Home
/
Blogs
/
Voices on Project Management
/
Voices on Project Management
by Cameron McGaughy,
Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Conrado Morlan, Peter Tarhanidis, Mario Trentim, Jen Skrabak, David Wakeman, Wanda Curlee, Christian Bisson, Ramiro Rodrigues, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, Sree Rao, Yasmina Khelifi, Marat Oyvetsky, Lenka Pincot, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, cyndee miller
Voices on Project Management offers insights, tips, advice and personal stories from project managers in different regions and industries. The goal is to get you thinking, and spark a discussion. So, if you read something that you agree with--or even disagree with--leave a comment.
View Posts By:
Cameron McGaughy
Lynda Bourne
Kevin Korterud
Conrado Morlan
Peter Tarhanidis
Mario Trentim
Jen Skrabak
David Wakeman
Wanda Curlee
Christian Bisson
Ramiro Rodrigues
Soma Bhattacharya
Emily Luijbregts
Sree Rao
Yasmina Khelifi
Marat Oyvetsky
Lenka Pincot
Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres
cyndee miller
Past Contributors:
Rex Holmlin
Vivek Prakash
Dan Goldfischer
Linda Agyapong
Jim De Piante
Siti Hajar Abdul Hamid
Bernadine Douglas
Michael Hatfield
Deanna Landers
Kelley Hunsberger
Taralyn Frasqueri-Molina
Alfonso Bucero Torres
Marian Haus
Shobhna Raghupathy
Peter Taylor
Joanna Newman
Saira Karim
Jess Tayel
Lung-Hung Chou
Rebecca Braglio
Roberto Toledo
Geoff Mattie
Recent Posts
Project 2030: Skills We Need to Cultivate Now
The Technical Program Manager: How to Stay Relevant in 2025
5 Things Your Operational Plan Should Do
5 New Project Guardrails for Adaptive Leaders
The Leader's Voice: Respect It, Protect It, and Use It Properly!
Categories
2020,
Adult Development,
Agile,
Agile,
Agile,
agile,
Agile management,
Agile management,
Agile;Community;Talent management,
Artificial Intelligence,
Backlog,
Basics,
Benefits Realization,
Best Practices,
BIM,
business acumen,
Business Analysis,
Business Analysis,
Business Case,
Business Intelligence,
Business Transformation,
Calculating Project Value,
Canvas,
Career Development,
Career Development,
Career Help,
Career Help,
Career Help,
Career Help,
Careers,
Careers,
Careers,
Careers,
Categories: Career Help,
Change Management,
Cloud Computing,
Collaboration,
Collaboration,
Collaboration,
Collaboration,
Collaboration,
Communication,
Communication,
Communication,
Communication,
Communications Management,
Complexity,
Conflict,
Conflict Management,
Consulting,
Continuous Learning,
Continuous Learning,
Continuous Learning,
Continuous Learning,
Continuous Learning,
Cost Management,
COVID-19,
Crises,
Crisis Management,
critical success factors,
Cultural Awareness,
Culture,
Decision Making,
Design Thinking,
Digital Project Management,
Digital Transformation,
digital transformation,
Digitalisation,
Disruption,
Diversity,
Diversity,
Documentation,
Earned Value Management,
Education,
EEWH,
Enterprise Risk Management,
Escalation management,
Estimating,
Ethics,
execution,
Expectations Management,
Facilitation,
feasibility studies,
Future,
Future of Project Management,
Generational PM,
Governance,
Government,
green building,
Growth,
Horizontal Development,
Human Aspects of PM,
Human Aspects of PM,
Human Aspects of PM,
Human Aspects of PM,
Human Aspects of PM,
Human Resources,
Inclusion,
Information Technology,
Innovation,
Intelligent Building,
International,
International Development,
Internet of Things (IOT),
Internet of Things (IoT),
IOT,
Knowledge,
Leadership,
Leadership,
Leadership,
Leadership,
Leadership,
lean construction,
LEED,
Lessons Learned,
Lessons learned;Retrospective,
Managing for Stakeholders,
managing stakeholders as clients,
Mentoring,
Mentoring,
Mentoring,
Mentoring,
Mentoring,
Methodology,
Metrics,
Micromanagement,
Microsoft Project PPM,
Motivation,
Negotiation,
Neuroscience,
neuroscience,
New Practitioners,
Nontraditional Project Management,
OKR,
Online Learning,
opportunity,
Organizational Culture,
Organizational Project Management,
Pandemic,
People management,
Planing,
planning,
PM & the Economy,
PM History,
PM Think About It,
PMBOK Guide,
PMI,
PMI EMEA 2018,
PMI EMEA Congress 2017,
PMI EMEA Congress 2019,
PMI Global Conference 2017,
PMI Global Conference 2018,
PMI Global Conference 2019,
PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America,
PMI Global Congress 2011 - EMEA,
PMI Global Congress 2011 - North America,
PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA,
PMI Global Congress 2012 - North America,
PMI Global Congress 2013 - EMEA,
PMI Global Congress 2013 - North America,
PMI Global Congress 2014 - EMEA,
PMI Global Congress 2014 - North America,
PMI GLobal Congress EMEA 2018,
PMI PMO Symposium 2012,
PMI PMO Symposium 2013,
PMI PMO Symposium 2015,
PMI PMO Symposium 2016,
PMI PMO Symposium 2017,
PMI PMO Symposium 2018,
PMI Pulse of the Profession,
PMO,
PMO,
pmo,
PMO Project Management Office,
portfolio,
Portfolio Management,
Portfolio Management,
portfolio management,
presentations,
Priorities,
Probability,
Problem Structuring Methods,
Process,
Procurement Management,
profess,
Program Management,
project,
Project Delivery,
Project Dependencies,
Project Failure,
project failure,
Project Leadership,
Project Management,
project management,
project management office,
Project Planning,
project planning,
Project Requirements,
Project Success,
Ransomware,
Reflections on the PM Life,
Remote,
Remote Work,
Requirements Management,
Research Conference 2010,
Researching the Value of Project Management,
Resiliency,
Risk Management,
Risk Management,
Risk management,
risk management,
ROI,
Roundtable,
Salary Survey,
Schedule Management,
Scheduling,
Scope Management,
Scrum,
search,
SelfLeadership,
SelfLeadership,
SelfLeadership,
SelfLeadership,
SelfLeadership,
Servant Leadership,
Sharing Knowledge,
Sharing Knowledge,
Sharing Knowledge,
Sharing Knowledge,
Sharing Knowledge,
Social Responsibility,
Sponsorship,
Stakeholder Management,
Stakeholder Management,
stakeholder management,
Strategy,
Strategy,
swot,
Talent Management,
Talent Management,
Talent Management,
Talent Management,
Talent Management,
Talent Management Leadership SelfLeadership Collaboration Communication,
Taskforce,
Teams,
Teams in Agile,
Teams in Agile,
teamwork,
Tech,
Technical Debt,
Technology,
TED Talks,
The Project Economy,
Timeline,
Tools,
tools,
Transformation,
transformation,
Transition,
Trust,
Value,
Vertical Development,
Volunteering,
Volunteering #Leadership #SelfLeadership,
Volunteering Sharing Knowledge Leadership SelfLeadership Collaboration Trust,
VUCA,
Women in PM,
Women in Project Management
Date
More times than not, change leads to new competitive environments -- and project managers who are able to adapt quickly tend to survive and capitalize. In such an environment, one of the most important tools a project manager has is the ability to effect change to drive an organization's competitive advantage, its ultimate goal. However, as I discussed in my previous blog post, change is always met with resistance and uncertainty.
Not only do project managers have to deal with resistance to change from team members, but they must also plan for and overcome general pitfalls of implementing that change. To do so, consider incorporating better change methods into your daily practice. Below is a list of 10 design principles -- culled from a list created by Booz Allen Hamilton consulting principals, which I expand on with personal experience -- that should be part of our overall change plans efforts:
-
Address the "human side" systematically. Engage employees early in the planning phases. Proactively manage suggestions and concerns based on their field of expertise.
-
Start at the top. Gaining executive buy-in to ensure the likelihood of success.
-
Involve every layer. If the change affects the entire organization, then consider identifying managers at each layer to be responsible for the change management plan.
-
Make the formal case. Establish a business case with defined goals that articulate the rationale behind the change and the benefits it will deliver to stakeholders. This could be a renewed organization mission or vision statements.
-
Create ownership. Motivate employees to take ownership of the change and leverage the organization's rewards and recognition system to reinforce those team member commitments.
-
Communicate the message. Teams need to understand how to be successful in driving change. Establish a formal plan to deliver that message through a communication matrix that includes methods such as town halls, videos, team meetings and informal gatherings.
-
Assess the cultural landscape. Assess the organization's values, beliefs and attitudes to obtain the baseline culture. Then contrast the baseline against implications of a new, post-change culture to determine what to communicate to stakeholders as the value of the organization's new culture.
-
Address culture explicitly. Provide employees the expectations of the new culture, and identify ways they can help it flourish. Reinforce those who embrace the new culture by using the organization's rewards and recognition system.
-
Prepare for the unexpected. There may be a new set of stakeholders not originally considered during the development of the change plan. Remain flexible to integrate their engagement, should it be warranted.
-
Speak to the individual. Identify an individual's emotional situation and prepare to understand their reaction to change. Then guide them to adapt to new ways of working.
What change methods do you use to provide your organization with a competitive advantage?
PMI's new title, Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide, is currently available for free download for a limited time only. It contains knowledge to help project and program managers identify change elements and account for them in their project/program plans, as well as create clear and powerful strategies to guide organizational development. Explore PMI's Change Management Resources. |
Posted
by
Peter Tarhanidis
on: August 01, 2013 09:46 AM
|
Permalink |
Comments (0)
| Any project manager or team member can appreciate the value of historical data to learn from previous project experiences and reduce associated project risks. But have you considered whether it's available in a format that appeals to Gen Y team members?
The traditional way of capturing lessons learned is by using a template to record the lesson and saving it in a repository. But given their collaborative nature, Gen Y team members may perceive this as a limited source of information, based on the experience of a single individual.
Instead, many Gen Y team members are pushing for a more collaborative approach, in which all project documents can be classified under categories, linked to wikis, referenced in blogs and be shared via micro-blogging or clouds. The goal is to prevent having valuable project documents stuck in one person's hard drive.
This new approach stands in contrast to the traditional view of knowledge as a finite asset, living and managed inside the organization's boundaries. With a more collaborative approach, it doesn't matter if the author of the lesson learned left the company, because the organization still "keeps" that employee's knowledge when she or he is gone.
One happy medium is to limit the collaboration environment to the employees in the organization and restricted to the project team until the project is completed. The adoption of this new way of managing organizational process assets will require the endorsement of senior management. You will also need to implement a strategy that's attractive to all team members for full adoption of a new collaboration approach to lessons learned. To do so, introduce a collaborative approach that best suits your project environment. Perhaps task the Gen Y team members to present this new method and highlight its benefits to the project during a team meeting. Finally, remember that individuals take time to accept new practices, so have patience.
How easy or difficult would it be for you to embrace a collaboration approach for lessons learned? What are the benefits for your team and your organization?
|
Posted
by
Conrado Morlan
on: July 30, 2013 11:11 AM
|
Permalink |
Comments (1)
| Without proper implementation, strategy suffers — and so do results. That's one of the big takeaways in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2013 Why Good Strategies Fail: Lessons for the C-Suite.
In the study, 65 percent of best executors — organizations that successfully completed 20 percent more strategic initiatives than others — report well above average financial performance and strategic implementation, compared to just 18 percent of peer organizations. Still, too many organizations stumble when making strategy happen, with 61 percent reporting difficulty bridging the gap between formulation and execution.
While strategy typically is engineered at the top, it's with projects that it really comes to life. To help strategy thrive, smart organizations focus on selecting the right projects and then closely following their implementation. The study shows that 59 percent of best executors have the people who formulate high-level strategy involved in execution.
Catholic Health Initiatives relies on five measures to determine the strategic value of a development project: business value, satisfaction, performance, cost and risk. And the U.S. not-for-profit tracks those measures not just during the selection process, but through the product's actual life cycle and even after the project is completed. The organization's teams continuously assess if a project strategically aligns with business goals by asking yes-or-no questions. If all the answers are yes, the project is marked green. If they see any red — meaning it's not strategically aligned — it's stopped in its tracks.
To truly deliver on strategy, organizations also need talent with the right skills to support strategic initiatives now — and in the future. Among the organizations surveyed for the EIU study, those that made significant investments in talent and skills saw 62 percent of their strategic initiatives come into fruition. That number dropped to 53 percent at organizations that did not provide as significant an investment in talent and skills.
At U.S. financial services company Performance Trust Capital Partners, portfolio leaders regularly analyze if team members' skills align with the company's strategy. Based on that evaluation, they know whether its IT team can deliver on current projects, requires training to deliver future projects or if a project needs to be outsourced altogether.
Executives can come up with the most extraordinary strategy in the world, but it won't mean much unless they work with project professionals to get all those brilliant ideas executed.
|
Posted
by
cyndee miller
on: July 25, 2013 01:10 PM
|
Permalink |
Comments (1)
| "To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation." -- François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
Interpersonal skills are crucial to project management. There's a lot of literature about them, even a section dedicated to them in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)--Fifth Edition. Still, some of us think it is too much work to improve on an interpersonal level.
I believe that good interpersonal skills can transform you into a "WOW!" project manager, as U.S. business management writer Tom Peters would say.
In my view, one of the most challenging interpersonal skills to develop is communication. And communication is equal parts listening and speaking. However, I would say it's twice as important to be a good listener than a good speaker. Greek philosopher Epictetus said: "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."
Being an active listener is not easy. I think it is more art than skill, so I often encourage my colleagues to review and use this checklist every time they have an important meeting with stakeholders and team members. It includes five elements; if you try to work on one at a time, you will end up becoming an active listener:
- Be 100 percent attentive to what your speaker is saying.
- Let the speaker know that you are listening: establish eye contact and nod often.
- Be open to what he or she has to tell you and encourage honest communication, no matter what.
- Avoid making judgments about what you are hearing. Try to be empathetic about what is being said and wait until the conversation is concluded before responding. When something is not clear, try to rephrase it to make sure that you understood correctly, prefacing it with: "What I am hearing is that..."
- Provide feedback appropriately. If you feel upset or annoyed in any way, then call for a pause. The worst thing you can do is to continue a conversation that is making you feel uncomfortable, because inevitably, you'll stop listening and the speaker will stop talking.
That's what I try to put in practice to be better at my listening skills, although I recognize it is very difficult and usually this takes a lot of conscious effort and self-discipline.
Do you have more tips to add to this checklist on how to become an active listener? |
In past posts, I covered five steps for setting up a schedule planning framework and seven basic tips for building a project schedule.
In this final installment of this series, I'll discuss 10 common pitfalls of building a schedule on any project:
- The silo approach: Avoid developing the schedule in "silo" mode -- that is, without input from key stakeholders or subject-matter experts that can validate and confirm the schedule's content.
- Inappropriate tasks decomposition: When decomposing work in tasks, avoid an overly detailed decomposition or under detailed decomposition. In my experience, each task should not be shorter than two days and not longer than two reporting periods (typically two weeks). A task of this length is generally explicit, focused, actionable, assignable and traceable.
- Too many milestones: Limit milestones to significant project events or decisions -- for example, the project start, completion of major deliverables or phases and the project's end.
- Overly ambitious schedule: Everyone wants to please the customer, but an aggressive schedule can have the opposite effect if unrealistic deadlines are continually missed. Instead, aim to exceed expectations by delivering the project in a realistic timeframe, with solid execution. If you inherit an overly ambitious schedule, you could "fast-track" (i.e., make work parallel) or "crash" the schedule by assigning more resources to reduce task duration.
- Loops: A project schedule is not a flowchart, and time cannot flow in reverse. Therefore, loops, a circular task dependency, are not possible or validated by most project management scheduling software. Do not confuse loops with iterations. Iterations of tasks --such as design, implement and deploy -- are allowed on a project schedule.
- Danglers: These are the dependency links between tasks. Only one task will have no predecessor (the project start task) and only one will have no successor (the project end task). All the other tasks should have a successor and predecessor.
- Confusing tasks efforts with schedule time: Don't just ask team members: "When can you complete this task?" Instead, ask for the estimated effort to complete the task in labor hours or days. Then, transform the effort into work periods (the work days the team member can carry out the task) and map this to the project calendar (considering business days, holidays and vacation periods).
- Allocating schedule buffer instead of effort buffer: Don't allocate buffers to a certain schedule time. Task estimation is a three-step process: effort, duration and required calendar time. Allocate buffers primarily on a task's effort and not on the overall required calendar time.
- Depending on overall buffers: Avoid relying on sweeping buffers, like the classic "20 percent." When assigning buffers, consider the project-specific risks (for example, unfamiliar technologies), the experience of the project team and non-project related factors, such as resources allocated to parallel projects or team members' involvement in non-project activities.
- Wrong tasks on the critical path: Project management tasks, effort estimation tasks and other schedule planning activities should not be located on the critical path. They have nothing to do with the actual project work tasks.
How do you overcome these pitfalls, and what other schedule planning difficulties have you faced?
|
Posted
by
Marian Haus
on: July 12, 2013 09:53 AM
|
Permalink |
Comments (6)
|
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Winston Churchill
|
