Identify stakeholders and bring them early. 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. Communicate with the stakeholders effectively and on a regular basis. Give a project presentation, list all their issues and concerns, report progress and inform changes and updates to the project management plan. Another important function of a project manager is to prevent uncontrollable changes. Stakeholders have greater influences over the requirements as well as changes in a project. That is why it important to have effective communications within the team and between the team and other project stakeholders.

Let’s try to understand why do you need a communication management plan?

• Communications management plan reduces and mitigates risk
• It provides you clear guidelines on how  you formally  interact with the project stakeholders
• Communication management  plan provides tools to utilize resources effectively
• It gives you the ability to analyze the impacts of various meetings
• It also ensures mutual commitments with the sponsor and other stakeholders
• The Communications management plan clearly documents all the deliverables and delivery schedules
• You should  be able to deliver  the right message at the right time to sponsors so that you can control  rumors and unnecessary work products
• A well defined communication management plan enhances your ability to meet stakeholders’ expectations

A project manager inspires people, shares the project vision with the group and creates a very motivating environment.  Communicate with all levels of the members of your team regardless of level. Communicate clearly your plans & ideas and make sure everybody understands them.

Your communication management plan should include both internal communications and external communications. Your internal communication management plan includes status report, progress report, trend report, forecasting report, variance report, earned value report etc. External communications requirements include types of meetings and reports, existing policies and contractual agreements etc.

Here are some simple steps to create an effective communication management plan.

Step 1: Documents the followings

1. With whom you need to communicate?
2. What deliverables are needed?
3. What media you are going to employ in the communication?
4. When the communication will occur?
5. Where the communication will occur?
6. The purpose of the communication

Step 2:  Document the list of deliverables, the list of stakeholders and your stakeholder analysis for each stakeholder. You need to document communications requirements with the sponsor, with the functional management, the subcontractors and with the team.

Step 3:  Determine the needs for media. Your communication management plan should have a media section where you document the types of media that you plan to use for communications on this project. Document the media requirements to make sure that all stakeholders have access to the particular media or technology that they need for their required communications.

Most cases you will be using the following media types:

• Conference calls
• Fax
• Knowledge repositories available on company’s intranet
• Paper reports
• Power point presentations
• E-mails
• Video conferences
• Instant messages such as AIM
• Electronic files, including zipped files, word processing files, and spreadsheets
• Web sites
• Information stored electronically on company servers
• Project management software such as MS Project
• On line project tracking tools

Step 4:  Document a schedule for the milestones and communication deliverables. You should have a table or calendar that shows your deliverables and other communications time.

Step 5: Determine the assumptions, dependencies, and risks associated with your project communications.

List all important assumptions you considered while creating communications management plan such as all stakeholders speak English or all team members will be company’s full time employees only. This may change the moment you hire contractors.

List all important factors upon which your communications management plan depends. For example, the communication among team members located in several time zones depends on how and when they communicate, what communication media they use and how they distribute reports.  A dependency is an input or output or time-related relationship.

When managing dependencies, confirm that the deliverables are well-defined, within the project scope, and also include a statement of work. Confirm that the schedule and cost are understood by the parties involved.

Identify past, present and potential risks that the current project faced, is currently facing or will face in the near future and list any important risks inherent in the communications management plan.  

Step 6:  Every work involves some cost and in your communication management you should itemize the costs associated with communications. For example, you should have a list of cost associated with conference calls , video conferences, instant messages such as AIM, your and team members time in preparing reports, cost of using other facilities etc.

Step 7:  The final step is to review your plan before you finalize it. Here is a check list of your communication management plan.

• List of your stakeholders and your detail plan on their communication needs
• Organizational type such as projectized, functional or matrix
• Document any geographic or multicultural requirements
• If you are working with a remote team make sure remote team requirements are met
• Document use of technology against your stakeholders’ access and technical skills
• Check to be sure your stakeholders are assigned appropriately to the reports, meetings, and other communications types according to role, level of detail, and personal communication preferences
• Review all the levels of communication and do not overburden stakeholders with too much or too little information

Your communication plan also should include the communication methods such as formal, informal, verbal and written. You communicate internally and externally to the project team and vertically and horizontally within the company. Use the following guidelines for selecting a communication method. However, please remember that every organization is different and you need to take into account your company’s processes and procedures for conducting work and communications.

Formal written:  Project charter, reports to the management, project management plans, communicating between divisions etc.

Formal verbal: Presentations and speeches

Informal written: Notes, e-mails, memos, status updates among team members, online chat etc.

Informal verbal: Conversations, meetings, discussion and often water cooler gossip  

In step 3, we will discuss about project changes and  how you manage a change.

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.

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

via Flickr by James Jordan

Are you prepared to cope when things go bump in the night?

