Project Overruns – Non-Project People and Business People
Project managers and the project management team are responsible for the success of many projects in organizations. The Project Management Office assigns PMs and creates documents and governance for project management. Although there are many roles and stakeholders that can impact project delivery, the project management role is the most important. It is a fact, however, that many projects are delayed or cost overruns are caused by non-project personnel or business people like HR, Finance, and Sales.
The following points will be discussed about how business people can cause project overruns.
Businesspeople are some examples of people who caused project delays
How to avoid non-project people causing overruns
Enhancing project management skills among business people within the organization.
Business People Cause 3 Real-World Project Overruns
Master of Project Academy trained over 200,000 professionals and worked with more than 100 companies, from small businesses to Fortune 500, to improve their project management skills. We have found that nearly all organizations have project delivery teams as the primary party responsible for a project’s success. While there may be many business people and non-project people that can impact project delivery or cause project delays, only PMs or PMOs will be held responsible for project success.
We will discuss three real-life examples of project overruns caused by business people and organizations. These cases will be very similar to yours. Names and company names have been fictionalized.
1- A Sales Manager Sells a Technically Undeliverable solution, which causes project overruns
Dave is a skilled sales manager who works in a Telco Pro. He is responsible for selling enterprise telecom solutions to telecom operators. Dave is falling behind his department’s sales targets as the end of the year approaches. He must sell more than $400,000.
Cell Mate is a telecom operator that is looking to expand its telecommunications infrastructure with new networks. Cell Mate created a Request for Proposal (RFP) and listed all requirements for the project. Dave is responsible for the bidding process for this project. Although Telco Pro’s solution cannot meet one of the technical requirements, Dave prepares a quote and sends it off to Cell Mate.
Cell Mate accepts Telco Pro’s offer based on multiple vendors’ offers. Dave achieves his sales targets!
Telco Pro assigns a project manger, two integration engineers, one analyst, and one analyst to the project. Cell Mate’s premises are taken over by the project team. Cell Mates raises a concern that one of the requirements does NOT meet their requirements during the first phase closure. The Telco Pro team reviews the RFP requirements and discovers that Cell Mate requires additional feature development.
Telco Pro agrees that the additional feature will be developed because the project is ongoing. The team has been working on it for more than three month. This add-on feature will cost $67,000 and take two months to complete. As you can see, Dave is hitting his sales targets while he also caused a budget overrun and a delay for the project.
2- Human Resources Department downgrades the Compensation Package For All Employees
BioMatter is a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical firm with over 100 offices around the globe and more than 80,000 employees. Megan manages a vaccine project. One R&D Scientist, two biologists, one chemist, and one doctor make up the project team. The project spans 15 months and has three phases. The two phases were completed on schedule and within budget by the project team.
The BioMatter HR department was notified that the project team had just begun phase three.
