Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
How to Think Big While Managing Small Projects
|
By Kevin Korterud
It’s typical for new project managers to be assigned to a small project to build their skills. Why? Small projects have a limited value at risk, a modest budget, a shorter schedule and a smaller team. But project managers early in their career who have successfully led small projects often ask me how they can move on to leading big projects.
Small projects, to some degree, can be more difficult to lead than larger ones. You are given much less in the way of reserve budget, schedule and resources. However, big projects are not just smaller projects with larger budgets and longer schedules. They have inherent complexities relative to stakeholders, scheduling, resources and deliverables not found on small projects.
My recommendation to project managers wanting to move to larger projects is to “think big” while running smaller projects. Thinking big involves adopting, where possible, practices required for large projects.
Here are two ways project managers can think big on projects. My next post will offer two more tips.
1. Leverage Support Resources Many times, project managers running small projects attempt to perform all of the project operations activities themselves. This can include creating new work plans, calculating progress metrics, scheduling status meetings, and performing a host of supporting activities for the project.
While it may be a source of great pride to a project manager to perform these activities, they represent an opportunity cost. In other words, the project manager could instead be working on higher-value activities like stakeholder management or risk management.
Employing support resources even on small projects can save valuable time and costs. It also means the project manager doesn’t have to spend time becoming an expert in the tools and internal project operations processes. By having other people assist with the mechanics of building project plans and producing metrics, the project manager will have additional capacity for running the project.
2. Implement Quality Assurance Processes Project managers on small projects tend to become immersed in a level of detail not possible on large projects. The small project also allows for deep interaction with team members that may not be effective on large projects.
In addition, a project manager on a small project may be tempted to start serving in roles akin to a business analyst or technology designer. This can distract the project manager from actually running the project.
To keep focused on project management activities, quality assurance processes should be implemented. Phase gate reviews, deliverable peer reviews, change control processes, quality performance metrics and the definition of project acceptance criteria are all good examples of quality processes. With the implementation of these processes, project managers can focus on deliverables and outcomes without getting too deeply immersed in the details of the project.
Check back for my next post on more ways project managers can develop a big-project mindset while executing small projects.
|
Portfolio Governance—Ensuring Alignment to Strategy (Part 2: Definitions)
|
By Jen Skrabak, PMP, PfMP In the first part of this series, I introduced PMI’s new governance practice guide and reviewed basic differences between organizational (corporate) governance, portfolio management governance and portfolio governance. With that foundation, I’ll now discuss the four basic governance functions, which together can ensure alignment to strategy. Since portfolios include programs and projects by definition, those are not called out separately.
In addition, there are four basic governance domains:
For some portfolio managers, there may be confusion over governance activities versus portfolio management activities. Portfolio managers may play a governance role on certain programs and projects and provide oversight and decision-making. However, day-to-day portfolio management is distinct from governance, as shown in the diagram below:
|
Why Certifications Matter (to Me)
|
By Conrado Morlan The number of credentials offered by professional associations, hardware and software vendors and other organizations has grown sharply in the last decade. So have the number of credential holders. There’s much to be said for certifications. Many companies require a certification to advance along their career path. In addition, salary surveys show that, overall, credential holders earn more. On the other hand, some professionals and employers are not fans of certifications. They argue that many people have forged a career and reputation without them, that accelerated changes in science, technology and government regulations makes certifications hard to maintain, and that the cost and time of pursuing credentials are too high. I see the value of certifications from two perspectives: the value given by the credential itself, and the value of my contributions to the credential. The value given by the certification is the importance of the knowledge gained through earning it, the reputation of the institution or professional association that awards it, and the certification’s years on the market. The value of my contributions to the credential has to do with how it engages me to actively research trends within my profession. This process can help experienced practitioners turn into thought leaders who share their experiences leading and managing projects across the globe. In other words, the value of a certification can cascade beyond the credential holder. Knowledge is shared with other practitioners, helping them to advance in the profession. Yes, it’s true that some credential holders fall behind and don’t keep up with the latest knowledge and/or renew their credential. Other credential holders don’t follow the established code of ethics, which harms the reputation and value of the credential. But such misbehavior or lack of up-to-date knowledge isn’t the fault of the credential or the credential-awarding organization. PMI, for example, has a strict renewal process for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification that requires certification holders to earn a specific number of credits per cycle to keep the credential current. And over the 30+ years since the PMP was created, those requirements have been updated to cover market and industry demands. You may be wondering why I didn’t mention the cost of certifications, and whether they’re worth paying. To me, it’s a no-brainer. I take my professional development personally and always recall former Harvard University President Derek Bok’s quote, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” If you’re a certification holder, how do you measure its value? |
Managing for an Uncertain Future
|
