Voices on Project Management

By Jen L. Skrabak, PMP, PfMP

Just like portfolio managers, business analysts are gaining wide acceptance as a profession. Business analysts can now earn their own PMI certification (PMI-BA) and read their own practice guide (Business Analysis for Practitioners). (Here’s a piece of cultural trivia: Did you know the latest bachelor on the reality TV show “The Bachelor” is a business analyst?)

Portfolio managers should get to know business analysts in their organization, because they can help ensure alignment and management of the portfolio to achieve the organization’s strategic goals and objectives.

What exactly do business analysts do? They, well, conduct business analysis. That’s defined as:

•identifying business needs

•eliciting, documenting and managing requirements

•recommending relevant solutions 

With this in mind, there are four major ways that portfolio managers can leverage a business analyst:

1) Develop Pipeline Opportunities

Business analysts can play a critical role in analyzing business problems and opportunities that will eventually be used to initiate projects and programs in the portfolio. Product or technology roadmaps can outline potential projects or programs that will be initiated at future points. They’re also valuable during a project because they can support proposed changes to a project scope (which will affect the overall portfolio) and ensure that the business justification for the project or program remains valid. 

Many business analysts are embedded within business areas and are critical to early identification and understanding of future opportunities or changes to the portfolio.

2) Define Needed Business Capabilities

We often think of business analysts as documenting business requirements.  Those requirements are built upon an understanding of which capabilities are needed for a particular business domain. 

Typically, capabilities are based on the goals and needs of a particular business area. Those needs may be depicted through business domain capability maps, end-to-end process flows or functional diagrams. An assessment of whether the capabilities currently exist or not becomes the basis for identifying priorities and gaps (in processes or talent). It can also be used to benchmark against other companies.

3) Develop Business Cases 

With their high-level understanding of the goals, objectives and needs of the enterprise, business analysts can assist in defining the justification for the proposed solution. The basis of a business case is the needs assessment. This process seeks to understand the underlying business problem, assess the current state and perform a gap analysis against the future state.

In addition, the proposed solution (see #4 below) is needed for high-level cost estimates that become the basis for the numerator of the ROI. The potential return (denominator of the ROI) is also based on an analysis of the impact of the solution on the current process.

4) Perform Solutions Analysis

One type of solution analysis is to assess a variety of options to go from the current state to future state. (For example, process changes vs. system implementations.) Business analysts can work with business stakeholders to define immediate solutions (quick wins that may be process changes) or longer-term solutions (new products or systems). 

Business analysis outputs provide the context to requirements analysis and solution identification for a given initiative or for long-term planning. Business analysis is often the starting point for initiating one or more projects or programs within a portfolio. The analysis is an ongoing activity within a portfolio as the business environment changes and more information becomes available, creating new competition and strategies.

How do you work with business analysts? Share your experiences and best practices in a comment below. Also, if you’re looking to learn more about how business analysts can support practitioners, check out this pmi.org webpage.

by Dave Wakeman

Recently I had the chance to engage with Microsoft’s social media team about some of the issues I have been covering here. Their team brought up a question you may have asked as well: How do you differentiate between “digital” project management and project management?

It’s an interesting question, because I firmly believe all projects should be delivered within a very similar framework. The framework enables you to make wise decisions and understand the project’s goals and objectives.

I understand that there are many types of project management philosophies: waterfall, agile, etc. Each of these methods has pros and cons. Of course, you should use the method you are most comfortable with and that gives you the greatest likelihood of success.

But regardless of which project management approach you employ, there are three things all practitioners should remember at the outset of every project to move forward with confidence.

Every project needs a clear objective. Even if you aren’t 100-percent certain what the “completed” project is going to look like, you can still have an idea of what you want the project’s initial iteration to achieve. This allows you to begin work with a direction and not just a group of tasks.

So, even if you only have one potential outcome you want to achieve, starting there is better than just saying, “Let’s do these activities and hope something comes out of it.”

Frameworks enable valuable conversations. I love talking about decision-making frameworks for both organizations and teams. They’re valuable not because they limit thought processes, but because they enable you to make decisions based on what you’re attempting to achieve.

Instead of looking at the framework as a checklist, think of it as a conversation you’re having with your project and your team. This conversation enables you to keep moving your project toward its goal.

During the execution phase, it can give you the chance to check the deliverable against your original goals and the current state of the project within the organization. Just never allow the framework to put you in a position where you feel like you absolutely have to do something that doesn’t make sense.

Strong communication is the bedrock. To go back to the question from Microsoft’s social media team about digital vs. regular project management: the key concept isn’t the field or areas that a project takes place in.

No matter what kind of project you’re working on and in which sector you’re in, the critical skill for project success is your ability to communicate effectively with all the project stakeholders.

