Strategic Project Management

It's been said, "If you don't like springtime weather in Utah, wait a minute—it will change."

On Saturday my wife and I, along with some friends, rode up one of the local canyons to have lunch. It was pushing 80 degrees. A beautiful, yet windy day, it felt like spring was finally here. Yesterday it snowed. Today, as I sit at my desk, it's 27 degrees with a frigid wind blowing out of the north.

Fortunately, if I wait a few minutes, the weather will change. The forecast for Wednesday is 70 degrees.

How quickly the weather changed over the weekend got me thinking about something Jim De Piante wrote on the Voices on Project Management blog for the PMI about a year ago. "I have a feeling the nature of project management—which has sustained my career for more than 20 years—is changing radically."

He described the forces that led him into a project management career in the late 1980s and suggested that tectonic shifts" in the business climate made project management an obvious career choice back then. However, "Now I see three things happening that give me pause," he said. "They're clearly things I need to react to, but unlike last time, I don't know how."

Without a doubt, the times are changing. Even folks like Gartner and Forrester are talking about it. Here's a list of the three things that caused De Piante some angst, most of them are even more true today than they were a year ago:

1. "Lower-level IT jobs continue to go to emerging markets." Unless you’ve lived in a cave or a shack in Montana for the last few years, you already know this. Of course this is challenging from a project management perspective—managing remote teams can sometimes be problematic. However, it is being done by skilled and capable project managers all over the world with software that accommodates it. That being said, don’t assume that it’s only "lower-level" knowledge work going overseas either, it’s not. I know of organizations who work "round-the-clock" with needs identified in China being assigned to project managers in Poland who in turn assign teams in other parts of Europe and the US to work on projects 24/7. As project leaders, we need to do more (a lot more) than build a WBS and assign tasks to team members. We need to create an atmosphere where creativity can thrive and project teams can invent and create, making our teams and ourselves indispensable—or we will become irrelevant and replaceable.
2. "The way project work gets done, particularly in the IT industry, seems to be undergoing an important shift." De Piante is referring to how more and more organizations are turning to Agile methods and how even the PMI now offers an Agile certification. I can’t tell whether he’s lamenting it or not, but I do know that much of the governance overhead of traditional project management methods is too cumbersome for most projects, the failure rate of projects according to sources like the Standish Group’s Chaos Survey are far too high and the PMO failure rate is bad enough that if you’re organization is starting a PMO and you flip a coin, you have about the same odds of winning as your new PMO has of success in the first 18 months. We need to be more flexible in how we manage projects. Plugging everything into the same model just doesn’t work. We need to use the right methods for the right projects, and for many projects that’s an Agile approach. That being said, I don’t think there’s one silver bullet for everything—we should embrace any method that enables us to accomplish our objectives in the simplest way possible (sometimes that might even be a "to do" list).
3. "We keep hearing of a new normal." If we have learned nothing else over the last four years, hopefully we've learned that business as usual isn’t anymore. Your CEO doesn’t care about your project plan, he or she cares about the value those projects produce for his or her organization. The "new normal" (if there really is such a thing) is that we need to make sure that everything we do is providing some kind of value to our organization and that we aren’t doing anything that doesn’t provide value. Now that doesn’t mean that process isn’t important or that governance is inconsequential. It does mean that process for the sake of process or unnecessary requirements should be eliminated. Our focus should be on keeping the process as simple and un-encumbered as possible. "As possible" are the operative words. Whether you call it the "new normal" or not is up to you. In my opinion, it should have been our focus all along—and has been the focus of the most successful project managers I know.

There is no question in my mind that the nature of knowledge work is changing. Much of the work that would have been identified as project-based work just a few years ago is being re-categorized. Project managers who used to spend all their time managing "projects" are now dealing with the challenges associated with leading operational initiatives. I don't see this as a negative circumstance for capable leaders who can adapt to change and are interested in delivering value to their organizations.

"To me, these three things spell change," writes De Piante, "and it seems to me I ought to be making some changes as well, but I’m not sure what they are yet."

Project management is changing. What we call projects is being redefined by the market, how we manage teams (people) is changing, what is expected of projects and project leaders is changing and if we don’t change the way WE look at these things, we will become irrelevant.

Ghandi said, "Be the change that you want to see in the world." If we want to survive with our profession in the future, we need to be the change—or someone else will.

Careerbuilder says that nearly half of employers say workers are burned out on their jobs.

I read earlier this morning a great article by Tony Schwartz asking, "Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?"

He suggests, "It's not just the number of hours we're working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time."

There sure are days that I have felt like that. Schwartz suggests that with too many things going on at once, we rarely have a stopping point or finish line from one task or project to another. What's more, "Technology has blurred them [the lines between work life and personal life] beyond recognition," writes Schwartz. "Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It's like an itch we can't resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse."

I have to admit to being a junkie in that regard. In fact, it's sometimes a bone of contention between my wife and I. My phone vibrates, I read the email, I drop what I'm doing and respond. What's more, I'm not alone. I know this because I'm usually answering a colleagues after-hours request for information—some of which are sometimes time-stamped at 1:00 or 2:00 am.

