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The Seven Things You Won't Hear at a Status Meeting

In the same vein as the "Seven Things You Can't Say on TV", here are seven things you won't hear at a project status meeting." If you're not hearing them, what else aren't you being told?

"The project will be over budget."

Giving a CEO the choice to either act or carry on is essential to following a business plan. Often, the decision to abandon a project is made without sufficient warning or context. Upper management can appear clueless when this happens.

"The project will be late."

Changes in project scope often cause a project to run over deadline. These changes in scope can be viewed one of two ways: as problems leading to project failure, or as a strong opportunity to improve a product.

"My consultants were wrong."

It's difficult to admit that we have made the wrong choice for consultant advice. Often, even when the initial assumptions and the resulting methodologies are right on target, the results can be inappropriate due to changing business priorities.

"Our base assumptions were wrong."

Initial assumptions are based on our best efforts at arriving at a clear picture of business needs. The key to understanding business needs is understanding that anything and everything can - and frequently does - change. Unfortunately, assumptions tend to change at the most inconvenient times, often urgently, between the completion of user acceptance testing and the actual sign-off.

"The competition did a better job."

In the best of all possible worlds, our best efforts will result in superior products and services. What tends to happen instead, is that the group that best accommodates long-term changing needs does the better job.

"We've lost the window of opportunity."

Windows of opportunity are like windows on a desktop. They open and close, sometimes according to plan, and sometimes with a horrible crashing sound. Windows close for us when we're beaten to market or the market itself moves. They also close when technology out-races our ability to deliver. Fortunately, scope creep can open windows we never anticipated, if we're positioned to take advantage of those opportunities.

"It's my fault"

It's hard to admit our own faults. Remember that we're never alone in credit or blame. Systems are so complex and require so much effort that fault can't be held to one person. More often than not, fault results from rigidity in not being able handle the fundamental part of business that initiates growth: Change.