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Great Time Management Is in the Details
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| Bringing together all the aspects of a project -- including stakeholders, team members, software tools and project requirements -- is just the beginning. Once we gather all the pieces of the project, we cannot sit back and relax. Properly controlling a project hinges on using time management skills to see it through to the end. And those skills consist of these three types of actions: Reactive. There will always be an aspect of the project that needs to be tended to: risks and issues that may need near turnaround resolutions or disparate interests of team members and stakeholders that need addressing. But it's how we've set the stage for our project that will help us steer the project to the finish line, so allot some time to plan for issues to come up. Always be aware of how your surroundings and other resources may affect your project and how they can be of value at another point. For example, when your project is heading into a critical situation and you have no resources that can help, have a contact at the ready who may be able to get an immediate resolution. Co-active. This element entails taking collective action toward correcting an off-schedule project. While we set out to have a process for every action, somewhere along the line, the schedule starts slipping or team members aren't reporting bottlenecks or bad news in a timely fashion. In these instances, reset the tone of your project control. My technique is to keep the scope constantly visible, usually by making sure the agenda has it displayed. However, I didn't do this on a project years ago. The developers were making ongoing enhancements to the software, ones that would be very useful at a future point. Yet they were very off-scope. The co-active measure was to pull back on the enhancements and redefine the scope to get it to what the sponsor originally requested. I did so by meeting with the sponsor and development team manager and reviewing requirements from the standpoint of:
Proactive. But what if a project has components that are not fully defined yet? This is a situation in which we're not reacting to the existing project or controlling project issues, but instead considering the future: possible risks, another project's potential impact or information a stakeholder may want. Here I would recommend actively anticipating what may be helpful that has not yet been discussed. And this consideration can be addressed perhaps as an earned value chart, a report outlining project enhancements for future work or something as simple as organizing a meeting with sponsors to ensure there are no new impacts on the rise. Are there any aspects to managing your time in a project that you see as helping to bring the project to a smooth close? |
Fight or Flight?
Categories:
Stakeholder Management
Categories: Stakeholder Management
| Most points of difference can be resolved through negotiation, discussion or input from a third party. But other times, circumstances quickly descend into acrimony. Bear in mind when a "fight" breaks out, it's always personal and emotional. If you can remove those two elements, all that remains is a difference or disagreement that can be resolved. Unfortunately, emotions kick in quick and are far more powerful than rational thought. Fight or flight is one of the most basic of survival strategies. As soon as a trigger matching the learned pattern of a perceived threat is sensed, the fight reaction cuts in. Some time later -- a few seconds or a few hours later -- rational thought may override the need to fight, but it always lags the instantaneous emotional reaction. The easiest of the conflicts to manage is where a stereotype is involved. You simply have to distinguish the specific person from the overall stereotype. For example, if a team member has an issue with the project management office (PMO), you can say: "Yes, everyone from the PMO is an interfering bureaucrat focused on wasting time by gathering excessive detail. But Mary from the PMO is different; she's really a 'project manager' and can make your job easy." In this scenario, you simply highlight Mary's positives and distance her from the PMO stereotype. When the fight response is more personal, you should still try to remove the emotion, but your task is much harder. Remember, emotions are instinctive, and factors such as fatigue, stress and emotional events can all shift the balance of power toward the fight instinct. Taking time out to cool down allows rational thinking to seep in, provided the emotions aren't triggered again as soon as the other person returns. This process can be encouraged by diversionary tactics, such as changing the focus or place of discussion, or doing something completely different. It's a good time to go down to the pub... Mediators use a number of tactics to start a rational negotiation. One is to encourage each of the parties to let it all out and vent their anger in a controlled environment. Once a person has done this, it's very difficult to maintain the rage. Another is to hold one-on-one discussions and carry messages back and forth between the parties. This removes the trigger for fighting and allows messages to be heard. If there's any common ground, rational debate can start and, with luck and good management, continue once the parties are face to face. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) advocates keeping disagreements professional and based on rational discussions of information. While this is desirable, we're all people with emotions and sometimes those emotions will take over. A good manager recognizes this and allows time for emotions to settle before using more proactive negotiating tactics to bring rational debate back into play. How do you deal with conflict? |
Lean, Mean PMO Machine
Categories:
PMO
Categories: PMO
