Strategic Project Management

It's been a year since US forces found and eliminated Osama bin Laden. If you're like me, you've got to be asking yourself, "How did the world's 'most wanted' man keep himself hidden from the United States for so long?"

In a recent NBC News article, Amna Nawaz postulates that he had help, lots of it.

"If you're a six-foot-five Arab, and the most wanted man on the planet, you can't just walk into a place like Pakistan without support," Kamran Bokhari, vice-president for Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs at Stratfor, a global intelligence company said. "So what's the nature of that support?"

It's not unusual for projects to have detractors, some even become saboteurs, which the search for bin Laden demonstrates can make project success practically impossible.

"U.S. officials publicly state they have no evidence that any Pakistani institutional leaders had any knowledge of bin Laden's presence here, nor played any role in helping to move him," writes Nawaz. "Privately, however, some admit that the deep mistrust between the two nations has led to strong, lingering suspicions within many in the U.S. that Pakistan's premier intelligence agency—Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI—must have known, at some level."

As with most projects, high-level detractors spell disaster for unpopular projects—regardless of how valuable the initiative might be.

I’ve noticed over the years that this often manifests itself as “fear of change” or resistance to change. In most cases this is really a fear of the unknown and can sometimes even create detractors. Here are some of the most common fears that organizations face from project detractors resistant to change:

1. It’s different. Realizing that there are some people who really thrive on change, but most people don’t, is important. You might get push-back simply because it’s a change. I think the key here is to understand that sometimes it takes time for people to embrace the change. Whether it’s a new practice, a new process, a new boss or a new project—giving people time to accept change is important.
2. Some people (managers and team members) are uncomfortable with the additional scrutiny that often accompanies change. If your organization is implementing a project review process to evaluate potential projects, some stakeholders might be a little nervous that their proposed projects might not stand up up to peer review. It’s important to realize that projects that might be important to one senior manager or stakeholder might not be important to another. Making the review process transparent and understandable to everyone often helps reduce those types of concerns and minimizes the danger of project saboteurs.
3. Some projects are more important than others. Implementing a sound work management methodology will mean only those projects that provide the most business value will get pushed forward—not the  “pet” projects of influential stakeholders. Because this might negatively impact some projects, there are stakeholders that may try to block the process and even stand in the way of project success.
4. There are tough decisions to be made. Sometimes it’s not easy for decision-makers to make choices regarding projects and people, but it has to happen. It’s important that senior managers understand that they have a responsibility to the organization—not just their individual departments or careers. There will be some who don’t like this fact.
5. Implementing change takes time. Regardless of the change, it never happens overnight. It takes time to implement new methods, it takes time for people to accept the change and accommodating for  that time is crucial for change initiatives to be successful.

The search for bin Laden teaches us the value of keeping detractors from becoming saboteurs. Have you ever had to deal with people who actively fought against one of your projects? What did you do?

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I am a pretty avid reader. One of my guilty pleasures is diving into a novel for some brain candy every once in a while. I say guilty pleasure, because I look at it as an escape from reality and a time when I can vicariously experience the adventures and mishaps of others. However, I learned this morning that it might not be a guilty pleasure after all.

Some time ago, I was looking for the correct way to sharpen a pocketknife and stumbled upon a fun (if not irreverent) website called the Art of Manliness. The goal of the site is to share all of those things manly men seem to know (like the right way to sharpen a pocket knife).

This morning while visiting the site, I stumbled upon a great article written by Brett and Kate McKay titled, Why Men Should Read More Fiction. The authors suggest "...while many men have stacks of books on their 'to-read' pile, chances are that pile is composed primarily of non-fiction tomes. For the past 20 years of so, the publishing industry has noted a precipitous decline in the number of men reading fiction. Some reports show that men make up only 20% of fiction readers in America today."

Although this might be a yawner to some, there are some pretty compelling reasons why reading fiction might be worth you time, particularly if you lead a team.

