Common Project Approval Blockers

Critical projects sometimes die prematurely when blockers prevent projects from getting management approval. Here are some tips for addressing these common approval blockers.

• Your organization hasn’t established project success metrics. A lack of success criteria can raise obstacles to project approval. Is the payback period 1 year or less than that? Do you need a significant reduction in the risk of using old processes or systems? What does significant mean? Do projects have to achieve a cost reduction of greater than 10%? Or is it a combination of these? Sometimes, the best way to get a project approved is to propose success criteria so management can talk about them and make a decision.
• Conflicting stakeholder goals prevent agreement. Goal conflicts between senior stakeholders are common. Financial personnel might focus on reducing costs, while marketing personnel want to spend more on initiatives to increase profit. Stakeholder conflicts that aren’t understood or identified can kill your project. They may have started from past projects or personality clashes. Work with your sponsor to facilitate conversations between conflicted stakeholders. Meet one-on-one with influential stakeholders who aren’t enthusiastic about your project. That way, you can identify these conflicts and work to resolve them.
• Past project failures. Many organizations have a poor project success rate. Stakeholders remember the pain and pressure of those failures, which makes them hesitant to take on new projects. Work to understand their fears. Review documented lessons learned, but don’t assume they tell the full story! If possible, talk with the people involved in past project failures. Personnel and contractor failures might not be identified. Do research to understand these failures and put risk plans in place to address them. Discuss how you will manage the project differently. 
• “We are too busy.” Does busy mean the organization is productive? Often, antiquated processes and languishing projects persist. Time wasters may contribute to being busy, but don’t help the business. People don’t like stopping a project that has consumed resources without delivering value. As a project manager, you can do your homework to help your sponsor why they should stop a project. This can free up critical resources to work on more viable projects. If that doesn’t work, at least it raises awareness of the need to examine whether busyness is producing anything of value. 

Have you encountered other obstacles to project approval? If you have tips or questions, share with us in the comments.

For more about project approval, check out my Project Management Foundations course.