Fitzgerald's Law: 2 States in a Project - Too Early To Tell, Too Late to Stop
4. Fitzgerald’s Law: There are two states to any large project: Too early to tell and too late to stop.
Ernest Fitzgerald, an engineer, manager, and former U.S. Air Force employee, is known for his work as a whistleblower that revealed waste in military contracting. One corollary to the law is: Projects have momentum, once started they become increasingly difficult to stop.
The Deliverable Orientation and Earned Value Management
EVM is best thought of as a control system for projects. By creating the project baseline, collecting the right measurements, and comparing these using EVM formulas we can determine what corrective actions need to be taken. By focusing on deliverables through all these steps we remove much of the uncertainty that can mask true project performance. Since the cost performance index (CPI) becomes remarkably stable after the 20% completion point in the project it is vital that EVM be used as early as possible to communicate the actual status and forecast endpoints. In this way we overcome the “to early to tell” state.
Project Termination is Not the Same as Failure
Because projects have momentum too many of them that should be ended are not. The mindset of a killed project equals a failed project can elicit undesired behaviors from many stakeholders. If a PM believes that a terminated project will damage their career they will be tempted to just “keep on keeping on.” As Fitzgerald also said, “often program advocates like to keep bad news covered up until they have spent so much money they can advance the sunk-cost argument; that it’s too late to cancel the program because we’ve spent too much already.” A project that is discontinued could be the best money you never spent; sunk cost is just that. It can never be recovered, but can always be increased. A poorly performing project should never be considered “too late to stop.”
Previous Posts:
Augustine's Law: Good Ideas Poorly Executed Are Useless
Lakein's Law: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
Next Post (ETA 9/7/10)
Parkinson’s Law and the nature of time.
Questions to Consider/Fodder for Comments
Have you seen projects continued because of the sunk cost argument?
What is the essential difference in the way we estimate time and cost?
Tags: 10 Laws of Project Management
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by tony joyce on -
John,
Love the series so far and look forward to more of the laws with your compelling explanations.
With regard to your projects continued because of sunk costs question, I have observed several cases over the years where the effort continues despite costs and future estimates. There is one pattern in particular that stands out that seems to be reasonably prevalent in Government activities:
A project which is defined well enough to be out-sourced will often become self-perpetuating. The sunk cost has gone into educating the contractor's staff. That knowledge is not easily transfered to the Government in the contract deliverables, nor is it necessarily transfered to the contractor nor readily maintained by the contractor if key people leave.
Knowledge is not fungible. Fairly obvious but also frequently forgotten. Projects are fungible. Programs seem to fit somewhere in between. Are programs collections of projects, or do they include knowledge components as well?
Is this unique to the Government and our peculiar and ornate methods of contracting? Probably not. But the recent realizations of, and directives for in-sourcing in the Obama Administration, emphasize that all projects are not created equally.
thanks
tony -
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Permalink Reply by John Kinser on -
Tony,
Thanks for your kind words about the blog and the great observations.
I believe that the self-perpetuating projects you describe are much more common in government than the private sector. This may be due to the size, complexity, and duration of many government efforts as well as the absence of the profit motive.
I particularly like Joyce's Law: Projects are fungible, knowledge is not. (Please excuse my editing) As long as we are using $10 words I have to commend your perspicacious erudition! -
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Permalink Reply by tony joyce on
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John,
I don't deserve any credit for this as it isn't an original idea. One of my favorite quotes is from KM practice, by Daniel Boorstin: "Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion." Not sure of the original source. I was just trying to shorten it for practical discussion.
regards,
tony -
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Permalink Reply by John Kinser on
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Tony,
That is a great quote. I had not heard of Boorstin before, thanks for the intro. Do you know which of his works the saying is from? -
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Permalink Reply by tony joyce on
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Unfortunately not. He's written dozens of books, check Amazon...
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