Is 56% Of Your Project Budget At Risk?

Oops! Sorry, Mike, it's tough to keep them Attenboroughs straight.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

Hi Steve

I doubt if Richard Attenborough ever filmed a beaver - unless it was a private production.

His brother David might have done but it has not yet been broadcast.

Life is a drag.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Hi, Mike.

I won't dispute that construction is a unique application of project management -- a factor that it shares with all the other applications. :-) But the following characteristic is pretty ubiquitous across all applications, in my experience:

"They forget to factor in all the hidden risk elements that have been sold with no value..."

Failure to do adequate risk assessment before commiting to a contract is perhaps the single strongest argument for humans NOT being the smartest animal. Beavers, for example, have evolved to make dam' (pun!) sure they leave enough time to get their projects done.

"...(P)rinciple of these is the risk of time over run."

Don't look now, but you're helping to make the case for using critical path drag and drag cost. ;-0  (BTW, did you know that Richard Attenborough recently photographed beavers in New Hampshire using little wooden abaci to do those calculations? Would a Bajan ever lie to you?) When is Asta going to decide to start including those computations in its CPM algorithm? My new book Managing Projects as Investments: Earned Value to Business Value is due out in September -- if there's a stampede for drag-calculating software, Asta is going to miss out.

And did you notice that I didn't say a word this past winter when Aus whitewashed England in the Ashes? (Truthfully, I was too annoyed -- and busy writing -- to talk about it!)

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

Hi Stephen Hi Emily

Not just 56% but 100% of the budget is at risk.

Construction projects are unique in the world of commerce.

Every other business buys its product as cheap as possible and then tries to sell them for a bit more - generating profit.

The construction industry sells it product cheaply and tries to buy it for a bit less.

The problem is that management have no idea what the actual selling price is so they tend to buy higher.

They forget to factor in all the hidden risk elements that have been sold with no value - principle of these is the risk of time over run.

Best regards

Mike Testro

As usual, good stuff, Emily! I especially appreciated:

"Talking about benefits

Just over 40% of project managers say that business benefits are not communicated effectively by senior managers but 62% of business owners report that they are communicating benefits... It’s hard to deliver on your project strategy when the teams don’t know why they are working on something and how their contribution ties back to the overall company goals."

IMO, there is no more urgent need in PM than to focus on the benefit that the project investment is being undertaken to generate, and how that benefit will be impacted by completion date.

Good article, all the way, well worth reading.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan