Voices on Project Management

By Conrado Morlan

We’re all novices when we start out as project managers. That’s okay. The key is to learn from your missteps.

As a young project manager in Mexico, I used to struggle with resource planning. Like many other neophyte project managers, I wanted to make sure that all the tasks in my work breakdown structure would have the required resources assigned to them by name.

The challenge was that the resources were not my direct reports. I had no control over their schedules. 

My first approach at resolving this problem was to meet with the appropriate resource managers to review all the breakdown structure tasks and available resources, assign resources’ names, and reserve the resources for my project.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? I would get the needed resources for my project, while helping managers keep their resources busy. Then I discovered I hadn’t considered all the other projects competing for the same resources. Not to mention all the project intra-dependencies.

I kept trying hard to build a perfect project plan (full of names attached to specific tasks) without success until I was assigned to a high-visibility project that was part of a strategic initiative. The initiative was led by an experienced project manager from the organization’s headquarters in the United States.

I didn’t want my struggles with resource planning to cause me to fail in such a high-visibility setting. So during my first meeting with the American project manager, I let him know about my struggle and asked for advice.

He was glad I brought my challenge to his attention, recalling that earlier in his career he faced the same challenge. His solution: the “Chinese army approach” to resource planning.

Because resource planning can pose such a huge roadblock to many project managers, the Chinese army approach assumes an abundance of resources.

Our conversation went like this:

American project manager: How many soldiers does the Chinese army have?

             Me: Millions.

American project manager: Right. The Chinese army has unlimited resources available to the commander in chief. Applying this approach, assume you have unlimited resources with the right skills that can be assigned to the different roles in your project. The resource planning stage is too early to be worrying about names.

Since then, I’ve followed the Chinese army approach, identifying the necessary resources for the early stages of the project—and their availability—during the project approval process.

On several occasions, I found that the roles could not be filled with internal resources because of a lack of required skills or because the resources with the right skills were in high demand. So I had to source from a contractor.

While working with resource managers and external sources, I found the need to acquire and master communication and negotiation skills. That helped me to get the best resources, while also sometimes allowing other projects to have the resource I was pursuing. All that truly mattered was that my projects were able to produce the expected results tied to organizational business goals.

What’s the most important thing about project management you now know that you didn’t know when you began your career?

By Christian Bisson, PMP

Agile approaches allow for iterative and flexible avenues to develop software. (It can be used in other fields, of course; I work in the software world.) When used properly, it can be an efficient way to adapt to changes in requirements and scope, and provide stakeholders with an up-to-date and ongoing list of deliverables to review.

Unfortunately, it’s a misunderstood approach that leaves many of us wondering if they’re really working in agile ways. Here are a few misconceptions I’ve encountered throughout the years.

Things just change names

My favorite misconception of agile is that terms suddenly need new names.

Meetings become “scrums” or “daily scrums”—even though the team is just having a regular meeting. A “week” becomes a “sprint”—even though there is no deliverable/release at the end.

Going faster is agile

Project managers sometimes “crash” a schedule to speed up project deliveries, knowing that it uses more budget in order to meet a deadline. Sometimes “crashing” is confused with “agile,” which is thought to deliver projects sooner and cheaper by having everyone start their work sooner than they would have in a traditional waterfall approach.

Having people start sooner and risk rework is still crashing even if the practice is called “agile.”

Stakeholders don’t have to be involved

Stakeholder involvement is a critical part of the agile approach. It requires them to be available and in constant discussion with the team. This prevents surprises and allows constant feedback.

The misconception I see sometimes is that a team can work “full agile,” with stakeholders only involved when they receive assets and go through their typical review cycles.

We’ll just “try” agile

Agile is not about trying out a new software. It’s a culture, and it involves everyone from stakeholders to the team. Some believe that a few people can “try agile” on a project and see how it goes, even though none of them worked in an agile environment before.

