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5 Symptoms of a Sick Project

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Rob Saxon- November 30, 2015

Rob Saxon is a Project Management

Professional, Certified Information Systems
Auditor and a trained Six Sigma Specialist. Rob
is currently developing methods to integrate
project management into previously unexplored
areas of business.

People
Index

Practice Areas: Communications Management,Leadership,Risk Management

Tools Directory

Its fall and flu season is upon us. Weve all had that day: The sun is shining, were in the
fresh air and suddenly we feel a little tickle in the back of our throats. Probably nothing, we
think, and we go about our day. As the day goes on, we get a bit of an achy back. Eh, Im
getting old, we might think.

Training Directory

We have a hard time thinking, however, because our head hurts. And come to think of it,
were also kind of sleepy. Before we know it, were in a full-fledged case of the flu! Why
didnt we rest when we first felt the symptoms? Why didnt we get the flu vaccine before
the season started? Blind optimism is the most likely culprit.

PMwars

I keep a positive attitude, and usually look on the bright side. I dont think Im alone in
being an optimist. I believe project managers in general want to believe that things are
going well. In fact, some of us may even look at the bright side when all signs are pointing
to trouble. Since projects are finite endeavors with clear goals, this human tendency to be
optimistic can be especially dangerous. If we continue to believe that things are fine when
they are not, we will continue doing what we have always done. We may continue our old
habits even when a change is in order.

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In my experience, there are few diagnostic readings that a project manager can take to determine if their project is out of control.
Think of them as temperature and blood pressure. By identifying a critical mass of these readings, project managers can sooner
identify problems, and they change project behaviors for the better.
Ive put these indicators in no particular order, and I leave it to the reader to devise a specific metric for each.
Symptom 1: Surprises
Because, lets face it, theres comfort in being cautious. And theres peace in the predictable.
-- Saving Zoe: A Novel by Alyson Noel
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A critical mass of surprise situations in projects is evidence of a

problem. Some people love surprises, and some surprises are quite
pleasant. Getting a gift you didnt expect, seeing an old friend at an
unexpected place or seeing an eagle in the air are all examples of
surprises that can astound and please us.
On the contrary, surprise resource changes, surprise requirements
changes and issues that seem to materialize out of nowhere are all
solid indicators that a project manager is losing control of his or her
endeavor. A very common reason for why project managers are
susceptible to unwanted surprises during projects is a low level of
communication, or miscommunication.

TRENDING ARTICLES
What We Are Still Getting Wrong About
Quality

A good way to cut surprises off at the pass is to increase the

frequency of team communication. If the team is geographically
dispersed, hold daily (or more frequent) calls. If the team is colocated, have a standing war room and have several full team
meetings a day. Once the surprises die down, you can decrease the
frequency; but when surprises are chronic in your project, its a code
red and requires immediate attention.
Symptom 2: Sarcasm

by Mark Mullaly, Ph.D., PMPNovember 23, 2015

Were getting quality more wrong than we are right.
Which is fascinating, when you get down to it,
because quality is the foundation on which project
management is built. Why is this a problem? When
everything is a constraint, nothing is.

I'd like to do more stuff with less sarcasm.

-- Sara Gilbert
I appreciate humor very much. Ive loved standup comedy since I
was small, to the extent that I once did a standup comedy routine for

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ProjectManagement.com - 5 Symptoms of a Sick Project

Methodology Weakness in Project

Control
by Arild SigurdsenNovember 23, 2015
Budget overruns are typical for all industries,
especially for those dealing with complex, nonrepetitive projects. Control over projects is often lost
because the most popular project control tools
simplify the control issue to the extent that vital
steering parameters are lost or missed. A
probabilistic forecasting tool like the Range
Forecasting Method (RFM) can help address
uncertainty and reduce extra costs.

Leadership: A Matter of Trust

by Syed MoizNovember 30, 2015
As William Shakespeare rightly said, Love all, trust a
few, do wrong to none. In this article, the author
highlights expectations for project leaders--and some
useful tips that can positively impact trust levels,
improve performance and ease leadership.

a 4th grade talent show. (It was a word-for-word reenactment of a

famous comics bit about being drunk, so it went over with the
teachers much better than with the students.) Suffice to say, I like to
take a broad perspective on situations--and with that perspective I
can see where most situations have a comedic element.
I use humor to my advantage in projects by lightening the mood and
helping the team to stay focused with less stress. There is a
dangerous and poisonous cousin to humor, however, and that
cousin is sarcasm.
The dictionary defines sarcasm as harsh or bitter derision or irony."
The term sarcasm derives from the Greek sarkasmos, which means
to rend (or tear apart.) When sarcasm begins finding its way into
project communications, take this as a very serious problem with
regards to the project.