This skill transcends any specific industry. As many of us have learned, it may constitute about 90 percent of a project manager’s job. You can put this into practice in any project by taking a moment to write down your key stakeholders and the information you need to get across to them. Then put time in your calendar to help make sure you are effective in delivering your communications.

In the end, I don’t think there should be much differentiation between “digital” projects or any other kind of projects. All projects benefit from having a set of goals and ideas that guide them. By trying to distinguish between different project classifications, we lose sight of the real key to success in project management: teamwork and communication.

What do you think? 

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A successful project must satisfy stakeholders. But how can we agree in advance what success means if we don’t have all the information?

Although you cannot control stakeholders’ expectations, you can influence and persuade them. The key is to engage and involve stakeholders in value creation. Success hinges on a stakeholder-centered approach to project management.

Your job as project manager is a cross between a physician, a consultant and a professor. You have to guide and educate stakeholders, diagnosing their pain to uncover their real needs. If you really want to uncover stakeholders’ needs, you have to learn how to ask the right questions.

Since 2011, I’ve been applying problem structuring methods (PSM) to project management. These methods guide stakeholders through a learning process in which you define the boundaries of a problem to be solved. You understand more as you advance progressively and iteratively, tilting the project toward success.

Soft systems methodology (SSM) is one of the most powerful PSMs I know. It is organized into seven steps:

1. Problem situation unstructured: area of concern, purpose and end objectives.
2. Problem situation expressed: rich picture created to represent the structure and processes of the problem situation.
3. Root definition: clarifies what needs to be addressed and which human activity system is of concern. You can have more than one root definition, representing the HAS (human activity system).
4. Conceptual models: use creativity and logical argument to derive relevant activities in the HAS and build conceptual models in different levels of abstraction.
5. Comparing #4 to #2 (real world and the conceptual model), provide comments and recommendations.
6. Identify feasible solutions: you can use a multi-criteria model to compare alternatives.
7. Improve the problem situation by implementing the solution.

_{Soft systems methodology (adapted from Checkland, 1981, Fig. 6).}

In my next post, I’m going to provide a real project example showing how to use SSM. 

Do you have any other ideas or experience on how to engage your stakeholders in a learning process? Please leave your comments.

By Lynda Bourne

A conversation with a clerk in a HR department looking to procure a training program and the passing of English actor George Cole in early August made me start thinking about the art of the deal.

Cole’s defining role was “Arfur” Daley, the devious “spiv” on TV’s Minder. Arfur was always offering deals that were too good to refuse. The deals were rarely outright crooked, but Arfur regularly needed his minder’s help to get out of trouble.

My recent conversation with the HR clerk (and time spent watching TV shopping channels) suggests the Arfur Daley approach to creating a deal that is too good to refuse is still very much part of modern business.

The reason for this post is to help project team members tasked with purchasing goods or recommending the preferred supplier cut through the communication hype to see the real value in a proposition. There is no such thing as a free set of steak knives!

The first step in making the best buying decision is to remember that only two elements really matter: acquiring the goods or services you need and the price you pay.

The second step is to be really clear about what you need. Defining the appropriate quality and quantity for tangible goods is easy. It’s much more difficult to work out what represents a good training option or the best value consultancy service.

Then there’s the price! What’s the better deal: a $600 product with a special discount of 25 percent or its $500 competitor with a discount of only 10 percent?  

Then one of your colleagues suggests talking to a local business. Its rack price is $440, but they don’t offer discounts. Is this a better option? Assuming all other factors are equal, what matters is the final price you pay, not the discount. It’s fairly easy to work out once you ignore the spin.

$600 minus 25% = $450
$500 minus 10% = $450
$440 minus 0% = $440

Moving beyond price, the inducements to make you buy from a particular business are many. The challenge is applying discipline to your decision-making process. The problem with most of the “fantastic free offers” and “no-cost extras” is that they are only valuable if you actually need them and can use them.

Remember that all “free” offers are priced into the cost of the goods or services. Most organisations who run training courses (including us) advertise that every trainee receives free access to on-line revision tools or practice questions.

But when we are setting the price of the course, the $50 we pay for the on-line licence is included, along with the “free” coffee and all the other expenses we have to cover before we can start making a profit. The course price includes all our costs plus a profit margin. If it didn’t, we would quickly be bankrupt.

