EkaLore has released notes on BAD (Big Data/AI/Data Science) Projects at different stages – conception, development, etc. This release takes a look at the day-to-day efforts at coping with challenging times.
High-powered project managers are in charge of BAD Projects day-to-day. They are entrusted with being good stewards of significant resources, attention, and betting results for the enterprise. Experience and expertise guide them to making good choices and conducting successful projects. The challenge for the project manager: what must be changed as challenges arise?
Project management is easy to criticize, easy to see choices in hindsight, and easy to plan when reality hasn’t intruded. A BAD Project is big enough, long enough, and hard enough to take the risks of getting rewards. The challenges are simple (staff adjustments, coping with weather changes, etc.) to horrendously complex (security, data storage, or development platform changes and ripples). Two key elements are needed for project managers in making the project plan adjustments and day-to-day decisions: resources to guide decision-makers and project management resources to adjust plans (add/delete tasks, reschedule coordinated events, resolve resourcing conflicts). Project managers are like operational managers: resources need to be expended to plan and execute the effort needed.
A successful BAD Project has a project manager who can avoid obviously risky issues. A project manager should be risk averse when responding to resource availability challenges, technology deployments being ready on a coordinated schedule, or critical resource availability. The key risks to avoid are schedule compression and assumptions that critical path events will also be complete on the optimistic schedule (often related assumptions). Initial project planning will have put some ‘slack’ into availability timing. If the built-in slack is insufficient then the most likely change is to adjust scope, scale or to eliminate a result (trimming tasks) if a reduction in benefit due to missed schedule is not possible. Knowing what can be sacrificed in a BAD Project plan is important knowledge.
A difficulty for Project Managers in challenging times are effects of changes in global costs (due to currency or macro-economic changes) and inflation. Inflation is an especially difficult problem as schedule overruns will incur escalating costs simply as time passes. This translates to fewer contractor resources, more expensive asset costs, and fewer resources to finish the most difficult parts of a BAD Project. A successful BAD Project will add substantially more ‘contingency’ (spend or resource count) by 3-5% above the enterprise’s assumed inflation rate. If inflation in the local budgeting zone is assumed to be 8-9% then a contingency spend rate of 12-14% is reasonable. The concern is that decision-makers used to seeing low rates of inflation and controlled staff costs (for example, using contractors) will see the contingency as unnecessary or something to be raided for problems elsewhere. Successful BAD Project managers will save their contingency for the ‘last 10%’ of a BAD Project.
BAD Project managers need to establish a resource (and budget) reserve/contingency to be successful. Coping with challenging times means stashing the resources (and budget) until needed.
If you’d like to read more about how BAD projects you can find more pieces at www.ekalore.com/bad-project-blog
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