According to the authors: "Dr. [Keith] Oatley argues in his book Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction that fiction is primarily about “selves in a social world,” and that fiction’s main subject is “what people are up to with each other.” Just as your understanding of history and finance is improved by reading lots of books on those subjects, reading fiction improves your understanding of social relationships–your thinking about what other people are thinking. In fact, Dr. Oatley calls fiction a simulation for the social world that allows you to experience (at least vicariously) a variety of social circumstances with different kinds of people than you might encounter in your actual day-to-day life."

We often talk about the soft skills and how difficult they might be to acquire if you aren't naturally blessed with them. This might be particularly true for me, who according to the authors "...have gotten the short end of the evolutionary stick when it comes to our ability to socialize. Studies show that male brains are generally wired for dealing with stuff, while female brains are generally wired for dealing with people. This may explain why women often prefer fiction over non-fiction: their brains are already wired to want to read about “selves in a social world.”

They argue that men (manly men they would argue) have a lot to gain from reading fiction. "Instead of seeing fiction as a bunch of made-up, waste-of-time baloney, look it as a simulator that allows you to exercise and strengthen the cognitive muscles responsible for socializing. Every time you pick up and read a novel, you’re molding yourself into a better, more socially adept man."

Theory of Mind and Reading Fiction

"Theory of mind is a cognitive ability that humans use all the time, but take for granted. Basically, it’s our ability to attribute mental states (like thoughts, feelings, and beliefs) to others based on a whole host of input in order to predict and explain what they are thinking," write the McKays.

Theory of mind is what allows us to make decisions about what others are thinking and perceiving so we can effectively communicate. Empathy is an important part of communicating and fiction compels us to be empathetic to the characters we're reading about and thus more empathetic when we communicate with our colleagues and our teams.

"While reading fiction may engage our theory of mind, does it strengthen it?" they ask.  "In recent studies by Dr. Oatley, the answer appears to be yes. In studies published in 2006 and 2009, Dr. Oatley reports that individuals who frequently read fiction perform better on theory of mind tests, regardless of gender. One such theory of mind test is the Mind’s Eye Test in which participants look at photos of nothing but people’s eyes and then have to describe what the people are feeling. Fiction readers perform better at this test than non-fiction readers. And a 2010 study performed on pre-school children showed that the more stories that were read to them as toddlers, the stronger their theory of mind. (Read to your kids, dads!)"

The authors also suggest that reading fiction increases creativity. "[P]erhaps fiction’s greatest creativity boost is what literary critic Viktor Shklovsky said is the purpose of fiction: to make the familiar strange, so that we look at things in a new light. Fiction allows us to compare how the human experience and ideas work in a made-up world to how they work in real life. From these comparisons, we can begin to think about ideas in profoundly different ways. I like to think that fiction disorients us to reorient us and during that reorientation new ideas spring to our minds."

I'm not going to feel the least bit guilty when I sit down with Hemingway or Faulkner anymore because it might just help me be a better project leader. I suggest you do the same.

The website also suggests the 100 Must-Read books every manly man should read (that being said, I think it would be OK if the ladies in our audience were to read them too).

Salesforce has done a great job of carrying the torch for SaaS solutions. In fact, I can't think of anyone I know that uses an on-premises CRM software anymore. With the global nature of many projects and project teams today, working in the cloud makes collaboration much less problematic. With that in mind, I thought I'd give you a few of my opinions as to why I'm a fan of SaaS in general and the idea of project management "in the could" in particular:

1. It's relatively easy and inexpensive to enter: Not too long ago I spoke with the PMO director of a very large international organization in the middle of an implementation of SaaS project management software. He expressed frustration at a previous three-year-long unsuccessful installation of a legacy project management software that claimed to offer business process expertise. The inherent complexity of many legacy solutions make implementation and adoption lengthy and difficult. His consternation is shared by many who don't have the time or resources to accommodate an expensive, multi-year implementation process.
2. Pay-as-you-go vs. pay-through-the-nose: Because SaaS software is typically subscription based, organizations can pay for the software when they use it, and access it via the Internet, rather than going through the expensive process of installing software on individual machines or purchasing expensive and costly-to-maintain servers to keep their systems up and running.
3. Cloud-based project management solutions make real-time collaboration possible: Although all SaaS products aren't created equal, taking project data from the desktop and putting it in a centralized location gives project managers and teams access to all the data relevant to their projects. Although some SaaS vendors do this better than others, this is the first step to real-time collaboration.
4. SaaS software empowers everyone—it isn't only for the enterprise: There will always be mega-organizations who insist on spending millions of dollars on legacy applications, but SaaS allows organizations with much smaller budgets to take advantage of the latest (and in my opinion, some of the best) project management technology available. In fact, most SaaS solutions, by their very nature, are committed to a robust schedule of continual update and improvement. It's part of the culture.

This isn't an all-inclusive list, but for organizations that want affordable access to the latest technology, SaaS project management software is a terrific option. Is your project management solution in the cloud?

"We often hear that a happy workplace is a great place for productivity," writes Susan Adams at Forbes. "But is that claim just happy talk? Don't happy workers have a tendency to become complacent and goof off?"

I know that I've certainly heard that from time to time over the years. However a new book by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, argue that empirical evidence suggests that happy workers are indeed more productive. The authors identify what they call the three "E"s and suggest that this is the definition of a happy workforce:

• Engaged: the employee is attached to the company and willing to put out extra effort
• Enabled: the company environment supports the employee's productivity and performance
• Energized: the employee feels a sense of well-being and drive

I've been a big fan of these particular concepts for a long time, however after collecting data from 700 companies in 2009 and 2010 interviewing 303,000 employees that displayed what the authors identified as "high-performance business results" there seems to be a measurable connection. They argue an increase in "...operating margins of better than 27% during a time when the economy was struggling," writes Adams. "The authors claim those companies had margins that were three times higher than companies with low engagement scores."

There will be many, including Adams, who acknowledge that some of this is kind of "squishy" and really difficult to measure, but I like the three "Es". At least over the course of my career I've noticed that when people are happy, they tend to perform better.

In an article she wrote for CNN Money, Linda Mignone suggests, "Aside from it sounding sensible, recent studies have demonstrated that the happier a worker is, the more productive they will be on the job. While an employee may appear engaged in their work, they may not be as effective as they could be if they were happy."

Knowing this should help us better lead and engage the people we work with on project teams. "People who are happy at work put in far more effort, work longer hours, and are more productive than those who aren’t," continues Mignone. "They remain at their jobs twice as long and they work 25% more time than an unhappy employee works."

If that is truly the case, it appears that creating an environment where people are happy could be a very good strategy for increasing profitability in an economic environment where organizations are trying to squeeze every little bit of productivity they can out of people.

I think there is a relationship between happiness and engagement. In my experience, most people have a real desire (dare I say need) to contribute to something bigger than themselves. Modern Survey spoke to 1,000 working adults, releasing a report titled, Employee Engagement in the U.S. Workforce. You might find it interesting to know that those folks who could answer the question, "Does your company have a clear set of values that people know about and understand?" are 17 times more likely to be fully engaged than those who answered "no". I suggest that they are a lot happier too.

It seems simple enough. Make sure everyone is aware of the value of their contributions. Maybe it’s even too simple. However I’m convinced that it’s the first step to a happy and engaged workforce.

Maybe we should be asking our project teams the same kinds of questions asked by Modern Survey to determine how our project teams feel:

1. Does your company have a clear set of values that people know and understand?
2. Do you understand the value to your organization of the project you’re currently working on?
3. How is this articulated to you?

