Strategic Project Management

The origination of the phrase, "The best defense is a good offense," seems to be apocryphal, although it was originally attributed to the classic military strategist Carl von Clausewitz. In later years, Mao Zedong was quoted as saying, "The only real defense is active defense." Both are of similar meaning and imply that a proactive approach often achieves the best results. As a boy in the schoolyard, the adage simply meant that if you can run up more points offensively, you have accomplished the same thing as a focus on defense (And, scoring points is always more fun than blocking and tackling anyway, right?).

I have come to believe that the same is true for leading projects.

As many organizations turn to project-based work to improve productivity and get more work done, companies and departments that wouldn't traditionally have turned to projects are doing so. For the most part, I believe that this is a good thing, and the project management tools that have been successfully used for years have the potential to be very successfully adopted to other types of project work. What's more, I believe that skilled project leaders have real opportunities to not only impact the success of individual projects, but the chance to positively influence the profitability of their organizations by directing how projects are done as well as the types of projects that get executed.

With that in mind, let's consider the adage, "The best defense is a good offense" in terms of project-based work.

In my opinion, project leaders need to take a more proactive role in defining project success. I say this because many organizations don't know what they really need in terms of a successfully completed project. In fact, I believe this is one of the reasons so many project-based groups struggle with governance and scope issues. If the organization can't identify what they expect from a potential initiative, how can the project team be expected to hit the ambiguous target.

What's more, I predict that the need for proactive project leaders will only continue to increase, while those project professionals content to manage process alone will find their roles diminish. I say diminish because I believe that the foundational elements of strong project management are not going away any time soon, but the need for real project leadership is so apparent that organizations are looking for proactive people, willing to take a leadership role in how projects are chosen, how they are executed and how success is measured.

So, how does someone differentiate themself from the crowd?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Speak Up: Don't be afraid to voice your opinion. As an experienced project leader, your opinion has a lot of potential value. Don't be afraid to share your knowledge and experience if it will help drive successful outcomes. Don't confuse this with a mandate to become a nay-say-er—that, is never productive.
2. Don't simply identify the problems, offer solutions: Over the years I've worked with many people who were able to identify what the problems were. "Ty, this is working...or Ty, that procedure is broken." They were some of the most annoying colleagues I've every had to work with. Identifying problems isn't a problem, unless that's all you do. "Ty, I've been thinking about 'this' particular issue, and suggest that 'this' could be a viable solution," takes you from the role of whiner to the role of problem-solver, which is where organizations look for leaders.
3. Don't be afraid to mentor: Over the years I've worked with many senior members of the team who were willing to take me under their wing and mentor me. Most of them weren't my boss and didn't formally identify themselves as "mentors," they just offered me critical bits of information at crucial times in my career. Don't be afraid to be that person to younger and less experienced members of the team.

In the context of our discussion, I am convinced that a proactive approach to project leadership will do nothing but increase your value to the team, to the organization and elevate your role. Of course, there are organizations that won't respond to this type of proactive project leadership. If that's the case, it might be time to "offensively" look for one that does.

A year or so ago I finally got my big red tool-chest. I've wanted one for a long time, and although I am a pretty poor backyard mechanic, I feel more competent when I open up one of the drawers and pull out the "perfect" tool. And, I often find myself growling like Tim the "Tool-man" as I do it.

I think the same applies to project teams and the information and tools needed to manage projects. Keeping everything in once place is critical.

Talk to a hundred project managers, you'll probably get a hundred different ways to file and keep track of all the associated project data. I like my tool-chest because it keeps all my tools at my fingertips. I don't have to hunt for anything when I need it. This saves me time, but more importantly, it saves me aggravation. I don't have to get frustrated because I can't find what I'm looking for, it's always were it's supposed to be.

Whatever project management tools or work management methodologies you employ, it's critical to keep everything needed for the team to successfully execute in one place. Keeping all the information in one place should become your mantra. Let's face it isolated information on individual desktops doesn't serve the needs of anyone on the team—project managers, business leaders or individual team members.

What are you doing to consolidate and share information?
 

During the first 85 years of the Tour de France, no American had ever won.

In 1986, Greg LeMond was the first. What's more, he won again in 1989 and once more in 1990. This made LeMond one of only nine cyclists to have won the Tour three or more times. A powerful competitor, LeMond has said, "Perhaps the single most important element in mastering the techniques and tactics of racing is experience. But once you have the fundamentals, acquiring the experience is a matter of time."

