Voices on Project Management

By Cyndee Miller

Greta Thunberg isn’t messing around. Joining forces with three other young climate change activists, she called on political leaders last week to stop talking and actually do something: “Our current system is not ‘broken’—the system is doing exactly what it’s supposed and designed to be doing. It can no longer be ‘fixed.’ We need a new system.”

For many people, taking on such massive issues can be overwhelming. And even the mighty Thunberg admits to Reuters she was “very worried” when she first began. “But when I started doing something, then there came hope from that. Because hope comes from action.”

Hope comes from projects.

Thunberg is part of a new generation of leaders who see that potential—and are using it to transform and define the future. Unflinching in the face of change. Naturally collaborative. Digitally fluent. Deeply committed to social good. Constantly learning.

This is the PMI Future 50. And they’re coming in with their own POV on building a better workplace—and a better world. There’s architecture activist Pascale Sablan, determined to right the social injustices embedded in design. Alagesan Hanippuya, PMP, is forging a fintech future in Southeast Asia. Tiago Chaves Oliveira, PMP, is pushing for more creativity and innovation in Brazil’s government. Gregory Daniels, PMP, is helping Zoom manage a 30-fold traffic surge amid the COVID-19 crisis. And there’s Thunberg, too.

They’re all putting their own stamp on the future of work and how projects get done. Deloitte reports nearly half of millennials and Gen Zers prioritize making a positive impact on society, for instance. And 32 percent of Gen Zers say they’re motivated to work harder and stay longer at a company if they have a supportive manager, per The Workforce Institute. It’s common enough advice for leaders, but this new cohort is determined to put it into action. “We need to take care of people. Just asking for results will not work. We also need to try to understand their needs and their perspectives and to encourage each person to ask critical questions,” says Gabriel Costa Caldas, director of operations at GPjr, Brasília, Brazil.

This also means a shift in the most in-demand skills. “I would expect big-picture thinking, creativity and empathy to play an even bigger role in successful project management,” says Miishe Addy, CEO of Jetstream Africa, Tema, Ghana.

Read more about the youthquake and meet all the Future 50 leaders in a special issue of PM Network^® and in a series of videos and digital exclusives. (Pro tip: This is a multimedia affair to be enjoyed. Flipping through the pages of the magazine is a grand experience where you can take in everything and everyone at once, along with loads of pretty pictures. Check out the digital profiles and you’ll find most have Q&As at the end with some content that doesn’t appear in the magazine. And the videos let you see and hear these leaders in action.)

How is the next generation of leaders transforming your organizations and industries? And who gives you the most hope for the future? Fill me in in the comments.

By Lynda Bourne

In my last post, The Real Estimating Challenge Isn’t Calculating the Cost, I suggested that calculating a project cost estimate is the easy bit. Having the estimate accepted by either a client or your management—or both—and then delivering your project on budget is far more difficult. In this post, I want to look at the challenge of delivering on budget.

Knowing what a project is likely to cost is important from every perspective: personal, professional and organizational. But developing a realistic and achievable cost estimate has two components: first you develop the baseline estimate, then you need to develop a realistic contingency. Most people do step one; very few even think of step two.

The baseline estimate should be realistic, and there are many valid approaches to creating one. But what comes next?

If you simply stop at the net cost estimate based on expected resource usage and known cost rates, your project will inevitably overrun its budget. There are no allowances for risks, which will inevitably arise during the course of the work. No project is ever risk-free.

Risks are uncertainties that matter. From a cost perspective this includes both variability in estimates and performance, and uncertain events that may or may not occur.

Managing Variability

Variability is inevitable. The work might be completed quicker or slower than planned, people might change and cost more or less per hour, etc. The only certainty is that the actual cost outcome will vary from the estimate.

The key question is: by how much? Use past performance as a guide to size this part of the contingency appropriately.

Managing Uncertain Events

This type of uncertainty is the realm of the risk register and its list of identifiable uncertainties, overlaid by other risk events that were not foreseen. These are the known unknowns and unknown unknowns of risk management.

