Common Project Mistakes
People who fail to plan, should plan to fail. - George Hewell

The success or failure of any e-learning project is seldom due to issues regarding content, technology, or personnel. Most projects fail because of some common and avoidable mistakes. Here are the six most common mistakes that can sabotage a project.

Common mistakes can spell disaster for any e-learning project. But, armed with a little awareness, you can sidestep these potential problems and greatly improve your chances of success.

1. Overly optimistic or aggressive schedules: In short, people are optimistic by nature. Schedules often are created without any consideration for the normal daily activities of the people working on the tasks. Establishing an overly optimistic schedule sets up a project for failure by shortchanging critical upstream development activities. It's important to consider the nature of the development when scheduling tasks and assigning work loads. Be sure to allow extra time in your schedule for unexpected problems or emergencies.

2. Incomplete design: Many projects are started before the design phase is complete, and some are started with no design at all! Inadequate design can seriously jeopardize your project and put your schedule at risk. You must allow enough time to properly analyze and design a project before beginning development.

3. Shortchanged quality: "Schedule" often becomes more important than "quality" in the minds of managers and developers. Shortchanging quality during development will extend the schedule and increase the cost of a project, particularly if fixes must be made after the project is complete. It is generally faster and less expensive to produce high quality products the first time around.

4. Creeping requirements: Project managers frequently fail to exercise control over changing or increasing requirements. This occurs when tasks, functionality, goals, and an understanding of the decision-making hierarchy are not firmly established. When estimating project requirements, you must clearly define the scope of the tasks ahead. If requirements are allowed to grow or increase after initial estimates, the project becomes vulnerable to schedule and cost overruns. It's important to note that project requirements may increase in two ways: by adding new requirements, or by further refining existing "fuzzy" or "gray" requirements. If legitimate new requirements are identified, you must manage them appropriately by making adjustments to schedule and cost.

5. Complex project team organization: For political reasons, many project teams are unnecessarily complex. They are designed to represent many managers and management levels within different organizational hierarchies. This kind of team structure can result in approval channels that are not clearly defined, and approval schedules that are difficult to meet.

6. Adding people to a late project: This classic mistake has a seductive lure that is difficult to resist. But, when a project is behind schedule, adding new people often reduces the productivity of existing team members more than it contributes productivity toward project completion. As a result, the project becomes even further behind schedule.

Submitted by the MediaPro project management team.