The Professional Project Manager

Does using all the right processes, tools and techniques guarantee project success?  Does having all the right credentials and training mean you cannot fail?

The short answer is no, it doesn’t.

Managing projects well is all about increasing the chances of project success and reducing the chances of project failure. 

You can be the most experienced project manager in the world with all the right credentials and experience. Furthermore you can be using the most appropriate methodology and constantly reviewing progress and yet still somehow, the project is a failure through events you simply cannot control. Conversely there are many incompetent people inappropriately called project managers with no sense of best practice who make things up as they go along that somehow, against all odds, deliver a project successfully.

So why bother?

Because, there is a far greater chance of success for those experienced and professional project managers. There is also a far greater chance of project failure for the inexperienced unprofessional project leaders. The problem seems to be when one of the inexperienced ones has a success they tend to crow about it and highlight the fact they finally succeeded and make it seem the norm when its not.

I assume that if you are reading this blog you fall into the category of professional project manager who has many more successes than failures. So here are some tips to help increase the chances of project success.

1. Define exactly what metrics are being used to define a successful project. Is it simply time and cost, or does it include other factors such as health and safety, customer satisfaction, environmental impact and reputation.

2.            Make sure your stakeholders know that you can’t guarantee project success – don’t set unreasonable expectations but balance that with a realistic appraisal of the chances of success, and don’t paint too gloomy a picture.

3.            Get the experience your need to be able to positively affect the chances of project success. This experience can come from your own experience on the job, it can also come from mentoring.

4.            Rely on the experience on others, often captured in a professional body of knowledge such as The PMBOK® Guide.

5.            Get the training, and if necessary the credentials, appropriate to the type of projects you are working on. Formal training takes you experience and helps it grow faster.

And finally, when you do have a successful project make sure everyone knows about it!

Do you want to be a better project manager? Then become a better change manager. It’s a bold statement but true.

All projects involve change, you are making or delivering something new that is different from the current situation, and given normal circumstances people naturally resist change.

So what is involved in begin a great change manager?

First, realise that generally people don’t like change and will resist it if not managed properly. Be aware that change is a scary for thing for most people. Let people work their way through the process of accepting change. You will need to use your well-developed leadership skills here to understand, appreciate and guide people through the uncertainty of change.

Create a compelling reason to change. Let people know what the reason for the project and the change is. If people don’t see the need for the project they will not support it. Communicate the need for change effectively and regularly. Change management is one of those situations where in the absence of good communication, rumour, gossip and innuendo will take hold.

Create capability for change. Get people on board who support your project and the change it brings and who also have the necessary skills to carry out the project.

Carry out the change as planned. First plan, then do. Any project or change must first be properly planned and then executed according to the plan.

Embed the change. Simply doing what you had planned to do will not guarantee that the change will be permanent. Create a strategy to make sure the change is embedded and will go on past the end of the project. Create champions and carry out post implementation reviews.

So, amongst all those other technical and soft skills a project manager must possess, learning about and becoming proficient at change management will increase your chances of project success.

Successful project management involve successful change management and successful change management requires great project management skills as well.

One of the greatest challenges we face as project managers is a focus on outputs over outcomes.

Generally, projects are initiated to deal with a particular outcome. A problem or opportunity has been identified and the project has been established to provide a solution. The objective is that the outcome will be achieved and the problem resolved or the opportunity taken.

As part of the planning process of any project we identify an output, or outputs, which can deliver that outcome. We then take the steps as project managers to deliver that output but what often happens is we fail to check whether the output will still deliver the expected outcome.

Don’t get caught up in the assumption that your project output will deliver the outcomes it was supposed to do. Stay focussed on the outcomes during your project and be prepared to modify your outputs to ensure that you reach your intended outcomes.

So what’s the difference between outputs and outcomes?

If you work in the IT industry the outcome may be a better user interface leading to greater customer satisfaction. A project is established to develop a software output that is intended to deliver the outcome. At the time the project is initiated it is clear that with the information available that the output will deliver the outcome. But what if new information is discovered about ways to improve customer satisfaction? That is the time to revisit the output and see if it is still the best way to deliver the outcome.

If you work in the construction industry you may have identified that a particular public gymnasium building with a certain floor area, height and fit out will deliver the expected outcome of greater community involvement in recreation and greater levels of fitness. This should be your focus, not the building. You should always be prepared to examine your project from the point of view of the intended outcome and question whether the output is still the best way to achieve it.

