De-escalating run-away projects
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- Created on Sunday, 15 November 2009 03:07
A common well known problem a lot of public and private organizations face are so called run-away projects and programs. We call a project a run-away when there is an escalation of cost without any real result(s) to show for it. There are ample examples documented in the literature. There are also quite a few good solutions documented. In one of the next articles we'll provide a few examples of some of those run-away projects.
In a recent article1in Communications of the ACM the authors provide an interesting so-called de-escalating maturity model (DMM) trying to deal with run-away projects. The model is based on three approaches to de-escalation management:
- The Crisis Management Approach
- The Change Management Approach
- The Problem Solving Approach
The model:
As with most maturity models the authors identify 5 levels:
Better Decisions?
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- Created on Thursday, 08 October 2009 02:53
In a recent article in the Strategy magazine the authors identify 4 red flag conditions that may lead to bad decisions and 4 safeguards to prevent those poor decisions.
They are:
Four types of error |
Four types of safeguard |
Misleading prejudgement |
Experience and data |
Misleading experience |
Governance |
Inappropriate self-interest |
Group debate and challenge |
Inappropriate attacements |
Monitoring |
Although this list does not imply to be complete nor do the safeguards imply to be perfect but it is always a good thing to be aware of the potential of "Bad Decisions"
Problem with any decision made in the context of an organization, and especially the ones higher up the command line, is that they are hard to challenge. We tend to mix the person with the decison.