Voices on Project Management

By Conrado Morlan

“Hybrid” is commonly used in biology to designate the offspring of two plants or animals of different species or varieties. For example, a mule is the hybrid of a donkey and a horse.

But the word has also been adopted in different contexts. Perhaps when you hear “hybrid,” the first thought that comes to your mind is a hybrid vehicle, which relies on two or more distinct types of power to stay in motion.

The world of project management has its own hybrids. New delivery approaches, frameworks and skills can come together in a hybrid form to create something different and valuable.

In different project management forums, I’ve recently participated in discussions about the hybrid project manager. Some proponents were concerned with the technical side of project management, focusing on which method or approach—such as waterfall (predictive) or agile—is better. Others interpreted hybrid as bringing together the best of two worlds to provide results for the organization.

Here are my takeaways from those discussions.

Technical Approach

Some project management practitioners think about the profession in purely technical terms. They have devoted themselves to learning new methods, best practices and frameworks that they consider innovative, trendy and useful to support the needs of the projects in their organization.

But some project managers who approach their work in this way tend to think that the method, best practice or framework they most recently mastered is a "silver bullet," pushing previous knowledge they acquired into obsolescence.

Holistic Approach

Just like any other profession, project management is evolving. There is no escaping the fact that today, many organizations see portfolio, program and project management as the way to link projects with their overall strategy.

Therefore, project practitioners need to consider the heterogeneous elements from the business side of the house to better understand the inextricable link between strategy and execution—regardless of the method, practice or framework. This is how they will deliver unparalleled value to the organization.

This type of practitioner is paying more attention to the PMI Talent Triangle^® to identify the skills they will need to be a successful hybrid project manager.

The Hybrid Advantage

Organizations with the right mix of hybrid project managers will:

• Deliver dramatically higher efficiency in project execution
• Identify candidates who can be assigned to temporary assignments that will support the achievements of strategic goals
• Establish a better competitive advantage when the outcome of projects positively impacts the achievement of strategic goals

Do you consider yourself a hybrid project manager? If not, would you accept the challenge of becoming one?

by Kevin Korterud

I always enjoy hearing about the early careers of the project managers I meet. In almost every conversation, the subject turns to when they were team members being led by a highly capable senior project manager who provided guidance in starting up, executing and sometimes turning around projects.

It’s also not uncommon to hear stories of the worst project manager they ever worked for. These stories, while not as glowing, also influenced their careers around what not to do. By probing a bit deeper, they offered up observations of certain behaviors that created havoc, dissatisfaction and quite often failed projects.

From these observations of the worst-ever project manager, I started to put together my own thoughts on who I would select for this inglorious label. After careful consideration, I arrived at the only logical choice: me. In my early years as a project manager I managed to consistently demonstrate all of the behaviors of poor project managers.   

Here are my votes for the most significant behaviors that led to consistently poor performance as a project manager early in my career:

1. I Wanted the Title of “Project Manager”

When I was a project team member I relished the thought of one day having a business card with an impressive title of project manager. My thought being once I received that lofty title, it would allow me to be successful at whatever project I was assigned to lead. In addition, the acquisition of that title would instantly garner respect from other project managers.

I failed to realize that most project managers are already quite proficient at leading teams and producing results. The title comes with a heavy burden of responsibility that was exponentially greater than what I had as a project team member. As a team member, I didn’t realize how much my project manager shielded me from the sometimes unpleasant realities of projects.

The satisfaction of acquiring the title of project manager can be very short-lived if you’re not adequately prepared. My goal became to perform at the level at or above what the title that project manager reflected.

2. I Talked Too Much

Perhaps I was wrongly influenced by theater or movies where great leaders are often portrayed in time of need as delivering impressive speeches that motivate people to outstanding results. I remember quite clearly some of the meetings I led as a new project manager that quite honestly should have won me an award for impersonating a project manager.

Meetings were dominated by my overconfident and ill-formed views on what was going right and wrong. In addition, I also had the false notion that I had the best approach to all of the risks and issues on the project. No surprise that this mode of interaction greatly limited the size of projects I could effectively lead. Essentially, it was a project team of one.

After a while, I started to observe that senior project managers spent a fair portion of the time in their meetings practicing active listening. In addition, they would pause, ponder the dialogue and pose simple but effective probing questions. When I started to emulate some of these practices, it resulted in better performance that created opportunities to lead larger projects. “Less is more” became a theme that allowed me to understand the true problems and work with the team to arrive at effective mitigations.