I think the same can be said of successful work management. Experience comes after fundamentals. Let me suggest a few of the fundamentals I think apply to successfully managing work:

1. Make sure everyone understands what they're doing and why they're doing it: It might sound like a no-brainer that everyone should know what they're doing, but unfortunately it's not uncommon for a lot of time to be wasted by people trying to figure out what to do next or what work is the priority. What's more, people tend to perform better when they understand the value of what they're doing. "Do it because I told you to" is not the best way to motivate people.
2. Make sure everyone is committed to see it through to the end: This doesn't mean a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" attitude is appropriate, but it is important that everyone is committed to see things through. If people are quick to give up in "crunch time," very little will actually get done.
3. Don't be afraid to empower individuals to make decisions for themselves: I don't' think it matters what type of work you do, forcing your people to "mother, may I" on every decision just isn't a good idea. If you've hired the right people, they should be allowed some autonomy to impact what they do and how they do it. If you can't trust your people to get the job done, maybe it's time to start looking for other people. The key is to identify a decision-making process, who has authority to make decisions and what type of decisions can individuals make.

Mastering (and practicing) the fundamentals might not be very exciting, but it's often the difference between someone who is successful and someone who isn't.

Both experienced and new managers have a number of tools to help them establish work management best practices and methodologies—many are turning to project management tools to help them understand and organize their work. However, nothing can substitute for establishing a good work management foundation.

Do you have any fundamental skills you would like to add to the list?

 

I had a great weekend. I spent four or five hours on the river yesterday thrashing about in the cold chasing fish with a fly about the size of a small piece of lint. The river was running a little higher than last time, which made it a bit more difficult to catch as many fish, but I caught enough to make it a good day (for the middle of February).

The beautiful little stretch of river I was fishing is in the photo at left. I took the picture just before I decided to call it a day and make the drive home. Although my day on the river yesterday did not produce the same results as last time, it was still what I would call a "successful" day.

In my opinion success, whether we're talking about project success or a successful day on the river, can be measured by how well the activity meets or exceeds expectations and provides value. Of course, the definition of value could be measured differently from organization to organization. For some, the success of a project might be measured in terms of ROI gained by income earned with the project, for others it might be money saved or even an increase in the ability to monitor and track processes. (For example, government projects might be less concerned with ROI than they are with governance.)

Whatever business value the project is supposed to provide should be identified and agreed upon before the project begins. If the project fails to provide the identified value, the project failed. This type of measure allows for scope and possible time-line changes, provided they do not negatively impact the project's ability to provide the specified value.

Project leaders who focus on providing business value have a clear measure of whether or not their projects are successful (and this applies to projects that are IT-related as well as those that are not). As project leaders, we need to start thinking more in terms of value if we hope to have a lasting and productive project environment.

In my opinion, there is a lot of value to being on the river casting to a wily trout with a tiny fly—regardless of how many make it into the net.
 

One of the comments I received concerning the post, Agile With a Small "a", suggested, "In your next post, perhaps address a key point in today's post that wasn't expanded on: ... ensure that we are working on the 'right' projects in the first place." Because this often makes a big difference as to whether or not project teams are really successful, I thought I would take Sarah's advice.

I don't think it really matters what type of work you do, how your project teams are organized or even the project management methodology you use—we are all faced with too many projects and not enough time or resources to get them all done. What's more, in a perfect world, every worthy project opportunity that presented itself would be executed—unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.

Although there are many organizations that don't spend much time seriously evaluating every project to determine if it even "should" be executed, there are those that do. Let me share with you an aggregate of some of the most common practices that are seeing success. Organizations that manage individual projects within portfolios tend to give this more thought than organizations that don't, but it doesn't really matter. Working on the "right" projects should be a priority for every organization.

1. Establish a criteria for evaluating potential projects: Before you start evaluating projects, it's important to ask some questions concerning what's important. Every company is different, but here are some common questions that might help establish some basic criteria. Your organization will probably want to customize these criteria, and even add additional questions to meet specific needs. Most organizations will want to ask questions about risk, cost and return. In addition, how do the proposed projects relate to identified business objectives or add value to the organization?
2. Organize the firing squad: Organizations that seem to be the most successful at this have established a project steering committee whose responsibility it is to evaluate potential projects. Although it's important that project leaders participate in the selection process, if the committee includes members of the executive team, it adds weight to committee decisions. A sponsor is less likely to present a project of dubious value for consideration if they know it will be reviewed by members of the company's senior leadership team. What's more, it ensures that corporate objectives become the goals of project leaders and the deliverables of their teams.
3. Ask the questions and evaluate the answers: Once you've determined what criteria is important and have created the evaluation team, it's important to actually ask the questions. In many organizations, the projects that are given priority are often the result of a sponsor's charisma or clout within the organization. Unfortunately, this doesn't always mean that teams are working on the initiatives that provide the best value. When every potential project (regardless of the sponsor) is evaluated by the same criteria, organizations are able to know that they are working on those things that ultimately will provide the most value.
4. Make sure it's a formalized process: As a general rule, I don't like to formalize anything that doesn't require it. However, this process seems to work best if there is an established practice that everyone involved in understands and uses. Plus, formalizing the process for project evaluation ensure that it always happens regardless of the nature of the project or the political prowess of the sponsor.

Of course, many organizations don't look at the project evaluation process this way. They tend to make sure the squeaking wheel gets the grease—very short-sighted, in my opinion.

How do you ensure that your teams are working on the "right" projects?