One of the realities of project life is every once in a while you are going to become embroiled in a dispute that is emotional and personal. It does not matter how cool and professional you are, you cannot control the other party’s emotions and perceptions — and very often you also need to win the dispute.
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A Balanced Competency Model
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A successful project requires a combination of technical and managerial activities at every stage to jointly deliver the final result and its benefits. If you have high levels of maturity in project management without the equivalent technical knowledge, your project is doomed to deliver a poor solution. On the other hand, when you have best-in-class technical knowledge without project management maturity, your project is also doomed to be inefficient and maybe even inefficacious. Many organizations have already developed competency models to encompass technical and managerial aspects of projects, describing overlapping areas and highlighting essential project management and systems engineering foundations of successful projects. Consider the U.S.’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) competency model, which “outlines distinct competency areas for project managers and systems engineers, as well as shared competencies that encompass both disciplines.” Examples of defined project management competencies include:
Examples of defined system engineer competencies include:
Examples of shared competencies include:
You might be asking yourself what does NASA have to do with your own daily projects? Most of us are working in projects and programs far simpler than building space systems. However, my objective here is to call attention to the best in class so that we can contextualize and tailor their model to our own reality. Of course, in order to achieve a proper balance in your projects, thoughtful tailoring is essential. Take the International Council on Systems Engineering’s handbook, A Guide for System Life Cycle Processes and Activities: “On smaller projects, where the span of required communications is small (few people and short project life cycle) and the cost of rework is low, Systems Engineering activities can be conducted very informally (and thus at low cost). On larger projects, where the cost of failure or rework is high, increased formality can significantly help in achieving project opportunities and in mitigating project risk.” Even small and medium projects can benefit a lot from the proper combination of project management and systems engineering. Systems engineering is helpful not only in developing complex products and services, such as a spaceship or an air traffic control system, but also in less sophisticated products such as a bicycle or an alarm system. In fact, systems engineering is even helpful when you are designing your new house.
What product development approaches are you using today? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. |
Are Best Practices Really Possible?
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A project is a planned and coordinated piece of work that requires considerable effort to deliver a specific result. According to PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), a project is a temporary endeavor to create a unique result. And it is performed by people, constrained by limited resources, planned, executed and controlled. Project management is an interdisciplinary approach to balance the conflicting interests and constraints of a project: well done (scope), fast (time) and cheap (cost). Although there are other important aspects of managing a project that will be covered in subsequent posts here, the triple constraint (scope, time and cost) implies that a project, large or small, addresses at least the following areas:
Project managers perform four primary management functions: 1. Planning: This encompasses project initiation and detailed planning, involving processes to identify needs and requirements, define deliverables and tasks, estimate resources and develop the project management plan. 2. Organizing: This function prepares for execution, it is a supporting and administrative function to provide project structure and governance. Most of the time, organizing involves staffing and procurement, but other preparation activities might be included here. 3. Directing: This is the management function of getting the work done, managing execution according to the plan. It encompasses stakeholder engagement, team management and communications management. 4. Controlling: This function takes care of project performance monitoring, preventive and corrective actions and the integrated change control. These functions might be performed in parallel and should not be understood as sequential. Outside of these functions, project managers should also focus on managerial aspects of the project, including leadership. Although it is desirable that the project manager possess some knowledge in general business management, business analysis and the technical aspects of the project, they are usually supported by other experts in a number of project management related disciplines including systems engineering, requirements engineering and specialist engineering disciplines, quality assurance, integrated logistic support and more depending on the project and industry. But, are these best practices really universal given all these factors? Please leave your comments below. We’ll be looking further into this question in subsequent posts. |
The Knowledge Management Paradox
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by Ramiro Rodrigues
Years ago, I was invited to speak on project management trends to a group of entrepreneurs and businesspeople from small and medium-sized companies. When the subject of knowledge management in a project setting came up, I asked if people agreed that it was important for companies to retain the knowledge acquired for future projects. As expected, there was unanimous agreement.
I then asked people if they had already implemented some kind of system for lessons learned within their company. Only 15 percent of participants raised their hands.
This reflects a common corporate weakness.
Civil, architectural, marketing, research and development, and IT projects, among others, deliver products that rely on the intelligence and experience of those working on them. For these segments, the maintenance of this knowledge, or intellectual capital, offers a competitive advantage. After all, it’s this intellectual capital that allows the recurrence of new business transactions.
Imagine the case of a Brazilian construction company that has been awarded a contract for work in the Middle East. Geography, labor legislation and culture are complete unknowns for the company. The project is expected to experience a high number of challenges and errors. Even so, the project will be delivered. Now imagine that, years after the completion of that project, the same construction company is awarded another contract of similar size in a neighboring country in the region. Even though every project is unique, the knowledge acquired in the first project has immense financial value in helping avoid the same mistakes.
What we witness today is that the knowledgable worker is highly valuable. Imagine that, between the construction company's first and second project, its key leaders leave the company. If the organization has not implemented some kind of mechanism to retain the knowledge acquired during the first project, all the errors (and financial losses) that marked it are highly likely to be repeated in the second project.
And this, in some cases, can be fatal for the survival of the company.
This brings us to a corporate paradox. Most executives are likely to agree that it’s important to develop some kind of knowledge transfer structure. But at the same time, there is clear lethargy in freeing up resources to implement knowledge management systems for projects.
Not that it's simple — initiating any knowledge management process is inherently difficult. There is veiled resistance among workers to explain the knowledge acquired during projects. Either they don’t agree with its importance, find the process annoying or even fear it will make them less essential.
Leaders have to overcome this resistance. Neglecting the issue can put them at risk of being exposed to market volatility.
What challenges have you encountered with knowledge management? How do you make it work within your organization? |
Communicating in Conflict
Categories:
Communications Management
Categories: Communications Management
| by Lynda Bourne
In my post Fight or Flight?, I looked at the power of emotions, which can escalate a disagreement into a fight. Now, I want to cover some of the ways to minimize conflict so you can reach a successful outcome. When dealing with someone who’s upset and emotional, the first thing to remember is they are not acting rationally and are not interested in optimizing their outcome. It is not uncommon for someone to be far more interested in hurting you than in achieving a mutually acceptable outcome, even if this hurts them as well. There are a number of tactics you can use to stop the dispute from getting worse. From there, you can hopefully move forward to an outcome you can live with. Watch What You Say Always remember: You cannot un-say something or un-send an email. If in doubt: Don’t say or send it! Every communication needs to be crafted from a minimalist viewpoint, conveying nothing more than the necessary information. And you should not respond to provocation. Making statements that can be interpreted as threats will be highly counterproductive. At the same time, your demeanor needs to remain strong and assertive rather than being too aggressive or too passive. An aggressive stance simply adds to the fight. If you are too passive, the other side may not feel any need to respect you and break into a bullying mode. It’s a hard balance to strike. The best practice is to find an impartial mentor who can help you stay calm, collected and review every communication before you send it. The time lag needed to allow the mentor’s review helps you stay in control of your feelings. If you cannot find someone willing to help postpone any action, literally sleep on it — come back to any message in the morning and see if you really need to send it. Very often, a deliberate strategy of doing nothing or saying nothing can break a tit-for-tat cycle of escalation. Use Time to Your Advantage When dealing with someone who’s really upset, it may seem like a natural response to offer practical or helpful advice. That will often backfire, however. They will automatically assume you are in the same place they are, and everything you do or say will be interpreted as an attack or a ploy to gain an advantage over them. The only way around this impasse is to find a third party, who is trusted by the other party, to act as a messenger. But even then, any communication has to be carefully thought through — never in the entire course of human history has anyone ever calmed down and become reasonable just because someone has told them to. You need options that may be rejected in the short term but allow the person ways to move forward once they have calmed down enough to start working toward an outcome. Time is a valuable ally. It takes a lot of energy for someone to remain really upset for an extended period of time. Consider Napoleon Bonaparte’s advice to one of his generals: “Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake.” As much as possible, control the tempo of the dispute and reduce pressure. If you can identify the other person’s hot buttons — the things that will instantly reignite the full intensity of the dispute — look for ways to avoid them. Have an Exit Strategy Regardless of the other party’s approach, you still need to focus on outcomes and your real requirements rather than positional bargaining and winning at all costs. You need to clearly understand what’s in it for you and when to walk away. As strange as it seems, really bitter disputes often become the center of the other person’s existence and they cannot see anything else. Therefore, having a number of exit strategies is critically important — your time and energy are valuable resources, and there is no point in fighting a dispute if there’s nothing in it for you. Ideally, the exit strategy will allow you to walk away and block the other person’s attempts to keep the fight going. If this is impossible, look for ways to lose elegantly — allow the other side to feel like they’ve won while you haven’t lost too badly. It’s far easier to get into a dispute than it is to get out of one once it is in full swing. Smart negotiators always understand their Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). In the type of dispute we are discussing in this post, your BATNA should be the trigger for your exit strategy and every move you make should be planned to keep these strategies open. Remember, when Napoleon invaded Russia, he won every major battle and still lost his Grande Armée’ and the war — the Russians simply reframed the rules of 18th century warfare. How do you reframe the rules to help manage this type of emotional dispute? |