By Jen Skrabak, PMP, PfMP, MBA

As we close out 2019 at work, wrap up projects, and plan to spend time with our families for the holidays, sometimes we forget this is the best time to prepare for the year to come. Here are my five tips to get you in the mindset:

1.  2020 starts now. 

The traditional thinking is that nothing happens from Thanksgiving to New Year’s since hiring managers and companies are preparing for the holidays. 

The real situation is that everything happens at the end of the year. Companies are busy preparing for next year, and, from personal experience, November/December has been the busiest time for recruiting senior-level portfolio/program executives. Hitting the ground running starting Jan. 1 means that 2020 starts now. 

Key questions for you to start your 2020 planning:

• What are your career goals for 2020? 
• Are your CV or résumé and LinkedIn profile up to date with key accomplishments and aligned with your career goals?
• What are your development plans? Do you have training scheduled, books to read or people you need to consult with to gain insights?

2.  Ladder up your experiences and skills. 

The traditional thinking is that a career ladder is about getting a new title at the next level with a higher salary.

The real situation is that building your career is about learning agility and building a repertoire of experiences and micro roles. If you’ve been in program or portfolio management for seven years or more, it may start to feel that you’ve “been there, done that.” To get to the next level of experiences, ask yourself: In 2020, how will you learn a new skill, gain a new experience or learn from someone?

3.  Transformation must be visible. 

The traditional thinking is that transformation is about organizational change management, which is mainly instituted through a variety of communication methods and channels (memos, town halls, workshops, staff meetings, etc.).  In a recent viral stationary bike ad, the woman depicted before and after the transformation looked the same—many people had issues with the cognitive dissonance where she said that her life changed so much, but the change was not visible.

The real situation is that transformation is more than just communication.  Instead of telling people what the change is, the approach should be to actively demonstrate the change so people can experience it.  Transformation at the organizational level is about behavior change.

When I implement a large-scale organizational change, I personally lead up interactive training sessions to teach people about the change, as well as follow-up sessions where I’m hands-on in mentoring and coaching people on the new skills. It’s a great way to get real-time feedback about the change, and most importantly, to be seen as the expert coach within the organization enabling the change. This has been very effective in building trust and credibility in the organization.

4.  Create space. 

The traditional thinking is that when you see a good idea for a program, go implement it—quickly—to take advantage of speed to market. 

The real situation is, just like a cluttered drawer that you keep adding to, a portfolio can be cluttered if not systematically managed. From a personal standpoint, I had to move recently, and I was surprised at how many things I found in the back of the drawer that I forgot existed. When I emptied it out and scrutinized every item, I discovered that 30-40 percent of the items were not needed or were no longer useful since they were damaged, broken or just plain outdated. By getting rid of items, I created space for new items and technology, just like in an organization.

The steps to portfolio management in an organization are: 

• Inventory: Create a complete listing of all programs, projects and activities that consume resources.
• Rationalize: Scrutinize and prioritize every item. Does it have ROI? Is it really going to move the needle on the strategy? You can even develop simple project scoring to prioritize—key criteria can include value, resources and alignment to strategy.
• Start, Stop, Sustain: Make decisions and tradeoffs about what to start, stop and sustain. In an organization, teams sometimes continue to do what they’ve always done for years, and it takes a thorough review of the portfolio to surface work that is not needed or useful—just like the drawer example.
• Quarterly/Annual Review: Portfolio optimization is about doing Step No. 2 above regularly, not just one time. Conducting a performance review at least quarterly is the best way to ensure that the decisions initially made in Step No. 3 haven’t changed due to environmental factors (internally or externally).

5.  Volunteer for your next role.

The traditional thinking is that your manager assigns you the next program or role.

The real situation is you are responsible for actively managing your next role. You should tell the right managers and other leaders what you would like your next program or role to be.

Key steps:

• Clearly state your desire: What type of program or role would you like? Be as specific as writing your own job description, including responsibilities, skills and experience needed.
• Develop a plan: What steps, dates and resources do you need to get to your desired role from where you currently are? Do you have the skills and experience needed or do you need to develop them? What support or resources from leaders or others do you need to accomplish your plan? Treat this like any other project you would manage, with a project plan and project schedule.
• Track your progress: Check in with yourself every week and key supporting leaders monthly or quarterly. Hold yourself accountable and adjust as needed.

Don’t wait: What is your plan for starting 2020 now?

By Dave Wakeman

I never like to miss a trend, so since 2020 is just around the corner, I thought I would put together a few of the ideas I’m going to be exploring in the coming year. My hope is that you all will reply in the comments section with some of your own ideas and areas of focus.

