Voices on Project Management

By Dave Wakeman

I spend a lot of time focusing on value and ROI. For a project manager, it's often a challenge to understand how to communicate your role in terms of value or ROI. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

The fact is that without strong project management and project principles in place, most projects wouldn’t come close to realizing any ROI or creating value for their organizations.

So how can project managers begin thinking and expressing their success and impact in terms of value? Here are a few ways:

1. It isn’t about actions, it’s about outcomes.

It can be tough to think in terms of outcomes with all of the various requirements built into your project’s plan. Or with a sponsor sitting over your shoulder asking about every minute detail.

But your goal is to produce a project that creates value for your organization and client. You don’t do that with a list of activities you have completed. You do that with the outcomes those activities produce as a whole.

To begin to turn your thinking around, instead of stating the tasks you’ve completed, start stating your accomplishments like this:

“Based on our objective to create a new drilling platform that has the following functions, we have successfully created the framework for the platform and have integrated these three features into the framework. We are on schedule to finish the remaining features within our predicted timeframe.”

2. Ask questions based on intended impact.

Too many project managers find themselves in environments where their input isn’t desired, their thoughts aren’t respected, and they feel reluctant to ask questions.

That’s a terrible situation. And, if it’s a common experience, I’d advise you to put down this article and go find a new job, because you deserve better than that.

If you’re merely failing to ask good questions, you need to get over that right away. Questions empower you as a leader. 

The questions you ask should be directed toward the intended impact of the project on the stakeholders, the sponsor and the organization. So ask strong questions like:

• “What will this project mean to the stakeholders?”
• “Why is this project being prioritized right now?”
• “What should we be on the lookout for as possible challenges to the project’s success?

These kinds of questions will empower you with two things: knowledge to make better decisions within your project and the context to explain and communicate those decisions to your team and key stakeholders.

3. Measure your work in a meaningful way.

In so many businesses, we hear about data and measurements.

What does much of it mean? Not really a lot, in too many instances.

To refocus your project management efforts and maximize your ability to talk in terms of the value of your projects and your leadership, you have to measure the outcomes in a meaningful way.

Here are some examples:

• Because of these improvements in processes and decision-making, we saved 5 percent on costs and came in 3 percent earlier than expected.
• By making the decision to fast-track this part of the project, we were able to free up these resources, and that enabled us to realize a 10-percent gain in productivity.

The key here is to make sure you focus on making things meaningful and measurable. Being fast or cheap is one thing, but being better, faster and cheaper is what counts. 

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by Dave Wakeman

I’m always looking for a way to tie project management to college football, and the start of football season is a great time to do just that. I went to the University of Alabama, which has been on one of the greatest runs in college football history over the last nine years. This is due in part to the vision of coach Nick Saban.

If you don’t know much about college football and Nick Saban, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with project management. But Saban’s success stems in part from his coaching philosophy, which he calls “The Process.” His reasoning is straightforward, as he once said: “Process guarantees success. A good process produces good results.”

Here are several lessons project managers can learn from coach Saban’s process.

Culture is everything: Every organization has a culture. Some are well thought-out, methodical inventions imprinted through consistent actions and accountabilities. Other organizations, not so much.

At the University of Alabama, “The Process” is at its heart a cultural tool that seeps into every action that every member of the football program takes over the course of the year. Saban is consistent in his discussion of creating a culture that allows his team to focus on the aspects of their “jobs” that create success.

As a manager and leader of your projects, you might be able to deliver the same sort of project culture by clearly stating your expectations for communications, reporting or meetings—or all three.

Regardless of your priorities, take a look at how you can communicate the kind of project culture you want to create.

Success is a process: As leaders, we have to balance two competing interests: the long-term success of our projects and our organization and the short-term tasks involved in delivering us to the long-term outcomes.

One of the big things Saban has done at Alabama is emphasize setting long-term goals for each team and the program, while also consistently focusing his players on the task at hand. This most readily plays out in his insistence that his players focus only on winning the play of the moment, treating each play as its own mission and never looking at the scoreboard.

You might help your teams by setting clear long-term project goals, but then breaking them down into phases with each phase having its own individual stages with a beginning and end. More emphasis should be placed on the specific stage than the overall project.

Communication is key: The image of Saban as a fiery hard-to-please taskmaster may have some validity. But one thing that often goes unnoticed is that he’s typically toughest on his teams when they’re winning and have a tendency to lose focus. When the team is losing a game, he tends to be very encouraging and measured.

