Laugh And Learn Project Management

By Dr. Hare Krishna Chandrasekaran

Projects succeed-projects fail. This is because there is no definite formula for success in any project. When attempting to do something, be it a small task, an assignment or innovation, a set procedure has to be followed. In a project, the number of factors involved are far too many, and it is always a complex situation. If due care is not given to the project, it fails.

The definition of failure varies with perspective. However, three factors stand out: cost overrun, time overrun and the original intentions of the project being lost en route. With finality, we can say that these factors fit in snugly in IT projects. It is particularly apt in a project, if the client who originally mooted the proposal says, “This is not what I wanted”. This is the tune sung by many IT clients and almost always, they are justified.

Project failure is a multi-headed dragon which may take any shape it wants. It can be a spaceship for Mars crashing into the ocean, or the Titanic, ramming onto an iceberg; an airport ending up as big as a city, or a road project hitting a huge roadblock. It can be a cathedral, half-finished, or a hydro-electric project ending up with lakhs of displaced families.

With big projects, the chances of failure are higher. There are projects with outlays of even billions of dollars. Thus, failure of space missions is understandable. Strangely, construction of a simple park also has failed sometimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Jun 4, 2022
• ISBN: 6580555008429

Book preview

C:\Users\INTEL\Desktop\Logo New\pustaka_logo-blue_3x.png

https://www.pustaka.co.in

Laugh And Learn Project Management

Author:

Dr. Hare Krishna Chandrasekaran

For more books

https://www.pustaka.co.in/home/author/dr-hare-krishna-chandrasekaran

Digital/Electronic Copyright © by Pustaka Digital Media Pvt. Ltd.

All other copyright © by Author.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

images/ata.jpg

Dr. S. Chandrasekaran is an Electrical Engineer from Annamalai University, 1968 batch. He is now a busy Valuer, Chartered Engineer Techno Economic study consultant and Lenders’ Engineer for many big projects. He claims that his time is involved in only three things: his business, talking about Krishna and situational humour. He feels that Krishna gives him ideas to write books in which all these three are combined. All of his books are full of humour and his only topics are Bhagavatam, Gita, Mahabharata Vishnu Sahasranamam and naturally Krishna, the original humorist with ever ready pranks & jokes. As per Srimad Bhagavatam 7.5.23-24, there are nine ways of devotion. The author strongly feels that ‘Hasyam’ (humour) should be added as the tenth form of devotion to Vishnu. His maiden venture is the highly successful ‘Kids Laugh & Learn Gita’ (third edition due now). He wants that children and elders pan-India should get a taste of his sugar-coated religious books. His fifth & latest Laugh & Learn Management is already a superhit and the second edition has been recently released. This is his sixth book, in three years and many more are on the anvil, Krishna willing.

HIGHLIGHTS OF FORTHCOMING BOOKS

SUCCESS THROUGH LEADERSHIP FOR STUDENTS

Great physicists like Sir C.V.Raman and Dr. Abdul Kalam learnt Physics in their schools. Marie Curie had chemistry in her school syllabus. Did any of our CEOs/CMDs study management in their schools? This book aims at a revolutionary change of filling that gap for our students, with a touch of humour. Meant for students of Class VII to Inter.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT-THE KRISHNA WAY

Who is the icon of Strategy in India who has been talked about in the Dwapar Yug and even now, in the Kali Yug? It is Krishna. His successfully implemented strategies have been discussed and are being discussed endlessly. What are those strategies and what is the truth behind all of His moves? Int his book, learn each management strategy with a Gita sloka and a laugh as per our declared policy ‘Ek slokek joke’.

TELL ME WHY KRISHNA...

For the past 5200 years, children have been raising questions and discussing within themselves as to why Krishna did such and such things and why He did not do some other things. They never could ask the right person, Krishna Himself. Now, the author with his ever-accompanying humour, is listing 81 such doubts and 81 answers realistically.

SUGGESTED BHAGAVAD GITA READING FOR MANAGERS

From the Editor’s Desk…

When the author presented me with the initial concept, it struck me as a unique theme, never attempted before. In India, we are used to seeing project failures, starting from just a simple flyover to even cleaning of a small canal, leave alone a major river. To know that project failures range from a space shuttle breaking in space to a simple domed structure getting doomed on flimsy grounds, even in advanced nations, was astonishing.

