The Money Files

Disruptive technologies such as big data are hitting businesses across all functional areas, not just project management. And with the recent uptake of collaboration tools for virtual teams because we haven’t been able to get into offices in the way we could before, it’s even more important to understand what that tech might mean for us.

Companies have to come up with practical ways to incorporate this massive amount of change and to sift through the trends that are worth adopting while ditching those that are not relevant at this time. This is starting to come to the fore in the form of the chief digital officer or other digital leadership position at the very top of businesses. We are also seeing digital PMOs—divisions supporting the project structure in the way a traditional PMO would, but with a leaning toward paperless, integrated, and online ways of working, along with the culture changes that brings.

Shadow IT – a challenge

Shadow IT is another challenge for the person or team taking on digital leadership within their organization. This is where employees have downloaded their own apps or software for work purposes.

I think it’s common in businesses where IT processes are slow and bureaucratic. When individuals don’t want to have to wait for software to be formally approved and installed, the Internet makes it possible for them to download pretty much anything they want and get started immediately. This forces business leaders to look for adaptable, speedy, and flexible models and processes while also giving them the headache of managing data security and unapproved software.

The culture of collaboration

It’s not all about the tech. Part of the challenge facing the digital leader, be that a project manager or a PMO director, is managing flatter teams, both across business teams and within projects.

Employees create their own internal networks outside of the traditional hierarchy, which potentially makes many of the formal line management structures redundant and forces the organization to become flatter. The digital divide—those employees who are familiar with digital working practices and those who are not—is a further team-related problem that digital leaders have to face up to and proactively manage.

Successful collaboration and teamwork comes from a culture that supports those ways of working. If virtual teams are to be successful, and if collaboration tools are to be fully embedded in the working practices of the team, then it’s important for businesses to invest in collaboration offline as well.

I think as we move forward, we’ll see greater investment in building corporate culture, fostering employee engagement, and creating the environment to deliver successful change. All of this underpins the use of any technology and supports the business objective of getting the right people to do the right things the first time, which cuts down on overall project costs.

It also supports the urgent need for knowledge sharing in a global economy that is facing significant talent gaps. As the Baby Boomer generation leaves the workplace, taking with them an incredible amount of organizational knowledge, companies need to find alternative ways to capture and maintain their knowledge assets. Technology (like wikis) has a part to play, as well as collaborative work environments where knowledge is freely shared.

This article includes a few points that were made in my PMI book: Collaboration Tools for Project Managers. Given what we’ve been going through and seeing so far this year, it felt appropriate to try to pick out some comments on tech for teams and where that might be taking us – because it seems to me that virtual working is here to stay.

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This article is part six of my look into project risk management, and today the topic is the project risk management plan.

Read part 1 here: An introduction to risk management

Read part 2 here: Trends and Emerging Practices in Project Risk Management (Part A)

Read part 3 here: Trends and Emerging Practices in Project Risk Management (Part B)

Read part 4 here: Tailoring Risk Management

Read part 5 here: Planning Risk Management

So: risk management plans. What should you expect to see in one?

Here are some things you can include in your risk management plan. You don’t always need all of them – good project management is all about tailoring, so pick and choose what is appropriate and necessary for your project.

Risk strategy

This is a statement about the general approach you are taking to managing risk on the project. You can reference any organisational guidelines, the risk appetite of the company and the business context for risk management.

Methodology

The methodology section is where you define the specific way you are going to manage risk on the project. That includes the approaches you will use, any software tools or other tools that are available to you and that you’ll use, and the places you’ll get data from to make decisions about risk actions and planning.

Include information about tracking risks: how will this be done? How will you record what has happened and how will adherence to the process be audited (if it will)?

Roles and responsibilities

I think it’s always useful to have this section in the risk management plan, even if you refer to the main roles and responsibilities document or a different place in the project management plan. I think it helps to know who is responsible for what, and for everyone to see that it is everyone’s responsibility to be on the look out for new risks.

Document who is going to lead risk management, any supporting roles, and who else is ‘hands on’ with the risk management process. Explain what their responsibilities are.

Risk budget

It’s also handy to record the project funding available for risk management (if you are lucky enough to have a dedicated risk budget). I think it’s worth calling out even if there is no dedicated risk budget, because it makes it clear to  senior execs and the project sponsor that managing risk takes money, and if there is none, there’s a limit on what you can usefully do to avoid or mitigate the risk.

In this section you’ll want to talk about how you can access the risk budget – because let’s be positive and assume there is one – and how the funding will be tracked and reported so you can see when it’s running out.

Timing and reporting

Write a short section that talks about how often you’ll do risk management reviews, when each part of the process takes place and how risk management is woven into your project schedule. I would include formal risk workshops in here, alongside a formal monthly risk review, while noting that risk management is an ongoing activity bound into everything else we do on the project.

You can also record how and when risk reporting is going to be done, and what is going to be included in the risk reports. I would mention what level of risk is going to be reported in each place. For example, in Steering Group meetings I would report every significant risk. In monthly project reporting, the template we used to use only had space for the top 3 risks.