As the leader of your team, you can put this idea to work by looking at the way you communicate with your own team and think about what is and what isn’t effective. Maybe you’ll find you’re pushing when you should be nurturing or nurturing when a good push is needed.

Even if you don’t like Alabama, Nick Saban or football, you can and should learn lessons from college football. A great college football team is very similar to a great project team, and a great coach has to be a great project manager.

For your enjoyment, here’s a 60 Minutes TV show profile of University of Alabama’s team from a few years back:

Let me know what you think in the comments! And, most importantly, Roll Tide! 

By the way, I've started a brand new weekly newsletter that focuses on strategy, value, and performance. Make sure you never don't miss it, sign up here or send me an email at [email protected]! 

by Dave Wakeman

Recently I had the chance to engage with Microsoft’s social media team about some of the issues I have been covering here. Their team brought up a question you may have asked as well: How do you differentiate between “digital” project management and project management?

It’s an interesting question, because I firmly believe all projects should be delivered within a very similar framework. The framework enables you to make wise decisions and understand the project’s goals and objectives.

I understand that there are many types of project management philosophies: waterfall, agile, etc. Each of these methods has pros and cons. Of course, you should use the method you are most comfortable with and that gives you the greatest likelihood of success.

But regardless of which project management approach you employ, there are three things all practitioners should remember at the outset of every project to move forward with confidence.

Every project needs a clear objective. Even if you aren’t 100-percent certain what the “completed” project is going to look like, you can still have an idea of what you want the project’s initial iteration to achieve. This allows you to begin work with a direction and not just a group of tasks.

So, even if you only have one potential outcome you want to achieve, starting there is better than just saying, “Let’s do these activities and hope something comes out of it.”

Frameworks enable valuable conversations. I love talking about decision-making frameworks for both organizations and teams. They’re valuable not because they limit thought processes, but because they enable you to make decisions based on what you’re attempting to achieve.

Instead of looking at the framework as a checklist, think of it as a conversation you’re having with your project and your team. This conversation enables you to keep moving your project toward its goal.

During the execution phase, it can give you the chance to check the deliverable against your original goals and the current state of the project within the organization. Just never allow the framework to put you in a position where you feel like you absolutely have to do something that doesn’t make sense.

Strong communication is the bedrock. To go back to the question from Microsoft’s social media team about digital vs. regular project management: the key concept isn’t the field or areas that a project takes place in.

No matter what kind of project you’re working on and in which sector you’re in, the critical skill for project success is your ability to communicate effectively with all the project stakeholders.

This skill transcends any specific industry. As many of us have learned, it may constitute about 90 percent of a project manager’s job. You can put this into practice in any project by taking a moment to write down your key stakeholders and the information you need to get across to them. Then put time in your calendar to help make sure you are effective in delivering your communications.

In the end, I don’t think there should be much differentiation between “digital” projects or any other kind of projects. All projects benefit from having a set of goals and ideas that guide them. By trying to distinguish between different project classifications, we lose sight of the real key to success in project management: teamwork and communication.

What do you think? 

By the way, I've started a brand new weekly newsletter that focuses on strategy, value, and performance. Make sure you never miss it! Sign up here or send me an email at [email protected]! 

by Dave Wakeman

If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed that I’ve been focusing on strategy a lot lately. The reason is simple: The alignment between projects and strategy tends to be a significant driver of organizational success.

For this post, I want to focus on a crucial figure when it comes to alignment: the sponsor. In working to align projects and strategy, the sponsor really is the key to whether or not your efforts will be successful.

For this reason, it’s essential that project managers candidly communicate with sponsors. You need to understand how the project fits into the organization and how you can position your project in a way that will deliver on your organization’s strategy.

Here are three tips for optimizing sponsor relations.

1. Keep Pushing for Answers: We’ve all dealt with projects and clients that give us some variation of the classic line from our parents: “Because I said so.” That may have worked for our parents, but it won’t work too well for our careers.

As a proactive leader in your organization, you need to work with your sponsor to understand how the project fits into the organization’s strategy. For some of you, that may seem difficult, but if you frame the questions around wanting to understand where you may be challenged for resources or time, you can usually get the conversation started.