There are many books in the market discussing Project Management. Several of them highlight the principles of management. Yet, I haven’t come across a book which helps us learn from past mistakes in project management. The author has handpicked 81 failed projects from history (as recent as 2014) and has derived important lessons from them. Identifying the reasons for failures itself is a novel attempt; finding a total resemblance of these to Duryodhana’s negative qualities from Mahabharata is the height of imagination.

Wait, the masterstroke is yet to come. The brilliant techniques of Lord Krishna, which convert the faults of Duryodhana into winning mantras for the Pandavas, bring out a hitherto unknown facet of Lord Krishna.

Mahabharata consists of several instances where Lord Krishna displayed His Supreme managerial skills in planning, motivation and execution. By highlighting these skills, the author provides a way to avoid some of the Project Management pitfalls.

History is not a subject, it is a teacher. It teaches people how to live their lives without repeating the mistakes from the past. This book talks about historical events/projects dating from 2600 BC to 2014 AD. Clearly, such varied experience will help managers handle their present day projects with ease.

The author in this book, Laugh and Learn Project Management, shows us a method to laugh our way out of failures, while learning the causes and understandingthe corrective measures needed.

How something is learnt determines how well it is learnt! The humorous way of learning can be considered the best way. This book has a cartoon after each Management lesson, thus making it memorable and fun to learn. The lessons learnt this way cannot be easily forgotten in many more years to come.

CHIEF EDITOR

SRIVIDYA CHANDRASEKARAN

INTRODUCTION

Projects succeed-projects fail. This is because there is no definite formula for success in any project. When attempting to do something, be it a small task, an assignment or innovation, a set procedure has to be followed. In a project, the number of factors involved are far too many, and it is always a complex situation. If due care is not given to the project, it fails.

The definition of failure varies with perspective. However, three factors stand out: cost overrun, time overrun and the original intentions of the project being lost en route. With finality, we can say that these factors fit in snugly in IT projects. It is particularly apt in a project, if the client who originally mooted the proposal says, This is not what I wanted. This is the tune sung by many IT clients and almost always, they are justified.

Project failure is a multi-headed dragon which may take any shape it wants. It can be a spaceship for Mars crashing into the ocean, or the Titanic, ramming onto an iceberg; an airport ending up as big as a city, or a road project hitting a huge roadblock. It can be a cathedral, half-finished, or a hydro-electric project ending up with lakhs of displaced families.

With big projects, the chances of failure are higher. There are projects with outlays of even billions of dollars. Thus, failure of space missions is understandable. Strangely, construction of a simple park also has failed sometimes.

If you have to pinpoint just one factor out of the innumerable ones, we can show that it is finance. It may not always be shortage of money but it can be the problem of plenty too. Many projects have failed with excess money being diverted to useless expenditures or investments. In short, financial mismanagement. Which is that one component responsible for all the automobile accidents which ever took place in the world?’ is the question raised; the answer is: ‘the nut holding the wheel!’ It is equally applicable to a leader or, the head of a government who holds the reins. If the leader does not coordinate with proper strategy and planning, the project is bound to fail.

It is not always that big countries succeed. Even big countries are vulnerable to project failures. Bigger countries have bigger idiosyncrasies. Every country in the world map, has had its share of failed as well as successful projects. One cannot prejudge a project that it may succeed or fail, just by knowing that it is from Australia, Ghana, Nepal, Russiaorthe USA.

One may conclude that technology is a clinching factor for the success of a project. If that were to be true, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, technology growth was amazing and all the projects prior to that should have failed. On the flip side, if one presumes that advanced technology leads to advanced failures like proliferation of nuclear radiation, then there should never have been anyfailure in the bygone era which was equipped with only outdated technology. An analysis indicates that the oldest recorded failure in history was as old as 2600 B.C. and the latest is as late as 2014 A.D.

When I started this book, enlisting the project failures was a mammoth task because of the mind-boggling numbers. I decided to segregate the list into: Airport, Banking, Building, Engineering, Government, IT, Road, Shipping & airlines and Space projects. In each of those failures, there is a VIBGYOR combination of project sizes, reasons for failure and the country. Thus we find that even in grey, there is an interesting product mix of different shades.

Now let us look at a project belonging to 5200 B.C., which was a success from concept to completion. Yes, I am referring to the Mahabharata, Lord Sri Krishna’s ‘magnum-opus’. Krishna envisioned it, fixed the cast, scripted it with twists and suspenses, penned the dialogues and directed the events into a beautiful drama. This Mahabharata can