Every project manager desires to achieve project success with a great customer signoff, payment, and successful rollout. However, the reality is that many complex and long-term projects fail to live up to their expectations and produce disappointing outcomes. Some of these failed projects are well-known for exceeding their budget or deadlines or both. How can corrective actions rescue the project? In this article at PMWorld 360, Joshua Ramirez explains how project managers can change the performance paradigm from passive corrections to more active ones.
The Corrective Measures
“We cannot put together a bad plan and expect to recover that plan when the project starts fully. Meeting a project milestone is the product of two things: predict the execution outcome, then attempt to execute on that prediction,” explains Ramirez. So, why do most projects fail to achieve schedule and cost objectives?
Controlling a project is key to its success or failure. Ramirez shares four measures that contribute to prediction accuracy.
Feedback
Feedback is a passive corrective measure. Continuous feedback provides project planners with an opportunity to correct their predictions. Furthermore, they can make adjustments to increase their prediction accuracy.
Visibility
Similar to feedback, visibility is also a passive corrective measure. Here, the project forecasters must comprehend how factors such as task obstacles, resource availability, external controls, and risks impact their prediction. These elements can help them correct their predictions and unrealistic project plans.
Awareness
The cognitive bias and obscure thinking errors will undoubtedly decrease project managers’ ability to predict project outcomes. By building error and bias awareness through training, many project managers self-correct and plan their project realistically.
Intentionality
This is an active corrective measure. Project managers and planners change the processes so that the team makes good project planning and forecasting decisions.
If you want to succeed on your specific projects, you must recognize behavioral planning and forecasting disciplines as the pivotal project points. To read the original article, click on https://www.pmworld360.com/blog/2021/02/01/active-project-corrections-vs-passive-project-corrections/.