Project shaping is defined as the up-front establishment of external project conditions, platforms, and environments. It is generally regarded by experts who study project performance to be the principal determiner of the success or failure of large, complex, high-profile projects. It is also the most ill-defined part of large project planning and management. Devoting adequate effort and resources to up-front project shaping should be considered the key to dramatically reducing the risk of projects ending up with negative outcomes such as no results; not completed; bogged down; coalition disintegrated; planned outcomes not achieved; or catastrophic cost overruns.

The survey was mailed to a broad list of 25,000 department directors, capital planners, project managers, project management officers, operations managers, and CIOs of Fortune 500 corporations, federal agencies, and large construction companies. It used a field of 18 questions designed to obtain quantitative answers to essentially two questions: 1) "What types of large projects are you running, or have you had recent experience with?" and 2) "What was (or is) the level of effort devoted to the project shaping phase?"

Most of the respondents were in the engineering/construction project area of private corporations, with a few government agencies and a small number of construction companies or project management firms. Such a response indicates that "project shaping" is mainly of interest to, and best understood by, those involved with engineering/construction projects.

Based on the response rate of the different institutions surveyed, it appears that the people who have the greatest interest in project shaping for success are those involved with corporate and institutional construction projects (74 percent). Running a distant second in level of interest are people involved with product development projects (11 percent). Negligible interest in project shaping was shown by people working on, or experienced with, enterprise system/IT implementation projects (3 percent); corporate-wide change initiatives (i.e., quality, compliance, automation, etc.) (3 percent); social programs (i.e., health, education, welfare) (2 percent); economic development projects (i.e., World Bank projects, regional development projects) (2 percent); and research projects (1 percent).

Findings

Survey results indicate that there is a great diversity in the actual implementation of project shaping, and that the term "project shaping" can include a wide variety of activities among those responding to the survey, even within the engineering/construction arena. This conclusion is based on the very small levels of correlation shown in the exhibits below.

The larger the project, the longer it takes. At first, this seems obvious. But why? Why can't big projects be completed just as quickly as small projects simply by throwing more human resources at the problem? The statement that big projects take longer is actually a profound experience-based observation making the point that big projects are in fact special management problems. Big projects tend to take longer because they are more complex than small projects with respect to technical, legal, social, political, economic, implementation, and management issues. The experience of people who work on big projects is that a big project involves more decision-making entities, and as a result there are more issues to resolve. It simply takes longer to resolve all of the issues; if, in fact, they ever are resolved.

Project shaping as a percentage of the total project timeline. The normal expectation for engineering/construction projects is that project shaping will account for 23 percent of the total project timeline. There is, to be sure, great diversity here. According to the data, the project shaping period for a few projects is 50 percent or more of the project timeline. If, however, the project shaping effort is only 10 percent or less of the project timeline, as indicated for seven projects noted in the survey responses, serious questions should be asked as to whether or not such a project has been properly conceived, developed, and tested.

Staffing levels for project shaping. The nominal full-time equivalent staffing level to do project shaping varies from six to 15 people depending on the size of the project. This is an FTE number applied during the total project shaping effort. The project shaping activities may actually involve many more than six to 15 individuals who work part time on the shaping effort. If a project shows 50 people participating in project shaping activities for a $20-million project, there is likely to be overspending, unless there are extremely difficult and recognized legal, political, or technical issues to be resolved.

Plan for months of project-shaping activity. The responses indicate that institutions should plan for at least 60 man-months of project shaping activity for very large projects. Man-months for project shaping, which is equal to staffing levels multiplied by the shaping timeline, set a starting basis for a project-shaping budget. For large projects ($10 million and up) planning significantly less than 60 man-months for the shaping effort may constitute serious project under-planning.

By Steve Westfall
Executive Editor
Tradeline Publications

If you are interested in attending a special conference on "Large and Complex Capital Projects,: or have comments on project shaping in general, please email Steve Westfall.