| In previous posts, we've discussed the must-haves of establishing a project management office (PMO) and the basics of a PMO implementation plan. After digging deeper into the PMO implementation plan, it's time now to discuss how to keep the PMO focused, effective and providing value. Having a framework that allows you to model the PMO's processes and tailor them to match organizational needs can make corporate project management more valuable. This approach is based on a proven methodology named Business Model Generation, a strategic management canvas for developing new or documenting existing business models visually. We are now going to apply it to a PMO. This is important, because many PMOs start small. Their main concerns are usually tied to monitoring and reporting project results to assist senior-level decision-making. However, as time passes, people think the PMO must absorb new features and responsibilities to remain competitive. But growing a PMO in size doesn't necessarily mean we're improving project governance and corporate results. Maturity is the key to success. And a lean PMO is much better than a large bureaucratic PMO. Take a look at The Project Management Office in Sync with Strategy to see examples of this in practice. Setting up a lean PMO is easier than keeping it lean. If you followed the steps mentioned in previous posts, you already have a strong PMO implementation plan with all the basics. Don't be tempted to add new functions to your PMO unless they are strictly necessary to the value you want to provide. The most important characteristic of a lean PMO is that it is customer-centered. So, the first step is to identify your customers. Then, you have to uncover their needs to define the PMO's value proposition. In my organization, for example, we can spot five customer groups that our PMO wants to serve:
Once you know your customer groups, the next step is to identify their needs. These audience needs could look something like this:
Once we understand our stakeholders and their needs, we can develop a value proposition, which we will discuss in the next post. Meanwhile, I invite you to review the following business model canvas and consider how this could be used to build a lean PMO: Courtesy of Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur For instance, does the PMO have revenue streams? If not, can we think of something better to substitute instead? What about channels and customer relationship -- do these apply to PMOs? Can a PMO develop alliances? Find out in my next post. For more on planning a PMO, read PMI's Pulse of the Profession®: PMO Frameworks, which was developed by PMPs and provides information o five types of PMOs. |
What Race Cars Can Teach Us About Projects
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| My last post on when to pull over a project to the side of the road generated much action on the Voices on Project Management Twitter feed. Here, I'll expand on that theme by highlighting the similarities in the makings of a race car and a successful project. Today's race cars are a marvel of engineering and performance. They achieve these results while being extremely complicated and operating in harsh environments. However, to the spectator, racing appears to happen easily and naturally. When we see a race car whiz by, we don't see the many hours of planning that go into achieving both high speed and durability. Therein lies the parallel between race cars and projects. As project practitioners, we need to consistently ask ourselves whether our "project race car" is ready and able to win the race. This includes design and preparations before the race as well as vigilant monitoring of performance. Here are four essential components of a "project race car" that have to be well engineered and constantly monitored for your project to be a success:
How many times have you started a project "race" though one of the previously mentioned components was missing? What is the most frequently omitted element in the "project race car"? For an insider look at car racing, read about a recent keynote speech on Formula One by Mark Gallagher at PMI® Global Congress 2014 -- EMEA. |
Stakeholder Victory, Without Battle
Categories:
Stakeholder Management
Categories: Stakeholder Management
| Chinese military general Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War nearly 2,500 years ago. But his ideas still hold value on the art of stakeholder engagement. After all he did say: "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle," which should be the ultimate aim of every stakeholder engagement process. One of the clearest messages from The Art of War is the supremacy of strategy over tactics and tactics over reaction. Yet project teams spend most of their time reacting to stakeholders with a few tactical activities, such as report distribution and progress meetings. This approach gives the initiative to the stakeholders. And, as we all know, not every stakeholder has the project's best interests at heart, and those who are supportive rarely have a deep understanding of your project's real needs. Sun Tzu states that success is driven by strategy: "All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." Planning your stakeholder engagement should involve far more than simply deciding who needs what information. The starting point for a good strategy is good intelligence. "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles." Project practitioners and their teams need to understand who's important and why; what their attitude to the work is (and why); what you need from them (if anything); and what those people want from you. After this analysis, key questions for the team include:
Now you're in a position to develop a pragmatic strategy to proactively engage with your stakeholder community, focusing on those people who matter. But beware: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." You and your team need to first understand your strategic intent and then develop appropriate tactics to implement the strategy. You could, for example, produce the standard monthly report containing data on your project's environmental protection activities. Or, if you know that several senior stakeholders you need as allies are concerned about your organization's reputation, you could highlight the team's successful environmental efforts with a photo on the cover. No senior manager ever reads a report (particularly all of the boring data on environmental monitoring in the appendix). But they can't miss a cover photo -- or how you're helping them achieve one of their organizational objectives. Smart tactics, minimal effort, and now you now have some powerful friends. Similar approaches can be used to minimize the impact of stakeholders opposed to the project if you understand what's important to them. Sun Tzu clearly shows that engaging with stakeholders requires more than reactive responses. The good news is a well-thought-out strategy -- implemented through nimble and effective tactics -- can virtually eliminate the need for reactive responses and crisis management, resulting in an overall saving of effort. "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." Does your stakeholder-management strategy let you "win first" and then deliver an outcome that benefits your stakeholder community? What other stakeholder wisdom have you picked up from Sun Tzu? |