Visualize Your Success
Categories:
Career Development
Categories: Career Development
| Many years ago, I recall being in an interview where the recruiter asked me if I knew what visualization was. I didn't. She explained to me that it's all about forming a mental picture of something you want to achieve as if you've already achieved it. For instance, imagine a standing ovation for excellent project performance or a big increase in pay or a promotion. It makes the future seem clearer and it tells your brain that you can do it, you can achieve it--because you've seen yourself do it successfully before. So how does it work? Simply do the following: 1. Choose an object and really focus on it. Then close your eyes and in your mind, tell yourself what you just saw--the colors, shapes, details. Open your eyes and confirm. 2. Close your eyes again and see yourself performing activities tomorrow, simply replaying in your mind what you know you will be doing tomorrow. 3. Identify one thing that you want to achieve. Let's say you have a meeting to present a project status report to the stakeholder community and you want to ace it. Close your eyes and visualize yourself standing in front of all the people attending your meeting, confident of the material and how you presented it. See yourself reporting with confidence, referring to documentation on slides or handouts, seeing everyone around understanding what you are presenting and being pleased with your results. 4. Do that a few times until you know exactly what you need to do to obtain that success. I would go as far as spending 20-30 minutes a day to do this exercise. Your mind will become conditioned to visualize the future the way you want to see it and, sometimes intuitively, that will lead you toward the envisioned success. So my question is: What do you want to achieve now? |
A True Rival to EVM?
| Glen B. Alleman was kind enough to respond to one of my recent posts, taking exception to my assertion that a simple, calculated estimate at completion (EAC) is probably the most powerful underused tool at the project manager's disposal. He laid out a scenario where a varied time-phased budget (Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled, or BCWS) would introduce a sufficient level of error into the calculated EAC so as to significantly reduce its effectiveness. I must disagree, if, for no other reason, than the time-phased budget isn't part of the calculation. As I discussed in that earlier post, the classic cost performance index divided into the budget at completion formula can be algebraically simplified to dividing cumulative actuals by the estimated percent complete. With those two data points, remarkably accurate management information can be gleaned and used to avoid project catastrophe. To support my argument, I would like to ask: What other options are out there? What other methods can rival the simple earned value management (EVM) version? After suffering through semesters and semesters of accounting, and semesters and semesters of finance, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that there's nothing in the accountant's toolbox that can even come close to the accuracy of the simple EVM method. As counter-intuitive as this may sound, the person who has been through a 40-hour EVM class is in a far superior position to relay accurate at-completion project costs than is the accountant, who, of course, needed years and years of post-secondary education. I intend to speak on this at the EVM World 2009 conference being put on by the PMI College of Performance Management this week. If you're in attendance, look me up. Otherwise, leave a comment. I'll see it, I promise. |
Learning From Agile
Categories:
Agile
Categories: Agile
| The Agile community has some good ideas to pass down to conventional project managers, including: Customer Engagement While it may not be possible to iterate the building of a piece of machinery, engaging and explaining to the customer in their language--no jargon--what's happening will highlight issues early. If the customer doesn't like something, the sooner you know, the better. One of the key tenets of Agile is to engage effectively with your customer and end-users, understand their needs and problems, and then deliver an effective solution. This requires regular and effective communication, openness and accountability, and a good measure of trust to support robust relationships between the project team and their key stakeholders. It's a pity so many project managers put their energies into fighting the client rather than collaborating. Going Light and Lean Those are hardly new ideas, but they've been embraced by the Agile philosophy for a good reason: They work. Lean was developed by Toyota as a manufacturing philosophy and has been adapted to many other areas. Some of its key principles--such as minimizing unnecessary movement, simplifying process and continuous improvement--have huge potential in project management. Light is focused on the minimizing unnecessary overhead. Complex plans and processes should be simplified, but only to remove excess complication, not to remove core requirements. Slimming down the project management overhead to its optimal level is probably the easiest way to free up the resources needed to engage your stakeholders more effectively and is definitely supported by the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). For more information, see Light Versus Lean -- Steps to Improve Project Efficiency from PMI's Community Post. |
Proving PMO Value: Think Thin
Categories:
PMO
Categories: PMO
| Amidst all the talk about the value of project management offices (PMOs), maybe organizations should be looking at size. "PMOs do not have to be big", says Ardi Ghorashy, PMP, PgMP, a partner with 80/20 Consulting Inc., Markham, Ontario, Canada, told me in a recent interview. "The biggest mistake I think that companies make is that they create a monster organization with a lot of overhead and they also bring all the project managers to report into a PMO. That creates a big lump sum of cost sink that becomes very visible at the executive level every year when you review your finances. Then the question will always get asked, 'What's the return value on this investment.' And project management has traditionally been very difficult and notorious at quantifying its ROI. ... By its nature, a PMO has such an encompassing impact on the organization that it affects a lot of things. You can't really measure it very easily. .... These days we say PMOs need to be implemented extremely thinly. [Thin] PMOs will demonstrate the value very, very easily." What do you think? Are "thin" PMOs the way to go? |
The Gentle Art of Managing Agile
Categories:
Agile
Categories: Agile
| A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)--Fourth Edition has nine technical knowledge areas plus the overall integration processes. By aligning these processes to the Agile delivery methodology, effective project management will enhance the probability of success. But you must recognize the processes are applied differently. Some of the areas that need an Agile approach include: Project Scope Management Traditional project management expects scope management to define the output. The final outputs in an Agile project should be defined in terms of achieved capabilities--how the capability will be achieved will be discovered along the journey. Change control will be more challenging, as is configuration management. The overall project needs a really good systems architect to keep each iteration or sprint focused on contributing to the big picture. Project Time Management In an Agile project, scheduling and workflow become closely aligned. The overall system architecture optimizes the sequence modules needed to be built in to allow progressive testing and implementation of capability. This defines the schedule. Scheduling should be at a much higher level; each sprint is likely to be a single activity of one to two weeks' duration. Project Cost Management Agile projects should be based on either a cost-reimbursable system, or the client accepts scope is a variable based on achieving the maximum improvement possible for a pre-set budget. This is a totally different philosophy to traditional project governance. Project Quality Management This is probably easier under Agile. Quality is continually assessed by the involvement of the client and the iterative release of modules to production. Project Communications Management The level of trust needed to run an Agile project is much higher than a traditional project. Effective communications in all directions are essential. Project Procurement Management Agile works in a collaborative partnering space. In the engineering world these are called alliance contracts. Traditional contracts do not support Agile delivery methods very effectively. More later.... |
