One instance where poor planning caused downstream difficulties in a project was during my senior design capstone project. My team grouped together because we were friends but did not account for our individual skillsets. The project was a multidiscipline project that was also a continuation from previous semester. Turns out what we initially thought was a project that had mechanical, electrical, and cellular components in turn was really only electrical and cellular project. Two out of the four team members were of mechanical background, while one was electrical, and I was cellular. So what ended up happening was the team dynamic was all over the place. The two mechanical members had to learn on the spot the electrical and cellular side and were out of their comfort zone and was not able to contribute as much. Down the line we struck a balance, but the first few weeks of the project was a disaster trying to delegate tasks and while trying to teach and involve the other two members. This was poor planning when making a team before even starting the project. First hand experience has taught me that project initiation is or if not the most important phase in projects. Poor initiation leads to disaster.
Planning is the base of the project. It is the phase when schedules are done, roles and responsibilities are assigned, a communication plan is created, and so on. Having poor planning is the downfall of the project therefore it is a company's failure. It can cause delays, lack of interest from your team, quality issues, and unexpected cost changes. As the project needs to be a success, planning needs a lot of time to evaluate and optimize the project plan so it can deliver positive results for the company.
I've definitely faced projects in the past where I've felt the initiation could've been better. Like anything, if a strong foundation isn't set to build upon, then the more you stack up the more likely it'll topple off at one point. A lack of proper initiation is a disaster waiting to happen. Professionally not structuring the project properly from the start will result in a lack of attention to detail. Not paying attention to detail will lead to certain things falling through the cracks and subsequently cause issues with the customer when they're not getting the product up to the standard they expected.
I agree with Adam here, initiation is an integral part of the project's success. At my current job, project initiation isn't a fully defined process. Oftentimes projects are started without a concrete idea of what they will end up looking like. As we work with customers to refine their designs; many factors in the project lifecycle can change. Material changes, small dimensional tweaks, even differences in fabrication method can lead to drastic changes in lead time. As such, we need to be flexible with how we "initiate" projects. Usually, we try and keep all the documentation we can possibly find; and pare it down once the project is complete. This offloads the clerical work to the back end, but does result in issues down the line when trying to remake something. Therefore, I've been trying to brainstorm some type of initiation process that will streamline our projects.
In my opinion, the planning phase is the most important phase in the project life cycle. Successful planning leads to a successful project. Although I haven’t been in industry yet, I’ve been involved in projects that were actually successful in the long run, but could have flowed more smoothly and concluded sooner if proper planning was performed initially (i.e. senior capstone). Our capstone team performed very basic planning when the project began, so as time progressed, some aspects of the design, testing, etc. weren’t always clear to everyone on the project team. As a result, our team sometimes encountered flaws in the project design, testing procedures, etc. that required us to quickly come up with a solution to meet our deadlines, resulting in a lower attention to detail in other aspects of the project. In a way, we were “tumbling over” our own project design and goals at times. If proper and thorough planning had been completed, not only would our goals have been clearer, but we would have been able to encounter our design flaws and resolve them in a more efficient manner. What are some ways a team can counteract the effects of improper planning throughout the other phases of the project cycle?
Poor planning of a project can significantly impact how the project life will play out. Improperly planning the due dates would result in either missing deadlined or cutting them really close. It adds a lot of stress to the individuals working on those specific aspects of the project that are being delayed. In addition, poor planning at the start of the project could further delay other dependent tasks.
To counteract poor planning, some slack should be incorporated into plans. In a way, this wouldn't be poor planning. In the event that slack has not been considered, poor planning could be counteracted with a project manager taking a strong lead and staying on top of deliverables from their team. They would have to create new achievable deadlines while keeping their team motivated.
Poor planning adds a lot of stress and uncertainty to the project and its members. There has been an instance where poor planning caused the project my team members and I were working on to suffer multiple setbacks and miss deadlines almost every other week. Due to poor planning and a lack of communication between members, the project itself seemed very intimidating. This led to a lack of knowledge on the project material and what it needed. During the initiation phase, it also led to poor planning where deadlines were set either too early or too late. Consequently, the team ended up missing deadlines almost every week, and even when we met the deadlines, the work output was low quality. This caused a severe lack of team trust and made the whole experience extremely difficult and stressful for everyone involved.
I didn't work in the industry before, but I have worked in a lab as an assistant before. It was the time that the pandemic was most serious. We need to follow the policy of our university that controls members below 5 in one day. We had two projects started up then. Our professor decided to choose one to two members from each team to work on. We worked on different days to do tasks and discussed them in the Friday online meeting. I can't tell if this is a good plan or not. It seems that benefit for the finish-to-start tasks, but I still felt we delayed our project because some parts of tasks still required others to start simultaneously. Would it be better to choose one team working on the same day to do the task together and stop at the same timeline?
