Voices on Project Management

By Cyndee Miller

Going to PMI EMEA Congress is a little bit like going back to school. You pick your sessions, learn a ton and (hopefully) come out with some new ideas on how you want to do things. But sometimes it’s good to be in on the action, too.

I personally was ready to bust out for some real-world adventure, so I headed over to One Microsoft Place. Part of Dublin’s burgeoning tech scene, Microsoft’s European HQ in Leopardstown, Dublin is still relatively new—it only made its grand debut last year. Home to some 2,000 staff members of roughly 70 nationalities, it was specifically designed to be a physical manifestation of the company’s digital transformation. So along with a rooftop garden with some pretty sweet views, the 34,000 square-meter (365,973 square-foot) digs include a “digital lake” comprised of 125,000 LEDs, a DreamSpace for teaching school kids all about tech—and plenty of collaborative spaces aimed at uniting the company under a common vision.

I wasn’t the only one checking out Dublin’s project scene. Some other adventurers headed over to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. That one had to be interesting. I was there last summer to film a video case study about how the 235-year-old school revolutionized its training program—winning a 2018 PMI Award for Project Excellence along the way. Yet another group of congress attendees ventured over to Teeling Distillery to get all the technical details on how the upstart makes a whiskey good enough to take on local stalwarts like Jameson. (Probably best I left that one to others.)

Back at the convention center, my fellow attendees engaged in some more immersive sessions.

Opening keynoter Jamil Qureshi kicked off his interactive workshop with quite the question: If everyone in the world were to suddenly change genders, how would that transform how we act? How we lead? The decisions we make? Would there be more parity for women? Would there be less war? The workshop put into practice one of the key concepts from his Monday presentation: To act differently, you must first think differently.

Mr. Qureshi wasn’t the only one pushing attendees to change the way they think. Karin Hurt and David Dye of Let’s Grow Leaders challenged attendees to root out what incites a fear of speaking up at their organizations. Project managers drew those fears on index cards, then looked for commonalities among their fellow attendees. One thing that doesn’t work? An open-door policy, said Mr. Dye. Instead, leaders should get out there and ask questions—not wait for answers to come to them.

In another workshop, attendees faced a whole other kind of adventure with Mission Possible: Escape from Earth—Agile Edition. Santi Alcaide, PMP, of Play To Growth, and Alfred Maeso Aztarain, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA, PMP, of Netmind, used the game to spark new ways of leading virtual teams.

And Maria Fafard, PMP, of Capital One introduced role-playing scenarios to teach project professionals how to be better facilitators, especially when conflict or tensions arise. “Before you facilitate any meeting, consider and mitigate any risks that may take your discussion off track,” she said.

The common denominator in all this immersion therapy? Project leaders are faced with a barrage of change, forcing fundamental shifts in how we think, work, play—and lead. How have you changed your leadership style?

by Cyndee Miller

The rogue monkey gets the banana. Researchers first made the discovery in the late 1970s, but the lesson remains for project leaders looking to keep pace with disruption.

Let’s peel this one back: In Jamil Qureshi’s opening keynote at PMI EMEA Congress in Dublin, Ireland, he told the tale of one monkey that chose not to believe the evidence put forth by its monkey colleagues that came before. It questioned the bias of its environment, adjusted its mindset—and was rewarded for its defiance. Seeing any parallels?

“I cannot tell you the value of a rogue monkey in your organization,” said Mr. Qureshi, a psychologist and performance coach. “Every single thing worth having on this earth has come from rogue monkey thinking.”

The greatest inhibitor to human performance, Mr. Qureshi said, is a steadfast adherence to our belief systems. (We all have them. Trust me, you’re no magical exception.) “We prove ourselves right even when we’re wrong, and that’s the problem.”

We must be willing to change the way we think. It’s the foundation of our decision-making process. “We think, we feel and then we act,” he said.

Hold off on the grand gestures, though.

“Proving ourselves as leaders is not about doing something dramatic. It’s about doing something a little bit more, more consistently,” said Mr. Qureshi. True leaders look inward, find what they already do well—and do more of it.

None of this will go very far without proper motivation, however. We’re drawn toward our most dominant thoughts, he says. And if those thoughts sound like “don’t fail” …? Um, we’re in trouble—our subconscious will only hear “fail.”

“People who are truly disruptive are motivated by what they seek to achieve, not by what they seek to avoid,” he said.

That’s how you move teams “from transactional to transformational.” The really bold ideas come from making the connection between two previously unconnected things. Look at PayPal, Spotify or Skype. “It took someone outside the sectors to give us what we wanted,” said Mr. Qureshi. Too often, companies and project teams are bad at being different—but the future demands it. “The only way to stay future relevant and future literate is to think about what the customer is valuing all the time, not what we wish to sell.”

So, are you ready to go rogue?

by Lynda Bourne

In my last post—It’s Time for a Long, Hard Look at Processes—I questioned if A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) should be updated every four years, or if it should become a dynamic knowledge management system similar to Wikipedia. The post generated a number of comments, which I’m going to try to address now.

