You’re a project manager running one or more projects; or a manager of project managers. I’m sure you’d like to know – as quickly and as painlessly as possible – if the projects you’re responsible for are in good shape or not.

In a previous article I’ve described "How to assess a project in five minutes". This present article describes some other telltale signs you can look for that might indicate that all is not well on a project.

The only way you can know for sure whether your project is in trouble or not is to (a) have a detailed, properly estimated plan and (b) monitor that plan properly.

The following article contains some of the most common signs I have seen over the years during my time as a consultant and trainer which are guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of my neck and may be indicative of trouble. You can use this article as a checklist of signs to look out for. If you encounter one of these signs, this article tells you how to correct what’s happening on the project.

First, I will describe the sign. Then, I will give the probability of your project being in trouble. I have graded the probability as follows:

• Certainty – there can be no doubt that the project is in trouble.
• Very high – I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t in trouble.
• High – very likely that the project is in trouble.
• Medium – I’d delve a little deeper to see what’s going on if I were you.

Some of these are not exactly objective or measurable, but in those cases, common sense gives us the reasoning. I will also show what action to take if you encounter the particular situation. The signs are grouped by the three different kinds of stakeholders: the project manager, the team, and superiors including external stakeholders (e.g., a boss (very senior), a project sponsor, or an important stakeholder or customer).

Red Flags – Project Manager Level

Sign 1: No plan

Sign: There is no plan at all. Or a very short / brief / 1-page or so plan.

Probability that the project is in trouble: Certainty. There is no plan – either literally no plan at all or a very dubious plan.

Common sense tells us: "If we fail to plan, we plan to fail". Apparently, it was Benjamin Franklin who pointed this out. If there is no plan it’s hard to see how the project could have any chance of success.

Action to take: Build a detailed, properly estimated plan. There are six easy steps to do that:

• Step 1: What are we trying to do and how will we know when it’s done?
• Step 2: What exactly has to be done?
• Step 3: Who’s going to do that stuff?
• Step 4: Who’s going to make it all happen?
• Step 5: What if something goes wrong?
• Step 6: Can we stop things from going wrong?

You can read more about how to do these six steps in my article "How to scope and plan a project in a day".

Sign 2: No effort (work) in the plan

Sign: The plan is not a plan at all – it’s a timeline. It doesn’t contain estimates of the amount of effort (work) to be done.

Probability that the project is in trouble: Very high. Also, very likely that people are working very long hours to stick to the timeline and keep the project on schedule.

Common sense tells us: If nobody has figured out how much work must be done then it’s not possible to know how many people you need to do that work.

Action to take: Calculate the effort required (in person-days) to complete the project, and use that to complete a detailed, properly estimated plan. I suggest these seven steps to do this estimation:

• Step 1: Involve the people who will do the project in doing the estimation. If these people are not available – because maybe, they haven’t been assigned or hired – get somebody to help you. The worst thing you can do is to do this by yourself. This is because other people have specialist knowledge about the project that you don’t have. Not using that knowledge would be a big mistake.
• Step 2: Identify the big pieces of work to be done in the project, the bits that get you from the start to the end. Picture the project as a journey to a destination. These are the big sections of that journey.
• Step 3: Within each of these big pieces of work, identify the detailed jobs that must be done.
• Step 4: Break everything down such that each job you identify is between 1-5 days duration or 1-5 person days of work.
• Step 5: Be as specific and concrete as possible when you identify jobs i.e., rather than saying "requirements gathering" say "Charley meets with the IT people for 2 days to explain his requirements."
• Step 6: Where you don’t know something, make an assumption. Assumptions are hugely powerful because whenever you don’t have facts or knowledge, you can make up the facts or knowledge.
• Step 7: Store all the jobs in a Work Breakdown Structure i.e., show the project as being made up of the big pieces of work, which in turn are made up of the smaller pieces.

I describe exactly how to do this and give examples of bad estimating in my article "How to Estimate Anything Accurately" (2017).

Sign 3: GGGGGGR!