The challenge with the free extras and other inclusions is deciding if they are of any value to you, since you will be paying for them anyway. For example, one PMP training course costs $2,000. The other costs $3,000 but includes free access to online training in four Microsoft Office programs, each “valued at $500.” Superficially the $2,000 in free extras makes the more expensive course seem a better value. But is it? Ask yourself:

1. Who can use the training—just the PMP candidate or anyone?
2. Do the people who can access the free training actually need it? If the training was really needed, why have we not already organized it?
3. What is the real value of the extra free courses? If you can buy a full set of Microsoft Office training courses for $800, that’s the value, not the 4 x $500 advertised by the seller.
4. What discount will the vendor offer if you opt out of the free courses? This is usually much less than the nominal values.

The reason this type of free offer is so common is that it’s cheap to deliver and most people never use the free offer anyway, even if they intend to.

You also need to be aware of the anchoring effect. If at the start of your investigation, you were told the typical cost of a PMP course was between $4,000 and $5,000, this price anchors your expectations. The $3,000 price will seem like great value and the $2,000 price too cheap to be viable. The anchoring effect is an innate bias that changes our perceptions of value, and the Arfurs of this world know how to use it to their advantage!

All of these sales tactics can be used legitimately. From the seller’s perspective, the purpose of “free” extras is to offer things that are of genuine value to the buyer but cost very little to deliver. But as the buyer, you must learn to ignore the headline price of the free extras and consider what the final package is really worth to you. If you don’t need something, its real value to you is always $0.00!

The factors that make a real difference to most service deliveries are much harder to compare. You will generally pay more for a more experienced consultant or a better quality trainer. Buying this type of service on price alone is rarely the best approach—a basic rule of business is you tend to get what you pay for.

The challenge then is to set up a decision matrix that looks at the elements that really matter in your buying decisions and then make an informed decision. Some of these factors may be measureable. Others, such as cultural fit, are critically important but entirely subjective.

The bottom line here is that before you can get to the serious decision-making, you need to clear away the confusion of the special offers and discounts. The Arfurs of this world are always looking to make you an offer you can’t refuse.

How do you approach your buying decisions?

When Is a Project Actually Over?

By Kevin Korterud

As project managers, we spend a considerable amount of time mobilizing a project to ensure it’s set up for success. To realize value from projects, that same level of attention and focus is also required to successfully end a project. It is key for project managers to have a plan for closure that defines specific activities to wind down and complete essential functions that end the project on a high note.

Here are some essentials to help your project complete successfully so you can enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done:

1. Complete the Project Adoption Schedule   

Project managers need to have an objective indicator that signals completion of their projects. In some cases, project managers use indications that determine the completion of the project far too early.

These premature indications can include the installation of technology, signoff of key deliverables or perhaps a subjective decision by the sponsor that the project is over.

One effective means of determining the end of a project is for a project manager to create a schedule for the complete adoption of what the project is creating, e.g., new technology, processes and products. An adoption schedule defines the details around the timeframe, functions and geographies by which the outputs from the project are to be assumed by the various stakeholders.

In essence, a project adoption schedule is a structure that provides an outcome-based path to how the project is supposed to end.

For example, one form of an adoption schedule would be to define the number of users or stakeholder groups that are to use a new technology solution. The adoption schedule would present which geographies would use the new technology over a certain timeframe.

2. Measure Against the Project Business Case  

As project managers, we sometimes become so obsessed with on-time, on-budget delivery that we can neglect the rationale that shaped the need for the project. As part of closing out a project, it is important that progress toward the original business case is measured.

The best way to do this on a project is to have business case checkpoints defined from the start to the end of the project. These checkpoints identify and measure the project’s key outcomes. By starting the business case measurement process at the beginning of the project, you eliminate the last-minute rush to determine whether the project was successful from a business perspective.

3. Assure Regulatory Compliance

Even if we do a great job with delivery as well as producing business outcomes, what we do in the area of regulations and other legal mandates is also key. A project that does not comply with regulatory needs stands the chance of diluting its success by requiring additional effort and time to mitigate issues.

As part of project closure planning, schedule timely completion of deliverables required to meet regulatory needs. The effort and schedule allocated for this type of deliverable needs to be given equal importance with other project deliverables.

For example, a project that involves the chemical industry may require material safety data sheets to be filed when a new type of material is introduced into a chemical plant. Even if the introduction of the new chemical material was successful, the project cannot be truly closed until this regulatory deliverable is created. 

4. Pay It Forward

Project or program managers sometimes miss out on the opportunity to leverage the fine work we have done to help others in our profession. While it is typical to have a lessons-learned session at the end of the project, quite often those newly created assets, practices and other valuable content are filed away and not leveraged for other projects.   

To unlock this potentially untapped source of project management value, work with the Program Management Office or other delivery assurance group to review the completed project and capture artifacts that might assist other projects. This group can take what has been created by your project, refine it and publish the artifact so it can immediately assist other projects.

Have unique activities proven valuable for completing your projects? Perhaps others can benefit from your insights while finishing their project journey. Please comment below!