How mature is your organization’s approach to managing data? Today, all projects use a lot of data and generate a lot of data – and how that is looked after is subject to legislation, best practice, policy and ethics.

AI doesn’t make it easier either: AI engines trawl through our data while also creating new data of their own. With all the analytics on offer today, how we manage our data, interact with it and understand it is essential.

Therefore, a data management strategy on your project is important. OK, if ‘strategy’ is too formal a word, perhaps you want a data management approach, or plan. What that looks like is going to depend on your project and the kind of work you do overall. Perhaps you already have an IT team that focuses on data management. Surely you’ll have an Information Governance team or Information Security who will have something to say on the topic.

The risks of not having a joined up approach to managing data on your project are clear to me, and I’m sure you’ll recognise the ones I’ve highlighted below in your own organization.

Data leakage

Or, to put it more bluntly: poor data security makes it easy for people to take your data and use it in ways that you were not expecting.

That doesn’t just mean hackers. If your systems are not locked down internally, you could find members of staff accessing customer records when they shouldn’t have permission to see the data.

Data leakage also encompasses being able to extract the data from one system and use it in another. For example, copy/pasting from a data presentation tool and then manipulating the data in a spreadsheet. When data is at risk of ending up where it shouldn’t be, it can’t be controlled and that can leave the organisation open to financial and legal penalties.

Efficiency losses

Data makes us faster… or at least, being able to find the data we need without spending ages searching for it does.

A project data management plan could lay out where data is being stored, what it is for, how to access it, who has access, what reports are produced and when, and lots more. Hopefully that should offset some of the frustration of trying to access something that isn’t available (to you, at least) and also save time and duplication of effort.

You can schedule meetings around when data is available so the team is looking at hours-old results instead of something that was produce a month ago.

Poor decision-making

If you don’t have the data, you can’t make data-driven decisions. The risk to your project of not having the correct, reliable data, can be huge. On one project, I had to create metrics and report on them regularly, but the underlying assumptions for how those metrics were calculated changed, and then I wasn’t comparing like with like. That messes up your ability to track and report reliably, and also made it look like I didn’t have a clue what I was doing!

Work out what data the project needs to inform decision making at every step and then factor in ways to get it. The more this can be automated, the better, because then it is more likely that the calculations will be based on the same formulae and assumptions each time.

Do you have data risks on your risk log? If not, why not? Or are there more you can think of? Let us know in the comments so we can all benefit from taking a smart approach. Thanks!

Let’s talk about commercial viability for your projects.

Commercial viability is something that is considered at pre-project stage. It’s all about proving that it is worth going ahead with the work because the figures make sense. It’s typically related to working with suppliers: your analysis establishes that the relationship is commercially viable, which means you’ll both get something out of it and it is worth the time and effort involved.

A commercially viable deal will be one where the procurement decisions and contract offer the best value to the organisations involved over a time period that makes sense for the deal.

One of the challenges is that what sounds commercially viable today might not be tomorrow, if the market changes, or a supplier goes bust, so it’s important to take a proactive approach and be as risk-aware as possible.

We’re now in the realms that – in my view – stretch outside of a project manager’s remit. As the project manager, it’s unlikely that you’ll be signing the deals or commenting on the financial viability of the partners you are about to start working with. But you can make sure that the right people are involved on both sites.

Here are some things to consider.

What procurement options are available, and have they all been considered? What are the contract terms and is there a break clause? How long are you locked in for and is that acceptable?

What do both sides need out of the deal and what are the requirements?

Where does the risk sit, and if it is with your organisation, is that acceptable? What does the risk profile look like when aggregated across the programme? Do you feel that the supplier is taking too much risk to the point that it might jeopardise their ability to remain commercially competitive?

How and when will payments be made? That can affect the commercial viability of a project because it impacts cash flow. Large payments need to be pre-organised in my experience, so they can made in a timely fashion. What are the payment terms – you might be surprised at how often payment terms are a sticking point for negotiations! We all want the money in our bank for as long as possible…

How will the money spent or earned show up on the books? The accountancy treatment is something that the Finance team will agree. For example, exceptional spend might appear below the bottom line. Some items might be capitalised; others will not. This is out of your control as a project manager, but it gives you confidence to know that someone has considered it and made a definitive choice as to how these things are going to be handled.

