Insights For Success

Strategy, Innovation, Leadership and Security

projects

9 most important questions to determine if a project is worthwhile

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

George H Heilmeier was a DARPA director and developed 9 questions to help the agency determine the worthiness of project being submitted to it for funding. These 9 powerful questions as referred to as the "Heilmeier Catechism" and have become a core operating paradigm for DARPA [Defense Advance Research Projects Activity] And IARPA [Intelligence Advance Research Project Activity].

These questions are so powerful, they are used in the business world day in and day out. I first learned about these questions while having lunch with a VC in San Francisco. He explained that many of his peers also use these questions when determining the funding worthiness of a proposal.

There have been variations to the questions but I recommended sticking with the original 9:

  1. What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.  What is the problem?  Why is it hard?
  2. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
  3. What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
  4. Who cares?
  5. If you're successful, what difference will it make?   What impact will success have?  How will it be measured?
  6. What are the risks and the payoffs?
  7. How much will it cost?
  8. How long will it take?
  9. What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?  How will progress be measured?

This is a variation on the journalists who, what, where, when, why and how strategy. Obviously answering these questions will not change the world or guarantee the success of a project. They will greatly reduce the risks you take by ensuring the key concepts are thought off and understood

Every project manager should be performing a pre-mortem

ManagementEdward Kiledjian

As a business leader, I have participated in and managed hundreds of post-mortem reviews for projects and deals. It is a sound strategy to identify the elements that failed or that could be optimized/

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana

But what if you could gain all of the benefits of this activity before the initiative fails thus potentially saving it? A pre-mortem (or premortem) basically is a role playing game where participants assume the project has already failed and then determine why it failed and how failure could have been prevented. 

Why this works

Issues rarely "just happen". Typically there are warning signals that show up prior to any failure. Typically these are:

  • You know you are not undertaking the required maintenance which will likely lead to failure (project monitoring, follow-ups, etc)
  • You can "feel" the project deviating from its core purpose
  • You start noticing "out of the ordinary" or unexpected results 

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Instead of retrospectively looking at why the project failed, why not take the time to foresee what could go wrong and fix it?

The best way is to invite a core group of knowledgeable experts and ask them to imagine the project failing then lead the group to identify possible preventative measures. It sounds easy because it is.

The Pre-Mortem Process

Step 1 - Doom and Gloom

Lock up your key people in a room and ask them to imagine every possible way the project could fail. Big or small it should be written down individually on a sheet of paper. Remind the team that no failure is too big or too small. Every issue should be started with "what if"

  • What if the supplier doesn't deliver the part
  • What if the supplier goes out of business
  • What if the price of the part shoots up significantly
  • What if...
  • what if...
  • what if... 

As a moderator, your role is to ensure everyone spends this time thinking about problems and not solutions. No judgement and no logical thought. We don't want participants making risk judgements to eliminate possible failures. 

Step 2 - Prioritization

Share all of the failure possibilities with the participants and narrow down the list to the top 10, top 20 or whatever other number you are comfortable with. For most projects, I typically like top 10 lists. For more critical or larger projects, I may go to a top 25 list.

When reviewing the list (collectively), remind the participants that there are really 3 things to consider in this step

  1. Choose failures whose realization will have a severe and catastrophic impact on the project. 
  2. Choose failures who are likely to happen. There could be some debate but the threat of a comet hitting your datacenter could probably be crossed off the list.
  3. Choose failures that are in your span of control. Some failures are outside of your control and cannot be mitigated by you. Chuck those out.

Step 3 - Solutioning 

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
”
— Abraham Lincoln

If the first 2 steps where done properly and diligently then this last step should be fairly easy and straightforward. Assigned the final problems to owners and each owner must:

  • Come up with a plan to prevent the failure from occurring
  • Come up with a backup plan in case prevention doesn't work

The final step is to ensure every action item is given an owner and a due date. These should be tracked as part of the master project plan and reported on weekly.

84% of Kickstarter projects ship late

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Kickstarter is the most popular crowd-sourcing site and since its inception of 2009 has funded $376 million dollars for 34,000 projects. For product inventors, Kickstarter is the promised land where you they can fund their dreams quickly.
CNN Money conducted a review of the 50 most popular Kickstarter projects and found that things get ugly, very very ugly.
  • 8 of those 50 projects meet their delivery commitment deadlines
  • 15 of those 50 projects had not shipped yet (very very late)
  • 27 of those 50 projects were delivered late (usually 2 months but some were as late as a year)
Unfortunately it seems Kickstarter is more interested in taking its 5% cut and moving on rather than helping project supporters get fair treatment. Many analysts (yours truly included) have been asking Kickstarter to take a much more active role to ensure projects are delivered on time or to implement penalties for late deliveries.
Don't forget that the worst case scenario is that your project may never actually materialize and the project creator has no obligation to refund your investment. Unlike a credit card or Paypal, you have no claim of refund for abandoned projects.
My hope is that eventually enough people will be aware of these shady situations and will take their money elsewhere forcing Kickstarter to re-evaluate its position. I think consummer protection should be at the forefront of its mission statement.