In my first year here at NJIT, way back in 2018-2019, I witnessed how poor planning had cost NJIT millions of dollars while building the now state of the art Wellness and Events Center. I was told that both the WEC and the field would be done by the time I graduated high school and started at NJIT by the Fall of 2018, this was not the case. The field was finished over a year after it was projected. This was due to poor planning by contractors and many other delays, like weather, that caused the field to be re-done multiple times, inevitably costing NJIT lots of wasted time and money. In addition, poor planning following the completion of the field quickly arose in the first winter months experienced. People who designed the the turf field and WEC did not account for snow storms that NJ regularly faces each winter. In the first snow storm the field was plowed, but there was no where to put the moved snow. Therefore, snow was pushed on top of fences surrounding the field ultimately crushing them and blocking campus walkways. Poor planning caused more issues to arise as the project continued and after the project had completed. Although I was obviously not part of this project, it was quite evident the poor planning that went into designing and completing the turf field at NJIT.
I am currently working on a Capstone Project with four other peers. We are currently working on a device that would induce dyspnea or shortness of breath, while patients are being scanned in an MRI machine. Since this is a two-semester project, we planned the materials we are going to use and how exactly we are going to put them together. One of our professors would constantly tell us that the “devil is in the details.” As college students, we brushed it off and kept on doing what we are doing. Our second semester started and we were having a lot of difficulties controlling the iris with a motor. The iris is used to restrict the patient's airflow. We had certain requirements from the customer and they wanted many different levels of airflow. Since we did not plan for this during our first semester, we ended up having to change the iris which ended up costing us more money. I believe that poor planning causes you to end up spending more money on something that could have been avoided from the start. We have also been needing to spend more time on simple tasks because we did not plan it as well as we should have.
One of my most current experiences with dealing with a long term project would be my capstone project. And due to the fact that capstone was one of the first instances of a major timeline project for a majority of the class, the planning phase could have been planned much better. We underestimated how much time each process was going to take and toward the end of the project we were very close to running out of manageable time to complete the task. Communication and sacrificing extra time was one of the only ways we were able to complete the project in the allotted timeline.
Although I don't have experience with working on actual project team, there have been instances where I was apart of a team that did not properly train well. Due to poor training the team was unsuccessful and unable to obtain the team goal for that season. Although winning and losing is a part of sports, losing consecutively can often damage team moral or chemistry making it harder to achieve the original goal.
While planning a project is one of the first phases, it's extremely important. Poor planning can mean execution can go all wrong and put severe delays on the timeline, even resulting in cancellation. Do you have any experiences where you felt that the initiation of a project could have been better? What are some effects you've seen because of poor planning on a project?
One situation in which a less than optimal initiation phase had adverse effects on the rest of a project was when the project team failed to clearly define the project scope and objectives, leading to confusion and disagreements among team members, delays in completing tasks, and ultimately missing the project deadline. This meant we unfortunately needed to ask for an extension, which our client was less than thrilled about. Additionally, poor planning can result in cost overruns, low quality deliverables, and damage to the reputation of the project team or organization. In extreme cases, an inadequate initiating phase can ultimately lead to the entire project being terminated.
In my job, we have to deal with customer service appropriately or customers would have adverse reactions to our approach. It wasn't known to us that the customer arriving at our facility wasn't in the best of spirits and to take caution in our interaction with them. Unfortunately, a co-worker wasn't having the greatest day and reacted poorly to the customer. As a result, the customer acted out and became hostile, making the whole process unbearable. If the planning aspect would have been better prepared and the co-worker hadn't taken their frustrations out on the customer, then the situation would have been better dealt with.
Obviously, as many people have said poor planning affects the outcome of the whole project. Inefficient planning will lead to many roadblocks in the project which will slow down the whole process. In my experience, since I have not been involved with many projects the only one I have had to plan for is my senior capstone this year. Since this is my first real project the planning could have definitely been better. Now that we are further into the project we are starting to hit some roadblocks in the process. If we took more time in the planning stages to really track out step by step of what we were going to do, we would be more efficient at this stage in the project. One example of what is going wrong with our project is that we didn't build in time for editing our 3D printed parts for the device. This has backtracked our group a little from our original schedule. Overall, preplanning is very important in the project process so that the project runs smoothly the whole way through.
Although I can't speak from personal experience, I believe that poor planning during project initiation can affect the project negatively in different ways. For instance, if a project starts without clearly outlining the people, money, and materials needed, it may result in shortages and delays because the team won't be able to obtain the resources in a given time .In addition, a poorly planned start of a project can lead to quality problems, excess costs, and unsatisfied stakeholders. In order to reduce risks and guarantee the project's success, it is crucial for project managers to do careful preparation at the beginning of the project.
