A long time ago, I wrote about the first cardinal sin of project management.
Well, now I’m in the interesting situation of managing an enormous project which has grown from a pilot to an official launch to a company-wide multinational initiative, and along the way we’ve (necessarily) had some inefficiencies as we’ve scaled it increasingly bigger. But, frankly, there have been good strategic and tactical reasons for increasing scope as much as we have.
Which has lead me to consider another cardinal error of project management:
“There is nothing so inefficient as doing exactly the right things in the right order in the right way … at the wrong time.”
There is always going to be someone who will tell you that you are screwing up. Spending too much money. Doing things in improper order. Not going through approved channels. Involving too few people and departments.
However, the reality is that when the time is right, you need to MOVE. And speed ensures that you’ll make some errors.
But good timing covers a lot of sins.