This type of risk can be mitigated or reduced by good practice, but neither of the unknowns can be eliminated entirely. Residual risks always remain. The important question is: How do you compensate for the remaining risks in your business case or cost estimate?

One approach is to pad the estimate and hide the costs within the overall price. The problem with this approach was identified by Eliyahu Goldratt in Critical Chain (1997). He stated that when the contingencies are hidden, they tend to get absorbed by the work and are generally larger than needed. This is not a good way of working. For example, in developing software every test may fail, but only some will identify bugs that need fixing. Padding every test with some allowance for failures hides the money, and it is likely to get used anyway to cover all sorts of other events. 

The better approach is to price each test on the assumption that the test will pass, and then create a contingency for bug fixes. This allows the cost of rectification to be seen, monitored and controlled independent of the costs associated with testing. If the number of bugs is too high, this becomes obvious and allows management to consider ways to improve processes.

Managing Contingencies

Calculating the amount of money needed to adequately cover the risk exposure of the project is complex. It requires expertise. But once this has been done, the values calculated should be divided into two distinct parts:

1. The project contingency, held within the project budget to compensate for variability and other known unknowns that will occur to a greater or lesser extent. The project manager should be responsible for looking after the expenditure of this money but is expected to report to senior management on each use.
2. The management reserve, held outside of the project budget for use by senior management to offset the effects of unknown unknowns.

These are not slush funds. They are calculated and held for explicit events that may occur and the use of the funds is constrained, controlled and reported on throughout the life of the project.

Summary

Developing a sensible level of contingency and reserve is a complex process and beyond the scope of this article. The message is simple, though: If you do not include contingencies, you will overrun your project budget!

The bigger challenge is to convince management to accept the need for a properly evaluated contingency in every project. Achieving this requires the solutions outlined in my last post, linked to a concerted program of support from both the organization’s PMO and its portfolio management team.

The challenge is not insurmountable. Large parts of the U.S. government under the auspices of the Government Accountability Office are mandating this approach, and the U.K. treasury has its Green Book. Your challenge is to inspire similar attitudes within your organization’s senior leadership team.

How does your project team develop realistic contingency plans?

By Yasmina Khelifi, PMP, PMI-ACP

I first experienced the transformational impact of diversity during a six-month internship in Japan in 2000. The experience made me question every action and learned behavior I had previously made without a thought: how to greet people, how to make a request, how to thank others, how to celebrate, how to apologize and, more importantly, how to collaborate. It opened the door to a stunning new world.

Since then, I’ve reveled in managing projects in an international environment. Diversity on project teams is an invaluable source of innovation and growth for individuals—as well as for projects.

Personal Benefits of Diversity

Throughout my career, I’ve been afforded the opportunity to work in diverse and inclusive environments. And I've learned so much as a result.

First, these experiences taught me humility: By delivering projects in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), I’ve worked with people who speak multiple languages and learned how to collaborate with people from different cultures, ethnicities and backgrounds. These experiences also helped me question the status quo: For example, in my technical field in France, few of my colleagues are female, while most of my Chinese colleagues are female engineers.

My sense of empathy was reinforced: Technical or political constraints can disrupt projects, but despite it all, the teams worked hard to meet their goals. These experiences also ignited my curiosity and encouraged me to broaden my views. I learned to ask open-ended (non-judgmental) questions and to fight against biases.

Surprisingly, interacting with people in other cultural environments also pushed me to better understand my own culture and myself. This introspective journey forced me to step back and grow into a more dynamic, informed and empathetic project leader.

Project Benefits of Diversity

Diversity isn’t just about ethnic or cultural differences—it also means embracing people with varying ages, gender identities, professional backgrounds and levels of experience.

For example, when I first began to work as a project manager, I had a team member close to retirement. His role was instrumental in the team: He calmly listened to our issues and acted like a mentor, sharing his experiences to help guide our decisions.

Conversely, I wanted to improve a project status, but I did not know how. I talked to a younger colleague, and he offered to review it. I surprisingly discovered he was proficient in designing documents.

A few years ago, I worked on a very diverse team, as far as background and experiences are concerned. They were not engineers; some had marketing backgrounds, others were not college graduates, one studied history and managed the supply chain.