Sarcasm will often find its way into project communications when
team members feel insecure about communicating information.
Rather than directly deliver bad news, team members might use
sarcasm to couch a comment and make it more indirect. A likely
cause of this insecurity is a lack of transparent and honest team communication.
To cure this symptom, encourage your team to be honest, and reward them for bringing up challenges within the project. There
are, of course, those team members who will seem to find a problem with everything, but the price you will pay for their
information is well worth the treasure you will find from those team members who would have been sarcastic, or silent (which well
talk about later.)
Symptom 3: Stale Information
Another symptom that your project may be getting the equivalent of the flu is when you are receiving stale information. You can
think of timely, accurate, thorough status reports as the diagnostic health reports of projects. Whenever the information youre
getting is behind the times, it will cause you to make poor decisions. This symptom, unfortunately, is usually indicative of a lack of
attention on the part of the project manager.

Page 2 of 5

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Read your team members status reports very carefully. Look for vagaries in status reports that let you know there is either a
communication gap, an analysis gap--or worse, both. Look for danger words like continued and made progress on.... Look for
planned activities that dont change. Be a stickler about dates, and question why dates are slipping.
Though all of these things may seem like blocking and tackling of project management, its easy to fall into bad habits. Like
washing your hands and then grabbing the door knob to the public restroom, sometimes were only doing half of the right thing,
and the other half of what were doing ends up hurting us.
Symptom 4: Silence
The most boring thing in the world? Silence.
-- Justin Timberlake
A corollary to stale information is silence during status and update meetings. If there is little team interaction and little to no
discussion, these behaviors are signs that your project may be getting very sick. This unhealthy phenomenon can be particularly
prevalent in projects with predominantly remote team members. Its far more difficult to elicit conversation over WebEx or over the
phone than it is in person, and its literally impossible to read expression or body language. Therefore, in all cases, project
managers must be persistent and creative in preventing project silence.
If no ones talking, ask provocative questions like, What are biggest hurdles we will face in the coming days? Sniper chat
individuals by calling them out by name, and open the discussion to topics the team cares deeply about related to the project. In
short, crickets stop chirping when they sense vibration, and the meeting crickets will stop when you purposefully move the
conversation forward.
Symptom 5: No-shows
Have you ever managed a project where the project team is conspicuously small? The team might consist of a technical lead, and
maybe an administrator? If the project goals are exceedingly small (and they rarely are), this might be a healthy condition. More
likely, however, is that youve discovered another symptom of an unhealthy project.
A healthy project includes a matrixed, highly cross-functional working team. This team usually consists of a high-level executive
sponsor (who will usually be a C level or vice president level,), a decision maker who has more hands-on buy into the project,
several technical leads representing various disciplines (network, database, server in the example of a technical project) as well
as other team members. The team might include business analysts, other process specialists and business representatives (if
your project is line-of-business facing).
One final symptom of a sick project is rare but deadly. If you have any project team member who is consciously withholding
critical project information from the team and you discover it, you must remove the team member from your team immediately.
Though all the behaviors I list above are fairly typical for projects--and no ones fault in particular--willful deception cannot be
tolerated. It is a cancer that will kill a project if you dont get to it quickly.
I refuse to end the article on a sour note. Weve all gotten the flu, and weve all kicked ourselves for not treating it sooner and
more thoroughly. Weve also all recovered from the flu, and all projects can recover from the symptoms I noted above. Once
when I was managing an especially rough project, I commented to one of my colleagues about how difficult it was. He responded
by saying, If it were easy, they wouldnt need us. I think of that sentiment often when projects get difficult, and it helps me to
persevere. What other symptoms do you see of sick projects? Please comment below, and thanks for reading!

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Comments (13)
Debangshu Datta

Network:2

Associate Manager,
Accenture
Pune, Maharashtra,
India

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Great article, thanks a lot for writing this up.

Posted: Dec 2, 2015 10:47 PM

Connect

Chetana Koulagi
Bangalore, India

Great points. Thanks for sharing.

Posted: Dec 2, 2015 10:27 PM

Network:0

Connect

Cesar Pacherres
PM Consultant, everis
Peru SAC
Lima, Peru
Network:0

Connect

Great article! Thanks for that valuable information. I want to enphasize the first point
"Surprises", I work with IT projects in a Telecomunication company, and in some of
them I have a lot of changes that came from the customers, and they said they are
"critical" for the bussiness.
A sick project have a lot of changes and no respect the scope statement, that cause
incresing costs and time that doesn't help to anybody.
Posted: Dec 2, 2015 9:39 PM

ALLAN
CALIBUSO
BARRIGADA, GU,
Guam

"If you have any project team member who is consciously withholding critical project
information from the team and you discover it, you must remove the team member from
your team immediately...willful deception cannot be tolerated."

