How do I approach my boss to be removed from a project?
You probably were assigned to this project for one of two reasons:
- Your boss thinks you can do a good job.
- Your boss thinks you are the least costly way to get this project done.
You can get off the project by changing your boss's opinion of your suitability for the project. To do that it would help to estimate which of the two reasons is more likely.
If it's the first reason, you are in a tricky situation because you would be saying that you can't or don't want to do a good job. This is likely to not reflect well on you.
If it's the second reason, if you can demonstrate your value to the organization perhaps the boss will put someone else on this project and will put your skills to better use. However, demonstrating value is challenging if you have nothing to say for yourself:
in our daily meetings I have nothing to contribute because I rarely make progress on the project
I would address this first, and I would start by examining whether this is really true.
Are the tasks assigned to you too big to be done in one day? Break them down into smaller tasks.
If you spend several hours per day working on this project, you should be able to set realistic goals for each day of work and consequently report on the progress/completion of these goals.
You could for example say something like:
"Today I was working on the expense report submission. I had to change the text on the submit button but the new text did not fit in the available space. I decided to reduce the font size. Since the font size is set in each file individually I had to inspect all of the files in the project to see whether any of them might affect the font size on this expense form. I did get the font size reduced today and the submit button has the proper text now. Tomorrow I will look into the other buttons."
This is not as glamorous as saying you finished the entire form but is much better than having nothing to report.
Once you can verbalize what you are working on and are going to work on next, you open the door for other people involved with the project to potentially:
- provide assistance to you.
- appreciate the work you are doing.
- use your feedback to renegotiate the project with the client.
At the end of the day, if you want to stay with this company (which is a separate question) you should look at the situation from their point of view. They have some kind of a contract with the client, so the company needs to either deliver the project to the client or provide good reasons why it can't do that. By communicating what you have done and what your roadblocks are you are giving the company the information it needs to deal with this project in a way that is also in your best interest (most companies don't want to lose employees unnecessarily, so the company should be at least somewhat motivated to keep you).