During our working sessions, we often strongly disagreed and faced various misunderstandings. But I cherish these projects, because we worked collaboratively to reach a compromise, despite our differences. It also fostered a feeling of belonging and true team collaboration.

Diverse project teams force you to explore and adopt new ways of working. When I began to work in MEA, I discovered new digital communication tools that allowed me to forge a bond with my team and deliver project information to remote team members.

Being inclusive brings fresh perspectives that enhance creativity and spark innovation. It also keeps your project team from falling into a rut of the same old ideas and solutions.

Don’t Fall into the Diversity Trap

Let’s be clear about the diversity business case. Hiring someone only for the sake of diversity is counterproductive.

When I was hired as a SIM Delivery Manager for MEA, a new colleague assumed it was because I speak Arabic. Unbeknownst to them, I cannot speak Arabic. But I do understand project management. Reducing my experiences and knowledge to a cultural fit was demeaning and hurtful.

Undoubtedly, knowing a language and a culture helps to build trusting relationships and offers a competitive edge in our global environment. But this cannot make up for a lack of project management skills.

Inclusion must have a rational and objective basis:

• What will the project team gain?
• How will it bring outstanding outcomes to the project?
• What will the new hire gain?

The desire to boost public image or sway public opinion to appear open-minded and tolerant will not add value. Instead, work to embrace qualified individuals who bring something fresh to your team.

How do you foster and celebrate diversity within your project team?

By Jorge Valdés Garciatorres, PMP

"There is nothing so practical as a good theory." 

—Kurt Lewin

Every project will lead, eventually, to a big or small transformation. However, the PMBOK^® Guide doesn’t outline the processes needed to prepare an organization for the transformation that will come with the project. 

Organizational development, created by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s, is the discipline that covers dealing with organizational transformation. In my opinion, Lewin, a natural agile thinker, was ahead of his time. If you review his intervention approach known as “action research,” which is iterative and based in retrospectives to learn and improve, you’ll see why.

Characteristics of a Successful Transformation

Organizations are open, complex and dynamic systems. Intervening within a company to transform it in any way is an adventure that should be addressed from a systemic view. 

It is no secret that the transformation journey can be painful and even traumatic for some. However, if organizations want to maintain relevance, it is crucial to build resilience into their DNA. With the right approach, change and transformation can become not only a reality, but an important development opportunity for employees and organizations. 

Here, based on my empirical experience, I will outline elements that must be present to enable transformation and the minimum systems that must be addressed to increase the probability of success. 

Transformational Elements

In my experience, the transformation should have, at a minimum, the following five elements: 

1. Top-level sponsorship. Management must offer the appropriate support and sponsorship of the transformation, providing the vision or purpose of the transformation and bringing collaborators into it. 
    
2. Big ideas. As a consequence of top-level buy-in, you will typically have the end goal in mind, and you’ll need to establish a path forward. Big ideas will give direction and inspiration to the collaborators and help them to better visualize what lies at the end of the path. 
    
3. An involved team. Those who will lead and participate in the project and those who will be impacted by the change need to be considered. This could be addressed from the very beginning during the information gathering and interpretation of such information. These points of view must be taken into account from the verbalization of the opportunities or problems, to the configuration of a viable and valuable solution. Even more, you have to build a social fabric that helps enable the project. You need to lean on project internal influencers (agents of change) who will exercise their leadership for the benefit of the project. 
    
4. Identified challenges and viable solutions. Around every process of transformation there is a force field, which Lewin called driving forces and restraining forces. To bring about change, these forces must be brought into imbalance so that the driving forces are strengthened and the restrictive forces are weakened. This, in addition to the energy put into the transformation, will help the team approach the finish line more efficiently. 
    
5. Moderated action. Limit the implementation efforts so that you are always acting at a high-impact, low-complexity level. This ensures the delivery of usable results for the organization, minimizing deviations and risks. In addition, having low-complexity implementations generates a positive inertia towards the change process. Lewin’s action research approach serves as a foundation for this element. 

