When experienced program/project managers looks at Indian Demonetization Exercise (8th Nov 2016) they are either critical of the implementation or else they simply want to shoot the manager of this exercise Point blank. No regrets. Those managers who don't believe in Capital Punishment & instant justice would rather brainstorm and think how they could have done a fool proof implementation if they were in shoes of Finance Minister or Prime Ministers and the IAS (Indian Administrative Services) officers who call themselves 'Planning Commission' & do the planning for Government of India.
In my lifetime Indian Demonetization is probably the biggest real life project implementation where I was impacted as a end user in different roles of a boss, an employee, a father, a son of senior citizen parents & also of a project manager who feels that we could guide the government to get things back on track but the government did not have time to listen to public. I consider demonetization to be a practical lesson on
'How a project manager can screw a good project when
1) The project manager does not study how routine business is conducted (in this case by different businesses of the entire country)
2) The project manager does not capture the complete requirements of the project & get the requirements reviewed by experts
3) The project manager does not consider how different business would be impacted by his decisions, he does not consider the risks & plan for mitigation (happens when manager thinks he is too smart to consult experts)
In my lifetime Indian Demonetization is probably the biggest real life project implementation where I was impacted as a end user in different roles of a boss, an employee, a father, a son of senior citizen parents & also of a project manager who feels that we could guide the government to get things back on track but the government did not have time to listen to public. I consider demonetization to be a practical lesson on
'How a project manager can screw a good project when
1) The project manager does not study how routine business is conducted (in this case by different businesses of the entire country)
2) The project manager does not capture the complete requirements of the project & get the requirements reviewed by experts
3) The project manager does not consider how different business would be impacted by his decisions, he does not consider the risks & plan for mitigation (happens when manager thinks he is too smart to consult experts)
4) The project manager does not 'self-review' his plans and does not get plans reviewed by an independent reviewer because he is overconfident & over smart
5) The project manager allows his ego to become bigger than the success of the project and even after knowing his mistakes he does not accept his mistake
6) The project manager does not consider the need to review the 'Preparedness of Supporting Services' that could hamper or delay or fail the implementation of the project or cause serious losses to the business
In my next post I want to spend some time to 'think aloud' & discuss all the 'things-that-went-wrong' during implementation of demonetization, how it affected lives of common man and small businesses & how 'an average program manager could have done a much better job by covering basics of program management to ensure a much better and smoother implementation of Demonetization.