Finally, are there any staffing requirements that affect the business case, or the chances of the deal being commercially viable longer term? For example, with the supplier provide staffing, and then when those individuals leave, you have to pick up the resource requirements internally? Build in any costs of handovers, transition planning, a drop in efficiency while new members of the team get up to speed and so on.

All of these discussions take place at various levels, and the summary ends up in the business case before a project is approved. It’s just worth having them on your radar so you can prompt the right people at the right time and get the best possible start for your project.

I’ve just finished reading Business Resilience by David Roberts etc al. It’s a book that sets out a whole framework for delivering progress at a sustained pace and not being left behind in VUCA times. It’s aimed at senior leadership at the top levels as that is where the culture change is likely to need to start from, if you are rethinking strategy delivery.

It did get me thinking about what it means for projects and project managers. Thinking about what resilience meant in an IT world, back in the days when I worked in the IT team, I could draw a few parallels with resilience from a tech perspective and what it translates to for project professionals. (These are my thoughts, they aren’t from the book, which is far more strategic and articulate!)

Process

Process resilience to me means having steps in place to get things done, even when things change. For example, when I moved from a fixed term to a permanent contract, my records were updated. Unfortunately, that meant that I could no longer see any purchase orders that were approved by the ‘old’ me.

That wasn’t a huge problem but as process steps go, it would have been nice to have the continuity without having to ask for it.

Another example of building in process resilience is making sure workflows can be delegated when you are out of the business. For example, handing over order approvals, estimates or change management approvals to a colleague during your holidays, instead of them all being stuck in your queue to approve when you get back.

Redundancy

In IT, we used to build solutions that had adequate redundancy. For example, the servers would fail over to another server if the first server had problems. We had back up generators to keep critical systems operational if (when) the power went down.

In project terms, that would look like having two people trained to carry out a project role so that if one resource is off sick, someone else can step in and do the work.

That’s quite an overhead for a project team, as normally we wouldn’t want to carry additional cost, but on business critical projects, or where your resource is truly specialised, it might be worth it.

Data availability

How long do you spend looking for project documentation? Probably quite a long time, especially if its on a collaboration tool that shall remain nameless! Thank goodness for being able to search.

In a technical environment, we’d create backups so the data was available even if the main system went down (although of course with the redundancy, the goal is that the main system stays up…).

Project documentation and data availability in a resilient team would mean you could find what you are looking for easily, in the right place, and access the data.

I think as the world gets more complex, projects get busier and teams have more to handle, being resilient is more and more important if we want to get things done and avoid burnout. These are just 3 ideas of things you can do with your project team this week to be a little bit more resilient and prepared for what next week might throw at you:

1. Review your processes and look for where you can build resilience in to keep things moving and avoid the process stalling
2. Look at your resource plans and consider how you can build in resource redundancy – maybe get a few more people on a training course
3. Consider where you store your project data and how easy it is for people to access when they need it.

What do you think of these ideas? Share any other resilience-building tips you have in the comments below!

Metrics are an important way to learn about how the project is going and to reflect on what has happened in the past so you can do things different in the future. Or repeat the things that work well.

I learned a few lessons about project metrics when I worked on an ERP implementation a while ago now. We measured internal customer satisfaction from the angle of the stakeholders’ experience of being on the project. We used standard questions and asked them to rank our performance on a scale of 1 to 10. (I write about all of this in Customer-Centric Project Management, which I co-wrote with a colleague.)

In my experience, workstream leads scored reasonably based on the context: no one ‘played politics’ to get what they wanted. But there was always room for improvement based on our scores. We had plenty of armchair debates in the lobbies of hotels while working on the road, talking over the scores and why they were ranking project performance the way they did. They weren’t my favourite conversations, but they were extremely useful in building great stakeholder relationships and goodwill over time.

The big lesson for me came when I was asking my own colleagues in the IT department to rank the project and they scored it badly. I took it personally as the project lead as you can imagine! But it was a huge wake up call for not taking my colleagues and friends for granted: I was pouring all my stakeholder engagement effort into people outside of my own team.