Other questions that will help you discover how well your project aligns with the organization’s goals are:

• How high a priority is this currently?
• I’ve read the requirements and goals, but I’m still unclear. What should the ultimate outcome of this project be?

2. Communicate Consistently: One of the big challenges of aligning strategy and projects is that you’re busy, your sponsor is busy, and your team is busy. This is no excuse for not communicating consistently. In fact, a constant stream of demands is a reason you should be communicating consistently—that way you ensure that no one’s efforts are wasted on something that is no longer relevant.

To make sure you communicate consistently with your sponsor, use the following framework:

• First, set up appropriate reporting and meeting schedules with your team.
• Second, take the time to digest the information gleaned from your team.
• Third, adjust your actions and activities to reflect the new realities on the ground.
• Fourth, set up a consistent time to brief and update your sponsor. Keep that appointment religiously.
• Finally, get the sponsor’s commitment that important matters can and will be addressed quickly to keep the project on track.

3. Embrace Change: I’m sure that at one time or another we’ve all felt humiliated and downtrodden because our most dear project has been shut down for no discernable reason and we can’t get an explanation from anyone.

These situations are challenging. But you owe it to yourself, your team and your sponsor to embrace change. You also need to proactively address the change, positive or negative, with your sponsor. This will help you gain information that will allow you to make better decisions. But it will also encourage an open dialogue with your sponsor.

Also, proactively dealing with change can be extremely helpful in assisting your sponsor on new courses of action based upon the new information and the new realities that your projects face.

To accelerate your ability to embrace change, ask questions like:

• How will this change impact our organizational mission?
• Is this change happening because the project wasn’t in alignment?
• Does this change provide an opportunity for us to embrace a new set of circumstances or new business opportunities?

I’m curious to find out how you handle these kind of strategic communications with your sponsors. Let me know in a comment below! 

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By Dave Wakeman 

Last month, I wrote about how you can become a more strategic project manager. This month, I want to continue exploring the topic by focusing on a few ways to make sure your projects have strategic focus.

1. Always Ask “Why?”

This is the essential question for any business professional. But I am aware that asking the question can be extremely difficult—especially in the organizations that need that question asked the most.

Asking why you are taking on a project is essential to the project’s success or failure. Using the question can help you frame the role that project plays in the organization’s goals. It can also allow you early on to find out if the project is poorly aligned with the long-term vision.

This can make you look like a champ because you can make course corrections or bring up challenges much earlier, saving you and your organization time and money.

When asking about a project’s strategic value, you may find it helpful to phrase it in less direct ways, such as: “How does this project fit into the work we were doing with our previous project?” or “This seems pretty consistent with the project we worked on several months back—are they connected?”

2. Bring Ideas

As the focal point of knowledge, project managers should know where a project is in meeting its goals and objectives. So if you know a project is losing its strategic focus (and therefore value), generate ideas on how to make course corrections or improve the project based on the information you have.

There is nothing worse than having a team member drop a heap of issues on us with no easy solutions and no ideas on how to move forward. As the leader of your projects, don’t be that person. To help you come up with ideas to move the project toward success and strategic alignment, think along the following lines:

·      If all the resources and effort expended on the project up to the current roadblock were removed from consideration, would it still make sense to move forward with the project?

·      What actions can we take that will help alleviate some of the short-term pain?

·      Knowing what I know now, would I suggest we start or stop this project? Why?

3. Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!

On almost any project I work on, more communication is a good idea. This is because the more the lines of communication are open, the more likely I’m to get information that will be helpful to me and my ability to achieve the end results that I’m looking for.

As with most things in project management, communication is a two-way street and loaded with possible pain points and missteps. As a project manager looking to deliver on the strategic promise of your projects, your communications should always be focused on information you can use to take action and move your project along.

To effectively communicate as a strategic project manager, ask questions like these:

·      What do I need to know about a project that will have a material impact on its success or failure?

·      What can I share with my team or stakeholders that might help them understand my decisions?

·      What information does my team need to take better actions?

As you can see, adjusting your vision to become more strategic isn’t too far removed from what it takes to be an effective project manager. The key difference is making sure you understand the “why” of the project. From there, you need to push forward your ideas and to communicate openly and honestly.

What do you think? How do you bring a strategic focus to your projects? 

By the way, I've started a brand new weekly newsletter that focuses on strategy, value, and performance. Make sure you never don't miss it, sign up here or send me an email at [email protected]!