Boo! It's a Runaway Project!

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Boo! It's a Runaway Project!

Andy Jordan

October 19, 2009






There are some projects that never seem to end. Whether it be the final QA sign-off, the final client acceptance or the last group to transition, there are some projects where the final hurdle seems impossible to get over.
I’m sure that you can relate, but that’s not what I want to focus on here. In this article, I want to look at those projects that truly never seem to end--where the scope changes and extends so much that the original scope is barely remembered, and in many cases was delivered months earlier.
How do these projects occur?
In my experience, runaway projects can happen for two very distinct reasons. In the first instance the project that is actually required is not very well understood by the business and so a “stub” project is created that is intended to get the team together and working on a piece of functionality that is agreed to be part of the project while the stakeholders figure out what the complete project should look like.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach--it may not be ideal, but it does allow for resources to be utilized in parallel with planning activities.



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