Three Post-Covid Reasons Your Project is Failing

Projects fail for all kinds of reasons — here’s a few things that are different after Covid…..

You’re Trying to Manage a Team on Chat

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not anti-IM. Chat, and its appropriately named cousin, Slack, are fine for a QQ to an individual or small group. What it doesn’t take the place of is a well-run meeting, goals, action items, workflow tools, documented requirements, baseline reporting, status, deliverables — ya know — the “work.”

It’s amazing how many people think nothing of constantly interrupting their highly-paid resources to insist they participate in circuitous Chat threads. Pre-Covid, no one would have ever said to their boss or co-workers, “Follow me around today and listen to all my conversations. That way, you’ll know what I’m doing.” How is constantly being interrupted by chat any different?

Talk is cheap, and the cheapest of all talk is chat.

I recently attended a meeting with a client’s finance team. They were proposing changes to their enterprise Rev Req process. Flow chart? Business Rules? Requirements? SOW? Nope, the guy pulls up a chat from three days ago, and proceeds to add people to the thread — really?

Talk is cheap, and the cheapest of all talk is chat. If you want to be 100% sure that your project will run over budget, over schedule, and your team will be lost in the chum and churn of incomplete direction, “manage” your projects via…