Michelle learns to win

In case you have not read the read the part-1 of this post, please do so now. visit http://rajeev-projectmanagementsimplified.blogspot.in/2013/01/what-went-wrong-wish-we-had-tarot-cards.html

As mentioned in my last post,  now  I would be playing a role similar to a role of air crash investigator who examines facts and comes up with remedial advisory and ensures that such type of risks are mitigated by reaching to root cause and ensure that future projects would not face same fate

Was it Leader? On examination about credentials and knowledge of Michele, it seems everything was ok and decision and her acting as Project Manager was not bad at all and  like for any pilot good number of flying hours is really critical for flying, similarly she had handled at least 2 such major projects  in past

Was it Team? Team had all eligible members with more than 4+ years of experience and had been part of Michelle team in past and was her choice only, so why would Michelle chose bad team?

 Mother Nature? May be it was easy to say that Mother Nature had played a critical role in this and it was unavoidable. But just because it was a natural calamity, nothing could have been done, so should we conclude that we should stop flying planes as lightening can strike?  Stop working in Japan as its earthquake prone?  Stop doing business with companies who transport materials in ships  via Arabian sea as pirates are highly active there ?

Then what went wrong?

Investigations:
As an investigator  or rather Project Manager,  looking at the needs of business globally, we cannot suggest to avoid business because of environmental  factors /risks  as they are part and parcel of our life. We can be better be prepared to handle crisis based out of learning’s from past and also have enough backup plans to ensure that we should not fail

Are you suggesting business continuity planning (BCP)? Well not exactly because in case of Michelle, it is quite clear that to some extent she had BCP in place and code was always checked out and checked in to source code configuration server (TFS), which means, she always had whole source code in New York server

Final Report

As an investigator, I was able to find few gaps which should have been part of risk response and planning to avoid this.  I can come up with following advisory to Michelle to avoid such failures in future:

Lack of audit: While we always have BCP in most of projects and companies have secondary site and defined SLA(service line agreement) to make secondary site functional in few hours but it is as simple that  we should not wait until disaster happens and we should regularly check our preparedness in advance with respect to  Crisis. Had Michelle even put a thought to invoke BCP check by mocking even an earthquake scenario, given the fact Japan is highly prone to earthquake, she would have got an answer that how bad situation was, as documentation was not complete,  there  was  issues with partial code available in TFS, SME knowledge was mostly in Japan. Percentage completion in project may not always tell truth. Audits/checks are must

Global operations but with caution: If you are dealing with global teams, it becomes more important to categorization of risks and the response. All historical risks should be gathered at the time of project planning and responses should be ready with you. For example we have seen last year that whole Atlantic was shut down for flights because of ash smoke erupting from volcano

A similar risk should have been documented by Airlines that what would be alternate routes of operations  in case of  war erupting  in Atlantic Ocean region because people will not stop travelling and that would have taken care of Volcanic ash situation automatically, while new risks would have been added to risk history

Off lately Terrorism is latest to add to definition of global risks and companies should plan well in advance when working in locations prone to terrorist threats.

So Michelle was briefed about all these precautions that she should take in upcoming projects to ensure great leaders like her and the work of the best team does not go in vain

Bottom line is that always checks your preparedness for disasters regularly and notifies any issues and corrective action. Periodically conduct such exercise but it should be surprise for team and not an informed activity

Until next time

Cheers,
Rajeev Koul