You’ve never failed a major milestone? Too bad.
You may need to try a bit harder. You are likely losing personal credibility as a PM, undermining the benefits of the milestone as an effective tool, and weakening the project team.
A couple of immediate questions come to mind when I hear someone make a claim like this. Are they under committing? Are they stretching the truth to prevent having to communicate bad news? A yes answer to either question isn’t what you want to hear, but in the latter case, the concern is more about poor leadership than dishonesty (political or otherwise).
Is the PM under committing?
Many PM’s believe in under promising and over delivering to keep their projects in “green” status. It sounds good on the surface, but it can backfire. In fact, I believe that “yellow” is the color of success, although it does mean assuming some milestone risk.
In order for a team to be effective they must be challenged, in terms of both scope and schedule, to their effective limit. That is to say that the work load should
amount to as much as they can accomplish with high quality in the time allotted. Under good management, an effective team will average a status=yellow for most of the project because the work load is high. While an average status=yellow doesn’t guarantee the team is being fully utilized (it could be yellow for other reasons), an average status= green does guarantee that they are not. You can be sure that customers and/or management will recognize this and begin to ask questions.
Is the PM avoiding having to report bad news?
Like any member of the press, the PM is a reporter, and reporting is a community trust. If the PM breaks that trust then he/she loses credibility. It sends the message to the team that hiding facts is acceptable in some cases. Now the PM is getting bad information from the team and making it worse for stakeholders.
In my personal experience, the desire to soften bad news is never more pronounced than when reporting major milestone results. Many PM’s will interpret negative outcomes as a reflection on them personally and their project team. While this may be true in part, any effort to hide these facts will compound the problem and damage the PM’s reputation. On the other hand, openly exposing every failure and issue will set the stage for getting back on track and enhance the PM’s reputation as a no holds barred problem solver.
The act of failing a milestone (when truly called for) is a demonstration of management integrity and maturity. When used to their best advantage, milestones represent significant leadership opportunites for the PM.
How successful milestone management works.
Milestone management is most often employed in large projects. A number of milestones are defined to divide the project into phases and each phase completion is marked by a milestone. Typically, each milestone is governed by a pre-defined set of written milestone completion requirements (deliverables as well as any quality criteria that must be met in order to “pass” the milestone). Milestone phases help by decomposing the project into a number of unique and manageable steps that will each culminate in a formal assessment of requirements completion.
A milestone assessment is most often accomplished via a formal review meeting, at or just prior to the milestone due date. Feedback is gathered from all project team members, but in most cases the PM alone acts as the final word regarding whether the milestone has passed (completed) or failed (remains incomplete at the due date). A follow up report is then sent to the executive/steering team with all stakeholders copied.
The Pass or Fail determination answers two simple questions, 1) is the current phase complete and 2) is everything in place to execute the next phase successfully. The answers to these questions should be taken very seriously. To make the determination, each milestone deliverable is assessed to validate that it is complete and sufficient, while each criterion is reviewed to assess whether or not it has been met. The combined results are then used by the PM and team to judge the success or failure of the overall milestone in terms of the two questions above.
How it helps.
Measuring the success of each milestone phase allows the team to better gauge overall project status and to initiate corrective actions designed to improve their performance in subsequent phases. This approach allows the PM to hold each team and team member accountable for their assigned deliverables in accordance with agreed requirements. If issues exist, they will often surface in early phases, allowing the PM to take action before the project suffers any irreparable damage. Using a highly visible approach to milestone assessment and reporting keeps the entire stakeholder community on the same page and helps to avoid misinformation and the unwanted surprises that often follow.
Leadership
Milestone assessments are stakeholder community wide events meant to demonstrate that the project team is accountable to stakeholders, open and transparent in status reporting, and committed to quality standards. The PM should use these forums to share team accomplishments and openly identify and deal with any issues that threaten project objectives. The process includes an assessment meeting with the project team and key stakeholders followed by a report. The report should be a dry and fact based account of per deliverable ownership, status, a pass/fail indicators, and should reference any related issues and actions. It should also capture the team pass/fail recommendation (from the PM based on team feedback) and note any significant dissent that may exist within the team. Inevitably there will be some negative news to report, but don’t shy away. Apply your best diplomatic handling, but state all the facts, even if it means a failure declaration must be made.
When should a milestone be failed?
It is most definitely an expert judgment call. Often a failure is declared simply to send the right message. As an example, if critical milestone deliverables have not been completed, your team may view a milestone “pass” as a declaration that management isn’t committed to quality. If management isn’t committed to milestone requirements, then why should anyone else take them seriously? On the other hand, failing a milestone over a few low impact items will make the process seem pedantic and punitive.
In the most obvious cases, failure is declared because critical milestone deliverables are unfinished or some key quality criteria haven’t been met. In these situations, project resources will likely need to continue working milestone deliverables and the milestone dates may have to be pushed. It may or may not be possible to begin the next milestone phase while addressing these issues. It all depends what deliverables/criteria remain incomplete. The decision to start the next milestone phase is related to, but independent from, the decision to declare the former phase complete.
How should a milestone be failed?
Failing a milestone isn’t nearly as negative as it sounds. Delivering a difficult message almost always increases PM and executive credibility when the reasoning is sound, motives are business oriented, everyone is treated with respect, and the message comes free of blame (all data and no opinion).
A report that is blame oriented will put the team on the defensive at a time when the PM needs them to be on offense resolving issues. Keep the message focused on the path forward and leave history out of it – it’s more important for the team to know where the project is than how it got there. Leave the history lessons to after-the-fact root cause analysis efforts.
Recovering.
Finally, in addition to the report contents identified in the Leadership section above, the milestone failure must come with a recovery plan that communicates what action the team will take to recover, and outline proposed changes/impacts to project scope, schedule, and resourcing. As a result, PM will want to get a head start of at least a few weeks on preparation for any milestone in trouble.
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