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. 

By the way, I write a weekly newsletter that focuses on strategy, value, and performance. If you enjoyed this piece, you will really enjoy the weekly newsletter. Make sure you never miss it! Sign up here or send me an email at [email protected]! 

“Creative” is rarely a word used to describe project managers. Typically, they’re called “organized,” “good communicators,” etc.

A colleague of mine inspired me when he said that a good project manager is a creative one. I was confused at first, but his explanation made sense. To be able to take advantage of great opportunities as they present themselves, a good project manager needs to be creative with the scope and the budget as the project evolves.

In other words, project managers shouldn’t automatically respond: “No, we can’t, it’s out of scope or budget.” Instead, they should say: “How can we make it work?” Genius!

Every project manager is guilty of refusing a great idea when the team comes up with something out of scope or budget. It’s easy to say “no,” but it’s a lot more rewarding for you, the team and the project to find a way. That’s where you get creative!

The first solution that generally comes to mind is upselling the idea to stakeholders and asking for more funds. This could be denied, or it might not even be an option if the budget is fixed.

Another solution is to reduce another part of the scope or even remove it completely to accommodate this new idea. There are often “nice to haves” on projects, and they can be traded for better ideas. That’s where the new idea needs to be sold as more efficient than what’s being removed.

Other solutions can be outsourcing to reduce some costs, or even pulling some strings if needed. And you know what? You don’t have to do this thinking alone—give your team the chance to contribute ideas. You might find out that if some features are slightly different, you can save effort here and there, and then you are able to transfer some budget somewhere else.

The key point here is leaving “no” as a last resort, and asking yourself and the team: “How can we make it work?”

How are you creative with your projects?

Organizations exist in all shapes and sizes, which means there is a wide range of project management needs to be fulfilled by standards, processes and best practices. In order to cope with that challenge, some organizations implement project management offices (PMOs).

PMI’s Pulse of the Profession: PMO Frameworks describes types of PMOs and their characteristics. Moreover, there are plenty of books and research on this topic (see Brian Hobbs and Peter Taylor, for example). However, despite PMO’s good references, detailed implementation and well-intentioned frameworks, organizations continue to question the value of these offices.

I recently came across four multinational organizations that killed their PMOs entirely. Although I believe these decisions did more harm than good, it is unquestionable that PMOs have to reinvent themselves. That’s why I compiled a list Frequently Avoided Questions that should be answered with honesty right from the start:

1. Does your organization really need a PMO?
2. What is the unique value proposition of your PMO?
3. Do you have a business model for your PMO?
4. Who are the clients of your PMO?
5. How are you going to measure the impact of your PMO?

Answering these questions is not an easy task. In order to answer, “Yes, we need a PMO,” you have to understand organizational strategy, structure and culture. 

• Strategy
  • Organizations with a few sporadic projects are better off outsourcing project management entirely. If project management is a core activity, the organization will probably benefit from a PMO (take a look at PMI’s Pulse of the Profession: The Impact of PMOs on Strategy Implementation).
• Structure
  • Project-oriented organizations are more suitable to PMOs because support functions are designed to improve projects’ performance. Matrix organizations pose different challenges to PMOs because there is a need to balance operations and projects. Functional organizations are not PMO-friendly due to silos and specialization.
• Culture
  • Change management is critical in PMO implementations. Some organizational cultures would simply target a PMO as an “anomalous cell” to be purged. If that’s the case, don’t even try to implement a PMO.

If you understand the organizational contexts of strategy, structure and culture and your answer is still, “Yes, we need a PMO,” it is time to define what type of PMO (questions 2, 3 and 4) to create. Performance measurements and KPIs are part of answering question 5. After working through those questions, we can finally craft and execute a plan.

But I get ahead of myself: I’ll address these topics in my next few blog posts. Don’t miss them! And please, leave your comments and suggestions below.

And by the way: Visit PMI’s Knowledge Shelf to learn more about PMOs.

By Marian Haus, PMP

There are dozens of studies about project failure. (To name just three: Standish Group’s Chaos reports, PMI’s 2013 Pulse of the Profession^®: The High Cost of Low Performance and Gartner’s 2012 survey on why projects fail). There are at least as many reasons why projects fail.

