Voices on Project Management

In July 2013, a panda was born at the Taipei Zoo in Taiwan, which was undertaking its first-ever panda breeding project. While the staff was busy looking after the mother, Yuan Yuan, and the cub, Yuan Zhai, they also had another important task: making sure people heard the good news.

This is part of an emerging necessity for conservation efforts—combining public interest in zoos’ work with information on what still threatens the survival of species in the wild. In the past three years, the Taipei city government and the Taipei Zoo have been mastering this skill.

The tasks of caring for the pandas and promoting conservation required a skill set that might sound surprisingly familiar to project practitioners: planning, risk management, problem-solving, stakeholder management and multiple resource application.

The team faced its first unexpected challenge just six hours after the birth: Yuan Zhai suffered a serious leg wound. The staff immediately separated the cub from the mother and placed Yuan Zhai in an incubator.

Just as importantly, they gave Yuan Yuan a panda cub doll. This had been prepared in case of such an eventuality. Sounds from Yuan Zhai were transmitted to a speaker in the doll’s stomach so Yuan Yuan could continue to hear her cub's voice. The team hoped that the cub’s cries and happier noises would keep Yuan Yuan interested in the fate of the doll—and her real daughter.

The main tasks for the cub’s caretakers included keeping her warm, monitoring her temperature, treating the injury and recording her growth. The mother required not just feeding, but also milking, massaging and postnatal care.

The small, vulnerable, cute cub attracted huge attention. Initially she drew 200,000 daily visits to the Taipei Zoo’s website, a number that eventually rose to 2 million.

Yuan Zhai was successfully returned to her mother when the leg injury healed. With this success, the Taipei city government realized it could exploit immense public interest for its own conservation projects. It put together a campaign that linked the panda breeding project to local conservation and ecology projects.

In this way, two pandas could be used to “speak” on behalf of all wildlife. This is what environmental activists had been campaigning for: a holistic, balanced picture of wildlife conservation, not just a narrow focus on one species.

By Wanda Curlee

Situation awareness is taught to many professionals, including pilots, firefighters, air traffic controllers and nuclear reactor personnel. This useful skill has been slow to cross over into the business world, however, though it is making strides.

Situation awareness is the ability to know what’s going on in a complex, dynamic environment. This skill is valuable in project management because a practitioner:

·       Needs to evaluate multiple goals simultaneously

·       Needs to determine the importance of tasks and goals, and not be distracted by the less important ones

·       Needs to know that when team members are under stress, negative consequences may occur, resulting in poor outcomes

Let’s look at how situation awareness can affect projects, programs and portfolios.

I was once on a project that was implementing a new technology. The project manager did not know how to evaluate all the tasks that were happening at one time. Poor decisions were made because the practitioner wasn’t aware of which tasks and goals were important and which were distracting.

As the project continued and lessons learned began to be gathered, the project manager started to gain situational awareness and could share this knowledge with others.

At the program level, intra-dependencies and benefits realization are always on the mind of the program manager. He or she must understand the environment within the organization (such as the politics and the needs of strategic stakeholders) and the industry, as well as other external factors.

Knowing who has the power to do (or approve) different things can help you implement a successful program. The program sponsor can help you get the lay of the land. Thoroughly understanding a country’s laws as they relate to the program and knowing the specific standards for your program and industry are part of developing a better situational awareness.

Again, lessons learned and asking questions of subject matter experts can help. As a program manager, you may have to review lessons learned from similar types of projects to give you an understanding of which tasks or goals are most critical, and which may be just a distraction.

Finally, a portfolio manager should help leadership and project/program managers improve their situation awareness. This means the portfolio manager needs to require a review of lessons learned on a quarterly basis and establish metrics (normally tracked monthly) to look for strategic trends.

Here are some questions portfolio managers can ask to improve the organization’s situational awareness:

·       Is there a process or procedure hindering advancements of programs or projects?

·       Is the tool set correct?

·       Are certain projects or programs failing in some industries but blossoming in others?

·       Will there be a gap in resources?

·       Will there be a gap in resources with the correct skill set?

·       Is it time to re-evaluate a technology or product where sales are dwindling?

Most people in project management have some awareness of their situation.

What sets great project leaders apart is they’ve honed their situational skill set. 

By Lynda Bourne

The fundamental reason any organization chooses to undertake projects and programs is to realize or create value for some or all of its stakeholders.

Project managers are key people in this overall value chain; they create the outputs that enable the organization to change. If the project’s deliverables are used, the intended outcomes should be achieved and benefits realized. Finally, if the benefits support the organization’s strategy, value is created.

But what is value, and how can it be assessed and measured?

For instance, if a charity successfully completes a fundraising project to upgrade its mobile soup kitchen, it is able to deliver more meals to more homeless people. But this increases weekly operating costs (there is a negative cash flow), and the value proposition of more disadvantaged people getting a hot meal in the evening is nearly impossible to quantify in financial terms.

In other words, value has been created, but it is not measurable in terms of financial returns. Therefore, the concept of benefits should be expanded to include both financial benefits and other stakeholder requirements. 

Benefits, Costs and Value

A useful definition of value is the ratio between the satisfaction of needs (benefits, expectations and requirements), which may be tangible or intangible, and the use of resources (money, people, time, energy and materials), which will normally be definable in terms of cost.