3. I Tried to Make Everyone Happy  

One of the most critical components of any project is the people that comprise the team members and stakeholders. As a new project manager, I tended to over-engage with stakeholders and team members by attempting to instantly resolve every issue, whether real or perceived. My logic was that if I removed any opportunity for dissatisfaction then project success would be assured.

I failed to realize this desire to completely please everyone quite often resulted in pleasing nobody. In addition, I also managed to pay insufficient attention to the key operational facets of a project: estimates, forecasts, metrics and other essentials needed to keep a project on track. Furthermore, the business case for the project gathered almost no consideration as I was busy trying to make everyone happy as a path to results.

Over time I began to adopt a more balanced approach that allowed me to spend the proper level of engagement with people, processes and the project business case. This balanced approach allowed me to have a broader span of control for factors that could adversely affect a project.

For all the things we have learned over the years as project managers, it sometimes causes me to wish for a time machine to go back and avoid all of the mistakes we made. But then, we would not have had the benefit of the sometimes-traumatic learning experiences that have made us the project managers that we are today.  

Did you ever consider yourself to be the worst project manager you ever worked for? I think we all were at one point in our careers.

by Jen Skrabak, PfMP, PMP

Project management offices (PMOs) have gained wide acceptance thanks to their ability to ensure the success of projects and programs. More than 80 percent of organizations have PMOs.

But, there is still some confusion with PMOs, as the “P” in PMO can refer to project, program or portfolio. At the same time, PMOs have been thought of as one of three categories:

• Supportive: Low-level of control with a focus on status reporting and passive monitoring. This type of PMO has low authority, low visibility within the organization and performs primarily administrative functions. Project managers are usually part-time resources and report into functional areas.
• Controlling: Moderate level of control and oversight over programs and projects. In this PMO, an overall project management framework, plus templates and tools, are in place. Project managers and other support staff (business analysts, project coordinators) report directly or matrixed into the PMO.
• Directive: High-level of control over programs and projects. This PMO has a lot of authority and visibility within the organization to drive overall execution of programs and projects. Project managers, business/IT leads and other support staff report directly into and are accountable to the PMO.

The Next-Gen PMO, however, is disrupting these traditional categories. In the Next-Gen PMO, the focus is on ensuring the successful delivery of organization-wide strategic initiatives. In addition to traditional PMO functions, such as providing project management tools, templates and training, the Next-Gen PMO is responsible for organizational results. They also report directly to a C-suite executive within the organization. 

I see the four critical functions of the Next-Gen PMO as:

1. Strategic Focus: Align, prioritize and focus the organization on the top critical initiatives based on organizational capabilities as well as constraints, such as resources or culture. The PMO should operate at the strategic level with executives, and align supply and demand of resources. That may include financial (such as budget), human (not on just number of people available, but skill and capability), or organizational culture (such as the capacity to absorb change, particularly sustaining change over time). 
2. Governance: Implement the appropriate executive governing board with authority to make hard decisions. Decisions may involve escalated issues/risks, resolving resource contentions, as well as which projects/programs to start, stop and sustain. Often, governance is engaged in starting new projects — particularly low or underperforming ones — without appropriately counterbalancing which projects may have to be stopped in order to free up resources
3. End-to-End Delivery: This takes a dedicated, seasoned project manager with authority and accountability to the PMO to define, plan and deliver the project, along with identifying appropriate resources and ensuring sponsor support and engagement. The PMO should create a culture where project management is valued and seen as a business enabler to successfully delivering projects. They should develop a roadmap of key initiatives, dependencies and resources that provide value to the organization. That cohesively brings together projects and cross-functional departments that are aligned to strategy.
4. Benefits Realization: Achieving the promises of project proposals starts with a robust business-case review process, as well as ongoing monitoring for performance and its impacts on the benefits. The PMO should establish success criteria and KPIs to monitor project and portfolio health, and take corrective actions as needed to ensure that the original ROI is met.

Is your organization embracing the Next-Gen PMO?

by Lynda Bourne

In my last post, Information Is Subjective, I outlined the way data is gathered and transformed into information by the subjective application of personal knowledge. Now, let’s look at how knowledge is created and shared (the gold connections in the diagram above).

People know things: Knowledge is organic, adaptive and created. It exists in the minds of people. Some of each person’s knowledge is explicit—they can explain the rules that apply to it. But much is tacit: intuition, gut feelings and other ill-defined but invaluable insights, grounded in the person’s experience.