Scope and cost can be fixed

Although agile could work with a fixed cost, it is quite the trap. Agile assumes that what will be delivered is the work that the team was able to deliver in a set amount of sprints, and each sprint will cost a certain amount based on the team’s size (among other things).

This means that if a feature took twice the amount of time estimated because it was decided to create something a bit more complex, then another feature might be removed or budget will be added to compensate. However, if you keep the budget the same but still expect to deliver everything planned on day one, then this more complex feature is simply scope creep.

These are just a few examples of agile misconceptions. My bottom line: When I’m told stakeholders want to use “the agile approach,” I make sure to ask for a definition of agile.

Have you encountered other agile misconceptions? Share them below!

Innovation is a natural skill in human beings—that’s how we moved from the Stone Age to the Space Age. The corporate world, however, seems like it’s in a different universe, where everyone wants innovation but appears to be racing to kill it. Here are a few easy-to-use tricks for you to join the race.

1. Focus on the quarter

Make sure you’re not allowing your team to think beyond a quarter. Quarterly results are dear to CEOs. So only focus on the next quarterly result and make sure everyone on your team does too.  

2. Be Impatient

Patience is a weapon of lethargic people. You should never allow it to develop in your team. Any project or idea that takes time to materialize should not be your cup of tea. Let your team members continue to focus on your short-term goals.

3. Keep the team busy

You should be a very strict taskmaster. Check what time your team comes in and leaves for the day, and all the activities they do in between to ensure they are continuously busy in day-to-day activities. Keep their task list overflowing so that no room is left for any free time or “blue sky” thinking.

4. Maintain order

You should lay down strict processes and not allow any deviation at any cost. Teams must follow the process even if it is not required. You never know how a simple deviation could turn out to be an innovation. Explain to your team that doing things differently is the job of other teams!

5. Stay safe

Just in case the above suggestions do not impress you enough, and some little spark in the corner of your heart wants to allow a deviation, let me warn you—they all are full of risks. Risks mean uncertainty that can put your project in trouble or jeopardize your dearest short-term goals. They can even hit your reputation of consistently delivering linear results. You should play it safe by taking the routine paths already proven by others.

6. Don’t listen

Listening will be seriously injurious. If anyone comes to you suggesting a solution to a problem or a new way of doing something, don’t listen. Sometimes, you may be tempted, especially if someone’s sharing success stories. But ignore it all, lest innovation seeps in. If anyone suggests any idea, reject it immediately, giving a very routine reason, such as “it will not work in our project.” You should not give any new reason, otherwise it will appear that you are doing some innovation.

7. Reward only the million-dollar idea

Rewards are precious and should be given to the best of the best people. If a stubborn team member implements a good idea despite all your efforts, immediately point out a flaw in it, ignoring everything else. If this person meets some early-stage failure, that’s an opportunity for you to explain to the team why they should not try new things. Thoughts of rewarding someone should not even occur to you until the idea is recognized by some external agency.

I’m being facetious, of course. My point is that breakthrough innovations are not harder in practice than many seem to think—but our day-to-day responsibilities and deadlines make it hard to step back and change thinking.

What do you think are the most common practices that prevent innovative thinking? How can they be avoided? Please share your thoughts in a comment below.

In recent years, agile approaches have rapidly gained ground in many parts of the world—but not everywhere. Some areas of Asia, including where I live (Taiwan), have generally speaking not yet embraced agile ideas and practices, despite their value and potential in the region. For this reason, I’ve been working to promote the adoption of agile approaches.

What is agile? It means being flexible and able to quickly adapt to unpredictability. Agile approaches are useful where the environment is constantly changing, where requirements are not fixed or where stakeholders face constant uncertainty.

Agile is typically used in software development, but it’s becoming more suitable in any organization facing rapid changes. Developed over 20 years, agile practices focus on customer value and emphasizing collaboration.