We can call it a prediction post, without predictions. Here are the three things that I’ll be focusing on in 2020:

Economic Uncertainties

As I’m writing this, the United Kingdom is holding an election to try to clarify what they will or won’t do about Brexit. And I likely don’t have to tell you there’s an election in the United States in 2020. 

Alone, these two things mean little to most project managers, but underlying these elections is a sense of economic uncertainty due to some of the issues that are driving them. 

This is a big idea to pay attention to because the U.S. and the U.K. are two of the largest economies in the world. All of us have to pay attention because potential ripple effects could sideline our projects, cut our budgets, or just cause a general sense of uncertainty to seep into our work. 

I’ll be checking the economic pulse constantly in 2020 because uncertainty of any kind can have a big impact on business, the economy and our jobs. 

Climate Change

I’m back from Australia, and while I was there New South Wales was dealing with severe brush fires. Some have attributed the fires to the impact of climate change.

Whether climate change is an attributed factor in these fires or not, the trend of weather patterns being more severe is impacting population centers around the world. 

I’ll keep an eye on this because where there are challenges, there are opportunities. As project managers, the opportunity to mitigate the impact of severe weather is a huge chance to hone our skills, develop new solutions and work on things that really do have a significant, real-world impact. 

For me, I’m going to look at every major weather event and ask what were the lessons learned, what could we do to handle it better, and what is the trend line for this kind of event so that I can better understand where my skills and mindset can add the most value.    

Changes in Technology

We take it for granted that technology is moving fast and changing the way we approach our lives and careers. I’ve been running out the flag that technology is a tool we should be using to improve our ability to do the things that only we, as humans, can accomplish.   

Maybe it will be a theme of the new year—I don’t know.

But what I will say is that technology has been a crutch for a lot of us over the last few years, and as much as it improves our ability to do things, it also jams us up or sends us down a rabbit hole of needless activity. 

In 2020, I’m going to keep an eye on how we are using technology. Can we find ways to take mundane, repetitive tasks off our plates and give us the freedom to do the things that really add value?

Or, are we continuing to allow technology to drive us and make us a tool of technology’s use?

From my point of view, keeping an eye on technology likely means spending more time focusing on the outcomes I need to achieve and thinking through how technology supports them, instead of getting lost in all the cool features that a solution has to offer. 

But enough about me. Where are you going to focus your attention in 2020?

By Ramiro Rodrigues

A good definition of the word “maturity” is the state of people or things that have reached full development.

For entities such as business organizations, maturity needs to be associated with a specific expertise. This can apply to operational, technical and also project management maturity.

Project management maturity means that an organization is conditioned to evolve qualitatively in order to increase the chances for project success.

To this end, there are both paid and free maturity evaluation models on the market. The application of one of these models allows you to achieve the first important objective: identifying what stage your organization is at.

This step is difficult, given the complexity in trying to compare whether an organization is doing its projects well in relation to others, without being contaminated by individual and subjective perceptions. Often, most models will question various aspects of how projects are executed and produce a score for ranking. With this result, the models will classify the organization's current maturity level.

Once this level has been identified, the next step is to try to plot an action plan to move to the next level. Here is another benefit of a good maturity model: Many offer references to the most common characteristics expected in each level. With this, it is easier to draw up a plan of action focused on the characteristics expected at the next level. This progress should be incremental—one level at a time.

The action plan should be thought of and executed as if it were a project, following the good practices and methodology of the organization itself. It should be scaled to be completed in time to allow its gains to be observable and perceived by the organization. This will then cause the expected positive impacts in the next cycle of a new maturity survey.

In summary, the steps to be followed are:

1.          Apply a maturity search.

2.          Evaluate and disseminate the results of the first survey.

3.          Develop an action plan.

4.          Rotate the project to the evolution of the level.

5.          Go back to step one and continuously improve.

By following this sequence, you can foster a constructive cycle in your organization as you continue to evolve your ability to execute projects.

I’d love to hear from you: Have you used maturity models in your organization? 

By Conrado Morlan

As a project management practitioner, I’ve been lucky enough to deploy programs and projects across the Americas, supported by teams in South Asia and Europe.

Working on those assignments enriched my multicultural background and helped me learn and become proficient in Portuguese. But as I’ve learned throughout my career, language is just the tip of the iceberg.

Based on my personal experiences, here are three key areas of focus I recommend that practitioners consider before, during and even after their next global assignment:

1. Gain Cultural Awareness

It is imperative that global project management professionals understand an individual's personal, national and organizational cultures, so they can better align the team and gain greater influence.

