How to help a failing project
A project manager asked me: “My software project is not going well, my team is tired and discouraged. What should I do?”
Answer: No software project is perfect. Every project has problems. As project manager, you must motivate your team even when the project is NOT progressing well. First, you must acknowledge to your team that the current situation is NOT good. There is nothing worse than when the project is not doing well but manager still insists that it is fine. You must speak the TRUTH but may add humor to it so the team can laugh a little. For example: “I know that the project is bad so the question is who want to buy a bad product? Can we sell it at half price?”. Second, you may ask your team to visualize about the end of the project by allow them to think positive on a better outcomes. You can ask each member to think of a scenario “What if the requirement does not change then …” “What if we have enough time to do better design …” then with your team together visualizing the end of the project. What will that look like? How does the success feel? What did you accomplish? How did you get there? How do you know you are there? When your team feels tired or discouraged, it often difficult to see the happy ending. As the manager, you can help them by give hope that the result will be better.
Many problems often come from fatigue as software people usually work long hours. In that case, you may give your team a break by having one day teambuilding workshop instead of project work. Sometime a one day field trip outside of town can give your team some “fresh thinking” into the old project. It is better if you can invite an outside speaker to come in and talk with the team on another subject and let the team rests their brain a little. For large project there are always changes. Sometime people move to another project and sometime requirements change. As project manager, you must review the project plan document, make adjustments by revisiting the expectations, adjusting goals and re-assign people to new roles and responsibilities. Sometime a little change may recharge the team, remove some issues and frustrations.
Even when the project failed or being cancelled you should NOT be bitter. It is easy for the project manager to blame something or somebody but by doing that you are creating a “bad environment” and may lose the respect of the team. Who want to work for a manager that blame their people? You must accept the responsibility and then connect back with the team by show them that you care. You must use any failures as a “lesson learned”. It is easy to get them engaged again if you show them that there is another chance, another project and you want them to work for you again. You may say that “As a team, we all learn from this lesson” and we will NOT make that mistake again. When your team is discouraged, do NOT avoid them. Instead, try to be positive and see what can be reworked and do NOT be afraid to ask for new ideas from your team on how to do it better next time. You will be surprised at how many ideas that they could come up to make a big difference the next time.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
