Don’t forget the important role that corporate politics play in this particular area. Case in point is a project that was finished 7 days ago (Sept 30th) by a junior PM whom I have been mentoring for about 2 years.

On this particular project the internal political pressure on the department VP had been increased again and again. This lead to a “slimming down” of their definition of what Done looked like. In the end, they defined Done as “5 products are in the system and we can print a report”.

As you can expect, the project was released successfully and is now “done”.

The only problem is that this is just a political statement and the real work to finish the project “properly” has just begun. They don’t have a definition for “properly” either…

Until next time,
Cornelius Fichtner
http://www.thepmpodcast.com