I was teaching project life-cycles last week, specifically the British Standard life-cycle which, broken down, can be easily remembered with the catchy acronym “CFROT”!

This stands for “Concept, Feasibility, Realisation, Operation and Termination”

I was describing the inaccuracy levels of early estimates and exponential increase in cost of change as you go further into projects, in short the costs of poor planning (the C and F of CFROT). At that moment, I’ll call him “Mike” (because that’s his name) had his Eureka moment..

“That’s it!”  he exclaimed

“great, erm….what?” I rather weekly inquired

“that’s it, our problem, all our projects go straight to ROT!”

his point being, his organisation does not spend enough energy in the Concept or Feasibility parts of their projects. Weekly described project briefs, based on poor estimates and built on very shaky plans go quickly into the Realisation (making the thing) phase.

“Going straight to ROT” has since stuck with me as I reflect on hundreds of projects I have encountered. If I may borrow a Michael Jackson lyric Mike “you are not alone”

So it leaves me to pose some more questions, and I’ll post some thought on them in the following weeks.

Why do so many organisations dump good money down the toilet because of a lack of willingness to plan? Is planning activity too often seen as the unnecessary bit with too many meetings before “real work” begins?  Is this as widespread as I think (or am I suffering from “confirmation bias”)?  What can be done about it?

I’ll put some ideas down but would love to know what the world thinks – especially if I’m wrong…(again)…