• Question: do your projects always go the way yo and your team have them planned out?

    Asked by Tina to Aislinn, Fiona, Nathan, Padraic, Sinead on 6 Feb 2015.
    • Photo: Padraic Morrissey

      Padraic Morrissey answered on 6 Feb 2015:

      Hey Tina
      I think it’s probably fair to say that projects never go exactly the way you have them planned out! Different problems can pop that you have to deal with, because it’s very hard to see all the fine points of a project when you are planning 1 or 2 years down the line. It’s not too much of a big deal though, because usually when you’re planning something you’d try to take into account the fact that there might be problems. So even though you might think it will take 2 weeks to do a specific piece of work, you would plan that it takes 3 so that gives you a bit of extra time in case there are issues.

      Very occasionally things can go horribly wrong and you might not be able to stick to your plan at all. In those cases you try to do the best you can and learn from what you did and what went wrong.

    • Photo: Nathan Quinlan

      Nathan Quinlan answered on 6 Feb 2015:

      Hi Tina. Always, always, things go wrong in a project. Sometimes the project doesn’t end as we wanted – but we make sure we find out why, and we learn a lot in the process. You have to plan the project right – if results are really needed, you don’t take big risks. Sometimes in a project you find a side project that’s more interesting than the main one, and you change direction. Because I work in a university, it’s expected that some projects are a bit oddball and risky.

      “You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.” – Fred Brooks

    • Photo: Aislinn Coghlan

      Aislinn Coghlan answered on 6 Feb 2015:

      Hi Tina,

      A project very rarely turns out exactly how you planned, that’s what makes it exciting!

      Sometimes the solution you chose wasn’t the best one, others it works out even better than you imagined!

    • Photo: Sinead Quirke

      Sinead Quirke answered on 6 Feb 2015:

      Tina,

      If a project is very clear on what it is to achieve, if it has been very well planned and if you have listed all the risks that could cause the project to fail and have a plan for dealing with them, then things usually work out well.
      However often times people (including me) launch into projects without doing the planning or bringing the key people with them and this is when they fail.

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