Bad news - Assignment 2, good student report PDF

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Comp3120: Assignment 2 - Research Report

Communication and the delivery of bad news 201

Communication and delivery of bad news Executive Summary

Our report provides an overall understanding and approach on communicating and delivering bad news for a Project Manager. We have researched suitable resources in relation to this topic and established that suitable preparation for a Project Manager is highly required. Results from our research show that depending on the type of audience: such as client, project team, project manager or CEO, should be tailored and delivered to suit their specific needs. We have also come to find that categorising such bad news into issues related, assists the process with the type of audience. In relation to the timing of delivering bad news, the preferred time frame is, as soon as possible. An important aspect of bad news is that it allows the types of audience involved, to be prepared and ready to work on the situation at hand. Failing to inform the audience at an earlier time has resulted in backfire in relation to productivity and future team coherence. An overall thorough preparation is highly favourable to create an opportunity for those involved to move forward and work with generating positive outcomes to complete the project. We also recommend that a Project Manager should be prepared to receive bad news, and focus on generating a method for the project team to get back on track or to devise possible alternatives from such negative outcomes.

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Communication and delivery of bad news Introduction and Background

In the current business world, communicating and delivering bad news is sadly inevitable. According to one recent account, about only one third of a project is completed smoothly, resulting in obtaining a sufficient budget, finishing on time, and providing committed functionality. Majority of project teams receive bad news during the development process which could either delay the accomplish date or get the whole project cancelled (Smith  and Keil, 2003). Therefore, appropriate execution on arising negative news and ways to reassure team members is indispensable in order to carry on successfully after such vicissitude. The term, “bad”, seems simple enough to comprehend, although the meaning would differ for each stakeholder. For instance, unreachable completion date is typically bad news to a project owner, and similarly sudden decisions on budget downsize during development progress is bad news to project members. Such unpleasant information would affect client’s reliability with the project team, resulting in the project teams decrease of sense of achievement. Thus as a Project Manager, knowing the appropriate techniques could mitigate these negative influences. This report aims to discuss: ● Communicating as a Project Manager: When, why and how. ● Bad News from different perspectives. ● How and when Bad news occurs. ● Timing of Delivering bad news. ● How to report Bad news. ● Preparing for responses as a Project Manager.

Discussion

Communicating as a Project Manager: When, why and how. When: The frequency and duration to communicate with the client is flexible. When  to communicate with a client is determined by the Project Manager and project team (Rajkumar and Sivasankari, 2010). This depends on the project. For example a team can send an update to a client daily, weekly, or even monthly. Why:  Communication is necessary in any aspect of project agenda. It is vital for the Project Manager to ongoingly communicate with the client and CEO of the project’s progress or of any unexpected event (Viliam, Studeničová and Janka, 2017). The Project Manager must understand the clients needs and express that the work done by the project team is what is required to meet the clients’ goal (Welch and Jackson, 2007). Effective communication is critical for a project as it affects the ability of strategic managers to engage project members and achieve objectives. Communicating with the CEO improves decision making (Barndt, 1981). Without 2

Communication and delivery of bad news communicating with CEO, CEO becomes out of sync with the team, and may underestimate the problem. How: There are many ways to communicate with the client and CEO. For example, conducting meeting, sending updates via email, or valuable presentations. Face-to-face meetings are the prefered communication medium, followed by phone calls. This is because the nature of the such mediums remove any ambiguity (Smit et al., 2017). A communication plan is highly recommended to be implemented as it is an efficient tool in enhancing correspondence (Sivasankari, 2010).

Bad News from different perspectives To Client: As a client, product finished without desired functionality and finished with unwanted long term delay are bad news. More specifically, some planned functionalities may be impossible to meet because of the limitation of budgets. At the same time, the client may be notified by development team that the planned release date is delayed by the unimaginable workload (Zehnder, 2015). To Develop Team: From the view of the development team, unexpected changes in product requirements, upgraded complexity of the project, and shortened period of the development is bad news (Zehnder, 2015). Among these series of mishaps, the worst scenario could be cancelling the project suddenly, meaning the time and resources spent by bunch of members are wasted. To Project Manager: Commonly, the bad news itself could actually be crisis for the one who is responsible for reporting such news. The Project Manager, who usually is in charge to convey bad news regularly to his boss or client, could be blamed verbally for irascible temper or more seriously be unemployed due to lacking further confidence from potentate group. The possibility of such poor man could end up losing his “face” and job simultaneously discourage and intimidate employee before even attempting (Keil, Im and Mähring, 2007). To Project CEO: On position of a project CEO, beside sharing some sort of similar concern experienced with client, CEO could be the “culprit” of causing bad news. Such that If the CEO face bankruptcy due to business failure in other field, he or she may have to terminate the funding or controlling over the project. Therefore, his or her own misery upgrade to a huge mess to project team, in other words, is bad news.

