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Assessment Tool for Project Managers

In “Seven Reasons IT Projects Fail,” I outlined why IT projects fail and how to avoid those pitfalls. Here, I provide an assessment tool to help identify project risks. This tool is designed to solicit a yes or no answer. If the answer is no, the project manager should write down the reason and take action to make it a positive answer. This approach is designed to facilitate project managers’ responsibilities to plan, direct, solve problems and communicate.

Project Management

• Clear project goals? If no, what is not clear?
• Firm project scope? If no, is change-management being used?
• Achievable plan? (Note: The scope of this question is feasibility.)
• Communication plan in place? If no, what is needed to establish regular communication?
• Problems being shared with management? If no, why are they not being shared?
• Functional management involved at the right level? If no, what can you do to change this?
• Senior management participating in executive status? If no, should there be senior-management meetings or communications?
• Are you skilled enough for the project? If no, what specific skills do you need? Can you develop these needed skills quickly?
• Proactive management including performance measurement? If no, what performance measures could you add to make the project status more numeric and less subjective?
• Are you consistently telling the truth when reporting status? If no, make a list of items that are being left out and ask yourself why these are not being discussed openly.
• Dependencies identified and understood? If no, take a specific action to investigate dependencies and work them into the overall project plan.
• Requirements known or changing but being managed? If no, what can you do to firm up the requirements or put change management in place?

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