One of the most important roles a project manager can play is to focus on the intended outcomes and be an advocate for this in their project. At times it may require some changes to your intended outputs but at the end of the day a focus on outcomes over outputs will result in a greater chance of project success, happier clients and an improved reputation.

Nothing matters more in project management than having great people skills.

This statement may come as a surprise to those of you working hard on your technical skills of time, cost, quality and risk in project management. You can estimate resources, cost and time to within a 0.5% margin of error; you can use software to produce report after report and chart after chart; you know the technical specifications of your product better than you know the back of your hand; and you love numbers, spreadsheets and Gantt charts. Aren’t these the most important project management skills to have? Sure, they are important and you need these to be successful, but between technical and people skills it the people skills that are most useful to you as a project manager.

Let me start by recounting an experience I had while managing a large construction project. I was working on this project and was proud of the fact that early on it was already ahead of time, ahead of budget and delivering greater quality than expected. I was shocked to be taken aside by the project sponsor and be told that my project was in no uncertain times considered a failure! How could this be, on paper the project was doing well? She explained to me that stakeholders just didn’t know me nor did they trust me. The first because I didn’t build relationships well and the second because I didn’t communicate effectively.

After recovering from the initial ego bruising I saw that she was right. Despite the project technically being a great success I had neglected key stakeholders, my communication was sporadic, ineffective and often sparse; and my focus was too much on the technical aspects of the project. I made a decision within 24 hours to change to focus of the project from a construction project to a communications project. We started building and maintaining lasting relationships with key stakeholders, taking time to find out what was important to them. I discovered that not everyone is interested in time, cost or quality. Some stakeholders judge success by other means. We began regular communications using a variety of styles from face to face, to written. We did all these things regularly, with sincerity and with respect to the different needs and viewpoints of our stakeholders. Within a short amount of time I received feedback that my project was now considered a success.

So what exactly are these seemingly mystical magical people skills?

1. They are the ability to form and maintain positive professional and personal relationships: this requires you to truly value people and the interaction you have with them and commit to maintaining these relationships
2. The ability to communicate effectively to a wide variety of listeners – this means understating different points of view, using different styles of communications and receiving feedback positively.
3. The ability to listen empathically – this requires you to understand that other people think and act differently depending on different viewpoints of the world.

So work on your people skills, give them priority in your project management work and you will be more successful. A final note though, don’t think that you can be just a great people person with little or no technical ability and achieve success. I’m sure we have all come across those people who are exceptionally talented with relationship and communication but have a lack of technical ability. No amount of people skills can hide technical inability, sooner or later these people will be exposed as well

So, as a successful project manager you will need both technical skills, and the softer people skills but it is your ability to form relationships and communicate that will contribute more to your success as a project manager.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an accepted part of quality management and customer satisfaction in many organizations. While it has a broad range of interpretation and application, it has some consistent principles which define it.

They are:

• Everyone in the organization recognizes that quality is central to organizational success
• Everyone in the organization contributes to quality
• The organizational culture and structure is built and maintained to support TQM
• Continuous improvement is mandatory and expected

Now imagine if we moved from project management as an ad hoc, practitioner lead initiative within an organization to Total Project Management (TPM). What would this look like? Keep in mind that most organizations rely on successful delivery of projects for operational and strategic success. Additionally, for a lot of organizations the largest part of their capital budget, and sometimes their operational budget, is spent on projects of some sort. These organizations don’t question the need to have finance and human resources as essential organization wide shared services but often question the need and value of organizational project management.

Let’s start by taking those four principles of TQM and substituting project management where it currently says quality management. Here is how they look:

• Everyone in the organization recognizes that project management is central to organizational success
• Everyone in the organization contributes to project management
• The organizational culture and structure is built and maintained to support Total Project Management
• Continuous improvement is mandatory and expected

If we did print these out, embed them in the organizational culture, and let our shareholders and customers know about them we could expect to see the following:

• A Chief Project Officer (CPO) operating a C-Level
• Appropriate and tailored portfolio, program and project management methodologies
• Appropriate and tailored PMO’s
• Support for ongoing professional development for all project management practitioners
• The CEO regularly acknowledging the role project management plays in the success of the organization
• Commitment from everybody in the organization to improving the approach to project management

Overall, these changes, if done appropriately, would lead to a more mature approach to project management within the organization and ultimately more successful portfolios, programs, projects and organizations.

What do you think?