Therefore, managing knowledge means managing people.

The fact that knowledge exists in people’s minds does not preclude joint activities to create knowledge, share knowledge and refine knowledge. But the people involved need to be in communication with each other.

Some of the structured ways this can be accomplished include:

• Various forms of meetings. People working together to debate or brainstorm a challenge and build on each other’s inputs often enhances creativity.
• Mentoring and coaching to help transfer tacit and explicit knowledge from the coach or mentor to the trainee or mentee.

Structured approaches work well if the information that needs to be transferred or created is understood, and the people involved focus on creating or acquiring the required new knowledge.

Less formal approaches are better for generating completely new information or insights that people did not know they were about to create.

Spontaneity and serendipity are encouraged through social interactions, such as:

• Communities of practice where people with a common interest interact. Good communities draw members from a diverse range of workplaces, backgrounds and knowledge levels.
• Member associations such as PMI.
• Other social networks and the activity of networking by an individual.
• Creating an organizational culture of open communication that allows and encourages both the asking of questions and the provision of advice. People cannot know what they don’t know and a small piece of friendly advice at an opportune moment can prevent a painful learning experience.

Knowledge will never be uniform in its distribution or in the way people interpret what they know. The function of a creative knowledge management system is to smooth out the differences as much as is practical and to facilitate the creation of new knowledge through the synthesis of different people’s ideas and insights.

So as you venture forth to share knowledge, remember:

• An effective knowledge management system is built on a symbiotic relationship between an effective information management system and a culture that encourages and facilitates the open exchange of knowledge and ideas between people.
• An information system on its own will at best simply make useful information available to people. There is no control over how, or if, the information is accessed or used appropriately.
• A knowledge management system on its own may create brilliant insights, but the information is organic and transient. Everything is in people’s minds and their knowledge leaves the room when they do.
• A knowledge management system is most effective when it combines these two elements and provides governance and oversight to extract the maximum value from the information held within the organization through personal interaction, conversation and other social processes. 

by Dave Wakeman

I try to start each post with some sort of hypothesis. In some cases, the hypothesis is clear to me, and, hopefully, you. Other times, however, the hypothesis doesn’t become clear until I’m done writing. 

This month, I’m on the side of a clear hypothesis built around much of what I have written about the last few years: The ultimate consideration project professionals need to keep in mind is that we’re in a people business. In the long run, the person with the best people skills often has an advantage. 

But what does that really mean? 

Communication is the key skill of a project manager.

I’m sure this falls into the trite, clichéd area of project management advice. But as I’ve witnessed time and again over the last few months, we often need a refresher on the basics of our profession. 

Being an effective communicator starts with having an expectation of what clear communication looks like, having a schedule that highlights what communication will look like and following through on your communication ideas. 

No matter what, remember your number-one job is to be a communicator. 

Communication is a people skill. 

Decisions are emotional, not rational. 

Spoiler alert: No matter what the decision is, emotion drives it. 

People like to think of themselves as rational. But that in and of itself is a nod to the emotion necessary to take action on an idea. 

You see, by trying to remove all emotion from a decision, you are often slowing yourself down because you are afraid of making a mistake. 

Being afraid is an emotion. 

Being excited is an emotional response. 

Whatever action you take is driven by emotion. 

Even if you don’t take any action, that’s an emotional response. Apathy occurs when the idea that you are being asked to take action on isn’t interesting enough for you to care about. 

People have emotions. Project managers deal with people. 

Projects are driven by ideas. People have ideas, processes don’t.
This one is likely to get the most action in the comments section because as project managers we think of ourselves as process driven. 

This is true. 

But, if we’re only process driven, we’re likely not doing our best work. Because even though we have processes in place to help guide a project and deliver it effectively, we still have a lot of discretion in our actions — or we should. 

Let’s think about this. If you have a certain amount of experience, I hope that you’ve had the opportunity to make mistakes and have successes. In the course of these experiences, you should have learned how to do things effectively or differently than the standardized process might suggest. 

Here is a dirty secret: In most cases, by the time a process has been established, there might be a better way of doing it that hasn’t had the time to be incorporated into the process yet. 

That’s why discretion is so important. It can save you time, money and trouble on your project. 

Processes don’t have discretion, but people do. 

While these are only three examples—and they’re likely obvious to most of us—I think it is important to hit refresh about the role of project managers from time to time. 

What are other examples of project management being a people business?