“Why do aviation projects fail? I find that the number one reason is an ‘I want’ attitude, and setting unrealistic target dates. How many times have you been in a meeting, where the delivery date is set based on a guess, or a whim without fully analysing the requirements against the actions required in order to achieve them. i.e. a fully informed Project Plan. The projects then fall to the team and straight away departments are on the backfoot and sprinting toward unrealistic goals. This leads to increased stress and pressure and ultimately pushes the chances of something slipping the net. A Human Factors failure some may say!

It seems a bit of an oxymoron that all Project Management training I have undertaken follows the same basic process, i.e. develop an achievable plan by analysing realistic requirements, planning these into work breakdown structures, scheduling, estimating and ultimately deriving a detailed plan that will inform the deliverable date. Whereas in reality most of the time the ‘date’ is provided and we have to shoehorn in the tasks to fit!