You have been a successful techie for several years. You have been working as a team leader at your current job for past eighteen months and you have just successfully completed a huge in-house software development project. Your project manager just got transferred to PMO with a promotion and you are the natural choice of your company to fill that vacant slot.  The company sends you for in-house project management training so that you understand the company’s processes and follow the guidelines of the PMO.  You are excited but bit nervous about your new role. You have acquired the theoretical knowledge about project management methodology and the company’s processes from the training you just completed but you do not know how to effectively implement them in your project.  At this stage anybody would be nervous as wise men said, “you do not know what you do not know”.

Relax! Here are the strategies to function effectively as a project manager and if you follow my simple albeit effective guidelines, you will be very successful in your new role as a project manager.

Step 1:  Understand top ten reasons of a project failure and proactively plan to avoid them.

Step 2:  A project manager spends over 80% of the time communicating. Have a solid communication plan not just a strategy.

Step 3:  Change is inevitable in a project. The problem is not the change itself but how you manage a change. Learn how to manage changes.

Let’s start with step one: Top ten reasons of a project failure.

1. Poor planning: Planning is the most important step of project management process. Half of the battle is won when you plan well. Coordinate with the project participants and the stakeholders to develop a detailed plan for the assigned project. Involve your project team members in planning and have the team buy-in. Prepare project scope, statements of work, work breakdown structures, task estimates, and specific tasks and milestones. Plan resources and schedule for your project implementation. Proactively plan effectively all anticipated bottlenecks, which include but not limited to management escalation, project prioritization, finding the right trade-offs between the business needs versus technical as well as triple constraints namely; scope, cost and schedule.

 2. Unclear goals and objectives: Many IT projects are elaborated progressively and in these scenarios you as a project manager need to rely on rolling wave planning. Initially the goal of your project may be only partially clear due to a poor requirement gathering in the definition stage of the project and you may not have clear picture of the scope and the schedule.  Defining clear requirements for a project can take time and lots of communication. You need to have expertise in rolling wave planning and that is where you should proactively focus.  You have strengths as well as weakness in this area. Being a technical team leader you can clearly view where the project is heading and you can very well anticipate the technical requirements and the future enhancements but at the same time you do not know how to plan for something that may be the future requirements. The best thing to do in such scenario is to rely on expert judgment.  Find project managers within your organization who have experience in rolling wave planning and seek their guidance. Your strategy should be to combine your technical expertise with experts’ judgments so that you can plan for your project that going to be progressively elaborated.

3. Poor Stakeholder Management: Identify stakeholders and bring them early. Project stakeholders’ interests may be positively or negatively impacted by the project and that is why stakeholders’ influence on the project is the most important thing to consider. Stakeholders who are found later will make changes and could cause delays. Any change that is made later is harder to integrate and is much more costly.

4. Scope creep and Feature creep due to objectives changing during the project: Scope creep refers to uncontrolled and unexpected changes in user expectations and requirements as a project progress, while feature creep refers to uncontrolled addition of features to a system with a wrong assumption that one small feature will add nothing to cost or schedule. Understand project trade-offs and make decisions regarding objectives on the basis of rational insight. Try to prevent project scope and feature creeps by implementing effective scope control methodology.

5. Unrealistic time or resource estimates: Many times project managers makes costly mistakes while estimating time or resources. Always work in a collaborative environment with the team and have the team buy-in and also consult with the project stakeholders as much as possible while preparing the detail project scope statement so that you do not make costly mistakes while preparing the WBS. Also employ effective techniques to estimate the amount of time each activity is expected to take. Be careful not to (common mistake new project managers make) use linear approximation when estimating the schedule For example, if you double the number of developers, you can cut the project time in half. In reality, doubling the number of developers produces a non-linear result.

6. Improper delegation of task and responsibilities: Many times project managers fail to delegate task and responsibilities to the team such a way that it should fit a team member’s job description. Organize the team such way that everybody should work under his/her own specialization so that the team as a cohesive whole performs the work diligently and within time and budget and thus raise efficiency above standard.