Although in some cases forces external to a project can imperil its success, I am convinced that properly managing internal factors, particularly scope, is a key enabler for project success. This is because internal factors can be controlled, while external factors can merely be influenced.

Let’s take some classic reasons projects fail and tackle their root causes from a project scope management perspective.

Vague or unclear requirements and no change control—aka the never-ending scope. These are typical problems related to poor project scope management. The remedy is straightforward. Complete and clear requirements should make it to the scope; anything else poses a risk. In addition, at least a basic change management process is required to keep scope creep under control.

Lack of clear roles and responsibilities (R&R). You tailor your project team around the scope work that needs to be carried out. Because of this, you have to be clear about what your project needs to deliver. This includes product specifications, product design, implementation, integration with other related product parts, validation, delivery, etc.

If the lack of R&R clarity lies within your client organization or with an organization external to your project, then break down your project scope into specific deliverables and lay out the assumption and prerequisites for delivering them. For example, a product specification will have to be reviewed and signed off by the client, the client is expected to provide you with the validation benchmarks, etc.

A lack of R&R often results in lack of ownership and accountability of deliverables.

Underestimated timelines. This can happen especially if estimations are done based on insufficient information or when the scope is not well understood. Estimates are consequently rough, based on previous experience, approximations and assumptions. If conditions are changing during the project lifecycle, this can lead to time or budget overruns.

Unclear and/or unrealistic expectations. This is often related to the project scope. Your project team might be unclear about what it is supposed to deliver or what level of quality and maturity your deliverable will have to pass to meet the acceptance criteria. In other cases, the team might be unclear on how the delivery of your project scope will impact the receiving organization.

Project complexity. This relates mainly to the failure to break down a large scope into more manageable pieces and deliverables. If the list of deliverables is not clear, the sequence in which these are to be produced will not be determined. If the deliverables’ relation to each other isn’t clear, then team members will just be busy delivering something, sometime, for some level of effort. This leads to missing the project goal or ending up with time or budget overruns.

A well-understood and executed scope brings you a huge step closer to finishing your project successfully.

What is your experience with managing project scopes? What key factors, other than scope, do you see as enablers for project success?

Stacy Allison on stage at congress in Orlando, Florida, USA on Tuesday.

By Cyndee Miller

I will never be a mountain climber. If forced, I will do some time on the rowing machine at the gym — but that’s usually followed by a big glass of wine and a Netflix binge. Still, I have the utmost respect for Stacy Allison, the first U.S. woman to summit Mt. Everest. And I’m not alone. She managed to keep a roomful of project practitioners riveted at this year’s closing congress keynote.

What a story. On her first attempt, she and her team spent days huddling in a tiny snow cave to escape a brutal storm, only to be forced back not far from the summit. Now, that’s got to be tough to accept. But it’s something most project or program managers can certainly understand.

“How many of you hold onto a project that’s no longer serving the strategic purpose  of your organization? Because you have so much invested you can’t let go. … At some point you have to cut your losses and move forward,” she said.

The following year, Allison doubled down on her goal and came back with her team, this time via Nepal rather than Tibet. Again, that kind of laser focus — even in the face of naysayers — is something congress-goers know a thing or two about.

“If you don’t have a personal vision, if you don’t believe in your project and the transformational change that it will bring to your organization,” she said, then negativity will bring you down every single time.

As with most projects, there were complications and unexpected events. But after adopting a team-first, solution-focused mentality, Allison made it to the top.

“When you’re not worried about your own success, it frees you up to do the job you need to do at any given time.”

Her bottom line was all about risk — a risk-benefit analysis, actually.

“No matter what our objectives are in this life, personally and professionally, they boil down to what we’re willing to risk. What are you willing to risk, and what’s the benefit to that risk?”

I still have absolutely zero intention of taking up mountain climbing, but Allison has good advice. Everyone needs to take risks. Just make sure you get something out of it.

And she seemed confident project managers would do just that: “The world is going to be changed by each and every one of you.”

I for one can’t wait to hear all about it. See you at next year’s North American congress in San Diego, California, USA.