Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

The Project: College Management System;

Background to the project:

I worked for a small college that wanted to develop an in-house College Management System that would capture various aspect of the college management. This was an important project as it was to capture student information, track student progress from application to graduation and capture data on Administration (human resources, finance and administration).

The project deliverables included:

• A computer application that would provide real-time reports on all aspect of college management.
• A web interface to facilitate staff and  student login
• Different permission levels for administrators, sub-administrators, lecturers and students
• An offline backup for information captured by the system

I was the project manager with responsibility to plan, organize and coordinate the project.

The project did not succeed.

What contributed to the project’s failure?

As Greer (2010) advises, it is important to be clear about the project concept to get the support from key people in your organization. I did not clarify the project concept and deliverables. All I did was have this meeting with the Director of Education and the Chief Executive and decided that we needed an online/ computer application. Halfway into the project, it became obvious that much more work needed to have been undertaken well before the project commenced.

For starters, I did not develop a statement of work or a Project Charter (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, and Kramer 2008) that formally launched and acknowledged the existence of the project. It was therefore difficult to access organizational resources (people, equipment, materials) willing to undertake the project activities.

The lack of a statement of work was a major hindrance to the success of the project. I was unclear about the project deliverables from the outset and different mangers kept on adding functions to the final application. This “scope creep” could not be contained, as the initial scope of the project had not been outlined. All stakeholders expected the project to be the panacea to all their headaches with the present system where each department kept own information and records. Most of this information was duplicated while some critical information could not be accessed on time. For instance, the instructor kept student grades, the finance kept financial records while the admissions needed this information to discuss with students and sponsors.

The vendors I hired were also not very competent. This was compounded by the fact that their terms of reference were vague and kept changing in the life of the project.

The assumptions that I had made for the implementations of the project were wrong. I initially had underestimated the size and effort required for the project. No comparative or feasibility study was undertaken and no benchmarks were set. I also assumed that staff members critical to the success of the project would be available for meetings and consultations. This was inherently wrong as they were busy in their daily responsibilities and could not avail themselves as needed.

Though the chief executive had implied that we would have access to reasonable finance to purchase needed computer equipment and other necessary software, the process of getting the funds released was bureaucratic and tedious. We therefore decided to skip purchases of critical software and other computer accessories.

By the time the project was almost complete, the board of the college decided to implement a different system that could accomplish what we were working on without having to invest in internal equipment. This was motivated by the fact that our project was taking too long and the accrediting council needed to have a functional system by the time they did a site visit. So our project was abandoned altogether after investing thousands of dollars, lost man-hours and sleepless night on my part.

I learnt several lessons about project management from this project. This can be captured using Greer’s 10 Steps to Project Success( p.5):

Step 1: Define the project concept, then get support and approval.

Step 2: Get your team together and start the project.

Step 3: Figure out exactly what the finished work products will be.

Step 4: Figure out what you need to do to complete the work products. (Identify tasks and phases.)

Step 5: Estimate time, effort, and resources.

Step 6: Build a schedule.

Step 7: Estimate the costs.

Step 8: Keep the project moving.

Step 9: Handle scope changes.

Step 10: Close out phases, close out the project.

References.

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Portny, S., Mantel, S., Meredith, J., Shafer, S., Sutton, M., & Kramer, B. (2008). Project Management planning, scheduling and controlling projects. Hoboken. NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.