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From CIO to consultant: Project manager or salesman?
Hard lessons from the coalface…

By Mike Barrett

Published: Wednesday 02 July 2008

Having decided last year to stop being a CIO and start his own business, Mike Barrett has just finished his first major project. With his background, it all should have run smoothly but how did the project really fare?

It seems like only yesterday I was publishing my New Year resolutions for all to see here on silicon.com.

In reality, it's been more than three months since I last sat at the screen with enough time to write a column. So much for resolution number one.

So why the absence? Since Xmas, my life has been completely consumed by my first major project.

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If you're expecting me to explain how I deployed my years of experience in product development and project management to deliver the smoothest project of my career, you should look away now. It didn't quite work out like that.

It's true that the client is extremely happy with the shiny new web publishing site. It was delivered on time - just - and within budget - well, the client's budget, anyway.

But as a study in project management, I have to admit it left a lot to be desired. In fact, I put off for at least two weeks calculating how much unbudgeted time and effort it has taken for fear of having to fire myself.

So how did I get into this situation? I've been responsible for much bigger projects than this. I have 10 years' project management experience. I can create Gantt charts. I even understand most of the functions of Microsoft Project.

In my last two roles I've always acted as a brake on projects that threatened to get out of control. But in the past three months I've pushed myself, my client and my suppliers to the edge.

There has been tension, frustration, exasperation and finally relief. It could have broken us all but thankfully it has pulled us closer together.

Here's what went wrong. The design element of the project was carried out by a separate agency with me responsible for the build process.

Originally the project was scheduled to run for six months, roughly half design and half build. As a result of the split, the build couldn't start properly until the entire design process was complete.

As with all projects of this kind, the initial estimates proved to be too optimistic and in fact the design process took the best part of six months. Along the way, at every delay, the design agency would push its completion date back by the requisite amount.

For the bigger changes, we moved our delivery back too. But without visibility on the completed designs we were always operating to some degree in the dark.

We were also way too nice. For many of the smaller changes or delays I simply said things like "That should be OK" or "We'll sort it out when we build it".

So when we did come to build it, we mapped out the project plan and set to work. The only problem was our plan showed a completion date of late April when the client had a hard, financial deadline of 31 March.

Suddenly, all those little things we'd agreed to sort out later loomed very large indeed. Cutting four weeks out a nine-week build plan was going to be challenging.

But everyone was very reasonable about it and after some negotiation we put together a phased plan that ticked enough boxes to get us a product to launch. We worked evenings, weekends and all hours in between to hit the deadline.

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This effort got us live on time but also provided no respite because we went straight into phase two to complete the remainder of the site by a second deadline.

We managed to do it but it was one of the toughest projects I've ever worked on. Not being completely in control of the resources is a new experience and one that proved very frustrating for the build team as well as for me.

So, having had time to reflect over the past few weeks or so since we finished, who was to blame for all this? It would be easy to look through the window and point at the agency for increasing the scope of the work or at the client for not making the hard deadline clear.

I could feel aggrieved that my supplier sometimes didn't have as much resource as I would have liked to allocate to my project.

But the conclusion I've reached is that the main culprit in all this was me. After years of moaning at my sales colleagues for selling non-existent products to be delivered in ridiculous timelines, I realised that's exactly what I was doing to myself.

I made the fundamental mistake of allowing my still immature sales and marketing skills to completely overrule all the experience I have of project management.

At least when those two roles are carried out by different people, there can be a sensible discussion. The pros and cons get weighed up. But when both are being performed by the same person, there's a real need to balance keeping the client happy by expanding the scope, with the danger of upsetting them by not delivering on time.

It's been an enormously stressful period but I've learned more about myself in three months than in the previous 12. Importantly, the one thing I never wavered on was quality.

Better to have 90 per cent of the site working properly and 10 per cent delivered later than to have the whole site only working at 90 per cent.

We're just about to start phase two of the project so we must have done something right and we're already incorporating the hard lessons learned. Now, where did I put that Gantt chart?