Insights / For Fraci
Project management in finance: why brilliant accountants run terrible projects
Finance people are the best in the building at hitting deadlines, and finance projects touch many more areas than just finance. So why do they overrun so reliably? Because execution requires way more than technical knowledge.
Give a finance team an audit deadline and they'll have all the working papers over to the auditors before they can raise an invoice for overruns. It's providing documentation for something they've already done, work that came out of their flow state. Give the same team an ERP implementation and there's a good chance it's still "nearly there" a year later. Finance is trained to run a process that has been run a hundred times before. A project, by definition, is being run for the first time. And if it's a project that impacts BAU, well, expect all kinds of discontent.
For anyone working fractionally, this matters twice over. Your engagement is a project. If you can't scope it, run it and close it, the client doesn't just get a late deliverable, you get scope creep that quietly destroys your day rate.
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What goes wrong, usually?
No agreed definition of done. "Improve the reporting" is a wish, not a scope.
Plans made of tasks, not milestones. Two hundred lines in a Gantt chart and nobody can say whether you're on track.
Risks kept in someone's head. Until they happen.
The sponsor disappears after kick-off, or there was no sponsor in the first place, just the loudest voice in the room saying they wanted it to happen. Either way, they reappear at the end, surprised.
Scope creep dressed as helpfulness. "While you're in there, could you just..." Every "just" is another week, and more frustration. Scope changes are normal: factor them in, and be prepared to say no.
No handover. The project "fi