A report by The Standish Group states that only 16.2 percent of IT projects were considered successful by being completed on time and on budget. Most reported projects were over budget, over time, or failed to achieve promised functionality.
No matter what type of industry, most businesses have come to accept that big projects will be late, over budget, and flawed. Why do so few projects make it over the finish line?
It’s clear the current approach to project management is not working. One issue is that project management is focused on ensuring activities are completed, rather than making sure the project succeeds.
For example, a delivery business that focuses all its efforts on checking off the road trip to-do list still manages to not make its cross-country delivery on time. The business failed to consider various factors, such as potential traffic, bad weather, truck malfunctions, and road construction. They needed to look at the big picture to determine how to arrive on time, on budget, and with the cargo in acceptable condition.
Like a well-delivered parcel, there must be a better way to ensure project management delivers what it promises.
This blog will delve into the current challenges with project management, introduce a new approach to achieving project success known as project success navigation, define what it is, how it works, and how to leverage project success navigation to take your project management to the next level.
The project management profession exists to help guide projects to successful completion. When projects fail, the fate of the project sponsor is on the line.
One root problem is that project management focuses on ensuring activities are completed, instead of ensuring a project succeeds.
Project managers are encouraged to check boxes and report that those boxes got checked. If they cannot check a box, some will record false inputs. This can leave project sponsors like you in the dark about what has been done or done right.
Existing disciplines inadequately equip project managers to do the best day-to-day work possible.
Another issue is that for big complex projects, progress data can quickly become lost in multiple silos. This makes it difficult to collect and analyze accurate data until it’s too late.
By the time the data is consolidated, it could be outdated by days or even weeks. This leads to a project truth gap.
We’ve all been there.
You are preparing for a quarterly board meeting. Hours before this meeting, you learn that the project’s status is red. You do not have time to take corrective action nor time to prepare to share bad news.
At this meeting, you have no other choice but to ask for more time and budget. This project truth gap creates a dangerous ripple effect – your company suffers, which harms your credibility and reputation, and could even put your job on the line.
During project review, analysis of what went wrong looks to the past, assessing failures and blame. A post-mortem doesn’t help you know how to get the project back on track or look to similar project management challenges from other companies for insight.
Project management software is designed to reduce project failure rate, but it still falls short. This software focuses on checking boxes of completed activities, rather than whether the project is likely to be successful.
This means project sponsors are still in the dark, never truly knowing how their projects are going or what needs attention.
Project truth gap means an increase in work logjams, misfires, and overages. This leads to the project falling apart and eventually, becoming another statistic – another project failure.
Scope creep occurs when the original project scope begins to expand in terms of goals, deliverables, and requirements.
This common pitfall can start with small undocumented changes based on good intentions. Yet, these requests slowly increase in size and frequency. Even with proper change control in place, they lead to huge problems and can derail a project from successfully achieving its objectives, timelines, and stakeholder expectations.
Up to this point, there hasn’t been an effective solution to significantly improve the chances of a project hitting its target. There must be something better than checking boxes, grappling with project truth gaps, and billions lost annually.
Companies, along with the global economy and society, deserve better. The status quo has clearly not been working for a long time.
How can businesses worldwide break free from the never-ending plague of failed projects?
Project success navigation, or PSN, is a combination of the project success discipline and an AI mobile application. It breathes new life into the realm of project success by guiding big projects to a successful conclusion.
The project success discipline realigns the project management profession, moving its focus from monitoring activities to the methodical and successful completion of projects.
PSN is comprised of a set of rules based on project success best practices, along with expert guidance for implementing those rules.
Project success navigation technology integrates with your existing project management ecosystem, consolidating the information and making it visible in a user-friendly mobile app for every project stakeholder. PSN delivers project truth, a critical component to achieving project success.
PSN does not replace your project management software. Instead, PSN augments it, bringing key data together in a constructive way.
Project success navigation simplifies access to compiled information by automatically getting data and making it objective, rather than relying on the subjective inputs of individuals.
PSN leverages this data to give you insight into project health and offers expert guidance and recommendations about what to do next to achieve project success.
The discipline and software work in harmony to help project stakeholders anticipate problems and prevent them happening ahead of time. As project sponsors, you will never be surprised.
Instead, you are always one step ahead. You will know how to effectively and efficiently guide your project.
PSN ends the project truth gap once and for all.
Anonymized data from your project and projects at other companies feeds an AI algorithm that learns what works and what doesn’t. In turn, this data helps improve recommendations and the mobile software’s ability to foresee problems.
For instance, the AI software might tell you how long one facet of your project should take, and whether and why you are behind.
The AI will also learn about your goals, project, and company, customizing guidance to fit your specific business. There is no cookie-cutter project. It will tell you which options increase your chances of success based on the intersection of your needs and what others have done.
In time, a generative AI interface will provide a more conversational approach to project success navigation. Project sponsors will be able to speak or type questions or play out scenarios in natural language.
Project success navigation is about materially improving the odds of every project succeeding. It’s about providing a holistic view of a project in a consumable mobile app format.
Imagine if the global project failure rate could move from two-thirds to one-third. This shift would have a profound impact – it could save more businesses, boost the economy, and make our lives better.
Every project now has a fighting chance – like a video game cheat code, PSN gives project teams an unfair advantage.
At CORBEAU Tech, we have built the first project success navigation solution called Crows Nest℠. It draws on the project success discipline based on several decades of practice in effective project management.
Assisted by a “white glove” concierge service, our PSN app integrates timely data from your project management ecosystem and clearly and easily displays it on mobile devices.
The Crows Nest AI is built to learn from the data, allowing it to predict trouble and provide you with best-in-class recommendations and allow for conversational interaction.
Our vision is to one day give you a single AI-driven application that significantly improves your odds of completing game-changing projects successfully.
CORBEAU Tech is transforming project management into project success. This profound shift will have enormous implications globally.
CORBEAU Tech clients benefit from decades of real-world experience. Since every client has unique challenges, CORBEAU aligns relevant and experienced project consultants who help your company strategize and execute solutions of all sizes specifically tailored to your long-term goals.
If you would like to learn more about project success navigation, download the Crows Nest app at thecrowsnestapp.com.
About CORBEAU Tech
Launched in February 2022, CORBEAU Tech is a success-focused technology and consulting company based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
CORBEAU Tech aims to help businesses worldwide break free from the box-checking epidemic that surrounds traditional project management. We prioritize the success of projects, meeting deadlines, and staying within budget.
The CORBEAU Tech team collectively has over 75 years of real-world project expertise. This expert team understands the unique challenges of our clients and strategizes and executes effective business solutions designed to maximize project success.