7. Lack of executive support and user involvement: Carefully listen to the executive management and the project sponsor and try to find out whether they have reservations about the project. If so, what is their vision for the project and what are their business objectives of the project. Try to work as an interface between the business and technology sides of the company so that you help our company align business with its projects.

8. Failure to communicate and act as a team: Projects sometimes fail due to improper communication.  A great deal of a project manger’s time is spent on communicating. We will discuss more about communication strategy in step-2.

9. Lack of proper risk management: Another potential cause for project failure is the IT managers’ inability to categorize all the risks qualitatively and quantitatively and implement corrective measures. Identify past, present and potential risks that the current project faced, facing or will face in the near future. Carefully and methodically categorize all the risks qualitatively and quantitatively and implement corrective measures. Assign one or two persons from your team as risk owners. These persons identify the risks, discuss the risks with the team and the project manager, find solutions and implement them.

10. Inappropriate skills: In this rapidly changing, technology-driven business environment and the constant changes of technology make it hard to predict skills the IT department will need. Almost all large IT projects require a diverse range of skills. Many teams lack the breadth, and depth they require.  Plan proactively for your resource requirements and make sure that everybody works under his/her own specialization. Have a solid plan for the skills your project requires. Work with your HR manager to evaluate all alternatives, which may include but not limited to hiring contractors, outsourcing, providing training to existing team members etc.

In step 2, we will discuss about communication and how to have a solid communication plan not just a strategy.

Technorati Tags: best-practices, change-management, communication, project-management

by Rutty

The sales-oriented, over-use of ‘maxi-media’ (anything in excess of need) was first challenged by me in two columns (1970-71; 71-73) and my first book (1973). A worthwhile message will be listened to and needn’t be prettied-up. Just make it intelligible when heard. “You can put lipstick on a pig, but. . .” Complex messages can be helped only by visuals that help clarify concepts, not illustrate irrelevancies. Pretty-for-the-sake-of-pretty detracts from message.

Old learning? Well, the human brain hasn’t changed much in 10,000 years, according to scientists; so the researched educational principles and findings are still valid. New research on the brain in recent years has identified specific real estate where various brain functions occur. We newly know that the brain has a life-long plasticity and can reassign real estate according to new-learning demands or to compensate for injury.

New proofs of old practices, too: Sleeping on new-learning material can aid retention. New idea? Ask any HS or college student who crams late-night for morning tests. Now we know why it works.

Vicarious practice has long been known to work. Newly-discovered reasons: ‘mirror neurons.’ While watching others, our empathic neural system ‘operates’ inoperatively in muscles, responding to observed action. New understandings of ‘old’ learning. Scientists still haven’t discovered how the functions do in fact function: How and why does consciousness occur?

Meanwhile, you’ll need old and proved learning and research. So return to learning needs:  In specific instances, technology can help in specific meeting/training situations. Don’t rush. ‘Be the first on your block’ to introduce new technology into the meeting room–is for kids. Other-directed meeting-callers have depended on technology and advertising claims to make their decisions and cases–and lost. Technology can’t make decisions. ‘Computer-aided-everything’ is a profitable sales idea–but first pay attention to the ‘aided’ element of the phrase. Aids-choice requires authoritative knowledge of message. Military ISD offers algorithms.

Don’t start with hardware! Increased comfort-of-viewing underlies most A/V technological advances (other than the computer itself). As an element of the surround, comfort contributes only incrementally to learning: unmeasurable in most company circumstances and probably not worth the added time or effort.

To select the proper technology to help deliver your message, first determine what specifics must be delivered in your current or next meeting/training session. For help on this “message” topic, see our prior Blogs.

Next, determine what categories of tools and A/V would aid in making your message and objectives clear to meeting/training participants. Such categories include new tools, prototypes, samples, demonstration/taste/ feel, case histories…and technology, including simple slides. Non-commercial exhibits present unspoken visual comprehension.

Remember: a computer-and-screen is only a fancy chalkboard. New chalk-boards are blank. Ditto, new computers. You enter meaningful material onto blackboards; guess what.  Absolutely nothing can do absolutely everything. Nor can anyone! You need real help based on facts, cases, and qualified opinions. Those are few.

