The End of the Honeymoon.

At the start of most ventures, problems seem far away; future challenges seem manageable. It’s “the Honeymoon Period” – the most enjoyable and durable part of a personal relationship; in business, less so…

…and it’s the biggest obstacle to project management success.

My book, the Project Success Method, reveals that during a project’s “Honeymoon Period,” everyone thinks there’s plenty of time, and the project scope and complexity itself is underestimated. PSI calls this “Uninformed Optimism.”

About halfway through the project, the team begins to sense that things are not going very well. Poor planning, lack of focus, and ineffective controls lead to a sense of foreboding. Worries increase. Teams fragment, quality suffers, and budgets explode before the deadline is reached.

Our approach not only accepts that there’s an expiration date for the Honeymoon Period – we move it up.

With our Shifting the Worry Curve^® method, we offer some common sense steps at the outset:

-the team meets face to face to develop a project plan

-individual team members commit to specific activities

-team members meet regularly (every two weeks) to report their status and solve problems

Clients have told me how their teams appreciate not facing a Mount Everest of problems towards the end of a project. By avoiding the Honeymoon Period, team members remain engaged and committed to their projects because they have successfully managed the most critical dimension of project performance: Time.

It’s not happier ever after, but it’s close.