Learn about the country’s culture—do your research and find out similarities and differences. Include cultural differences as one of the topics on the agenda of the kick-off meeting. Use that time as an open forum for everyone to share and record their cultural experiences. Keep those cultural experiences in a repository with documents and useful video clips that can be later used to induct new team members.

Cultural awareness is a skill that should be developed and mastered. Incorporating a cultural differences exercise establishes respect and empathy for diverse values and behaviors, which in turn creates an open and accepting team environment.

2. Embrace the Chinese Army Approach

As a global project management professional, you may worry about resource planning. Resources may not be your direct reports, meaning you don’t have control over their schedules.

Instead of struggling, apply the Chinese army approach: Imagine you have unlimited resources available. Assume you have resources with the right skills who can be assigned to the different roles in your project. Do not worry yet about assigning names to the roles.

You may find that the roles can’t be filled with internal resources because of a lack of required skills or capacity, so your solution may be to outsource resources.

To complement the approach, you’ll need to adapt and remaster communication and negotiation skills, which will help you get the best resources.

3. Be SMART

The project management profession now goes beyond just managing projects. The profession helps to achieve business objectives and explore new ways to lead, execute and deliver. Technical expertise in project management is not enough; global project management practitioners must adopt a business-oriented approach.

My suggestion is to become SMART. The SMART concept includes a portfolio of skills the global project management practitioner must master to meet the needs of the organization in the coming years.

Being SMART means you are:

• Strategic. Demonstrate an understanding of the organization’s business goals to help it get ahead of the competition.
• Mindful. Develop cultural awareness and leadership styles to influence and inspire multicultural and multigenerational project teams. Foster strong relationships across the organization’s business functions.
• Agile. Business strategy is not static and is frequently impacted by internal and external factors. Projects will need to be adjusted to remain aligned with the business strategy, so embrace change.
• Resilient. Remain committed and optimistic. Demonstrate integrity when realigning or repairing projects facing hardships because of miscommunication and problematic behaviors, as well as cross-cultural issues and conflicts.
• Transparent. Whether the project is in good shape or facing challenges, the status needs to be shared promptly with relevant parties.

To become SMARTer, global project management professionals need to continually strive for excellence and master new skills to support professional growth and help the organization achieve its business strategy.
 

If you’ve been exposed to global programs or projects, what advice would you offer to other practitioners?

By Christian Bisson

When I was asked to write about a project that inspired me in the last 50 years, I didn’t have to look back further than last year. That’s when I had the chance to act as scrum master for a newly formed team.

The Challenge

We had seven weeks to build software from scratch that would be demonstrated at a conference and used by hundreds of people. Since the conference was centered on artificial intelligence, it was mandatory that our demo used AI. Our idea was a game where the player spelled words using real sign language. The game was displayed on a television hooked up to a camera, which filmed the player’s hand.

The hand’s position was then recognized and matched to a letter of the alphabet. The player received points based on the speed at which he was spelling the words displayed on the screen.

The Team

We had a great team composed of two developers, a designer, two AI researchers, a product owner and me (scrum master). Our small, dedicated team would empower us to deliver the software we needed to build from A to Z.

Although concerned about the short time available, everyone was motivated and excited to build this amazing software, knowing the visibility it would get.

How We Would Work

Since the scope wasn’t fully defined and the user experience was key, we needed to deliver usable increments to test. We needed a framework that would allow us to deliver quickly and adjust to the requirements as they were refined. Scrum was the obvious choice, even though most of the team was completely new to it. The majority of the team came from a software background, so they knew what it was on paper. However, for the AI researchers, it was completely unknown.

Where it All Came Together

Many start off with the team they need, but then obstacles come their way and prevent them from moving forward. These could be anything from unavailable stakeholders to people being pulled off the team to poor requirements.

However, in this case, it was everything you would want from agility/scrum:

• A team collaborating together without anyone coordinating them
• Busy stakeholders making themselves available for us to collaborate
• Everyone following scrum, even though it was new to them
• The team working at a sustainable pace
• A usable increment of the game delivered every sprint
• Continuous improvement through the retrospectives
• A healthy backlog that was properly refined by the team

It was amazing to see the collaboration when we needed users to test; after a quick Slack message to everyone in the company, we would suddenly have a lineup of people available to play the game.

What Inspired Me

When I think back on our success, all I remember are the people working together to create something great. It wasn’t even about being “agile.” For the team it was, “Let’s get this done!” and for everyone who supported us, it was “Let’s help our colleagues!” There was nothing more, nothing less—exactly how it should be.

I’d love to hear about the most inspiring project you’ve worked on in your career. Please share below!