A project that I have been involved with came to an end this week. It is part of an ongoing, larger, piece of work and I got some surprised looks when I said that it was completed. This is something that I do experience once in a while, it seems that many people don't actually end their projects.
The surprise came from me declaring that the project was finished. Most of this organisation's project don't conclude, they fade. There is no definite end point.
I supported my statement by listing all of the actions that had been taken in order to claim that the project was completed. These included the writing of the SOPs, the ongoing management routine that had been established, the maintenance activities and the fact that we had achieved the results that we set out to achieve.
Finally, I made reference to the other priorities that were now focusing our attention.
I found it strange initially to be queried about me considering a project complete. But what is the alternative? Allowing a myriad of nearly finished projects to hang around the business? I certainly see a lot of projects lose momentum towards their conclusion, as the pain of not doing the project starts to leave the business, but come on, let's close out all of our projects properly.
Giles Johnston
...fixing MRP systems and re-engineering business processes