Network:0

Connect

Absolutely on point! While projects can continue through the sheer personality and
communications skills of a project manager, the amount of time and effort that must be
expended to cover the critical project information gaps is inexcusable. Such energy
could have been productively used in more meaningful ways.
As a suggestion and as a significant caveat, the PM must be absolutely sure that critical
information is being withheld--and to formally determine WHY it is not being
disseminated.
Posted: Dec 2, 2015 7:20 PM

Derrick
Richardson
Network:1

PMO, Engineering,
R&D Leadership
Union City, CA, USA

Great article - thank you for a sound "diagnostic tool" for PM's!!
Posted: Dec 2, 2015 7:11 PM

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Seema Abdullah
Shepparton, Australia

Network:0

Connect

Interesting article Rob. Thanks.

About your comment that "If you have any project team member who is consciously
withholding critical project information from the team and you discover it, you must
remove the team member from your team immediately. ".....I am wondering how
practical or convenient this removal may be. A PM may wish to take this logical and
reasonable action but may be restricted due to reasons such as resource shortage,
knowledge transfer, critical phase of the project, etc. Any suggestion on how to deal
with this behaviour while knowing that 'removal is not an option'. Thanks

Posted: Dec 2, 2015 5:57 PM

Helene Segura
PM Consultant,
HeleneSegura.com
San Antonio, TX, USA

Great synopsis, Rob! Thank you for sharing.

Posted: Dec 2, 2015 5:18 PM

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Jay Stone
Walters Ash, BUCKS,
United Kingdom

A nice read. For me the biggest symptom is when team members spend time and effort
explaining why they are ignoring the process!
Normally this is by senior managers who have alterior motives.

Network:0

Connect

Posted: Dec 2, 2015 4:05 PM

C Joseph Nower
Global Enterprise
Resource Planning
Manager, Franklin

A very well written article and I agree with the points made. I find that the attitude of the
organization coming from the top and filtering down drive how projects are managed
and how successful the projects tend to be. Companies that are goal oriented and tie

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| Mobile-friendly
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south more so if the project manager is not experienced.
Posted: Dec 2, 2015 3:02 PM

Thanks for the great comments everyone! Each of your elaborations is very valuable,
and they make the conversation richer. Please keep them coming.
Posted: Dec 2, 2015 3:01 PM

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Boris Konrad
Houston, TX, USA

Network:0

Connect

Fine elaboration. But it seems that those in power never read such, as concise, to the
point and nicely worded they are.
For your own practical purposes of corporate survival,
and wthout any sarcasm, and just from hands-on experience, sure tell tale signs of
pulse of any company or project are just the basics and conduct of any personnel, be it
first contacts with receptionist/secretary or HR personnel or hiccups in communications.
When you spot such classic alarm bells, trust that they will never improve with time.
That would be just wishful thinking.
If you are in multi-billion dollar company where secretaries put people down and use xrated terms when dealing with anybody but top management,, or say, like another real
life example, a $3 billion subcontract of a $50 billion project, where, seven months after
start they did not have anybody to answer the head office phone, what is more to say.
So, deeper analyses aside, look for those alarm bells which are every single time a
clear writing on the wall.
Check the way company personnel behave when they think that nobody (who matters)
is watching.
Then assess your changes of making a difference or just plain surviving in such
environment
Posted: Dec 2, 2015 1:42 PM

Fouad Elsayed

Network:173

Electrical and
Automation Manager,
ASEC Cement
Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
Connect

Hi Rob, Excellent point of view.

The prevention of sickness cannot be the sole responsibility of any one agency. It is to
be checked at various stages by developing close and continuous dialogue with each
other through effective communication. The preventive measures can be taken
individually or jointly by having discussions and consultations.
Posted: Nov 30, 2015 12:41 PM

Paul Gillespie

Network:1333

Branch Chief, IT
Project and Policy
Management,
USMEPCOM
Connect

Rob, very nice article. I agree, communications and management of communications is

crucial to sucess of a project. The more complex the project the more critical
communications becomes, and it is also much more difficult to manage as the
complexity increases rapidly. Managing the 5 symtopms you described would go a long
way to control project issues.
Posted: Nov 30, 2015 11:22 AM

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"All generalizations are dangerous, even this one."

- Alexandre Dumas

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03-12-2015