As project managers we have become proficient in transforming the project charter (in whatever form we get it) into a project plan (hopefully, including some risk management) and then charging through plan execution to closure.  But, what happens when thing go bump in the night during execution?  Have you prepared for a discontinuity? I’m talking about the metaphorical equivalent of the plan dropping off the edge of the earthquake damaged bridge.  More specifically, something like Apollo 13, an onboard explosion that instantly trashed the entire project’s plan and requiring some heavy-duty problem solving and decision making to create a new plan in short order (if the astronauts are to make it back alive).  NASA didn’t have this scenario in their risk management plan, much less having a mitigation plan.  Yes, I know this is an extreme example and most of us don’t work on projects where people’s lives hanging in the balance, however, some of us have managed projects were the organization’s future is at risk.  It is only when we are prepared for the worst, or at least something worse then you will ever see, does everything else seem easy.

Now that I have your attention by setting the extreme boundary of the topic, let’s take a look at our project teams and think about a few thing that may be taken for granted or just not considered, at the outset.  Things that may help us shine, even in everyday situations, because we are mentally prepared.

Project Management 101, with the PMI PMBOK® as its underpinning; have taught us the methodology for putting together a good project plan, executing that plan and bringing in a successful project.  No problem, with a good plan and team of SMEs (subject matter experts) we can sleep at night.  Right?  Sometimes.

Even with a solid project plan created through your competent leadership and active participation of an outstanding team of SMEs, have you ever stopped to think about all the problems that get solved and all the decisions that get made in the course of executing the plan, most of which were never considered or documented as part of the planning process, even if you did risk management?  Some are at the day-to-day level of individual SMEs, while others may require the involvement of senior executive management, and all points in between.  What will the effect of any one of them be on the overall project effort and outcome?  Some are constraint changing, other plan stopping, and many go unnoticed.

In the posts that follow we will consider three items the PM should be concerned with:

• Are the problems/decisions being addressed by people with the right level of responsibility and/or expertise?
• Does the project team have a process for problem solving and decision making to handle the daily dips in the road?
• Are you and the execution team ready for a bump in the night?

Needless to say, this discussion is situational, dependent upon the size of the project, its complexity and it criticality.  On the higher end of the scale, like the Apollo 13, it is more important to formalize a process for problem solving and decision making.  However, even on the lower-end of the project spectrum, there are always benefits for the PM to have at least thought through some possible scenarios.

Technorati Tags: Leaderhip, process

Well, it’s been quite a week.  After 7 days of heightened attention on my interpersonal communication skills I can’t say I feel I’ve made much progress.  Aside from some encouraging email from a few friends cheering me on in my (decades old) quest to improve myself, there’s no indication that a complete transformation of my relationships in imminent.  Nevertheless, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so I remain committed to this path.

My last blog, Dear Diary #3, was about conjuring action through clear commitment.  Immediately after writing that blog I was engulfed in a sea of commitments that I had made over the past couple of months.  I had to wake up at 4:30 AM Saturday morning in order to make a 6:53 AM flight on my way to Tokyo, and with my packing still undone Friday night, I was looking down the barrel of a half dozen broken promises.  What’s a person who’s word is their bond to do?  Yup, I decided to stay up until 3 AM getting all of it done.  Now, I love my sleep, and I sure do intend to make a lot fewer promises this year as a result of this recent reminder of how much I detest waking up after only 1.5 hours of sleep, but I did follow up on every one of those commitments before laying my head oh so briefly on that luscious pillow.

The fourth and final step in improved communication guarantees that the future envisioned and committed to is actually achieved, and strengthens relationships by building trust.  It’s been said that trust is the residue of promises made and kept.  Following up on our own commitments builds trust with others.  Following up on the commitments others make to us supports them in maintaining our trust in them.  FAILING to follow up on our own promises undermines our integrity and our self-esteem, as we usually know very well that we’ve chosen the sneaky path by letting something slide that should have been taken care of.  And failing to follow up with others cruelly tempts them to do the same.  I’d like to believe I’d do everything I commit to without the threat of follow up.  But if I’m honest with myself I have to admit that I’m much more likely to follow through on a commitment I make if I know that the other person involved is going to be checking in with me to hold me accountable.  It’s only fair to give other people that incentive by securing a follow up date by which I’ll be checking with them on their progress.

There are some people in this world, including myself, who will do what we’ve promised even if other people don’t bug us about it (maybe because we were raised Catholic and guilt is still a major motivator).  But that’s absolutely not the norm (doing what we promised without being bugged, not being Catholic!).  I’ve been working in project teams for over 20 years now, and I can tell you that commitments to action alone – without follow up – have been completed less than 30% of the time, whereas commitments with follow up accountability built into the agreement have had more than double that.  That’s sending action items out in email (where you’re lucky if it’s even read, let alone done) is so ineffective, and keeping a permanent Action Item List for all to see pasted on the team wiki, and trotted out at every team meeting, results in much greater levels of follow through.  Let’s face it, if I know I’m never going to see you again, and you are never going to check in with me to see if I did what I promised, I’m likely to prioritize that promise pretty darn low.  Except for the guilt thing.

So, let’s review my plan for improving my relationships via vastly enhanced communication skills:

Step 1 – Categorize the kinds of conversations I’m having.

