I’ve been on lots of projects, and I’ve also gotten brought in to fix projects which have gone haywire. Nothing is worse than being on a project that’s going poorly….”we’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” is one of the memorable things said to me.  Here’s a list of the things that I most often see….

(If you ask me any rules about any sports, I don’t know them. But I love sports metaphors.)

1. People are not playing their position. Everyone should have a clearly stated role on a project. But often times, people don’t know exactly what their role is….so you have chaos. You have gaps (“we need John, he’s the only one who knows the answer to that question”), multiple people in the same role (three people from sales), or people you need later, but not now (“why am I on this call?”).  It’s important to figure out the right players from the beginning.
2. No scorekeeper, no clock. This translates to lack of good project management discipline: someone has to be the scorekeeper, and mind the clock. If no one is doing that, the meetings cover the same issues without resolution, you feel like there’s no clarity on deadlines. You need to know where you are and how much time is left on the clock.
3. No referees.There’s no escalation path: sometimes, the problem requires a decision bigger than anyone on the team is authorized to make. Someone has to escalate the problem. Often times that one person’s afraid to…so the team just keeps struggling along.
4. No captain/no quarterback. Someone has to call the plays, the time outs, communicate with the players on the field. Otherwise, it’s a lot of well-meaning people who are trying to get something done without a leader.
5. Not switching out players. Sometimes, you have the wrong person in these roles. You have to be willing to switch out players when it’s not working…otherwise the whole team suffers.  One of the phrases I use is  “we keep giving x the ball, but he/she keeps fumbling on the goal line.”  It’s not that they’re bad, but sometimes the person is just over their head.  I’ve never seen a situation where someone recovers from that…it might seem mean, but it’s much better to address the problem than letting someone fail.