By Wanda Curlee Marisa Silva, “the Lucky PM,” recently published a five-part series on portfolio management, “Thinking Outside the Triangle: Project Portfolio Foresight.” What intrigued me in the series were her thoughts about the future. She aptly points out that the project management discipline is about helping to understand the future. But the future, of course, is anything but predictable. Project, program and portfolio managers take different views of the future. The project manager is at a tactical level and focuses on moving one project to its successful conclusion, or the future. Throughout the project, the project manager attempts to keep it on track. However, Marisa stresses that the project manager needs to think beyond the golden triangle of scope, timeline and budget by assessing the external environment and how it affects the project. For example, imagine you’re a project manager leading a large, complex project. The project is key to the organization updating its antiquated systems. The vendor is about to announce a revolutionary change to the product that the project is implementing. What do you do? This affects your future and the company’s. At the next level, the program manager is orchestrating a group of projects to deliver a complex environment and a single benefit or a set of interim benefits. Again, the program manager is gazing into the future to deliver these projects and benefits. He or she is constantly re-evaluating how to maximize the benefit for the company via the set of projects. Finally, the portfolio manager takes a disparate set of projects/programs, maps them to strategy and then works magic to move the company from an “as-is” strategy state to the “to-be” strategy state envisioned by the leader of the organization. Simple, right? Absolutely not. The portfolio manager is consistently looking at how to optimize the portfolio to keep within risk tolerance. He or she also optimizes resources to drive the best value for the company. Talk about looking into a crystal ball! But according to Marisa, even this is thinking inside the triangle. The astute portfolio manager needs to have foresight. He or she should be thinking about various visions of the future and be adaptable enough to change. In other words, portfolio managers must have situational awareness of the current world and how it can change dramatically (sometimes in an instant). They must be ready to adapt to that change. To describe the enormously complex world we now reside in, two acronyms have been coined: VUCA (vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) and DANCE (dynamic, ambiguous, nonlinear, complex and emergent). As the project, program or portfolio manager, you help your organization prepare for and adapt to an uncertain future.
|
How to Motivate Your Team (Part 2)
| By Lynda Bourne In my last post, I delved into the SCARF model of cognition during a social situation. Created by Dr. David Rock, the model describes the five elements that can be a motivational reward or a threat to an individual: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness. I tackled status and certainty in part 1 and now turn to the final three elements of SCARF. Autonomy Successful autonomy feels great! You have been given a challenge and succeeded. No one likes to be micromanaged. Even in jobs that require close coordination between a number of people (think of production lines), each person—and the group as a whole—needs to feel they have some control over their destiny if you want a motivated team. The art of providing the right amount of autonomy to each team member is effective delegation. If the delegation is a stretch assignment for the person, make sure someone is available to provide coaching and support to make the learning experience enjoyable. Most people like to learn new skills but hate failing. Relatedness A feeling of relatedness is a primary reward for the brain, and an absence of relatedness is a primary threat. The feeling of relatedness is what you get when you belong to a group. Having many positive social connections (e.g., a sense of relatedness) doesn’t just increase your happiness, it can reduce your blood pressure and help you live longer. The challenge for leaders is to create an inclusive group. Just as your brain automatically classifies situations into possible rewards or threats, it does the same with people, determining, subconsciously, whether each person is a friend or foe. People you don’t know tend to be classified as foe until proven otherwise—including the new team member. Careful planning is needed to build the team initially, and then to introduce new people into a team once it has formed. How individuals relate is cultural. Some cultures and individuals are highly tactile and enjoy close physical contact—hugs and kisses on the cheek are part of the normal social processes (even in the workplace). Others expect and require more personal space. This is not a problem if everyone is from a similar background, but needs careful management if the team is made up of people from different cultures. Fairness Fairness can be more rewarding than money and is probably the only SCARF element that is almost impossible to overdo. The fact that being treated unfairly can generate a strong threat response is unlikely to be a surprise to anyone. What may be a surprise is that a sense of fairness can be significantly rewarding in and of itself. Fairness-generated emotions can run high even in mundane situations such as being short-changed at the checkout. The feeling of being taken advantage of can wreck an otherwise great day, despite the relatively insignificant money involved. The tendency to prefer equity and resist unfair outcomes is deeply rooted in people, to the extent that they are willing to sacrifice personal gain in order to prevent another person from receiving an inequitably better outcome. It’s especially easy for people or teams to get upset by small injustices when they are tired. Therefore, leaders must ensure fairness both in fact and in perception. They need to do their best to be always seen as doing the right thing by everyone. This is no easy task! Summary All the SCARF elements crop up routinely in various theories of motivation. Dr. Rock’s contribution is to tie these factors back to the most fundamental processes in the human psyche. When a leader gets the mix right, people’s pleasure drives are engaged, serotonin and other hormones are released and they feel good. If the settings are wrong, the limbic system switches to a threat response, which triggers a fight-or-flight reaction. Either reaction occurs deep in a person’s subconscious and happens far quicker than rational thought. Therefore, the leadership challenge is to create the right environment for the team. Leaders must encourage the positive reactions that appear to lead to the creation of genuine happiness—at least in so far as happiness is driven by the chemical reactions in our brains. |