The Critical Path

You know the saying, "I'm a Project Manager - I chase storms to relax!" Well this phrase aptly describes January's Member of the Month, Priya Patra. Priya works for an IT services company, CapGemini, in Mumbai, the financial capital of her home country, India. She is an active contributor to ProjectManagement.com and was featured in the Ask the Expert series at North America Congress 2015.

When she is not managing projects at work, she is busy managing her home and her two hyper-energetic kids, son -  Rishabh ( 15 ) and daughter -  Rishima ( 8 ).

How did you get involved in project management?

Project Management fascinated me always. My dad was a manager in a public Services Organization in India. I grew up watching him meticulously planning his day’s work while having his morning cup of tea. When I look back I can connect the dots, he was actually planning his day and  his TO DO list. Next day he was evaluating and knocking off the closed items from the list and adding newer ones. As I grew up I started assisting him in tracking his TO DO list.

Today he has retired from work, but still has a diary where he keeps his notes, TO DO list, tracking his finances etc. I think that is how I got first introduced to project planning, tracking, monitoring and closing.

At work, I guess it was a natural evolution. I have a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science, plus an MBA degree. As a fresh graduate, somehow I was always offered a technical job, maybe back in those days I did not have enough experience to be  a manager. Today when I look back, those job roles have actually helped me in planning, tracking, monitoring my projects more efficiently. Over the years, I have evolved from a software developer, project lead to a Project Manager, this where I am right now.

Who or what inspires you to be the best project manager you can be?

Who: My Team and my projects

I strongly believe whatever I am is because of my team; a project success and failure depends on the team you have! Every interaction I have with my team and every project I executed has been a skill enhancement and learning experience.

What: The fact that I am doing my bit, making a difference to my projects, my account, my business unit, my organization, the project management profession inspires me to even contribute more.

What is one thing you wished you'd known when you first started out in project management?

I wish I knew the Agile concepts of project management, continuous delivery, Business value and Minimum Viable Products when I started out with project management. I think these concepts would have helped me to take better decisions and provide more business value to my stakeholders and sponsors.

You come in Monday morning to find that your most productive project team member is no longer with the company. You have been working together on a project for six months. What are your next steps?

First of all:

1. Go for a walk outside, trying to sink in the news
2. Come back and check the status of the work that was assigned to him/her
3. Check who would be the best fit for the person who has left
4. Closely monitor the unfinished task and the assigned resource to ensure that the tasks are completed on time

You get a call from your project’s sponsor. You've been working on the project for a year and the two of you have a good business relationship. You're 2 months away from the project deadline and she wants the deadline bumped up by 3 weeks and indicates that this is a critical need. What do you do?

Since I would have executed this project in an agile for the last two years, I would have delivered all business critical features in the previous iterations. Looking at the situation I would however:

1. Introspect on the critical need, if it is a new regulatory or legal condition we may need to take it up
2. Check with the product owner and see if we can prioritize the items critical for business for the current delivery and check if the rest can be taken in the next phase
3. Check if any tool usage / automation can help in meeting the schedule deadline
4. Check if the project can be fast tracked
5. Evaluate risks associated with point 4
6. Calculate trade off and the business value
7. Communicate the above to all stakeholders, sponsors and project team

Please introduce yourself to Priya in the comments below and take some time to add her to your network! 

Is there a community member who you think deserves some recognition for their contributions to the community? Let us know! Email the member’s name and a brief explanation as to why you think he/she should be featured in our Member of the Month to [email protected].

The largest annual gathering of project, program and portfolio managers draws thought leaders and experts from around the world at PMI® Global Congress 2015—North America. Luckily for you, ProjectManagement.com has your backstage pass to the event! As congress rapidly approaches in mid-October, we’ll be unveiling customized opportunities for you to interact and connect with these industry authorities.

In the first installment of Sneak Peek at the Professionals we’ll be focusing on speakers, sponsors and sessions relating to the finance and consulting fields.

SPEAKERS

This year at congress we’re introducing Ask an Expert kiosks in the Solutions Center. Ten professionals from the project management field will be available for 1:1 discussions covering a wide range of topics. Experts in the finance and consulting field are listed below:

Bruce Harpham – Senior Financial Analyst, BMO Financial / Founder, ProjectManagementHacks.com
Gina Abudi – President, Abudi Consulting, LLC
Michelle Stronach – President, M.L. Stronach Project Consulting, Inc.
Naomi Caietti – Project Management Consultant, The Glass Breakers

Be sure to sign up on-site at the ProjectManagement.com booth to speak 1:1 with a topic expert during exhibit hall hours. Limited time slots are available; we encourage you to sign up during the Solutions Center opening reception on Sunday, October 11 from 4:15 – 6:30 PM. 

