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[A] The Venture
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[AB] Why Project Control?
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When we're talking
about project success or failure, we're really talking Project
Control, and the reason is purely economic. This becomes
intuitively obvious when we consider some of the things that hinder
a project's progress.
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(1) Central
information becomes fragmented and localised so the right hand of
the project becomes less and less able to know what the left hand
is doing.
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(2) People leave,
taking their own personal bubble of knowledge with them. That
knowledge has to be either recreated or the project has to somehow
go on without it.
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(3) Project Concerns
arise during the normal course of the work and there are often
numerous meetings called to discuss them. Often the Concerns in a
project relate to the use of resources and deficiency in
communication.
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(4) Email culture
takes hold in the project alongside 'blame culture' as back
covering activity dictates that everyone is emailed with updates on
sensitive topics. People in the circulation feel obliged to
respond, whether or not they have some useful input because they
imagine their lack of reaction can be seen by peers and management
as some kind of weakness. Email trails like this can go on for
weeks as each person in the circulation tries to score points that
he hopes will help him keep his job.
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(5) People cast their
own personal economic outlook onto the project. An obvious effect
of that is the tendency for individuals working on the project not
to want it to end! People on a project can take all manner of day
to day difficulty, as long as the cause of the problem can't be
attributed directly to them.
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(6) Enthusiasm is not
an automatic feature in a human. Levels of enthusiasm vary hugely
in the project workforce over the span of a project. Imagine a
project where the enthusiasm of the entire workforce is transformed
to the highest level throughout the project. Making a project where
every single individual in the workforce actually WANTS the project
to finish as early as possible.
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The vast majority of
projects of all types and sizes currently in progress in the world
are flawed.
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