Subsystems to Address

The change effort should be addressed in a balanced way with a systemic approach. To achieve this, I usually use the model outlined by Patrick Williams, which comprises four subsystems: 

1. The environment subsystem: This represents the influence that the external environment exerts on the organization, the organizational context itself and the strategic focus of competition. When faced with a transformation, the environment must be evaluated to identify which aspects must be taken care of. 
    
2. The management subsystem: This subsystem includes the vision, the beliefs, the leadership style, the way decisions are made, the way communication flows, the risk appetite of the organization and the level of commitment that management has with the transformation process.
    
3. The technical-work subsystem: This includes aspects such as information technology, work models, toolkits, methodologies, machinery, processes, formulas, equipment, structure, and roles and responsibilities, all of which are factors that can favor or inhibit the changes that are to be implemented. 
    
4. The human-social subsystem: This represents the people who have skills, knowledge, competences, motivation, needs, attitudes, commitment and expectations, as well as the interactions among these people, how they deal with conflict and how they communicate to find the best path of action. 

In my experience, using the above elements—plus acting small by using the low-complexity/high-impact approach—will put you in a better position to tackle the challenges of your transformation journey, with an agile approach. 

What about you? How are you managing the transformation that comes with your project?

By Emily Luijbregts

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell explains that you need 10,000 hours to master any skill. That equates to several years of work and development.

But even dedicating smaller amounts of time can lead to progress. If I told you that you could become a better project manager within 100 days, would you believe me?

I’ve been spending a lot of time during the pandemic thinking about professional development and how we can become better project management professionals in every aspect of our careers.

When I started on this journey myself, I decided to take a look at my leadership skills and determine how I could better manage my remote and virtual teams. I chose this path based on the projects that I managed this year and where I felt that I could add the most value to my projects, organization and, more importantly, my team.

Your challenge—if you choose to accept it—is to sharpen your skill set as a project leader over the course of 100 days.

In the next 100 days, I want you to consider taking the steps below and tracking where this journey can take you:

1. Determine three areas that need your attention.

Where are your weaknesses? Where do you most need help?

This can be a real challenge for some people to comprehend, as knowing your weaknesses is a sign of a deeper understanding of yourself as an individual. I have truly come to understand my weaknesses, not only in my professional life but through my private challenges, which enabled me to look at myself from a different perspective and analyze my achievements and shortcomings.

When I’m mentoring an individual, we’ll spend quite a bit of time working on this topic—normally, it’ll be something that they didn’t think of initially. If you struggle with this task, I suggest talking to someone whom you trust and working on this together.

I recommend choosing three areas of focus, but if you have two or four areas, that’s absolutely fine. This is your path and your journey.

2. Make a plan for what’s realistic to achieve in this time period.

Let’s be honest, no one can devote 24 hours a day to perfecting a skill or personal development: It’s just not possible. Life gets in the way. And that’s absolutely fine.

Determine what’s feasible to achieve in the next 100 days and set yourself some realistic SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based). Also, analyze how you’re going to get there. What tools do you need to be able to develop? Is there a course of action you need to follow? What about guidance? This is the time to make sure that you’ve got the resources that you need to succeed.

You can plot this plan however you feel is most appropriate. You can choose a Kanban Board, Gantt chart or even a list of to-dos. Keep it simple and tailor your methods to your needs. When I did this for myself, I created a sheet in my workbook that looked similar to the below:

3. Seek out support.

Make your manager and colleagues aware of what you’re doing, and maybe they’ll join you. Make this a positive turn towards professional development and collaboration. I bet there are skills that you have that your colleagues need and vice versa. Challenge each other to become better professionals and raise the bar within your teams.

My support network came in the form of my peers. I asked several respected project managers whom I trust if they could recommend courses or webinars that might be suitable or give me advice based on their experience.

4. Complete the action plan.

Now, we get to the difficult part: You need to actually do the work and execute the plan that you’ve made. Watch some webinars, attend training courses and find a mentor. Along the way, I’d like to suggest that you adopt the agile principle of “inspect and adapt.” Analyze what you’re doing: Is it working? Do you need to change paths?

At the end of the 100 days, you will emerge a stronger, more confident project manager.

What 100-day challenge are you willing to take on to become a better project leader?