The plan is clear. So why is the project not moving? Working the hidden bottleneck

WHAT TO EXPECT

You know the meeting. Everyone agrees, the actions are clear, and six weeks later the same three items are still open. Nobody did anything wrong, and nothing moved.

Most sessions on this subject ask what you should start doing. This one spends its time on a different question, asked seriously: what would we have to do to guarantee that a cross-functional project never moves at all?

It is an easy question to answer and an uncomfortable one, because the list does not stay hypothetical for long. Somewhere on it are things being done this week, in good faith, by people who believe they are protecting the project.

The rest of the session is spent finding out how much of that list you have in common with project managers from other organisations/ industries, and which one of them you are willing to stop.

WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH

One practice you are going to stop, chosen by you and small enough to survive next week
An understanding on how much of what slows your projects is particular to your organisation, and how much is simply what happens when work crosses a boundary
A question you can put to your own team afterwards without needing a workshop to do it

WHO IT IS FOR

Project and programme managers, PMO leads, and functional managers who carry delivery across more than one team. It works the same whether you run predictive, agile or hybrid.