V (value) ∝B (benefits) / $(cost)

However, the units of measure are often unrelated, so the equation is shown as a proportionality rather than equality—it’s difficult to directly align the cost of the mobile kitchen and its supplies against full stomachs and potentially the increased status of the charity.

Managing the overall concept of value creation to maximize value for the organization’s stakeholders requires a coordinated approach by the whole organization. The key elements of such an approach are:

·        A value-oriented strategy

·        Portfolio management to select the most valuable projects and programs for the organization to undertake. Even in commercial businesses, this requires ways of assessing total value, not just financial returns.

·        Project managers need to keep in mind maximizing benefits realization and value creation when making project decisions.

·        The organization’s change management needs to be effective and aligned to ensure the intended benefits are actually realized.

·        The organization’s governance systems need to require management to report on the final outcomes in terms of the total value realized from the original decision to invest in a project or program.

This framework is relatively easy to describe; the difficult issue is creating a language that describes value from the perspective of the organization and its stakeholders.

For the charity, value may be defined as serving more meals cost-effectively, or reaching more people in need or being seen as the leading soup kitchen in the area (i.e., achieving elevated prestige). Different concepts of what is valuable can shift the focus of both the project and the way the project’s deliverables are used.

In commercial situations, the challenge is deciding how much value is attached to options such as:

·        A mining project spending additional resources on environmental protection in excess of the minimum required by law to achieve a better outcome

·        A project expending resources to enhance stakeholder engagement efforts

·        A project manager spending budget on clerical support to help implement project management processes more effectively

Which options are chosen will always be based on the specific context of the organization, its ethics and culture. What matters is making sure the understanding of value is consistent and agreed to by the organization’s governors and key stakeholders, and incorporated into portfolio, project and change management practices.

Are you discussing real value with your stakeholders?

Project managers work hard to keep stakeholders informed. Nonetheless, sometimes when a stakeholder asks about the status of a project, he or she gets the impression that a project manager is hiding something or being less than honest.

Here are three circumstances where stakeholders may get this feeling, and how you as the project manager can handle them to ensure you’re viewed as trustworthy.

1. You can’t disclose certain information or documents. On our projects, we become the caretaker of all information and documents, including some that can be extremely sensitive. Stakeholders might request the home phone number of a team member, the contingency target of a budget or other confidential information. In some cases, your organization may require a security clearance or other confidentiality measures.

In this sort of scenario, it’s appropriate for a project manager to say, “Let me check on disclosure agreements and provide allowable information."

2. You’re the bearer of bad news. Project managers sometimes must communicate negative issues, risks or unforeseen events to stakeholders. The risk here is that a stakeholder might believe the project manager had prior knowledge of the problem, or even allowed the problem to fester as a way of extracting additional funds for the project.

To avoid a “shoot the messenger” scenario, it’s a good idea to not blame someone for a problem. A better tactic here may be to arrange a discussion on the topic with key decision-makers. This could lead to a satisfactory acceptance or a suitable compromise.

3. You made an error. You may have inadvertently distributed a report with wrong information. Mistakes happen. As soon as possible, apologize and acknowledge that the wrong information was given.

Our reputations as project managers depend on us being creditable and trustworthy. We must always be honest and remain professional and polite, no matter what the concerns of a stakeholder are.

How do you handle stakeholders who question the truthfulness of a project’s status?

One of the most valuable project management lessons I ever learned in my professional life is: Key words at key moments are the key to success. Despite the foundational importance of social and emotional awareness, this “underlying competency” remains unknown to a lot of managers and leaders.

Without this awareness, how can they succeed?

The truth is that most of them don’t thrive. I’ve worked with professionals at all organizational levels, from the operational floors to the boards of directors. They are usually equipped with more knowledge than they need to effectively engage and involve stakeholders.

Nevertheless, I witness stakeholder management disasters every day. Unfortunately, weak sponsorship, untruthful partnership, empty leadership and irresponsible citizenship are the norm, not the exception.

Allay Stakeholders’ Fears

I’ve been researching stakeholder management and related topics for years to cope with my daily struggles as a project management practitioner and consultant. (I recently delivered a webinar on the subject that you can watch here.)

While compiling tools and techniques, developing frameworks and applying theoretical knowledge in pragmatic ways, I keep coming back to what has become my stakeholder management mantra: Key words at key moments are the key to success.

Technical and managerial knowledge are must-haves for project success, but so are underlying competencies—what are known as soft skills.

Here’s an illustration. Suppose you are in a hospital waiting to undergo surgery. The doctor enters the room, does his job successfully, and then leaves you by yourself without saying a word. How would you feel? Even if the doctor were highly skilled, you would feel disappointed, right?

Caregivers and medical professionals know the importance of a warm reception and voice-guided gestures. Showing that you care is even more important than caring about your patients.

So here’s a better course of action: First, announce what you are going to do and explain why. Then, do what you have to do, explaining details during the action as much as possible. Finally, announce that you are done and explain the results.

Stakeholders are afraid of change. Anxiety boosted by a lack of the right kind of communication creates huge misunderstandings. That is why—yes, let’s say it again—key words at key moments are the key to success.

How about your projects? Do you plan the type and timing of communications to facilitate change management initiatives?