Project management question??
Question:
i have a question about building information systems, i am woundering what a project manager should do when he is having difficulty with a key stakeholder. difficulty in the way of finding out factual information for the development.
and then relises half way through development the system is all wong, the requirments were incorrect?
should the project manager dumb the system or continue development with schedule over runs?
I'm in project management myself, we use PRINCE2 methodology. Basically, in any which method you use, if you are a project manager this is not even your decision to make! You usually have a group of people you report to; the project coordination group (PCG). Your Key User can be part of the PCG. Call these people to a meeting immediately. Be honest about the situation without pointing fingers. Present the situation and give the PCG a number of options; one of which perhaps is discontinueing the project. Elaborate on the pros and cons, alternatives, financial consequences, schedule consequences, etc. You need these people in the PCG to back you up no matter what. So you need to lead them to a decision they feel confident about by clearing up the situation.
On project startup:
Be careful as a project manager. Organisations are often so incredibly disfunct they let project managers literally 'own' projects of massive budgets without ever pulling up the right organisation structure for the project. This leaves the project manager to manage and make decisions about things they should never ever be solely responsible for. I'm saying; stop trying to solve things on your own. Use the power of the decision making organ. Unfortunately organisations don't care about helping you out with that. They've dumped it someplace and that's enough for them. First thing you've got to do when you've got stuff dumped on your desk is lead the subject to it's appropriate project structure (people-wise). If it seems impossible to get it to a functioning project organisation you need to go back to wherever you got the project from and sound the alarm bell.
I know where you're coming from, and it's hard to address these things but you can't avoid adressing them no matter how hard that is. It's only going to get worse if you don't. I wish you the best of luck.
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