The challenge for Project Managers is to keep the project moving through challenges – or identify when the project shouldn’t keep moving forward. If the PM is skilled in issue management they can navigate the daily issues (or hourly issues) on any project. If they aren’t as skilled, the project goes into firefighting mode.
So, how do you know? As the PM how do you recognize the difference between firefighting and issue management?
What does issue management look like?
No matter how fast the issues come, the PM and the team can assess the issue against the goals of the project and prioritize the use of resources for resolution. The PM can make the distinction between real issues and things that will go away if you wait.
Issues are resolved based on the long view – the desired result, the alignment to strategy, the market place. Any number of criteria that drive the project. The PM knows what the project drivers are. What takes precedence, cost, time, or quality? Recommendations are aligned with that priority.
What does firefighting look like?
Issues come fast and frequently. The same issue keeps rising because it’s not resolved completely. Issues are resolved on the approach of “how do I get this out of my face’. There’s no consistent priority of resources to the issues. People are pulled from one to the other issue, working on the latest problem before resolving the current fire.
Projects overrun schedule and budget and don’t often meet the quality. Scope creeps, customers are unsatisfied.
So, Perry, don’t hold back say what you really mean.
I’ve been in both situations. In the firefighting project, the team was so stressed that I joked about having a counselling shingle hanging outside my door. No one ever knew they had done the right thing. The project was a success but at the cost of 12 – 14 hour days and quality all over the place. There was no clear understanding of what the criteria were for meeting a compliance standard. As a result, time, energy and money were spent meeting the highest overall standard when we only needed to meet the specific standards.
In a similar project that used an issue management approach we met the right standard, with fewer people and money over a shorter time period.
There were fewer real issues, and we knew how to deal with the issues that would go away with time.
In my experience, the keys to avoiding firefighting lie in the initiation and planning of a project. The PM and the sponsor need to clearly determine the priorities on the drivers to allow the project team to produce aligned recommendations when issues need to be resolved.
Clarity between the PM and the sponsor on decision making authority can alleviate the effort required to resolve issues as the project proceeds.
Close and frequent communication with the sponsor at the early stages of the project will build a level of trust between them. When there is trust between the PM and the sponsor, things go smoothly – well as smoothly as a project can go.
What is the one thing you would advise a PM to do if they want to get a better handle on issue management?
Nice Article Perry. Communication plays an important role and it would help you handle on issue management. You can also use tools to manage issues properly, we use bugzilla in our organization.
But, as a PM, we need to be more proactive, and should use reviews and verification methods to decrease incoming issues as big no of issues at later stage is costly and create scenarios like firefighting.