It is so great to hear your take from the perspective of someone who has been there and done that.

You are so right. We can get too attached to our projects and fall in love with them. Getting too attached makes it difficult to handle the impact when they get terminated. I agree that we need to make sure others, not just us, care about the project more than we do. Others need to be willing to do the heavy lifting to defend the project when the org needs to re-prioritize.

The business case will have all the information we need to determine how strong the motivation for the project is.

At the end of the day, we need to take care of ourselves so we are prepared mentally, if the project is terminated, as our organizations may not have the experience or the capacity to take care of us.

In the past 20 months I’ve had the unique experience of taking on and having 2 projects terminated. Usually I’m brought in to turnaround failing projects, but in this instance I actually initiated one of them myself.

Sadly the Organisation did not follow any one of your 8 points, and it was a case of one day the project was chopped and literally 20 mins later being asked to initiate another.

As you said the key thing is not to take it personally. Invariably one needs to realise that when managing IT projects commercial priorities change particularly when money is tight.

One therefore needs to keep a close eye on the project business case from the outset to ensure you have an understanding of how viable the project really is and not to get too attached until it is beyond the point of no return.

For me after 2 sudden terminated projects due to the Credit Crunch and secondly a decision by the Secretary of State, my third project went through the entire project management life cycle and successfully launched.

Regards

Susan de Sousa
Site Editor http://www.my-project-management-expert.com