At some stage your project will hit the skids, as we used to say in Liverpool. I’d love to be able to tell you this won’t happen to you and everything will go swimmingly well, but that’s not the nature of projects, I’m afraid. By their nature, they are evolving entities that often generate uncertainty. Your job is to see that this uncertainty is well managed and to course-correct when you spot things are going wrong.

Here I’ll give you a few insights from my experience into how to spot when your project is going wrong, in case it’s not obvious to you.

1. No one understands why you’re doing the project

For the project to really matter and for the people who are working on it to really care, it’s got to align with what your company said they would address at the start of the year — in other words, your strategy. The second you deviate from that, you lose people and the kitchen conversations start: ‘I have no idea why we’re doing this’ or ‘This doesn’t line up with what we said we’d do’ or ‘We’re only doing this because the HR Manager went to [insert name of competitor] and saw what they’d done’, and so on. The project has to fit your strategy, not the other way around, and as the sponsor you have to ensure the value is clear at the start and it has ongoing viability.

The moment it deviates from what was originally planned, doubt and suspicion arise and you have to reassure everyone that it will still deliver the expected outcomes. Constantly reiterating the ‘why’ is vital to maintaining interest and engagement.

2. Watermelon projects

Ah, my favourite! The name derives from the ‘traffic lights’ we often use in our organisations to signify how we’re progressing towards the key elements of our projects, usually time, cost and quality.

There are some projects we know are in trouble. The project manager will tell us of issues we’re dealing with, or if risks are going unmanaged. In winter, projects often lose people to sickness. Still there remains a blind confidence that everything can still be achieved, so the project is reported as ‘green’. All the traffic lights are set this way, yet the narrative on the project report doesn’t reflect it.

They’re called watermelon projects because they are green on the outside, but as soon as you cut them open by starting to ask questions, you find they’re actually red on the inside, with bits of black here and there!

What you require at all times from your project manager is honest reporting. Otherwise you won’t be able to make the decisions required to keep it moving towards achieving its objectives.

3. Increase in emails

In the first part of this book I talked at length about the project manager’s role in relation to communication and relationship building. They walk, they talk and they constantly have their finger on the pulse of the project. Every now and then, though, they’ll resort to writing. Emails that confirm conversations are fine and to be expected (although you should never be copied into these). Then there are the passive-aggressive emails, often sent late at night, that speak to different problems.

These are a sign that a project manager has stopped talking and has resorted to an ‘audit trail’ of information instead. This is counterproductive for their role and what the project is trying to achieve. At this stage you’ll show empathy and ask the project manager what the issue is in order to help them overcome it.

4. Missed deadlines

If you haven’t taken the time to plan properly, then you’re going to miss deadlines. It’s your responsibility to make sure this doesn’t happen.

If you have taken the time to plan properly, then you’re halfway to success and it’s now the project manager’s responsibility to ensure that it’s actioned accordingly. It’s their job to inspire and motivate the team, to set expectations, to help them manage their priorities and drive them to deliver. This is what project managers are paid to do.

When the first deadline is missed, it’s a cause for concern, because in my experience there is often a domino effect. You can’t afford to let this happen.

If there’s no consequence for a project manager who misses a deadline, then they will continue to excuse them away. You have to hold them to the promises they make and be tough on them when they don’t deliver. Remember that for any project to be successful you have to push each other to succeed. There really is no other way.

5. Documents aren’t updated

As the sponsor you should regularly ask to see documents such as the schedule, risk register and issue register. If the project is being delivered in an agile way, these will still all exist, though they’re more likely to be visual or talked about during the daily stand-up, where you’ll be present. What these documents provide is another level of confidence that the person managing their project is doing their job properly, not skipping the important bits.

I would never allow my project managers to present anything to me that was more than a week out of date. Things change so quickly in projects that if you’re not on top of the detail, then milestone delivery can get away from you.

A project manager should be spending a minimum of a day a week updating their documents or visuals to ensure that the information presented is up to date. If it’s ‘all in their head’ (and extroverted project managers are a nightmare for this), you have to remind them that it needs to be documented too.

6. Increased sick leave

Projects can be stressful. Very stressful. If they’re not handled in the right way it can lead to increased levels of sick leave, and that’s bad for everyone.

In my experience, increases in sick and mental health leave are usually linked to one or more of the following factors:

1. Project manager. The role of the PM is to inspire and motivate, which means they have to show empathy and emotional intelligence. They have to understand the emotions and personalities of the team and manage them judiciously. That means no shouting, screaming or unreasonable demands. It means not talking behind their backs or embarrassing them in any way. And it means ensuring they have everything they need (including clarity) to be able to deliver as needed. Any deficiencies here often lead to stress and/or anxiety, and may result in people taking time away from their work.
2. Workload. Organisations often take on more work than they have staff for. This inevitably means people have to juggle multiple projects at the same time as doing their day job. It pushes people into putting in long hours without giving them any time (other than their holidays) to rest and recuperate, while it demands the same undiminished level of performance from them. This is simply not sustainable. As a sponsor you have a responsibility to be reasonable in your requests and to ensure that priorities are clear so people always know what’s most important. Where workload is an issue, you need to work with your peers either to reduce low-value work or to bring more people in to help.
3. Culture. The environment in which you expect your people to work can often be counterproductive. From poor behaviours and performance going unchecked to unclear roles and responsibilities to a lack of daylight, there are many contributing cultural factors that may impact productivity on a project. In recent years the increasing numbers of emails and meetings has definitely become a problem. This is a cultural issue that can be dealt with, although in my experience, often the will to do so isn’t strong enough at a senior management level. If your people department runs a culture survey, this will be the best place to look for potential cultural issues. If you don’t deal to them and redefine the way you do things, then expect sick leave to increase.
4. Competence. Finally, it’s possible the person being asked to complete the tasks is not up to it. Sure, they may be well meaning, enthusiastic and up for the challenge, but if they don’t have the right skills, the project will only place extra pressure on them to perform. It’s the project manager’s job to ensure they’re suitably skilled, then to regularly check in on them to ensure they have everything they need to be able to deliver. Should they consistently not meet expectation, however, they’re likely to feel the pressure even more, leading to time away from the office. We should never put people in this situation. If we’re not able to provide them with adequate training or give them extra time to complete a task, then bringing in someone externally may be the short-term answer.

7. Forecast spend = budget

Once the plan has been approved, it’s time to spend the money. Every activity undertaken will cost something. During the planning process estimates will have been provided for the financial value of this work, and those estimates will likely be wrong because, well, they’re estimates.

But that’s fine. Any project manager worth their salt will understand this and make sure the financial estimates are greater than what’s required, so towards the end of the project they’ll have some money left either to give back or to use to address scope items that weren’t anticipated at the start.

All of which means that if at any stage of the project the forecasted spend matches the budget exactly, then the project manager isn’t doing their job. In my 20 years, no project ever came in exactly on budget. Ever. There will often be considerable flex, week to week or month to month, and in collaboration with the project manager you have to decide whether or not this is acceptable.

If you’re ahead on the plan, then you may bring some work forward, causing an overspend against forecast; if you’re running behind, then it’s likely that you will underspend. But the forecasted spend never matches the budget. If you find it does, then you may have a problem.