It doesn't seem to matter if it's a meeting, a conference call, and sometimes even conversations on the phone, sometimes I find myself checking email, answering a text message or actually trying to have another conversation. This is a problem at a number of levels, but in relation to people feeling a sense of burnout, it's a huge problem. "But most insidiously, it's because if you're always doing something, you're relentlessly buring down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour," says Schwartz.

Just last night I was having dinner with a friend who complained about feeling burned out and frustrated. The particular role she plays in her company sometimes requires her to help her customers when they have an after-hours problem. "I've stopped taking my computer home with me," she said. "I'm just burned out. I can't be 'on' all the time." If nearly half of people in the workforce feel this way, she's obviously not alone.

"The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal," suggests Schwartz.

That's one reason that motorcycle time has become so important, maybe even sacrosanct to me. Schwartz suggests some practices or policies that might be worth promoting if you lead or manage people. I think they are worth repeating here:

1. Maintain meeting discipline: Keep meetings short, start and stop on time and insist that all digital devices be turned off during the meeting. Instead of an hour, keep meetings to 45 minutes so everyone can stay focused. We've all been in multi-hour marathons that never seem to end. I've actually witnessed colleagues fall asleep before. I recognize that sometimes long meetings can't be helped. I'd suggest providing breaks, snacks or other things to keep people from zoning out during the course of a necessary long meeting.
2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day: One of the biggest challenges facing project leaders is the constant barrage of task requests that are unrelated to any particular project that often pelt and interrupt people throughout the day. Schwartz suggests allowing people to turn off their email during certain times of the day, I'd suggest a procedure for systematically collecting and prioritizing those requests so people can stay focused on those things that provide the most value. If we can eliminate email, text and other "drive-by" forms of project requests, we'll be better able to help people, as Schwartz suggests, "...sustain attention on their priorities."
3. Encourage renewal: "Create at least one time during the day when you encourage your people to stop working and take a break," suggests Schwartz. This resonates with me because I fail to do it. Not because of any external mandate, but because it's easy to get wrapped up in the work of the day and forget to stop and take a breather. That being said, there are times when I will take a walk around the building to clear my head or make a quick trip to the lunchroom to grab a snack. Encouraging that type of environment is important to keeping people's minds and ideas fresh.

Schwartz also suggests some things that individuals can and should be doing for themselves:

1. Do the most important thing first in the morning: He suggests, if possible, doing this from a private space where you won't be interrupted for the first 60 to 90 minutes of the day. In reality, the biggest challenge will be to resist the impulse to acknowledge every ping and buzz from emails and IMs (at least that's true for me).
2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically: It's really easy to get distracted by the urgent and ignore the real priorities. Schwartz calls it the "tyranny of the urgent." He also suggests finding a place that's relaxed and conducive to open-ending thinking. In our office we've got a number of very small conference rooms that are perfect for this type of work—and yes, I did say work. It's neither daydreaming nor goofing off. I agree that it's important to do once in a while.
3. Take real and regular vacations: "Real means that when you're off, you're truly disconnecting from work," says Schwartz. My family spent four or five days last fall camping in the Unitah mountains of Utah. I spent the first 24 hours worrying about what I couldn't access on my iPhone because we were remote enough that I couldn't get any service. It quickly became a "real" vacation and was incredibly relaxing. What's more, the world hadn't come to an end by the time I got back. We're thinking that a cruise sounds good for this year.

Schwartz suggests, and I agree, "A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. When you're engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time. When you're renewing, truly renew."

As much as we'd all like to believe there is a silver bullet (or project management tool) that would help us better execute projects and improve the efficiencies of our project teams, I'm not sure it really exists. I'm also unconvinced that any particular methodology includes some kind of mythological power to engage teams, focus their efforts or plan and execute efficiently. Ultimately it boils down to how project leaders interact with the team, how they manage the process of getting work done and how well they utilize the tools at their disposal.

Although I may have some of the same tools a carpenter or master mechanic might use, I am neither a great carpenter or anything other than a novice mechanic. It's not the tools, it's knowing how to best use the tools that makes the craftsman.

With that said, I think there are some common things successful organizations do to successfully execute projects and other work:

1. They have a formalized process for in-bounding, evaluating and prioritizing work requests: Regardless of the size of the organization, many business leaders don't have a way to collect and prioritize work or project requests. It doesn't really need to be incredibly complicated (I've seen simple methods work every bit as well as more complicated processes). Many organizations with a high level of project management maturity filter standardized business cases that flow through a project selection committee to decide which projects are executed and which aren't. Other organizations, rely on something as simple as a request queue to capture inbound requests in one place so that department heads or other line-of-business leaders can prioritize and distribute the work. Sometimes this work winds up in the hands of a project manager to plan and execute, sometimes it's more simple and doesn't require a complex project plan. The key here is that there is a process and method to ensure that team members are working on the right things. I've come to dislike the "do more with less" mantra. I think we should be thinking about doing less, but more of the right things.
2. They utilize appropriate methods and tools to plan and execute projects and other work: I don't believe a one-size-fits-all approach to managing projects provides the value most organizations need to efficiently (and successfully) get work done. Because all work, including projects, are not the same, methods and approaches should be adapted to the work. For example, developing a new software product is different than developing a consumer product. The same methodology might not be appropriate. Organizations that successfully execute on their projects and other work utilize Agile methods where appropriate and things as simple as checklists where they are appropriate.
3. They capture successful practices and incorporate them into the next initiative: It's always been a puzzle to me that most organizations don't spend much (if any) time evaluating the successes and challenges of projects once they've been completed. Successful organizations conduct regular retrospectives upon project completion, work to incorporate successful practices and "template" them into future initiatives. Utilizing tools that accommodate this approach makes sense to me. Many organizations have this down to a very successful science. In fact, before any new project begins, project leaders within these organizations look at the templates created from previous projects to see where they might apply to the new initiative. It saves time in the planning process and team members don't have to reinvent the wheel for those parts within the project that happen on a regular basis.
4. They have visibility into status and results: It really doesn't matter if it is a shared services team reporting to internal stakeholders, the PMO reporting to the CIO, or meeting compliance requirements mandated by law—successful organizations are able to seamlessly capture information about work in progress (and work completed) to provide visibility into results. When executives and stakeholders don't have visibility and information they can trust, initiatives struggle.

Regardless of the tools you choose or the methods you employ, successful organizations seem to have these four practices down. How does your organization measure up?

After taking a long weekend to get away and recharge the batteries, it's good to be sitting at the computer again. Over the course of my career, I've discovered that sometimes it's very good to step away, relax for a day or two and focus on something other than work. I've also noticed that to be true for project teams.

Over the last couple of years in particular, I've noticed that most teams jump from one project to another without so much as taking time to breath. I think we should all take a cue from Agile teams.

If you're part of a SCRUM team, after every three-week sprint, there is a little time to decompress. After the retrospective and usually before the next sprint planning meeting, most teams have what they call a "lab day."

This isn't intended to be a party day, but it is intended to be a break from the regular work of the last or upcoming sprint to work on something else—usually an initiative that individual team members feel passionate about. It's been said that a change is as good as a rest, and I've found that to be true.

I also like the Agile methodology's focus on sustainable effort. The concept is something that I really admire and have come to appreciate over the years. Long days that push into the night just aren't sustainable over the long haul. In fact, too much overtime is a real indicator of a project that could be in trouble. Project teams that are tired and burned-out make more mistakes and aren't able to perform at their best.

What do you do to help the team pause, refresh and get ready for the next project? Even if you don't manage an Agile team, I really like the concept of the occasional lab day. If you do work as an Agile time, I'd be interested to learn about some of your lab day experiences—and how they help the team get back in the saddle.

Steve Bather commented on a post from the other day about simplification. He reminded me of a story I had heard a couple of years ago about Dr. Atul Gwande, a NY heart surgeon who has been successfully implementing a checklist into the operating room. The NPR story talked about some research he had done at the Harvard Medical School. I found the article very interesting, I think you will too.

"Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty," Gawande says. "It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong."

Because doctors are human (just like everyone else), they sometimes miss things. So Gawande looked at other fields that deal with complex circumstances and visited, among others, Boeing to see how they make things work. He cites the "pilot's checklist" as a good example of how other complex tasks are completed outside of medicine.

Unlike a pilot, there is no checklist in surgery, just the surgeon's experience and intuition that dictates how a procedure is performed. So as an experiment, he brought a two-minute checklist into the operating room of eight hospitals—after having worked with a team of folks that included Boeing to show them how to put the checklist together.

How did it work?

"We get better results," said Gawande. "Massively better results."

"We caught basic mistakes and some of the stupid stuff," Gawande reports. "We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently."

Something as simple as making sure that everyone in the operating room knew each other by name turned out to be incredibly valuable.  Isn’t it interesting how similar some of these issues sound to the work management issues project teams face every day?

Not unlike some project managers I have met, many of the surgeons weren’t originally too keen on operating with a checklist.  However, when all was said and done, 80% of the surgeons saw the value of the checklist.  And, although 20% said they didn’t need the checklist, 94% said that if they were going to have surgery they would want their surgeon to be using a checklist.

I realize that heart surgery and project-based work don’t have a lot in common.  That said, the surgeon could learn a few things from project managers about how to create a sound work management (surgery management) methodology.  Project managers could also learn from this study. "We caught basic mistakes and some of the stupid stuff," Gawande reports. "We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently."

Despite all the evidence, Gawande wasn’t sure that using a checklist would help save the lives of his patients—after all, he was from Harvard.  However he started using the checklist and says, "I was in that 20%.  I haven’t gotten through a week of surgery where the checklist has not caught a problem."

Like surgery, capturing best practices and formalizing processes are critical for success.  Like the surgeon’s checklist, the right project management tools can help.  Fortunately, there is a lot we can learn from Dr. Gawande’s study.  As well as what a heart surgeon could learn from a project manager.

If you were going into surgery, would you feel more comfortable if you knew the operating team was using a checklist to make sure nothing got missed?  I think I would.