Step 2 – Escape the grip of the past by shifting my focus to the future.

Step 3 – Eschew weasel words and powerfully commit to take action!

Step 4 – If I expect “follow through”, plan on “follow up”.

OK, that should keep me busy for the next year.  And I’m putting a reminder in my calendar every month so I’ll be following up with myself.

Keep it real!  Keep it Scrappy!  Keep it real Scrappy!

- Kimberly

Kimberly Wiefling, Author, Scrappy Project Management

In the “Dear Diary #2” blog I made a commitment to re-engineer my relationship with my dad – getting unstuck from the past conversation swirling around in my head about him.  (Perhaps you made a similar commitment to doing that with a colleague or boss after reading that blog?)  After recognizing that the historical banter in my head was largely based on experiences over 3 decades ago, and some practice imagining a future relationship with my dad where we actually enjoyed one another’s company, I rang him up.  Surprisingly (to me) we had a rip-roaring time – chatting, joking, laughing, and planning to get together this summer for the obligatory family wedding reunion.  He lamented how my mom was “all over him” for using the “F word” too much (is there such a thing?), so I worked that into the conversation every chance I got just to kid around with him.  Hearing my mom shout “What’s she saying?!!” in the background over and over again, and him giggle with delight in response, filled me with glee.

It was one of the most pleasant conversations I’ve had with him in ages.  Maybe, through some strange act of synchronicity, my dad suddenly turned into a nicer human being.  But I think the change was mostly due to the difference in my attitude – my maintaining a focus on a future possibility for our relationship during the conversation instead of holding expectations based on the past.  Well, “that’s one in a row”, as they say.  I’m going to continue to fight the grip of memory and experience in hopes of creating a future relationship with my dad that’s truly extraordinary.  That should come in handy in my project management, too, where years of experience have grown in me a cynical attitude taller than Dubai’s Khalifa Tower.  My only fear in letting go of the past in the area of project management is that I won’t be as funny in my keynote speeches without all of the negativity.  (OK, maybe I can dredge up the cynicism when I’m on stage just for entertainment purposes.)

With the past no longer blinding us, let’s move on to the next step in improving communication skills – conjuring up action.

Step 3 – Eschew weasel words and powerfully commit to take action!

Replace “I’ll try.” with “You can count on me.” (or say no!)

Replace “I think so . . .” with “I will.” (or say no!)

As you can imagine, I didn’t really look forward to the conversation with my dad.  I was afraid it would be just another disappointment.  But since I had committed to calling him, I did it.  That’s the power of commitment.  It moves people to action.  “Wishing and hoping” don’t even come close!  “I’ll try.” is a phrase I dread.  Give me one solid commitment over a pocket full of wishes and mumbled half-promises any day.  At least I know where I stand if my request is flatly turned down.  At least I won’t waste days waiting for something to happen only to find out at the last minute that it’s not going to be done, leaving me with few – or no – options.  At least I can make other plans.

“No answer” is almost as bad.  A request that receives neither a yes or a no just hangs out there in outer space like a forgotten ornament on a discarded Christmas tree.  I’m never sure if I should ask someone else, repeat my request, or just wait patiently for an answer.  A “No way!” is way better.

Because I’m the most responsible lunatic I know, and so many other people’s work depends on my doing my job, I’ve become a bit of a tyrant with myself about making and keeping commitments.  Sometimes it’s a little exhausting because I make a commitment when I feel well-rested and energized, and then I have to keep the commitment when I’m feeling like something the cat just dragged in.  Just yesterday I was using my 2 minutes of whining per day to lament how “That dang hyperactive Kimberly went and agreed to do this presentation, and now I’ve gotta up and DO it!”  Sometimes I feel as if someone has broken into my office and put all sorts of stuff on my calendar that no reasonable person would agree to, and I have to clean up the mess.  Of course it’s me making the commitments, and keeping them is something I take very seriously no matter how I feel.

Why bother?  Because your words are your power to conjure reality.  Long ago I heard a woman with a chronic disease that occasionally left her temporarily blind or paralyzed speak about how she’s learned to live out of her commitments, not out of her feelings, in order to avoid having her disease sap her power in her life.  No matter how she feels, she does what she promised to do if humanly possible.  That inspiration stuck with me.

If you start using your words carelessly you’ll find your power to create and shape reality slipping away.  The more clear you are with your commitments, the more power you have to create the reality that you intend.  And when you stop settling for vague indications of what you can expect from others you’ll quickly clean up many of the problems plaguing your project execution.

It’s been said “The fortune’s in the follow up.”, but that’s Step 4.  Experiment with making and keeping clear commitments, and settling for nothing less than that from others for the things that matter most.  If it doesn’t matter, “I’ll try.” is perfectly fine.  But if it matters, ‘try’ not to say that (yes, that’s a joke, in case you’re wondering).

TTFN,  – Scrappy Kimberly

Kimberly Wiefling, Author, Scrappy Project Management