Voices on Project Management

by Cyndee Miller

Ahhh, late December—my time for curling up with some holiday bonbons, a nice bourbon and obsessively reading every year-end recap article, deep analysis, listicle and infographic out there. There’s loads of stuff on music, politics, books, technology, business and just, well, 2016 life in general. (The Economist even has a country of the year. Spoiler alert: It’s Colombia.)

But there’s not a whole lot of ink devoted to what went down in project management over the past year. So consider this a not-so-super-scientific look at the year that was in Project Management Land.

Not every project went precisely to plan. The Rio Olympics, for example, got mixed reviews: some good, some less so. And there were some straight-up flameouts: the GalaxyNote project, for example.

But on a grand scale, things were looking pretty good. The global economy continued to regain its footing (although not quite everywhere.) And project, program and portfolio managers remained in high demand across sectors and around the world. With good reason, they’re getting stuff done even amidst mind-boggling change.

No shocker here, much of that change revolved around tech, with industries like aviation and healthcare going in for major upgrades and overhauls. The Internet of Things entered the buzzword lexicon a few years back, but in 2016 we started to see what it might mean for project pros in everything from mobile to the once-staid auto industry. And as more and more devices get connected, project managers entered the front lines of the battle against cybersecurity threats. Then there are the drones, coming soon to a project site near you.

Even in such a tech-drenched year, there is no doubt that it still comes down to people. Robots will not take over the profession any time soon. For one thing, their leadership skills are just not where they need to be. Plus, they stink at managing teams.

2016 was a powerful reminder that project, program and portfolio managers are at heart change agents. Sitting at the intersection of strategy and the status quo, they’re the ones who figure out how to make change happen—and stick. And process-fueled technical knowledge alone isn’t enough. Strategic leadership skills are a must-have—and that message came through again and again and again.

Strategy is all about the pursuit of advantage—which means achieving the right goals at the right time. There’s a reason PMI’s Thought Leadership Series and Pulse of the Profession In-Depth reports focused on benefits realization. In 2016, it wasn’t just knowing how to deliver the goods, but why the goods matter.

Those are my highlights. What’s your big takeaway from the year? Is the great debate over agile approaches actually still a debate 15 years after the manifesto was published? How are PMOs faring? And what happens when there’s a PMO agile smashup?

Agile, connected cars, change management, whatever—what are you thinking about as 2016 closes?

by Peter Tarhanidis

I’ve served in various leadership roles throughout my career. In one role, I worked with engineers to build and deliver a technical roadmap of solutions. In another, I was charged with coordinating team efforts to ensure a post-merger integration would be successful.

All of my leadership roles ultimately taught me there’s no-one-size-fits-all style for how to head up a team. Instead, the situation and structure of the team determines the right approach.

Traditional teams are comprised of a sole leader in charge of several team members with set job descriptions and specialized skills, each with individual tasks and accountability. The leader in this environment serves as the chief motivator, the coach and mentor, and the culture enforcer. He or she is also the primary role model—and therefore expected to set a strong example.

But, this traditional team setup is not always the norm.

Take self-managed teams, for example. On these teams, the roles are interchangeable, the team is accountable as one unit, the work is interdependent, the job roles are flexible and the team is multi-skilled, according to Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development, written by Robert M. Lussier, a professor of business management at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA.

On a self-managed team, each person’s capabilities support the team’s overall effectiveness. While these teams do need to have their efforts coordinated, they spread leadership accountability across the group.

Members each initiate and coordinate team efforts without relying on an individual leader’s direction, according to Expertise Coordination over Distance: Shared Leadership in Dispersed New Product Development Teams by Miriam Muethel and Martin Hoegl.

Effective leaders adjust their style to the needs of varied situations and the capability of their followers. Their styles are not automatic. Instead, they get to know their team members and ensure their teams are set up to succeed.

How do you pick the right leadership style to use with your teams?

By Wanda L. Curlee

Could neuroscience be the next big thing for the project management profession?

Today, there are many theories about leadership, management, and psychology, yet, no one is quite certain how the brain works in concert with these theories—or even if it does.

In the pursuit of more information, neuroscience—including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) —is being used to study what the brain activity of business-minded individual’s looks like during thought and during motion. (This technology can map new neural pathways as they are created—pathways that can be created until death.)

Already this scientific field is creating new fields of study across the business landscape. Neuroeconomics, for example, is “the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand economically relevant behavior such as evaluating decisions, categorizing risks and rewards, and interactions among economic agents,” according to Dr. Zainal Ariffin Ahmad, a professor in the Business Research for Applied Innovations in Neurosciences (BRAIN) Lab at the Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Graduate School of Business.

There’s also neuroaccounting, neuroethics, neuroleadership and neurogoernance.

With portfolio management still in its infancy, neuroleadership and neurogovernance could potentially assist portfolio managers. By extracting knowledge from the sciences of neuroleadership and neurogovernance, PMI could differentiate itself and its body of knowledge from the various other project management associations and standards.