Mignone suggests (and I agree), "When employees feel like they have some control over the work they are doing and when they feel like they’re making progress, they are generally happier and more productive, and these feelings are amplified when employees are part of a team. A team makes bigger, bolder, richer sound, with more layers, like an orchestra. And the richest sounds come when the team feels they are part of something big; a big idea, a vision."

My personal experience suggests that this has been true for me (and many of my colleagues over the years). What's more, happy people are less likely to jump ship for a few thousand dollars more in pay than their unhappy counterparts.

What are some of the things you are doing to create a happy working environment?

Earlier this week Projects@Work released a 38-page report—Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits. Individuals from over 40 countries where surveyed and asked about what they do, the industries they were in, and the number of Agile managers working within their organizations to cite just a few of the questions asked.

"Given the high proportion of IT respondents, we expected most Agile practitioners to report working for an IT PMO, or at least the IT department. However, 39% of all Agile practitioners report across all business areas, which shows that Agile is breaking out of the IT department and adding value across other teams. A further 14% reported that they were affiliated to a corporate PMO. The remaining 47% said they reported into IT, with nearly 20% of these reporting to the IT PMO," writes Projects@Work. "Even in the IT industry, fewer than half (46%) of Agile practitioners report into IT. The majority report either to a corporate PMO or across other business areas."

Regardless of the type of project you manage, I'm convinced that an Agile approach shouldn't be overlooked because of its traditional roots in software development and IT. In fact, I'm of the opinion that project managers should look at every project and evaluate whether or not a traditional Waterfall approach or an Agile approach might best produce the desired business value. I'm convinced that a one-size-fits-all approach just isn't the way to provide the most value to the organization.

I recently spoke with a very talented project management veteran on the TalkingWork podcast who has jumped into the Agile methodology with both feet. Although they still have what she calls "traditional project teams" there are some projects that are just better suited to an Agile methodology. What's more, Projects@Work identifies that over 60 percent of respondents reported that more than one in five their Agile projects are run with distributed teams.

Distributed teams pose some unique challenges to most organizations. “With distributed teams, the notion that you can use a story card board goes out the window, you are pretty much forced to use some type of tool,” said one practitioner in federal government. “The good news is that there are tools that do a decent job in this and from my perspective as a Product Owner, I prefer to use the same tool to manage my Product Backlog as the team uses to manage their Sprint Backlog and tasks. The challenge is getting the team to go into the tool and record their progress and ‘to do’ estimates frequent enough (daily hopefully) to glean any useful data from it.”

Last summer I spoke with a brilliant project manager who is working to eliminate email from their project communication—it takes place within their software. All the messages (whether direct messages or in the message stream) are attached to tasks, issues and projects which makes them easy to search and reference for building out reports and effectively collaborating. Eliminating disparate communication methods like email and instant messages makes it possible to have "one source of truth" when it's time to ask questions and evaluate project success. This is very consistent with the idea of keeping the backlog and the tool the SRUM team uses on a daily basis the same.

It should be no surprise that 80 percent of respondents suggest that it's harder to work with distributed teams. It's also no surprise that the vast majority of respondents suggest that "poor communication" is the biggest challenge. This seemed to be true regardless of the experience level of the manager or the team. Whether the team is co-located or distributed, this is a challenge for every project team.

However, the flexibility of an Agile environment was viewed as the greatest benefit to distributed teams. Projects@Work suggests, and I wholeheartedly agree, "The essence of Distributed Agile is all about collaborating and putting together the way we want to execute a project by means of leveraging Agile best practices and fine-tuning existing methodologies."

Whether or not you are working with distributed teams, I think it's time that even organizations that have relied on traditional project management methodologies for the last fifty years, take another look at Agile methods to see where they might be best utilized within their organizations. I've personally had experience with agile projects within a marketing context with great success—for the right type of projects.

There's so much great information in this report that I will likely bring it up here again. It's worth the download and review. I think you might be surprised at how effective an Agile approach could be with a distributed (as well as a co-located) team.