SPONSORS

Project Management Leadership Group, Inc. – As the world leader in project, program and portfolio management implementations, PMLG delivers experiential-based project and program management training and certification to transform your organization to a culture of strategic execution excellence. Find them in the Solutions Center at booth #2101, or visit their solutions showcase on Tuesday, October 13 from 12:15 – 12:45 PM.

SESSIONS

Join Andrew Guitarte of Wells Fargo Bank for “A Case Study on Taming the Wild Problems of Portfolio Management” on Sunday, October 11.

• Attend this session to gain insights from a professional banker on how to better your portfolio management approach.

Join Wallace Johnson of Deloitte Consulting for “Leading Multi-Generational Projects and Surviving!” on Sunday, October 11.

• Attend this session to embrace diversity and learn solutions for issues that come from multi-generational workforces.

Join Dipanjan Ghosal, Pranabendu Bhattacharyya and Sharmila Das of Tata Consultancy Services for “Bringing Certainty in Agile Sprint Planning Through Estimation” on Sunday, October 11.

• Attend this session to enhance your knowledge of agile software development projects and learn how to plan, track and benchmark performance without being a hindrance to the agile way of executing projects.

Hello Project Management Colleagues!

For a long time, PMI’s global magazine PM Network has featured a very popular column called “In the Trenches.” Here, project management professionals share with their peers valuable advice and comments on managing projects, on leadership and on good practices. 

It’s now time for us to update this column with a new name…and we want to be sure that PMI colleagues -- around the world -- have input on the new choice.

You are invited to vote on our new column name! Please visit our poll to make your choice and after you do so, feel free to leave a comment as to why you voted the way you did.

Your input and feedback are important to us and we are excited to hear from you! If you have questions or would like to learn more, please contact Jan Haig or Dan Goldfischer.

Thank you for your participation and recommendations!

Did you know that we have over 1,000 templates on ProjectManagement.com to help you perform your job better?

Need a Project Plan/Project Definition template? We've got one here! 

• This template walks you through building a very detailed and comprehensive description of your project. 

Looking for a general Business Case template? Check this one out!

• Use this template to provide a detailed business case for your project. Once complete, it will give you a very tangible way to justify your project to executive management and sponsors.

In a hurry to communicate your project status to your sponsor? You might be interested in our At-a-Glance Weekly Project Status Report!

• Status reports keep everyone on the same page. This weekly report is an easy way to report status, issues, and more! It will call to your attention any unresolved issues and action items that might come back later and bite you.

Visit our Templates page to discover all of the deliverables, project plans, presentations and checklists in our library designed to make your life easier and more efficient. 

We are always interested in deliverable templates and project plans. Even if we already have something similar in our current library, your approach may be different enough help out a PM in a pinch. If you have a template that you would like to share with the community, please visit our Contribute Content page. 

We are pleased to introduce you this month to Dave Maynard, MBA, PMP®. Dave is a native New Yorker who after graduation from engineering school from the State University of New York, traveled to Houston to work for NASA at the Johnson Spacecraft Center.

He gradually gained responsibilities and participated in the Shuttle avionics architecture design, the “glass cockpit” development and in crew training. Incrementally David’s level of responsibility increased, and he became a Senior Engineer, Project Engineer, a Project Manager and Program Manager. David then moved to the Space Operations and Planning Complex (SOPC) where he again participating in overall technical design efforts.

After leaving NASA, Dave was asked to become the General Manager of Systems Management Inc. (SMI) in Orlando whose mission was to turn-around troubled projects, programs or operations. 

Dave now teaches at Indiana University and Purdue University in Indiana, is active the PMI-Northeast Indiana Chapter, who recently announced the David Arthur Maynard Scholorship Program, and volunteers for PMI in various capacities.

How did you get involved in project management?

Like many others, I started as an “accidental” project manager.  I was an engineer working as part of a large team solving a complex math problem.  The resolution of that problem took several years with a very discipline-diverse group of people from across the globe participating.  As the team’s efforts were nearing a conclusion, my manager asked me to “oversee” a new project.  The project’s purpose was the design and installation of an integrated set of five large computers that would be used to simulate the Shuttle’s flight computers.  The purpose of this system was to help with further Shuttle system architecture development and crew training.  It was excitingly difficult; hardware, software, displays and controls, schedules, cost, risk and more.  From then on, I was a Project Manager.  While I’m still a nerd, I’ve never done engineering work again.

