This week in pm-clinic: Killing the zombie project
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:
I’m a pm for a web development company – I have what we call a zombie: a project that lives on forever for no good reason. The client continually makes rounds of tiny changes, often to things where they can’t provide specific or actionable feedback so we can’t get it right the first time. The project scope (contract) of work, sadly, doesn’t have language that caps these things as they were unexpected. So, through either politics, influence, bands of garlic, or changing the process, how do you put a zombie
project to rest?– Hunting project zombies
I think decision about killing any project, including zombies, shouldn’t be made by a pm. There’s probably a sales, who sold the project or an account manager who cares about the customer. The desicion should be made somewhere around those persons. If there’s no one who matches this criteria, well, I believe there’s someone who’s responsible for sales in the company, right?
The role of the pm here is to provide short analysis of costs in the project. Whole money spent on adding and implementing those tiny features. There’re also some maintenance fees and everyday support for the project. All those should be included. You’ll come out with some number either positive or negative. One thing is important – don’t cheat here – you have to believe in the result you got.
Nothing talks to the sales better than money. Don’t expect that even the lack of profits will allow to kill the project. If sale team is working on a new deal with the customer, they rather won’t allow you to put it down. But remember – it shouldn’t be decision of the pm.
Having said that I admit I experienced some failures with similar situations. Bah, I was even accused of trying to kill the project behind sales’ back (which wasn’t true). But still, knowing how hard continuing the zombie can be, I believe the decision should come from sales team.