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Communication and delivery of bad news How and when does bad news happen Bad news in software management can be categorized in two ways. One is classifying by the type of issue related to the news, the other is classifying by the audience of the news. To figure how and when bad news happen, it is efficient to evaluate by categories. Bad news usually raised in the discussion of project requirement (Bell and Thayer, 1976). Which can be further divided into the product function requirements and project scheduling. The rise of the issue from client point of view is because of the concern of the end product quality. A Client always want a great product with comprehensive functionalities that can satisfy and attract customers (Baida, 2001). Which may cause the complexity of the function requirement, and regular changes in function requirement. Meanwhile, clients also want to get the end product in a reasonable short time (Baida, 2001). Which may lead to an early deadline. From the development team point of view, they focus on bringing the product into reality. Thus, technical problems and resource availability are all concerned when determining the project scale, and evaluating the function specifications (Bennett, 2018). When some functionalities are not necessary or are hard to achieve using the resources of the team, issues will be raised. As the development process cannot be fully predicted, rescheduling or even delay of the release of the end product can happen (Bennett, 2018). As software development is an iterative process, bad news related to the project requirements changes can occur frequently during the software development process (Cohn, 2006). Contrasting from the bad news in project requirements, the bad news coming from team resources just have one main target audience, the development team. The reason for this is because of the limitation of the company’s people, skill, and the budget provided by client (Gibbert, Hoegl and Välikangas, 2007). This kind of bad news usually occurs at the beginning of the project (Gibbert, Hoegl and Välikangas, 2007).

Timing of delivering bad news It is often preferred for the manager to deliver bad news as soon as possible. Since it is important for stakeholders to know the current situation of the project, and to take necessary actions based on the feedback. The timing of delivery is a vital factor of bad news management, though the evaluation of how soon can vary in different situations (Bies, 2013).The bad news related to day-to-day work should be reported in a timely manner to the right audience in workplaces. In software management, it is desirable to communicate bad news after some preparations. Such preparation can include finding the cause of the problem, developing plans to solve the problem, and thinking about ways to deliver the bad news to the intended audience. However, this preparation should not take too much time. Otherwise, it will cause the delay of information delivery.

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Communication and delivery of bad news If a Project Manager fails to inform relative stakeholders about the bad news instantly and frequently, implicit concern could backfire on the team in future. In fact, 74% of software projects are troubled, within which, 28% are cancelled before completion; the remaining 46% of the software projects are released late than planning, or over the budget, or with limited functionality (Smith and Keil, 2003). However, most people, no matter in role of recipient or presenter, are reluctant to hear or transmit bad news instinctively, which is one of the reasons software project failure and a loss in a project is increased.

How should bad news be reported to the client, project team and manager’s CEO To Client: Bad news should be informed to the client straightforwardly and honestly. A Client does not want a perfect excuse or a verbose and meaningless explanation of the bad news, which will waste both client’s and developer’s time. On the contrary, an earlier direct discussion of the problem with client can help the project team to make earlier corrective action of the bad news, and may allow the client to have earlier delivery of the final product (Tan et al., 2003). To Project Team : Bad news should be promptly informed to the project team, and with no delay. Reporting the bad news with unreasonable delay is costly, and will make the situation to be worse (Kothari, Shu and Wysocki, 2009). Bad news should be delivered to the project team with due time, so that the cost on failing the software project would be reduced, and the project team could come to a solution together and make corrections as early as possible. However, some individuals are reluctant to report negative information to the project team. The reluctance to report bad news may ultimately result in the failure of the whole project (Smith and Keil, 2003). To Project Manager’s CEO : Bad news should be reported to the Project Manager’s CEO actively and without reserve, especially if the project team cannot deal with the problems by itself. If the project team always withholds the bad news from its superiors, a failing project may result at the end (Keil and Robey, 1999). On the other hand, if the bad news is delivered early to the Project Manager’s CEO or to other upper managers, there are still some chance to determine the best course of action to make the situation better, or to terminate the project if necessary (Keil and Park, 2010).

Preparing for responses as a Project Manager In delivering bad news, a Project Manager should always be prepared, and know the audience of whom they are speaking with (Price, 2009). The client, Project team, Project Manager and the CEO have different needs. Preparing by understanding the audience benefits the Project Manager in answering further questions, provides further details on the news and what can be expected.  their studies showed that employees negative responses were lowered by Richter et al. (2016) in their perception of “fairness”. For example sharing the bad news to a client or stakeholder of a product lacking components, a fairness approach would be to offer an alternative suitable product. 5