Luckily it was easy to fix. I set up conference calls for team Q&A and made time for regular communications. If you listen to what people want and give it to them, you can make a quick difference to perceptions and how easy it is for them to do their jobs.

The takeaways for me, specifically around metrics were these.

Identify stakeholders in the process

Put some time into identifying stakeholders and don’t miss the obvious ones like I did!

Ensure the measures are representative of all stakeholders

If your measures are not objective and are not representative of all stakeholder, consider having different versions of the measures for different things. That’s OK as long as there is some longevity baked in for comparison purposes.

Decide on how to record results

In my case, it was better to keep individual stakeholder results separate instead of creating an aggregate of stakeholder satisfaction scores. That gave us greater insights into how each workstream was feeling. An average would be unrepresentative of the community overall.

Sense check

Are the metrics telling you what your instincts are telling you? If not, why?

As project leaders, it’s important that we set up metrics to measure what matters (I’m sure you’ve heard that before). We need to know who matters and their experience influences the overall metrics on something like satisfaction or the interpretation of project value.

Metrics are only useful if they include or are representative of all stakeholders, and all interested parties, even if you then split those groups out further.

Have you ever worked on a project where when things went wrong, the sponsor was calm and measured, helping you create a map towards a resolution but backing off as required and letting you get on with the work?

That’s great.

The alternative is a much more destructive environment, where pressure from the levels above create a sense that everything has to be done now, even the tasks that don’t actually have to be done now. When things go wrong, that pressure intensifies. The team are pressed to deliver a fix to the exclusion of everything else, or to hit a milestone that has been made up by a senior leader and would never have been committed to if the full plan was understood at the time.

Where does false urgency come from?

False urgency comes from the pressure that is put on a team, group or individual to make a decision. It’s normally – in my experience – the result of some kind of failure.

Something goes wrong, and suddenly the big boss says he wants it fixed by 5pm. There’s no denying it’s a mistake that needs to be fixed, and fast, but the 5pm deadline is false urgency. Wouldn’t it be better to be fixed by 6pm and be right, rather than slap together an issue response plan and do a not-so-good job by 5pm?

The other situation I’ve found myself in is where a senior leader has committed in public – to a client, customer or during a Town Hall meeting – that something will be done by a certain date. And then we, as the project delivery team, have to find a way to meet that date. This false urgency is created by someone who doesn’t have the full information about what work is required and how much effort is likely to go into the project. But once a date is out there in public, it’s kind of hard for it to be extended without someone losing face.

How does false urgency affect people?

False urgency makes people think the situation is out of control, especially as the first deadline whooshes by. I’ve been on teams where we’ve been asked to do something asap, but it’s become clear that the solution – the correct solution – is going to take a bit longer. Suddenly, the fake deadline is swept out of the way. The fake urgency is gone. It feels like that was just a tool to get us to focus, which of course we did. And would have done anyway. We all know the problem needs resolving and that it’s top priority.

That sense of not being respected or allowed to find the solution, the pressure of having to do something just because someone says so, it all goes towards creating feelings of anxiety and anger. I know I get grumpy if I think something is important and someone then comes along and tells me it should be my most important task. It is already – but as a project manager, there’s often not much I can do beyond facilitating the process of issue resolution.

It's also tiring to be micromanaged and to be under the pressure of scrutiny.

The pressure of being in an urgent situation can make people do strange things. For example, looking busy. Busy is not the same as proactive or productive. When the bosses are circling because a client is being affected by a project issue, it’s important to look like you are gainfully employed, even if you can’t actually help the team to code the solution or run the fix or whatever.

There are lots of meetings, often to go over things that you’ve already gone over with other people. There are lots of reports. You end up defending behaviour and progress and explaining why things are taking as long as they are or involving the resources that they are.

How do we avoid this?

Given that false urgency can have such a negative impact on the team, I think it’s important to consider how it can be avoided. Sometimes – such as when your sponsor blurts out a delivery date in a client meeting and you haven’t even finished the estimating yet – you can’t in the moment. You can, however, mitigate the impact with open and honest communication and a bit of negotiation.

Be data-led, keep the communication channels open, be transparent with your sponsor and customer and avoid promising things before you have finished the planning stages. Have you ever been in a situation like this before? If you’re prepared to share, please tell us in the comments!