By using cutting-edge knowledge about how the human brain works to help create standards, PMI could move project management closer to a profession such as medicine. When the standards of the profession are based on empirical scientific knowledge, rather than good practices done on most projects most of the time, project management could become even more science than art.

What do you think? Can and should neuroscience be part of the future of project management?

by Christian Bisson, PMP

The project manager role is often underestimated or inaccurately interpreted. Because organizations can have different definitions of what project management means, there is sometimes a lack of clarity around the role, especially for non-project management professionals. In this type of environment, people fall back on basic stereotypes.

If you find yourself typecast in one of these roles, take heart. You are not alone.

1. The Note Taker

One of the most stereotypical expectations of project managers is that they’ll be the meeting note taker. I’ve experienced this time and time again. During a large client presentation, for example, one of my colleagues was asked if he would be taking notes. He replied, “Well, I have a project manager for that.”

Yes, project managers take notes. But they shouldn’t be the only ones doing so. Meeting attendees tend to focus on the notes that directly impact their work. A designer, for example, will focus on conceptual and visual comments, while a developer will focus on features and functionalities.

Furthermore, if the project manager is leading the meeting it will break the meeting flow if he or she is also responsible for note taking.

2. The Meeting Organizer

Project managers will often be expected to set up meetings—and to a certain extent, that makes sense. For large meetings, such as internal presentations or milestone check ins, it makes sense to have the project manager take care of the planning. It allows him or her to rally everyone and set expectations for the meeting so the team can come in prepared.

But there is a line.

Teams shouldn’t expect project managers to organize meetings when they just need to gather for a brainstorm or a quick chat. Sadly, it happens. For example, I was once asked by a colleague from another office to book a meeting so that he could talk to another colleague that was sitting just 10 feet (3 meters) from him.

Project managers should encourage teams to be responsible for setting up those smaller meetings or one-on-ones themselves.

3. The Accountant

There is a misconception that the project manager is the only team member who should care about budgets, or worse, the only one that should be responsible for a budget’s health. This mindset is tough to change because it’s true that a project manager’s role, amongst other things, is to manage the budget.

However, the project manager cannot take everyone’s actions on his or her shoulders — and it wouldn’t be fair to expect that. If a feature was estimated at 50 hours and the team took 100 hours, it takes collaboration to fix the negative impact to the budget or schedule. The team must warn the project manager, everyone must discuss solutions, and then the project manager should take the appropriate next steps with stakeholders, etc. Obviously, this should be done as proactively as possible, not after the fact.

To think that no one should care about the budget, and only project managers should fetch this information and “figure it out” on their own is absurd. Yet, it’s a common expectation.

Have you found yourself in any of these scenarios? What other project manager stereotypes have you faced? How do you deal with these misconceptions?

By Lynda Bourne

The effective management of knowledge has received some extra attention in PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide)—Sixth Edition (to be published in 2017).

And it should—it’s an important area.

While there are many aspects to effective knowledge management, in this post, I want to take a look at the foundation: transforming data into wisdom from a project controls perspective.

As astronomer Clifford Stoll once said, “Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.”

He had a point—information changes in character as it is processed. Consider work performance data, the raw observations and measurements made during the execution of project work. For example, knowing that an activity is 25 percent complete on its own has little direct value.

Basic information starts to be created out of this data when it is analysed and assessed. For example, an analysis of this data might reveal the activity should be 75 percent complete and, as a consequence, is running three days late.

This information then becomes useful when it is placed in context and integrated with other relevant bits of information. For example, a report might explain that the activity is on the critical path and the delay has a direct effect on the predicted project completion date.

Converting that useful information into knowledge means communicating it to the right people. For example, when someone reads the report, he or she becomes aware that the activity is running late.

Understanding that knowledge requires the person to interpret and appreciate the consequences of the delay. Interpreting one piece of information to create understanding can happen in many different people’s minds (lots of people may read the report) and each will derive very different insights from the same set of facts. One person may see the delay as relatively minor, while another may think it’s critically important. Understanding is based on the frame through which each person views the fact.

Finally, using the person’s understanding of the situation to inform wise decisions and actions is completely dependent on the capabilities, attitude and experience of the individual.

Who Controls that Conversion of Data?

PMBOK® Guide Fig. 3.5

As shown in the extract from the PMBOK^® Guide Fifth Edition above, project controls professionals drive the conversion of data into useful information. By using work performance reports to communicate effectively, they can actively encourage the transition of information into knowledge in key people’s minds, and by providing context and advice they can positively influence the development of that person’s understanding to support wise decision making (manifested in the “project management plan updates”).

But achieving this effect requires more than simply collecting and processing data. It requires analysis, insight and effective communication skills.

How effectively do you transform raw data into useful information that helps your key stakeholders make wise decisions?