Points To Ponder

Price deflation for US contract workers has coincided with the US recession cycle. As the US and world economic activities rebound, the same could be likely for contract worker rates. Companies who have planned their current projects with the lower rates should also plan for increasing risk of cost variance and team member turnover as contract workers opt for better contract rates.

The number of PMP certified project managers has exploded to over 350,000 PMPs in recent years and yet the number of "success" ranked (based on a well known 13 years study of) information technology projects has averaged near 28%. A more recent study within the mortgage business listed the success rate closer to 11%.

A project overly focused on PMO processes tends to fail because the project focus replaces the scope related work with PMO rules compliance. 

Projects do not succeed, people do.

A professional certification alone does not create project or project manager success.

Every decision alters the project plan towards success or failure; choose deliberately.

Achieving project success after a project failure requires a lot more work than having consistent and deliberate focus on effective project management methods.

Test the order and workflow of a project plan front to back and then back to front.

WIT Systems Corporation specializes in "building intelligence before systems" within the enterprise. Partnering with you, we advance your internal capabilities to simplify systems development life cycle efforts, improve systems quality and compliance levels, enhance enterprise systems planning, and achieve a results driven, "what has been finished?" project management approach. We simply help you remove the ceremony out of structured systems development and project management methods so that you and your teams may instead focus on what is important, the final postive business results.

Did you know that most projects indicate one or more negative health symptoms that if not remedied may eventually trigger a project failure?

Consider one industry's projects history. For over a decade, the Standish Group has studied thousands of IT projects for success and failure tendencies. In 1994, nearly one-third of analyzed IT projects were cancelled before completion, close to one-half ran almost twice over budget, and less than one-quarter were delivered on-time and within budget. In 2001, nearly one-forth of projects failed, almost one-half were challenged, and just over one-quarter were successful. Their more recent statistics (available in 2004 and 2006) continued to show overall historical project success rates averaged near 28%. And notably, another study by STRATMOR in 2008 about mortgage origination systems projects indicated only 11% of could be considered as delivered on scope, on time, and within budget. With this data in mind, will one or more of your most critical projects succeed, or disappoint? The statistics demonstrate the latter is much more likely.

We welcome the opportunity to help your troubled project or program of projects. As your individual needs may require, we can be retained to perform a project or program health check, which will provide immediate project corrective action plan alternatives. As you may also need, we can be retained to perform a more thorough project management practices health check, which will yield immediate and longer term corrective action plan alternatives.  Contact us to request this specialized assistance.

We highlight a two-day, onsite workshop to describe how to detect and remedy common project failure triggers. This workshop presents this complex triggers analysis topic across 23 essential project management focus areas. It details over 150 failure triggers, over 230 possible root causes, over 230 potential remedies, and other helpful take away items. Contact us to request a review with your professional development scheduling needs.

Organizational Evaluation Question

If you are a business owner or influential change leader, consider the following question.

"Knowing what we now do, would we likely choose to go into it as a new venture?"

If your answer is no, do not plan to patch another process. Do not make another study. Do not attempt to deploy another team of great problem solvers. Instead, contact us to help you and your teams plan for abandonment, reinvigorate for seeking opportinities, and reinforce mutual respect and trust across the organization.