.
• Face pain early. Have an honest risk register. If you are going to get hit, get hit early and have time to clean up the mess.

Takeaway

Remember, this does not mean you cannot have multi-year programs. Most major programs are. It just means you need a minimum viable product defined, built and launched early enough to avoid a costly and painful death at the crossroads of despair.