Jiri’s Notepad

This post from the last January appeared in the draft posts reminder and I decided it is worth finishing.

Every now and then, there is a wave of self-flagellation in the press about IT projects. Journalists and naysayers weight in with a view we can’t deliver project right; sometimes sprinkling this with a view on immaturity of an IT industry. You’d almost think that we should stop and start gardening or something. At one hand these are just ‘noise’, there is quite a good number of them, including development of Macintosh, IBM 360, Windows NT (you wouldn’t say, would you!), and a good number of implementation projects would fall into this category. On the other hand there is a good number of large projects that failed.

As a friend of mine pointed out, projects over £50m are fundamentally different. The disciplines and tasks involved are the same: project management, architecture, development, testing, implementation. The difference is in execution. Whereas on small projects there is breathing space - to do the design properly, to build and salvage relationships after mistakes are made, to train people up etc., this kind of slack is in limited supply on large projects feel quite extreme. I would agree with Alan Mather list of key success factors:

• it will cost more than you thought and it will be ugly. […]
• put the very best people you have on it and run a portfolio that only has a couple of these at any one time - you can’t resource more than that effectively. […]
  
• Whatever you are delivering, make it incremental rather than all out. […]
  
• By having a portfolio of projects across government or an organisation, aligned to business process and overall goals, you can see where you’re doubling up or where you’re not putting in any effort.[…]
  
• Finally, the stakeholders need to be right there.

Although true from a personal perspective, large projects feel quite different. I thought I would put down few points I have personally learnt over last few years from working on a (successful) project with some 500 people:

• Excel at whatever you do. The project needs the best people to succeed. Perform at your personal and industry best, using the best methods and tools which are available.
  Maitain positive attitude. Humour, even the gallows humour helps to get over the hardest patches.
• Keep your head up walking from one impossible challenge to another. Do not get put down that others may be annoying you.
  
• Save your energy. Remember you are running a marathon rather than a sprint. It is mist likely not worth it to destroy your health or relationships for work.
  
• Learn to say ‘no’. If you really good, there will be a tendency to give you more work. There is no harm and this can greatly increase your experience, but you need to make sure this does not go beyond certain limits
  
• Manage risks. Apart from doing your job, make an effort to understand what is the impact and focus on risks and issues which are the most serious ones. This may mean that averting disasters, you will have to cut corners, but ultimately everyone will be better off
  
• Communicate. There’s never enough communication. Be prepared that large parts of you day will be spent ‘in meetings’ i.e. talking to other people.

Overall, my experience have been that large projects are fun. Though ‘fun’ in a similar way as alpine climbing or other extreme sports. You need to get over the ‘ugliness’ and learn to live with the feeling of constantly walking on a very thin edge between success and failure, moving from one impossible challenge to another one.

There is nothing that can exactly get you ready for the experience: Soft skills and leadership training I had done in the past was good and useful, but facing the real world problems, it felt pretty basic. I picked up some very good books during the course of the projectm which I would highly recommend Ed Yourdon’s Death March, Barry Oshry’s Leading Systems, Brinkman and Kirchner’s Dealing with People You Can’t Stand and Scott Berkun’s The Art of Project Management. In the end, it is similar to swimming: you need to muster the courage, breathe, jump into the water start swimming. And enjoying the experience.