Who or what inspires you to be the best project manager you can be?

It’s clear that a group of humans trying to accomplish a specific objective represents the most complex system that can be created.  There are an infinite number of variables that affect a project team.  Personalities, skills, location, understandings and a great many more factors.  There’s also a tangible atmosphere when a team is working together well.  It’s often described as synergy; when the team’s combined effectiveness is greater than the sum of each member’s separate efforts.  It’s a measure that the “most-complex system” working.  You can actually feel it in the air!  It makes the hair on my arms stand up and sends chills up my spine.  It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of and is a source of inspiration for me to continually, learn, adapt, change, re-think, re-focus and study to possibly help to achieve a synergistic team.  

What is one thing you wished you'd known when you first started out in project management?

It’s critical for the Project Manager to establish the team’s vision of what the end-result will be.  People want to know they are working towards a valuable goal, and it’s the Project Manager’s duty to continually reference the project’s mission.   The PM must be clear about the answers to: “Why are we doing this?”  Or “Why is what we are doing valuable?”  The Project Manager must be the team champion of the project’s mission, continually referring to it, judging against it and never losing sight of it.

It's Friday at 4 pm and your boss just told you that you've been assigned to work on a project - on a different continent! You leave 9 am tomorrow. What are the next five (5) things that you do?

• Understand who is assigned to the project and what their skills are

The project team is who will get this project accomplished.  There is nothing more important than understanding who they are and what they know.  Everything else pales in comparison to this simple action. 

• Examine information about the stakeholders, customers and their needs

Knowledge of who the end-users are and what they desire will be invaluable when I hit the ground tomorrow.  Creating a project result that misses the stakeholder’s desire is a recipe for encountering “interesting times.”

• Study everything available about the stated and implied requirements of the project -- including functional, performance, physical and design. 

This is so I could understand what in detail the product of the project is.  Note to self: many times the stated or documented requirements are incomplete, inconsistent or just plain wrong.   

• Study every scrap of project information (status)

Since this project is already on-going, there must be status reports that were created and perhaps presented.  I’d get a copy of all of them to read, digest and think about.

• Try to understand the method used to collect project data that was used to produce the status

This project is on a different continent!  There will be cultural differences, perhaps language barriers, certainly some fundamental things will be at odds with the way I’ve been working.  These differences will affect the way in which project data is collected and even represented in the status reports.  How? Why? 

You’ve come to the realization that an important project you are currently managing is going to be a massive failure. Somehow, every red flag has been missed or ignored and it’s far too late in the game to turn things around. Maybe you inherited the mess, maybe you’re the cause of the failure, or maybe it’s just the way things turned out and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. What 3 types of things will you do, mentally, physically, or even spiritually, to cope until the project is over?

Been there, done that!  I was part of a group whose job it was to turn around troubled projects, programs and operations.  If it’s “far too late” to turn things around, it’s indeed a very sad state.   Actually, if it’s truly too late to recover, the project should be terminated and closed.  Managing this project through termination will take a physical and mental toll on nearly everyone associated with it.  During the years I did turn-arounds, we invented key phrases that describe different situations including this one. 

We used to call this the “full wax job.”  You, the PM will need to be totally equipped.  You’ll want every advantage you can get in order to survive the upcoming ordeal.  You need to step up and get the “full wax job” for yourself. 

1) Body: Take care of yourself - stay healthy. For me this means taking time away from the project to exercise and eat well.  There are a great many ways to damage your heath while you’re in this troubled situation.  Stress is not the least of them!

2) Humor: Enjoy and point out to others the humor in every little thing that occurs.  Joke with the team, enjoy the stakeholders.  This is difficult to do under troubled circumstances, but is extremely important.  Humor helps get over the hurdles.  And the hurdles will be there anyway.

3) Dress up.  Yes, I know this sounds odd.  But start dressing more formally.  Suits, shoes, watch -- even a super nice pen in your pocket.  This is your business armor.  Without it, jabs and stabs will hurt.  It’s a great mental mechanism to get through tough meetings.  

Please introduce yourself to Dave below in the comments and add him to your network. To connect with him outside of the community, you can find him here on LinkedIn.

Is there a community member who you think deserves some recognition for their contributions to the community? Let us know! Email the member’s name and a brief explanation as to why you think he/she should be featured in our Member of the Month to [email protected].