You know those projects that absolutely, 100%, have to be done? The ones that are completely mandatory and the business will stop if you don’t do them? Well, many of them aren’t really mandatory at all. I expect you knew that – we all have an inkling when we are asked to work on something that we’re told is mandatory. Secretly, we know it’s just the latest pet project of the Marketing Director. Or the CEO agreed at dinner with a customer one night that the company would deliver it.
That’s not mandatory. That’s very, very, nice to have. Mandatory projects come about because of a legal or regulatory change, or something else that means the company will be out of business if the project isn’t delivered.
Even a mandatory project will likely have some elements of non-mandatory-ness. A ‘Phase 2’ or an enable project that paves the way for the mandatory project.
If these extra bits are really mandatory, include them in the scope of the mandatory project. If they aren’t really mandatory, then they should be assessed with every other project and forced to justify themselves. Otherwise, all sorts of things get snuck in on the coattails of mandatory work.
Of course, challenging the status of a project as mandatory is taking a personal risk. Which director wants to be told that their pet project should actually get appraised with all the other projects? Get your PMO to back you up, or even have the discussion with the project sponsor on your behalf.
Changing the project status to something else means being able to allocate project resources in a way that makes sense across all the projects – which will allow the PMO to put people and resources on the projects that really are mandatory.