My work has involved training Agile Certified Professionals (PMI-ACP)^®, organizing agile communities, promoting agile practices and reporting on the successful use of agile. I have a digital magazine, “PM-Mag ,” with over 100,000 readers across the Chinese-speaking world. Two of the editors have earned the PMI-ACP^® credential.

Through my company, I ‘ve also commissioned reports and articles about the use of agile to generate its acceptance and support. I’ve also taken advantage of other media (such as radio and YouTube videos) to raise awareness of agile in the project management world. And then there are other more novel approaches—like an ACP song played at events and before speeches. I introduced a “Hybrid PM” badge that I award to project managers I see taking up agile ideas.

In the last year alone, I trained 149 PMI-ACPs, accounting for nearly 50 percent of the PMI-ACPs currently working in Taiwan.

It was my honor to win the 2015 Agile Award for Person Who Has Done the Most to Promote Agile. The competition was strong, and I’m very humbled by this recognition.

Currently in their sixth year, The Agile Awards are organized by business management consultancy Yoh to recognize businesses, organizations and individuals who actively promote knowledge of agile, as well as its proper application and development. In the past, the awards have been dominated by Europeans and Americans.

I hope that my recognition will spur more international recognition of agile methods in project management, encouraging the further development of agile in Asia and allowing European professionals to understand agile application and development throughout Asia.

To improve the acceptance of agile even more, I encourage those who have already gained their PMP to learn from agile, especially the concepts of incremental delivery, adding business value and embracing change. These new ways of running businesses can improve the competitiveness of small to medium-sized businesses. The added value is too great to ignore.

by Dave Wakeman

In my posts from the last few months, I’ve been discussing strategy and how you can make yourself a more strategic project manager. A lot of project managers still struggle with this idea.

One source of this struggle seems to be uncertainty about what strategy means in relation to being a project manager and part of a larger organization.

First, let’s start with a simple definition of strategy: a plan of attack designed to achieve a major goal. So where does that apply to project managers? Pretty much everywhere.  Here are three ways you can look at it.

1. Think from the end backward, not from the start forward.

A few months back, I wrote about managing for the right outcomes. And that means starting with the end in mind. In being a strategic project manager, at its simplest, you are really just starting out by planning your project with the end in mind. Considering that we are all supposed to begin our projects with a planning phase, it makes sense to not just plan, but plan with the intention of fitting everything into a commonly focused outcome.

Think about it like this: The planning process is designed to make sure that you have the time and resources available for your project and that you know where you are going. In being strategic, you just need to make sure you always make your decisions with the end in mind.

2. Don’t become wedded to one course of action.

What I’ve seen in working with organizations around the globe is that it’s very easy to become wedded to one course of action. That can’t be your position if you want to work strategically.

When you’re approaching tasks and challenges and the inevitable same old ideas and solutions come up, ask simple questions: “What are our options here?” “Is there a different way of approaching this?”

All you’re looking for is opening up your actions to different avenues for success.

3. Lovingly steal from everything around you.

I’m not advocating a life of crime, but one thing you want to do is start stealing ideas from the businesses around you.

This is important because in too many cases, we become locked into one idea, one way of thinking or ways that projects have always been done. This is especially true in industries that have always been closely associated with project management, like construction and IT.

How should you go about stealing ideas that may be helpful to your projects?

To use a personal example, I found a use for my project management background in politics. In politics, many titles include “strategist” or “manager” or something that elicits the idea of project management and structure. But due to the intense nature and timeframes of a political campaign, most of that planning and structure is quickly tossed out of the window.

In my work in politics, I introduced the role of a traditional project manager and applied that framework to every aspect of the campaign and process. Essentially, I added a layer of change management and monitoring foreign to many in the industry.

Now think about what you can learn from outside your industry. Can you discover a management tactic from a TV show? Or is there a parallel in another industry that gives you a useful piece of insight?

Am I off base or what? Let me know below! 

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]!