Communication and delivery of bad news

The Project Manager should respond to the stakeholder that is affected, by communicating in a manner in which allows them to move forward (Price 2009; Richter et al. 2016) . An example of telling bad news to a client in relation to deadlines would be to say “The deadline cannot be met, however I can assure you that the quality you expect will be completed in the next four days”. This example communicates the bad news and adds an efficient solution for the client. An example of a scenario of bad news with the project team in relation to lack of skills could be, Sam’s section of the software is not functioning as required. Sarah is dreading the presentations. Sam is great at public speaking, Sarah has ideas and the skills to make the software efficient. A proposed solution would be to advise Sarah and Sam to work on both areas together, training one another and strengthening their personal skills. This is an example of avoiding potential bad news and creating a positive, balanced outcome. On the other hand, in receiving bad news as a Project Manager from your CEO, It would be hypocritical in not taking the good out of the bad. It is our personal opinion that all bad things make way for greater learning opportunities and experience building. No one becomes great from smooth sailing! If the CEO does not advise any suitable options or solutions, the Project Manager should be prepared and willing to find the “silver lining within the cloud”.

Conclusion

A Project Manager should communicate with the client and team’s CEO effectively. There are mainly two types of bad news, classified according to its type and audience. No matter the type of the news, they should be delivered to stakeholders as soon as possible so that viable action may be taken. The Project Manager should also prepare viable solution as they deliver bad news to affected stakeholders, this could avoid potential bad news and create a more positive outcome. In all projects, the Project Manager should frequently communicate with stakeholder and deliver bad news effectively. We also recommend that a Project Manager should be prepared to receive bad news, and channel their abilities in creating favourable alternatives or initiate possible pathways to getting back on track with for a project.

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Communication and delivery of bad news References

Baida, Z. (2001). Stakeholders and Their Concerns In Software Architectures. [ebook] Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b5d9/eef487e5e48df6bac208bc741896b71d9524.pdf. Barndt, S. (1981). Upward communication filtering in the project management environment. Project Management Quarterly. Bell, T.E. and Thayer, T.A. (1976). Software requirements: Are they really a problem?. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering (pp. 61-68). IEEE Computer Society Press. Bennett, H. (2018). 10 Typical Project Management Challenges Faced By Businesses. [online] keyedin. Available at: https://www.keyedin.com/uk/keyedinprojects/article/10-typical-project-management-chal lenges-faced-by-businesses/. Bies, R. J. (2013). The Delivery of Bad News in Organizations: A Framework for Analysis. Journal of management, 136-162. Cohn, M. (2006). Selecting the right iteration length. [online] mountain goat software. Available at: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/selecting-the-right-iteration-length. Gibbert, M., Hoegl, M. and Välikangas, L. (2007). In Praise of Resource Constraints. advertisement MIT Sloan Management Review. [online] Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/in-praise-of-resource-constraints/. Keil, M. and Robey, D. (1999). Turning around Troubled Software Projects: An Exploratory Study of the Deescalation of Commitment to Failing Courses of Action. Journal of Management Information Systems, 15(4), pp.63-87. Keil, M., Im, G. and Mähring, M. (2007). Reporting bad news on software projects: the effects of culturally constituted views of face-saving. Information Systems Journal, 17(1), pp.59-87. Keil, M. and Park, C. (2010). Bad news reporting on troubled IT projects: Reassessing the mediating role of responsibility in the basic whistleblowing model. Journal of Systems and Software, 83(11), pp.2305-2316. Kothari, S., Shu, S. and Wysocki, P. (2009). Do Managers Withhold Bad News?.Journal of Accounting Research, 47(1), pp.241-276. Price, M. (2009). Business Driven PMO Setup. J. Ross Publishing. Florida. 7

Communication and delivery of bad news

Rajkumar and Sivasankari (2010). Art of communication in project management. In: PMI® Research Conference. Washington, DC. Richter, M, Konlg, C. J, Koppermann, C, Schilling, M (2016). Displaying Fairness While Delivering Bad News: Testing the Effectiveness of Organizational Bad News Training in the Layoff Context. J ournal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 101. No. 6. Pp. 779 - 792. Smith, H. J. and Keil, M. (2003), The reluctance to report bad news on troubled software projects: a theoretical model. Information Systems Journal, 13: 69-95. Smit, M., Bond-Barnard, T., Steyn, H. and Fabris-Rotelli, I. (2017). Email communication in project management: A bane or a blessing?. SA Journal of Information Management, 19(1). Tan, B., Smith, H., Keil, M. and Montealegre, R. (2003). Reporting bad news about software projects: impact of organizational climate and information asymmetry in an individualistic and a collectivistic culture. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 50(1), pp.64-77. Viliam, M., Studeničová, A. and Janka, P. (2017). COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT IN SOFTWARE PROJECTS. 9(4). Welch, M. and Jackson, P. (2007). Rethinking internal communication: a stakeholder approach. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 12(2), pp.177-198. Zehnder, M., P.M.P. (2015, 01). Delivering bad news. PM Network, 29, 22-23. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.virtual.anu.edu.au/docview/1651708219?accountid=8330

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