Some books offer chapters prepared by numerous recognized authorities. Yet, no matter how valid the individual chapters, they usually don’t add up to cohesive, workable systems. If books on meetings topics were/are discursive, readers must cut-and-paste into probably-inadequate meeting planning structures. Does the given book present a workable system?

Magazines love tips: they’re plentiful, easy, short, and perfect for filling unused space. Readers cut-and-paste. No system. In short, ersatz “help.” They can’t photograph or sell you your own message. There’s a paucity of worthwhile information in even business journals. Their editors usually defer to the meetings industry press’ editors and viewpoints, because “Don’t they know best?” Obviously not!

The original concept and title we created for “Achieving Objectives in Meetings” has become a standard concept in the meetings professions and essential trade(s). ‘Achieving objectives’ as a communications key is finally being rehabilitated (in different words) by industry-associations that have previously down-played that concept.

Meetings can be improved significantly without extravagant spending when the methods and technology used are chosen with concern for–and protection of–intelligent, do-able messages, aided by proper tools and practice. Aided–not necessarily ‘technology-aided.’

Message-control is free; it’s based on brain, not budget! Now, how much more attention can you pay to the message?

For citations of ignored fundamental research, see wwww.meetingsCavalier.com; then ‘Business Writing.’ At ‘Recognition,’ button, see our bibliography for ‘A&SP/Granddaddy’ button (at base of Note): It’s proof that useful research was long available.

For later presentations of useful specific research findings, largely military, see ‘Recognition/Industry’; then “FirstTake” magazine (p13 of 48); and also ‘AOM & Early Mag articles’ button.

For comprehensive information and procedures re: meetings needs and aids, you might see our “Sales Meetings That Work.”

For hotel-related methodology, see tomorrow’s blog.

from Lumaxart

As Mark Twin would have said, “Everybody talks about teamwork but nobody does much about it.” Teamwork is the Holy Grail of manufacturing and sales/marketing, as much as for sports. But, like the Holy Grail–and despite claims–few know exactly how to create it.

Teamwork exists, but it cannot be sought directly and cannot be commanded or demanded. It occurs as a synergy when each person of the incipient team understands his/her assigned task perfectly; knows how to do–and does–the assigned task in cooperation with others on the incipient team. Teamwork is essentially task-skills oriented. Our willingness to work with others depends on both their task skills and our trust in those intended- teammates’ skills and commitment. Trust and teamwork cannot be coaxed or demanded or bludgeoned into being.

Known–but unrecognized–corroborations from real life:

• Decades ago, the Hawthorne Effect indicated that employees want to help you succeed. Stop exhorting people re: teamwork. Stop bullying. Stop wishing. Start teaching them how to perfect their assigned tasks and encourage their bonding. Then they’ll be ABLE to do the team’s assigned job!
• A football team coach (we consider a bully) depended on tongue-lashings to “energize” his players and keep them in line. One defiant player wore a sponsored headband, employing a loophole not appreciated by his coach or League’s advertising contract: a finger salute to the coach. But the player knew his task and did it well; and his teammates trusted him to do it. The team won their share but also lost many. That’s sports; not spectacular.
• A Chicago basketball team coach and Zen enthusiast ‘encouraged’ and ‘inspired’ his people, perfecting their task skills. They trusted him, their own skills, and their team-commitments. . .and won multiple national championships.
• When Kobe and Shaq had a long-running feud, the press knew; their early ballgames didn’t show it. Each man knew his task on the court. Each knew and valued the other’s skills and expected that he wouldn’t cheat the team in order to feed the feud. Attitudes changed; break-up followed loss of hoped-for fourth championship. Task skills weren’t the problem!

Don’t ‘demand’ teamwork. That’s the cliche theme of too many sales-related “motivational” films and programs. Film producers (and their staff or free-lance writers who lack corporate training skills) lean on teamwork cliche: “Just do it.” It’s safe–for writers. But worthless.

It’s okay to cheer. Cheers are no substitute for substance. See cheerleaders at every ballgame. How many points do they score?

