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Would You Like to Manage a Low Level Priority Project?
16-03-17
As a project manager, you are given projects that it's priority is not up to you. If it was up to you it would be definitely, in a higher level, wouldn't it? Because we know that it is very hard to manage a low level priority project, on the top of the project management activities you need to work harder to get your resources.
It seems, it is obvious which one is more important to act on, load the resources, spend money on or, doesn't it? There are millions of improvement projects and if we had time and money we would do them in some point in the future or in another world. All the ideas have been going through the selection process, and some of them stays on the top. These are the most profitable ones or which can bring more popularity, at the time being. We have limited resources: people to work, equipment to use in limited facilities, we have some money to invest in the most profitable projects. and we have limited time to achieve the annual targets. We have to choose which one is more important to act on. There are projects that only valid for a certain time due to the market needs, there are ones we can only achieve when we have the right people or right maturity, there are ones that you need to keep on doing to prove that you are an innovative company, there are ones forced by the government or upper management.
I have worked many low level ranked projects, where the project team has been disbanded, tracking the trace of the work that had been done in the past, persuading line managers and engineers, draftsmen, technicians to pick up the it again to modify. Or even where the project idea did not exist in directors’ mind, it has many benefits to the company but it is not in the line of the projects to do yet, explaining why it is important, what it can bring to the company, what other companies doing similarly and getting the results. And when you get the permission to use resources, suddenly they can be taken from you, being directed to the higher level of priority projects. Your colleagues start to laugh at you, saying you have a project which has no-one to work on it. You answer is Well, we are all in the same company working for achieving the company's targets aligned with its strategy. But your project can go down to the hole of unfinished low level projects rubbish. And, you are the project manager, all yours and your team’s effort so far has gone! Your team whom believed you, blame you dragging them to an unworthy project and wasting their time, company’s resources although it was a managements latest decision. Shame! But, it is what it is. You have to fight when a project passed to the applicable projects line, you have to keep on, and not give up easily. Therefore I find it more difficult to manage the low priority projects. You have to melt the brains with your insistency and stubborn behaviour until you get the result: your precious resources! But of course if the resources are given to other projects no matter what, then you cannot finish it by yourself, only you can report the causes and risks. In this case, the upper management should communicate the reason for the prioritisation and assure people about that their effort has been valuable to the company and the project might start again sometime in the future. However people would still feel being tricked and lose their trust to the management.
It is also difficult for the upper management to give a decision which project has the priority. It is not only the which one is more profitable or popular as you can see. It is a very wobbly platform where the projects stand. They know the side effects of choosing one and leaving the others behind. And they often know this type of management decision is not free, it will cost prestige, money, time, moral, motivation…it costs all of these in company wise. That is why often low level priory project comes back like a boomerang with a top level project later on, when the etiquette is the company could not manage even this tiny project on time. That is the experience is talking, I have seen that several times.
People often think, high level priory projects are the ones that are expensive, complicated, which involves many departments, multinational, lasts longer, which can bring a lot of money at the end. But do they? These projects lose multiple levels when they get in the end, when the project manager is in the phase of closing the project suddenly the project finds itself at the bottom of the line of the projects. It was important before, very high level but now we have done all the necessary designs, a prototype is working, a few more tests but the wobbly platform shakes again. Because the amount of work left to finish the project got shrunk, the tendency is moving the resources to the new projects. But the boomerang comes back very hard due to the bigness of the project. The promises that were given to the customer, public, stakeholders… now they may fall into sustaining activities, 5 years guaranty works.
Then what to do to correctly prioritize your project, to not to miss any opportunity, to take minimum risks? It is challenging and the table will be wobbly all the time. We need to bear in mind that the business promises to the customers and workers should not be underestimated even it seems a little, easy or a development project that could work in long term. Once they are passed the election and put into the projects file, you need to finish them properly on time, no matter what and all of them. That is why we need to implement performance improvement, organisational culture change, innovation management, effective and lean working and many more management techniques.
Derya Milner
Leading Innovation and Change
