Reflection on “Pet Projects By Jackson, 2012”

The article “Pet Projects”, discussed a very interesting topic in project management; the pet project can be defined as a too much involvement in a particular project, where the executives start growing overly attached to that project. The consistent scope creep is a big sign that the executive or sponsor is getting away from the main business needs of the project and now is focusing on his/her own needs.

The article listed several characteristics of a pet project; A project that is Undertaken to satisfy the stakeholder’s personal interests, a project that was Launched for a good strategic reason but it is not terminated when no longer valid, a project that initiated regardless of its high risks and possible negative returns, or a project that receives an unjustifiably big amount of effort/attention from one of the sponsors.

In order to avoid falling into one of pet project traps, the article mentioned some warning signs; when a project shortcuts standard procedures, like identifying a business case and formally allocating resources, which means there is always data missing. The high costs result of using resources with no-value work and also not being able to use those same resources in a valuable work on real projects. When the executive requests all details in the project progress reports, he/she may be getting too close to that project, and to avoid that, executives should always stick to the big picture, and monitoring critical high-impact risks and other issues.

Some of the lessons learned from this article are that the practice of having pet projects can easily spread, and the people looking after their personal interests can grow in numbers easily, and as a result the trust between all levels can become hard. In order to prevent this, it is recommended to implement a vetting process of multiple high-level stakeholders, because having a structure in place limits the pet projects to get through.

I believe that it is a very interesting topic to read about, and it is also super hard to avoid; any project manager will have an access to the company’s resources, and along the time he/she will develop a personal interest in that project, and it is normal, because we are humans, and we get attached to similar things when we have them for a long time. And I also believe, this type of issues can be reduced, but it cannot be completely eliminated, as this is the human nature. The company should provide a space to the project leader, that space is very important to have creativity in the solutions, and the final judge should be the final customer, so no matter what, if the customer is happy with the final product, many things can be forgiven, or better understood.