The single best-selling motivational film of all time is “You Pack Your Own Chute,” by Dr Eden Ryl. No ‘go-team-go.’ Just a psychologist’s view of our need to take responsibility for our own actions. Serious stuff, intelligently presented. “Chute” is still selling, after 30 years. Ryl’s competitors point out that the film’s hair styles and clothes are old. Genius! Why not make a better film? PS: Greta Garbo’s and Charlie Chaplin’s hair styles and clothes are old, too. Moral: View any film before you book it!

Performance skills are scarce. Apparently, expertise requires about 10,000 Hours of “deliberate practice,” according to recent literature and findings. Search “10,000 Hour Rule” on either “Advertising Age” magazine or Google.

Strange ideas, ours? They work: They were developed with well over 12,000 hours of this blogger’s hands-on experience (office hours, plus reality-hours with conventions) and have been proved effective by clients, columns-readers, and other users.

Harold Geneen (once of ITT) wrote “The Myth of Synergy.” Synergy is not a myth–Geneen was criticizing the managerial fad, not the phenomenon. Like teamwork, synergy cannot be sought directly. No synergy in your incipient team? Is their mutual-commitment genuine or just a slap-on-the-back-and-a-beer when watched?  Given mutual concern for the welfare of competent incipient-team ‘mates’ who commit, synergy can take over. Teamwork is an accumulation and accretion of smaller successes in task/job competence–plus the will to do the job with others! Plus our trust in the whole.

Because of numerous failures with empty, but expensive, electronics-based training and distance-learning programs, the meetings industry has been back-tracking. About yr2000, “Training” magazine began pushing that backtracking with challenges. Available:

See www.meetingsCavalier.com; ‘Titles’ page’s ‘Final Thoughts’ segment cites many “Training” magazine attacks on the industry’s sacred cows, detailing the range of meetings-industry problems and biases.

Control of your own meetings, training, team-building, and related group-communications programs depend on your brain, not your budget or technology.

With those read-recommendations accomplished, you will have a fighting chance to construct program agendas, message/contents and tools that themselves have a fighting chance to communicate, train. . .and build teams.

At lower dollar cost. Forever!

Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get things done!

As we go through our lives we are subjected to numerous rules – as kids, as students, as workers and as adults living our everyday lives.  As program managers and leaders, part of our responsibilities is to lay down some rules by which to guide projects, by which teams work together and by which products are built, tested and released.  However, let’s not forget that the reason we have rules is to get us to a destination.   There is a favorite quote of mine which I invoke to remind myself of this principle:

Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.  Thomas Edison.

The program manager needs to know when to go by the books and follow the TL9000 (or your favorite development) process and when to let loose and have the team go off and run as fast they can.  I once worked with a program manager (let’s call him Joe) who could not tell the difference.  He was a ‘by the rules book’ type of leader – and that actually got in the way of us getting our jobs done.   We ended up getting to our destination despite Joe.  Here is the story.

Joe was responsible for leading a project on which I was one of the engineering managers.  We started out with a reasonable plan, and had regular program meetings, with status, minutes and action items that Joe would track.  Along the way, two things happened.  Our management wanted us to adopt a new development process.  And, at about the same time, we also had the inevitable ‘technical bump’ in the road that required our attention.  The new process rule required a detailed unit testing plan be documented, and signed off at completion prior to handing off to the QA team.  Joe was focused on tracking this new process requirement and getting the test plan documented.  The engineering team was very concerned about the bump.  Without addressing the bump, there would be no substantial development or unit testing to speak of.  However, Joe had it in our project schedule that the unit test plans would be done by a specific date and tracked that religiously at each meeting.  Joe also had very little domain knowledge and despite the team’s efforts to educate him on the criticality of addressing the problem asap, he continued to focus on the dates and the schedule.  Joe was following his rules book – the established project plan.  The engineering team decided to take matters into its own hands, and we held shadow program meetings without Joe to address the bump and quickly fix the key technical issues that were hampering our progress.  Joe’s rules were getting in the way of work being done.  When the crisis was over, I gave Joe some feedback that he needed to be able to adjust his plans when bumps came along, and bend the rules to meet our most critical goals.  To do that, he needed to learn more about the domain and understand the business of what he was program managing.  However, I hear he still manages the same way. Sigh!