The fundamental purpose of a standard is to offer standardized advice organizations can rely on. Standards are frequently referenced in contracts and other formal documentation, and they form the basis for certifications. The PMBOK^® Guide fulfills all of these purposes. In this situation, stability is essential. Globally, standards are reviewed and updated every four to five years to balance the need for currency against the need for consistency. 

The PMI Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.) community has a busy few months each time the PMBOK^® Guide is updated, requiring them to go through their training materials to bring them all up to date. This is magnified many times over as organizations around the world update their documentation to align with the new standard.

But the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard is only one part of the PMBOK^® Guide. The guidance part is the larger aspect of the book and also, in my opinion, the most useful. This element is a knowledge repository and if access to validated information is readily available, knowledge management systems should seek to be as up to date as possible. To achieve this, most knowledge management systems are web-based and assume that once information is printed, it is no longer current. Managing a knowledge management system needs skill and knowledge but should be a real-time, full-time function.

Given this, I suggest that PMI separate the standard part of the document from the knowledge element. The standard section would consist of the ANSI Standard (part two of the current PMBOK^® Guide) and the supporting core knowledge that does not change much. This standard and supporting information would remain on the four- to five-year update cycle. The resulting document would be much thinner than the current PMBOK^® Guide.

The knowledge element builds onto this as a cloud-based resource and should be the subject of continual improvement and updating. Allowing PMI members to contribute their knowledge on a continuous basis, subject to review and edit, would allow the body of knowledge to grow and adapt as project management grows and adapts.

A careful design of the knowledge structure based on the PMBOK^® Guide—augmented with information from the other standards published by PMI and enhanced with current developments from industry—would create a very useful and dynamic source of knowledge for the global project management community.

If access to this project management knowledge bank is free to members and available for a fee to commercial users and non-members, the value of membership would be enhanced and PMI would be positioned to maintain its position as a global leader in the development of project management.

It’s an interesting challenge. What do you think?

By Ramiro Rodrigues  

A great deal of effort is often put into a project kick-off meeting—so why isn’t that visibility just as important on the other end of the project?

What is a project closing party?

A project closing party is an event that intends to provide visibility and recognition to the main professionals involved in a completed project. Obviously, there is no sense in celebrating a project that got aborted or that didn’t reach its main goals and targets. So, we are talking about those projects that managed to get to end with the best combination of its intended results.

Within this proposal, it is reasonable to say that what will drive the size of the closing event will be the size (and budget) of the specific project, since it is necessary to achieve coherence between these variables.

What are the benefits?

I see two arguments for hosting these events at the end of a project—one strategic and one motivational.

On the strategic side, a closing party brings visibility to the executing organization (and, if applicable, the hiring organization) that the project has reached its predicted goals. It will help to reinforce to those at the strategic level of the organization that the team is capable and reliable.

From a motivational standpoint, these events will help recognize the efforts of the project team.

How should they be executed?

If you think a closing event could benefit your project efforts, here are some tips to abide by:

1. Forecast the closing event in your project planning. It will allow you to make the proper arrangements of budget, time and resources.

2. Manage expectations: Don’t hide the event, but also don’t overestimate what is forecasted in the plan.

3. Honor the forecast: You can’t skimp on the event if it’s forecasted from the beginning—it will only leave a negative impression on the people involved.

4. Gather people and acknowledge the merit: Just like in the kick off meeting, you should identify and invite the right stakeholders to witness the recognition of that specific team who performed great work.

Done well, events like a project closing party can have positive repercussions on your next projects.

Do you regularly host or attend closing events at the end of your projects? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

by Ramiro Rodrigues

Project managers: Are you sometimes looking to make plans faster but without being superficial and therefore riskier to the project?

Developed in the 1980s, design thinking is a structured mental model that seeks the identification of innovative solutions to complex problems. Although the concept has existed for decades, it’s only made its presence known in the corporate environment over the last 10 years.

Swiss business theorist and author Alexander Osterwalder similarly sought to accelerate collaborative reasoning when he introduced the Business Model Canvas. Canvas helps organizations map, discuss, rework and innovate their business model in one image.

But a series of proposals for the use of the Business Model Canvas for various purposes outside of business models has also appeared — including innovation, corporate education, product development, marketing and more.

For project professionals looking at alternatives to developing quicker and more collaborative planning, Canvas may sound like a great option. Of all the proposals that come up for the use of Canvas in a project environment, integrating stakeholders may be the best. Canvas brings stakeholders into the process and will help to minimize resistance and increase collaboration, resulting in a better proposal for planning problems and making the project more aligned to the interests of organizations.

But while the arguments put forward for Canvas all seem positive, there is still a dilemma: Can Canvas fully replace the overall project plan and the planning process? Is it possible to do without a schedule of activities, a detailed cash flow, a matrix of analyzed risks — just to limit ourselves to a few examples?

That is probably too extreme.

The general sense is that the integration of Canvas with specific planning — such as the cost plan and the risk plan — is the most productive and generates the best results.

It may be worth asking your project management office for their thoughts.

Have you ever used a Canvas for your project planning efforts? If so, what tips can you share?