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Beyond The Plan
Roger Bly (May 4, 2006)

It isn’t long before even the best project plan is rendered obsolete by new realities. And in an environment of shared resources and common strategic goals, the impact can spread like a virus. To succeed, organizations must apply collaborative tools and practices that go beyond planning and bring enterprisewide project execution to the forefront.

In a famous FedEx TV commercial, a lowly shipping clerk is on the phone getting the parameters of a critical project — namely, sending a very important package overnight to an impatient customer. After each instruction, he confidently responds, “I can do that! I can do that!” Then he hangs up the phone with a horrified look and asks himself, “How am I gonna do that?”

Projects are the currency of getting things done in today’s enterprise. Formost workers, the work day is nolonger spent in isolation. Rather, it isspent in the service of multiple projects involving groups of people andresources. With their complexities, interdependencies, resource constraints and time limits, projects are costlier, riskier and more mission-critical than ever before. So the question “How am I gonna do that?” is one that project managers now ask all day long (and it’s not a joke).

Until now, the software industry’s response to that question has been to create a wide range of tools that focus on project planning.

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September 2010:

What are the main reasons that projects fall behind schedule?