Focusing on the rules and mechanics of program management helps keep things going.  But a good program manager needs to have at least a basic understanding of the domain and be prepared to apply rules or break the rules in order to get things done.  At the end of the day, the customer will not pay if we don’t have a good product, but followed all the rules!

I truly believe in continuous improvement. In today’s world standing still really translates into regression. I apply that continuous improvement to different areas of my life: I keep pursuing knowledge on scuba diving in general and its physiology in specific, I am planning to improve my technical skills of motorcycling this year, I learn new things about a healthy lifestyle every day and of course I keep expanding my professional knowledge.

I started out in the investment banking world as an account manager for institutional clients. I decided that my drive for results and my desire to learn more about information technology would be better served in project management so I switched careers. I have never regretted that move. Since my first PM position was at Royal Dutch Airlines, I decided to follow a full year of evening classes in logistics management at the university.

After moving to the United States, I was introduced to the PMP and became certified in 2001. My desire to continuously improve continued with Toastmasters, a Scrum Master certificate, the PMI Leadership Institute Master class, a Myers-Briggs qualification, a Green belt in Six Sigma and currently an executive coaching certification. It is not the certificates I am interested in but rather the knowledge, experience, and interaction with other students from different industries. Some of the acquired knowledge I actively use on a day to day basis, other knowledge becomes part of the mental toolkit to be pulled out when the situation calls for it and some of it goes into the mental waste basket.

Especially in a job market that is a “buyer” market (like today’s) showing that you invest time and money in yourself will improve your chances in the job market. It demonstrates aspects like a curious mind, commitment to (self) improvement, and dedication to juggle a busy schedule with continuous learning.

What can you do? See it as the project “Investing in myself”. First, define the requirements:

1. Figure out what you are passionate about and evaluate if this is something you can pursue.
2. Look at your current skill set: are there skills you want to improve?
3. Do you see skills in others that you would like to acquire?

A lot of my continuous improvement was triggered by one of these three points. For example, I joined Toastmasters because I was in awe of the speaking skills of some of the people I met here and being from Europe there is significant less emphasis on public speaking skills while they are crucial for a successful project manager.

Secondly, figure out what you can do to start working on the desired skills. This includes:

• What courses are out there? (PMI nowadays has a plethora of certifications as do many other organizations)
• What is your financial situation?
• Will your company pay for it?
• Can you obtain the skills through self-study (and are you self-disciplined enough to do this)?

Then schedule the time to work on those skills. None of us have enough time to do everything we need and want to do so it comes down to prioritizing our time. If the project “Investing in myself” is important enough to you, you will find the time to execute it even though it might mean having to (temporarily) give up other activities.

Okay, back to my coaching studies.

Image: EdgeDonkey

We all have been in the situation where a customer or team member asks to add a feature or upgrade the quality of a certain item. We often agree to do these favors because we find ourselves unable to say “no”—driven by our desire to please or a preconceived notion that we do not have the option to say “no”.

Favors happen on projects because many of us like to help other people. Doing so makes us feel good. It can make us uncomfortable to say no or to make tough decisions. The problem with doing favors is that it can have a domino effect or even start the project on a downward spiral. One favor begets another and before you know it, you have lost control over the project scope, budget, and/or timeline.

The construction industry has made controlling favors an art. Anyone who has ever built a house or has done some remodeling knows that contractors do not do favors. Any requested change is discussed, the work estimated, a cost assigned, and a new timeline approved.

Project managers in other industries would do well to take a lesson from the construction industry. Rather than simply saying no when someone requests favors, make the price tag visible so that the right decisions and tradeoffs can be made. Skillful project management is not about trying to please one person at a time; rather, it is about satisfying the majority of the project stakeholders involved and most importantly to provide customer value. This requires balancing all expectations.

Project management is not a popularity contest.

via Flickr by Bouliqab

Where to Go From Here?

I realize that most of us will never face the challenges confronted by Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, on Apollo 13, but the mental exercise is worth doing.  If you haven’t seen the movie, or have seen it and view it as entrainment at the time, I suggest renting it and putting yourself in Gene’s shoes while watching.  You can put yourself through an endless stream of questions:

• Would I have Gene’s mental toughness?
• Would I be prepared to ratchet-up my leadership skills and rally the troops?
• Do I have the knowledge in problem solving and decision making necessary?
• How can I improve my day-to-day leadership, now I’ve seen one of the best project leaders in action?
• Etc., etc. ….

