When your managing or governing a project you don’t want to be caught out relying on your project reporting while your project fails. You need to look where the reporting doesn’t go and pick up trends that otherwise go unnoticed.

Tracking, managing and measuring your project’s true status requires you to monitor multiple sets of indicators, such as

1. project progress reporting - standard status reporting
2. project health reporting - the output of project health checks
3. management by walking around - visiting the project team and business areas impacted (frequently)
4. AND monitoring the leading indicators of failure.

Too often, when projects fail (whether completely or just fail to deliver much value) we find that the indicators of the project’s potential failure have been clear for some time, but no one was looking.

This “How to manage the leading indicators of failure” Guide came from my personal desire not to be caught “asleep at the wheel” when governing projects. From my need to have clear indicators I could monitor to confirm that the project was not disintegrating without my knowledge.

If you’re suddenly engulfed in some business ‘tsunami’ that is one thing, but if you’ve let the project slide into oblivion, that’s negligence.

Active monitoring of leading indicators of failure is a VDM difference. We’ve given you 7 key leading indicators of failure. we could give you much more, but if you periodically (say, quarterly) check these indicators you’ll identify if your project is heading of the rails (or worse, off a cliff!).

Your “How to manage the leading indicators of failure” Guide explains what leading indicators to look for in terms of your project’s

1. scope
2. resources
3. cash-burn rate
4. issues
5. risks
6. quality
7. organizational change.

Who should read

A simple but critically important Guide for all

1. Project managers
2. PMOs and, especially,
3. Governance Teams

Contents

list goes here

Bonus

Condemned to completion
A value delivery management article by Jed Simms that explains, through a fictitious story, why projects that are failing are continued or ‘condemned to completion’ rather than being cancelled.

Worthwhile projects
A value delivery management article by Jed Simms that describes the essential characteristics of successful workshops.