Veering From the Typical Career Path
Categories:
Career Development
Categories: Career Development
| I recently watched a Hindi movie called 3 Idiots. The moral was to follow your passion--which got me thinking... In the software industry I've seen examples of technical leads who were promoted to project manager based on the assumption that they'll perform just as well in that role. But in several of these cases the technical lead has failed in the new position. That's because project management is not about resolving technical issues. It has other parts: resource management, cost management, expectation management, etc. Companies shouldn't automatically follow the standard growth path for each role, whether it's for a software engineer, senior software engineer, technical lead or project manager. Rather, the path should be decided based upon an individual's capability and interests. A technical lead may be interested in business analyst work or quality-assurance activities instead of the project management role. Also, as individuals we should have the opportunity to follow our passion and not feel tied to a typical career path. What do you suggest? |
Is This Your Project Stakeholder--The Conclusion
| My last post received a wide range of comments and I wanted to draw some conclusions based on those comments and my thoughts. The majority of those that left a response said they would choose "option one." If you selected "option one" and well managed your relationship development and engagement processes, then helping "Mary"--the stakeholder in question--and her team contribute to the change should be beneficial. Why? The first thing to consider is that Mary would be a key stakeholder at several different levels in the overall change management program. As a long-term employee leading a group of workers, she is a stakeholder in the overall organization and is likely to have many unofficial contacts and significant influence. As the leader of a group of workers who will be disadvantaged by a planned reorganization, she and her team are critically important stakeholders for the change manager. The group will never like the consequences of the change, but they need to be included so they at least cooperate for the good of the overall organization. Because they can contribute knowledge and support, Mary and her team are also stakeholders of the program and particularly your project. The assumption that your team has enough knowledge to bypass her people is risky. You don't know everything that happens in Mary's section on a day-to-day basis. The second important consideration is where the value is created. Ultimately, there is no value to the organization unless the change is successfully implemented. Your project may deliver a key component needed for the reorganization but if it is not used, there is no value. This is something IT people in particular need to remember; 99 percent of IT projects require changes to business processes and are a complete waste of time if the business people reject the new processes. If you selected "option two" and chose to ignore Mary, she is likely to become an active opponent of the change (no involvement equals no commitment and no support). This puts your most important stakeholder at a disadvantage: the overall change manager. |
A PMBOK® Guide for the Trenches
| When you are introduced into a project environment, with a team who has never used project management and knows little of it, what is going to help most? Is A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) too airy and sophisticated? Put another way, if you find yourself in a World War I-era trench, which would you rather have: the operator's manual on your howitzer or The Art of War by Sun Tzu? Over my next few posts, I want to introduce my own version of the PMBOK® Guide, unencumbered by peer review (or even consistency). It will give me a chance to cut through some of the academic cobwebs that may have set into our practices, and illuminate recent issues and problems. We'll start with scope. Scope: (noun) the output or outcome for which your customer is willing to pay. You've probably already recognized that, by this definition, the customer can't request anything out of scope, since what they desire is, by definition, in scope. And you would be correct. So, if you don't want to find yourself in a situation where your (paying) customer is asking for more than you were originally willing to produce for a certain price, you had better have a very detailed agreement--otherwise, that most deadly of project ruination elements, scope creep, will devastate you, your team, your organization and your project. Here's further proof that my definition for scope is correct: If your customer wants to add work to your project and will to pay for it, what project manager would refuse to do it on the grounds that it wasn't in the original statement of work? No matter how absurdly the original work breakdown structure (WBS) was set up, if a person with sufficient organizational clout generated it, it can never be substantially changed. In fact, the very act of pointing out that a proposed WBS element is inappropriate is a serious career-limiting move, since everyone knows that the ability to create a valid WBS is the litmus test for real project managers and pretenders. I've found that the pretenders will attack any challenge with a ferocity rooted in their insecurity. Yes, it all begins with scope, but it obviously doesn't end there. Next up: schedule. |
Pick Your Commitments
| When we work on a project, we commit to tasks that work toward the grand result. You have these tasks because at some point in time in the past you have committed yourself to doing them. Taking on many commitments can make you feel powerful at times, but not delivering on the expected result is a total loss of that power. Here are some tips for managing your commitments: 1. Get really clear on the particular project requirements and what role you play. 2. Clear your plate of any commitments that do not contribute to the project's end goal. 3.Commit to your role within the project. 4. Commit to the number one task: always delivering on your commitment. 5. Ask yourself daily: What did I commit to doing today? Am I in a position to deliver on those commitments? It's best to break a commitment ahead of time--leaving you free to execute exactly what you need to be doing. How do you manage to commit only to what you know you need to achieve? In the future I will discuss more about how to break commitments not in line with your goals. |
Is This Your Project Stakeholder?
Categories:
Leadership
Categories: Leadership
| Imagine for a moment your organization has decided on a major restructure, and as a consequence has initiated a change-management process and appointed a change manager. The change manager develops the business case for a major program of work. The executives responsible for the organization's portfolio management approve the business case and agree to fund and resource the program. The program manager sets up the program management team, establishes the program management office and charters a series of projects to develop the various deliverables needed to implement the change. And you have been appointed project manager for one of the projects. In this situation, your life as a project manager would be fairly straightforward; you have direct-line management responsibility to the program manager, and the change manager is your project sponsor. The program management office looks after most of the issues of sourcing adequate funds and resources. All you have to do is deliver the project's outputs as defined in the project charter. However, part of your project ideally needs the cooperative input from a group of people who will be significantly disadvantaged by the overall reorganization. This group is led by a 20-year veteran of the organization, whom we will call Mary. At the moment, Mary's loyalties are divided--at one level she wants what's best for the organization she has worked for all her life, but she also wants to preserve her team and keep the status quo. Fortunately, you have enough domain knowledge in your team to bypass her input and produce the deliverables anyway. So what should you do? Option one is to work to get Mary and her team's input--if not their positive cooperation--but risk delaying your project's completion and overspending the budget. Option two is to use the knowledge you already have in the team to produce the deliverable and bypass the problem, thereby ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery. This option also minimizes the chance of Mary interfering in the overall work of the project and program. What would be your recommendation to the program manager? Option one, two or something different? Post your thoughts in the "comments" section and we shall draw some conclusions in my next post. |