Remember it is a journey of a thousand steps and it starts with just one.

Technorati Tags: Leaderhip, process

via Flickr by dbking

Rallying the Team from a Bump in the Night

For the rare situation where the project plan comes to an abrupt, premature end or dead stop, it is your time to show everyone what real leadership is.  At this point the whole team, and more, are looking for someone to rally them and provide direction on how to proceed.  Let’s not confuse direction with providing detail instructions on what to do (micro-management).  What’s needed is leadership and a process for the path forward – everybody following and moving in the same direction.  It is the followers that will be doing the work and it is you ensuring the process needed to accomplish it is established and communicated, including when and how decisions are made along the way.  Here is a general outline of the flow:

Step 1: Bring the team to a common agreement on the points of the situation:

• The facts
• The assumptions
• The selection criteria for solution alternatives

Step 2: Organize the team’s creativity effort for solution development

Step 3: Monitor the development process and make adjustments

Step 4: Converge to a set of solution alternatives

Step 5: Make the decision and act on it

I’m sure at this point there is at least one doubting Thomas among the readers.  When asked whether creating an Apollo 13 disaster recovery process on the fly and managing to it was a waste of time, Gene Kranz indicated the opposite was the case, it saved time because it gave the team the needed focus.

I wish you the best of luck, if you’re ever experience a bump in the night,  in pulling another iron out of the fire and getting your project back on track; may you have the same success as Gene Kranz.

Technorati Tags: Leaderhip, process

via Flickr by krossbow

Process for Handling the Dips in the Road

The majority of unexpected situations that hit a project during its execution are dips in the road to closure; a leader can certainly prepare both themselves and a process for the team, to deal with these.

As the project leader you own the solution/decision process, like any of the other project processes, and are responsible for:

• Understanding the organization’s  decision culture and its implications for affecting a final solution
• Ensuring the process is viewed as fair, legitimate and transparent by the participants, in order to maintain an engaged and cohesive team, through commitment and shared understanding
• Driving the team to converge on a final solution; not personally creating the final solution and selling it to them
• Sharing with the team what the process is and the role they will play and what your role will be
• Fostering a creative environment for solution development

The bottom line is: People want to be engaged and to have their positions heard on any given issue; then, they want a choice to be made, so the team can move on.

Technorati Tags: Leaderhip, process

via Flickr by woodleywonderworks

Who is Solving the Problems and Making the Decisions?

The question on the table is, will we have the right person(s) solving the problem and/or making the decision, when needed?

The volume of problems/decisions seen by a project is probably somewhat pyramid in shape, with the bulk lying with individual SMEs and, hopefully, precious few with the organization’s senior management team.  From another perspective, an inverse relationship exists between the problem volume and the number of people and/or organizational levels involved.  Involvement appropriate for the situation makes for an effective use of resources within the organization.

So, who is the traffic cop?  You are; the project manager (leader).  How do you know what is right? There are two key issues that need to be considered:

• The composition of participants – Who needs to be involved because it either affects their area of responsibility and/or makes use of their expertise?
• The environmental context of the situation – What are the implications of the situations final resolution, relative to the project outcome, the well-being of the organization, etc.?

My assumption in the previous post was you had a strong, cohesive execution team already in place, which implies the team uses the project meetings to openly discuss challenges (and waste little time on success status) and readily shares information.  As the leader, your role is understand how each challenge/situation is being handled from a process perspective; not necessarily technical content.  In terms of the process, it need to be a hub-to-spoke communications, with you as the hub.  Unlike the solution/decision communications model, which should be point-to-point among the active participants. This is not to imply you can’t be a participant in the technical discussions, it just means in order to lead your focus has to be first and foremost the process.

It boils down to active listening.  Is this person talking to me about project process or technical content? Even if they are talking about the technical content, is there some implied process issues?  Remember, getting the project technically correct don’t necessarily bring it on time, under budget and aligned with the organization’s strategy.

Technorati Tags: Leaderhip, process