Categorisation of risk

Finally, document how you are going to categorise risk on the project. You might already have organisational-wide definitions and categories, in which case you should use them. If you don’t, you can easily make up some categories. Things like Technical, Commercial, Reputational, Environmental etc are all common categories. Think about what the project is trying to achieve and what departments are involved, and that can be the basis for your categorisation. I would start with a simple list and allocate each risk to one category only.

If you want to get a bit more detailed and dive into risk management further, you can create a risk breakdown structure which is a useful way of grouping risks and seeing how they interact and relate to each other.

Risk appetite

Include a statement about how much risk the project (or organisation) is prepared to accept. You’ll get this either from ‘official’ company sources or from the project sponsor.

Remember that risks can aggregate together: lots of small, insignificant risks can make for one massive problem if they all happen at the same time.

Definitions and matrix

Include definitions of how you calculate probability and impact. It’s really important that everyone understands what these two concepts are and then what the different levels mean. Ideally, you should have this at PMO level if not organisational level, because then you can more easily comparer the risk profile of different projects.

Alongside your definitions, include the probability and impact matrix that helps you assess the risk score. Or link to where it can be found – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel or create lots of additional pages in your documentation, just reference the PMO documentation if there is any.

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Ah, the mythical management reserve. This hits project managers who have sponsors that are poor at following through on their promises. The sponsor says that there is some kind of ‘contingency’ or ‘management reserve’ that can be spent at their discretion if required, say, in the event of an unplanned project disaster.

Said disaster happens and suddenly they don’t have authority to access those funds, or another project has used them, or you need to write a business case to access them…

How to fix it: You will struggle to fix this one in advance but your best bet is to make sure that you have full confidence that any pot of money that is being held outside your official project budget does actually exist and is there for you. Of course, the best thing to do will be to manage the project so you don’t need to tap into additional reserves.

I explain more about how to handle management reserves in this video.

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We all have the same number of hours in the day, so how come some people seem to get more done?

Well, there is no magic secret. They probably are just very good at focusing and prioritising their work. They get more done – or at least, they appear to – by doing the right things.

That said, there are a few tips and tricks I’ve discovered over the years that help me speed up my daily work. First: get a super-fast internet connection! Once you’ve got that, you’ll get less frustrated waiting for pages to load. It’s amazing how much we need to use online services and tools in the course of our day jobs, and for everything else that’s a ‘home’ job too.

After that, try the tips in the infographic below and see if you can use them to improve your focus and shave a few seconds off your regular routine tasks.

Data is a differentiator. Companies that can capture what customers buy, like, and use can interrogate that data to provide insights that help them stay ahead of the curve. Big data is the term given to the storage and analysis of workplace data for the purpose of creating meaningful management information.

The data from collaboration and project management tools is a subset of all this data. Real-time project analytics can add huge value to streamlining project management processes and in identifying early warning signs for projects.

Being able to parse a discussion thread from your collaboration tool and single out potential risks and issues could change the role of the project manager in the future. Furthermore, natural language searches will make it easier to include narrative discussions, meeting minutes, and more in the data analysis, saving hours of time when investigating or predicting problems. All of this data could be used to predict the future success (or otherwise) of projects.

There is already work happening in this sphere: The PMO Flashmob here in the UK held a session recently looking at the role of AI in the project office and project management domain. While I didn’t attend, they did publish some interesting Inside PMO report on the topic.

There’s also been a discussion around RPA – robotic processing automation (in other words, using algorithms to process info instead of humans – it’s not ‘real’ robots sitting at a desk next to you doing PMO work). There is a lot of scope for development in this space, freeing up knowledge workers to – you know – actually use their brains for stuff and building relationships to help get projects done.

Data presentation techniques

Allied to the big data revolution is the rise of data presentation techniques, because the trouble with all that data is that it is very difficult to understand. There is a trend toward simple, clean designs for websites and tools with high usability and a very visual impact. The growth of social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest, plus the sudden, recent spike in the number of infographics doing the rounds on sharing sites shows that users are gravitating toward images.

This is relevant to project management collaboration tools because project managers have to adapt the way they communicate to suit the needs of stakeholders. If the needs of stakeholders are evolving to include a requirement for more visuals, then project managers will need to move away from text-based project reports to a more engaging way of sharing status updates.

Visual data presentation is not new to project management—after all, that’s really what a Gantt chart is. Kanban, too, is a visual project management approach and many agile teams work with visual plans. We could well see the visual preference for presenting data manifesting itself in more tools that use images and visual workflows in conjunction with traditional Gantt charts.

This article includes a few points that were made in my PMI book: Collaboration Tools for Project Managers. Given what we’ve been going through and seeing so far this year, it felt appropriate to try to pick out some comments on tech for teams and where that might be taking us – because it seems to me that virtual working is here to stay.

Pin for later reading: