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What to do when people aren’t following your project management process...

So, you’ve spent all this time and energy building and putting into place a process for people to follow to help them achieve better project outcomes and now you have some that aren’t complying. What do you do?

First, you must make sure your project management process is usable.

If your process is complicated, hard to follow, or hard to figure out where they fit into it, people won’t use it. Make sure you are keeping it simple and as streamlined as possible.

Once you have made sure it’s not the process and it really is a people issue, here are some techniques you can use:

Make sure they know HOW to comply.

Do your homework to understand the reasons for non-compliance before raising a red flag to others.

1. If it’s a knowledge issue, get them the right/right-sized training/coaching.
2. If it’s a motivation issue, find out their WIIFM (what’s in it for me) and tie their success to the overall goals that matter to them and their organization. For example, if getting a promotion is on their radar or getting that key assignment, show them how a win on this project will help them get recognition. If that’s something you can help with (such as making sure their successful project is recognized), then offer that support.
3. If it’s a misunderstanding of their role, clarify that WITH them so that you can agree to what they must do.
4. If it’s laziness, you can try appealing to their sense of responsibility to the community or the stakeholders on the project by showing them the impact of their lack of participation.

In any of the above instances, they won’t pay attention unless you have some specific metrics you can point to and impacts you can clearly articulate. Be prepared with facts, not finger pointing or emotion.

If the above doesn’t work, then it’s time to start looking at who else can help you…

Do you have an engaged and supportive sponsor that cares whether this process is being followed? If so, engage them and tell them about your concerns about noncompliance. This can often be the PMO leader that established the process, the PMO’s sponsor, your leadership team, or the leader/boss in the area where the non-compliance is taking place. Here’s how to have that conversation:

1. Make sure that you can clearly articulate the impact of the non-compliance. That can range from pointing out how it’s impacting other stakeholders because they don’t know what’s going on with the project, or when and how they are supposed to engage, the project isn’t meeting the timeline or scope, quality is suffering, etc.
2. Show them how it’s impacting the morale of other PMs that are complying because they feel like it’s not “one team, one fight” with the non-compliant person.
3. Be clear about what you have done to help this person back so that they see you have tried several options before coming to them.
4. Make sure you are keeping this conversation objective and about the impacts that are being caused by the behavior, not an attack on the person.

Then it’s time to get a little more public.

After you have given the above options time to work, you can try a more open approach. Bring the issue to a more public forum via the PMO leader or portfolio manager. Let’s assume this is the role you are in.

In your regular PMO/PPM meetings, let the group know that you will be going through a routine audit to make sure that everyone has all the support they need to effectively use the process. Let them know both a timeline to give them time to prepare (and comply), as well as exactly what metrics are going to be used to ensure compliance.

I would highly recommend that this list of measurements be very straightforward and simple. The more complicated, the more it will feel like this audit is becoming “the work” and people (especially those that don’t want to comply) will complain and draw attention to the intensity of the audit as a distraction technique.

Then, you need to give them some time to comply with these standards, making sure that any opportunities for training/coaching/support are provided. Once that time for compliance has been satisfied, bring the group together and review where each project stands. Your goal for this session is to gain commitment and support from leadership on compliance or put the leadership team in a position where they must approve any non-compliance.

That’s right…there might be a reason why certain projects wouldn’t have to comply. You may not like their reasons, but at the end of the day, the leadership team needs to make an active decision to either get the non-compliant project back on track or take responsibility for non-compliance. The goal here is to get to the source of the problem and get to a decision so we can cut back on the drama being caused by angst, frustration, etc. Then we can all get back to Getting. It. Done.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

When I was teaching my Project Management training to a client last week, my client said something that stuck with me, “Our problem isn’t progressive elaboration, it’s perpetual elaboration. We will analyze and over analyze and spend so much time trying to break down the work that we forget to do the work.” Such a strong point.

We were talking about right-sizing process. I always emphasize the importance of making sure to check every step along the way that you aren’t doing too much process and not enough work. We talked about work breakdown structures and the concept of Progressive Elaboration.

If you haven’t heard this term, or it’s been a while, “Progressive Elaboration” is a method of continuing to provide further detail into the planning process as it becomes available. The goal is to help the project team to continue to manage with greater accuracy, control the process more effectively, and achieve greater success with project delivery.

Many organizations struggle with, and are on the lookout for, the cases of analysis paralysis that usually takes place during the requirements phase. Another thing to look out for is perpetual elaboration. This is when you spend way too much time focused on getting the schedule perfect and breaking it down to such a level of detail that the project schedule itself becomes unmanageable. We’ve lost sight of the thing that’s most important: DOING the work.

Think about it. What level of detail do you actually need to go to in the schedule and what level of accuracy do you really need in order keep the project moving? Don’t let the planning process become so much of the work that the work isn’t getting done. Instead, look for the level of “just right” that gets you the information you need to move the project team forward and get to the business of getting work accomplished.

Your goal is to elaborate on the plan as you are progressing through the life cycle and gaining more knowledge about the elements that make up that plan. Your goal is to progressively elaborate to a point that is useful to you and the team to keep the project moving forward in the right direction. To keep the team focused on the work of getting the project done.

What you want to avoid is the process of making the project management too much of the work and spinning cycles on getting the plan so detailed and so elaborate that it becomes an unmanageable tool that gets in the way of productivity instead of supporting it.

Progressive elaboration by phase

Let’s look at it from the various project life cycle phases. When you are in the beginning stages of defining a project, a phase I call “Discovery,” you don’t yet know all the details of that project or what will go into ensuring success. You are building a business case and starting to define the “what” and the “why” of the project. At that time, we cannot provide a great deal of accuracy as to how long the project will take or what resources will be required for it to be successful. Make sure you are asking the fundamental questions about the goals, purpose – the why of the project and whatever other details are needed to ensure that the decision makers can make an educated and informed decisions about the priority of this project relative to others and whether or not it should be given the “go ahead” to proceed.

Then, we go into an “Initiation” phase where we develop the charter and start answering some very high-level questions about resource needs, risks, scope, etc. We know a little more and have done a little more digging. We have continued to elaborate on the scope, timeline, etc. We don’t yet know the details of what the plan will reveal, but we have answered another level of questions.

Now we hit “Planning.” During this process, we should begin to develop requirements so that we can effectively plan the work, based on that scope. We build a work breakdown structure (WBS) to further define the work of the project. We know a little more, we are progressively elaborating on the scope, and with that, we can now start addressing the timeline, we know more about what resources we need and when, etc. However, there is still more to learn as we continue through planning and into actual project benefits delivery.

As we continue onto “Delivery,” the execution phase, we then learn more about what reality is going to do to our schedule. Our friend Murphy (remember Murphy’s Law?) peeks his head into our plans and we need to adjust. We are going to learn more and we are going to have to take those learnings and apply them to the schedule and see what impacts are generated…we are progressing and we are elaborating.

This process continues through project delivery, generally, and sometimes doesn’t end until the project does. This can be OK, if we are maintaining a strong hold on scope. We can certainly continue to provide more detail to the process if it’s useful, but if we aren’t controlling the scope process, this is where we will experience scope creep.

Scope creep happens when we don’t have a good change management process to help us control change to scope and we allow too many of the “it’s just one thing, it’s just one feature” kind of conversations to happen. Each one of those, by the way, can be addressed with a “Yes, and…” meaning, we can say, “Yes, we can make those changes and here’s what the impact will be to our timeline and costs.” It’s the triple constraint dance we all must do.

Don’t let them put you in the position of always saying “no” when “yes, and…” will address the situation and put the onus back on the requestor to own the decision and impacts.

So far, progressive elaboration sounds like a nice and healthy process that we do to address new information that comes to us as we go through the project phases. It is. It should be done. It’s helpful to know that it’s perfectly OK to not have all the answers upfront when you start a project and that you will get more information later and can update your plan accordingly. What you want to avoid, however, is spending so much time and energy on getting to the lowest possible level of detail that tracking status becomes a full-time job and you become a low-level tasker instead of a benefits delivery project manager.

Remember, there is no such thing as a perfect plan…until the project is over and we’ve gone back to update that schedule to reflect what happened.

If you are a project manager or responsible for project management process in your organization, think hard about what you require of yourself and the team in terms of project planning activities and deliverables. I highly encourage you to spend sufficient time doing planning upfront and being prepared to adjust as new information becomes available, however you do not want to spend the vast majority of your time focused on continuing to iterate on that same plan at the expense of project delivery.

Remember that project management is not the end game. Project management is the process that we use to drive business results. Your job is to know when and how to use the tools of project management to help you drive those business results in the most efficient manner possible.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

The Project Management profession is shifting in some very important ways…are you ready?

The world is seeing an accelerating speed of innovation as problem solver and change happening at an almost frenetic pace. Companies are going through transformations almost as a matter of course and it’s hard to keep up. But this is our golden opportunity, our chance to show just what project managers are made of.

Why do I say that?

Project Management is the MOST equipped profession for driving IMPACT during these times of chaos, accelerated change, and general impatience we have developed globally. We have a unique skill set that has been honed and designed specifically to take these new ideas and transform them into value-based solutions, all while taming the chaos.

But how do we step up to this challenge?

Not by doing things the way we’ve always done them! Many of us have gotten too comfortable and complacent. We’ve chugged along doing our projects, jumping from one to the other, staying heads down on the work in front of us and we could let this golden opportunity pass us by.

Here’s how to prepare yourself for the future of Project Management:

1. Understand that only you can decide to be an IMPACT Driver.

This means deciding to take control of your own career. Don’t wait for your company to send you to a training class or miss out on a great opportunity because your company doesn’t pay for training anymore. More and more companies are not paying for training for their staff or don’t give them access to the resources that are really going to move the needle. Develop your own career plan and seek out opportunities to develop skill sets in job rotations, new opportunities, or training that addresses where you want to go (not where you are), or where they want to put you. Do not settle. You must develop your skills, open your eyes to new ways of doing things, and understand that the status quo will leave you in the dust.

2. Know the difference between performance and value.

There is a three-letter acronym that many of us hold dear: EVM (Earned Value Management). While this is an important key to measuring performance, it doesn’t do anything to tell you about value. How can that be? Yeah, I know. It’s a beautiful irony.

Think about it. EVM tells you a great deal about how the project is performing against the planned schedule and cost constraints, but it doesn’t really tell you if the scope being delivered will generate the IMPACT that is expected. That’s VALUE. HINT: guess what the organization is paying you, expecting you, to deliver?

EVM and other similar metrics are necessary so that we can monitor and improve performance, but this is not the same as measuring, delivering, and realizing IMPACT and value.

You will start hearing more about ROI (Return on Investment) going forward. It’s the new three letter acronym every project manager should be using. It’s the term being used by the business leaders as they develop their business cases and decide which projects will get funded. It’s that promise of ROI that determines what projects are worth the time and energy, and of course, money. It’s also to keep in mind that if an organization is investing in projects, then it stands to reason that an organization is also investing in project managers to deliver those projects.

3. Understand the role of IMPACT Driver.

When you are given budget to do a project, you have assumed a fiduciary responsibility to spend that money in a way that always has the best interests of the investor in mind. Sometimes this means your project should be canceled if it won’t achieve the intended value. There’s no reason to throw good money after bad. You need to put ROI first and worry less about your “baby” being taken from you.

If being over budget and schedule means that the value the project could generate will double, it might be worth the overruns. That’s a business decision you need to prepare the project owner to make – but you need to have the ability/skillset to recognize it and most importantly, be able to communicate it to those who will make that decision. You must be looking for these opportunities and be comfortable sacrificing your perfect project performance record for real value delivery.

4. Understand that projects are the means, not the end.

We spend so much energy and focus on the project and define our own success by how the project performs, “I brought my project in on time and on budget, therefore I was successful” or how thorough our process has become, “We have created 45 new templates this month.”

The organization thinks of projects as investments and is investing in the project and the project manager to drive the business outcome they are trying to derive - the project is therefore a MEANS not the END.

Stop worrying so much about process. I’m not saying don’t have one, but I assure you, the business doesn’t care about metrics related to how many templates you have created or how many steps are in your process (fewer is better here). What they want to know is does that process get me the high-IMPACT outcomes I’m looking for with my investment? Measure outcomes, not templates.

5. Speak their language, not yours.

Sometimes we complain because the “business” doesn’t “get it” when we try to talk to them about project management. We are the ones missing the point.

It isn’t about making sure the business understands project management speak. It’s about making sure you understand how to speak to them in their terms – how to translate “project into business-speak.”

Why is this critical? You must understand the business value and be able to articulate the way your project is going to drive that business value, deliver outcomes that move the needle in the organization, AND COMMUNICATE the outcomes and value. IMPACT Drivers can clearly articulate the value and impact that their project will have on the end consumer.

6. Be a commitment keeper, not just a commitment maker.

With leaders having less and less patience in this fast-paced environment, trust is going to be critical for your success. It’s all too easy to just say yes when your sponsor asks for changes that are going to throw your project off course. You certainly need to look at every change request through the eyes of an ROI-seeker, but you also need to be crystal clear about what you can and cannot do, so that commitments are not just made, but kept. This will build your credibility and ultimately earn you a seat at the table when tough decisions need to be made. They will know they can count on you.

IMPACT Drivers don’t just talk a good game, they deliver.

7. Train for the future, but don’t look for more of the same.

There are so many courses out there that all look the same. They teach you the same steps in a methodology, they emphasize the same old techniques and they are all emphasizing the same things: project success equals business success. Now we know this is not true.

IMPACT Drivers look for new ways to gain the crucial skills that will help them advance their careers, position them for the future, and empower themselves to be organization strategy partners.

8. You will determine the future of Project Management.

No pressure or anything, but each of us must take an active role in determining where we want this profession to go. We can either be the super heroes that drive future transformation or we can sit back and watch as the world changes around us. The choice is yours. It all starts with you. Drive the change you want to see in the world.

Just remember…Project Management is not the end game. It is simply the engine we use to drive IMPACT and now you can become the IMPACT Driver.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

As project management types, many of us are so busy helping others with their planning and project activities that we forget to take time to do our own planning. I liken us to the plumber with the leaky faucet. Whether it’s planning the next step in your career or planning the next quarter, we need to take time to plan out our roadmap. We must be prepared to take our own medicine. It’s good for us, after all.

I’m taking my own medicine and beginning my process of planning the next year. Starting in quarterly chunks of planning. This helps to figure out what I can get accomplished. I always have more ideas than I possibly have capacity to complete. There are so many new projects I want to explore, new ways to deliver value, things I want to try.

Are you like me with a to do list that never quite gets to empty?

As I prepared for some time out of the office, I kept working furiously to get things knocked off my list. I got A LOT done, but as I worked, I found more things that I wanted to add to my list! It’s crazy, I know. The list just gets longer no matter how many things I check off! I have projects coming out of my ears and I know that I won’t be able to get them all done.

It’s healthy (at least I think so) to keep that list of ideas coming in, things you want to accomplish, goals that you are setting out for yourself. The creative energy is good for us. And it’s important to jot down the ideas we have when we have them instead of discarding the idea or possible new project.

So what do I do? I prioritize!

I am always looking at the order things need to be done in. What’s urgent? What’s important?

Urgent vs. important

It’s crucial to find the balance between urgent and important. So often, we spend so much time on the urgent that we never get to the important. For example, you have urgent client needs that must be addressed, but once you’ve taken care of all the needs of your clients, you have no time left for the important things like planning for the future.

As a business owner, I like to remember something my coach always says, “You cannot only work in the business. You must work on the business if you are going to be successful in the long term.”

The same applies to you, whether you run a division, a company or a project. We must make time to work “on the business” we are managing, as well as in it. This means taking time to step back, figure out where we are going and what big things we want to accomplish, then plan out our roadmap for getting there.

This takes planning for the future. Yeah, we gotta actually do some planning.

Take a few minutes to think about your big goals for the next year. What will bring you the most happiness? What will give you the greatest sense of accomplishment? How can you drive high-IMPACT?

Then, put a plan together and manage your big goals like you would any other project. Yes, this means actually writing it down. It’s only a dream until you make it a plan. Once you make it a plan, we know how to handle and execute a plan, right?

OK, now go Get. It. Done!

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,

How do you convince someone that Project Management is the medicine they need to take? You don’t.

Our “go to” move when we want to bring someone over to our way of thinking is to talk and talk about the benefits because surely, they will “get it” if we just explain it right…right?

Well, you may want to consider starting with a few other things first, then they might actually listen to what you have to say…

• Start by listening. Why are they unimpressed with Project Management? Maybe they have seen it fail before or “got burned.” Maybe they just haven’t been exposed to it. You won’t know unless you ask and asking allows you to figure out how to best approach engaging them on the topic.
• Make sure that you are not over-complicating the project management process in the first place. There's a difference between project management and PROJECT MANAGEMENT. It might be that the process is getting in the way of productivity and that could contribute to their concern. Focus on what minimal best practices you can put in place in order to create value without making project management “the work” for them.

• Think simple and small. If what you have been presenting to them is overwhelming, they won’t buy into it. You don't want to overwhelm people with charts and tools and templates they have to fill out if you want them to believe in the value project management. Always keep your discussion of the topic and what you introduce to them very minimal.

Then, you can start talking in a way that speaks to their perspective…

• Provide examples of what other industry leaders are doing. In every industry, you can find people that are exhibiting good project management discipline and it shows in the outcomes that the organizations able to create. Take the opportunity to research other companies that do similar work and showcase how they have implemented project management discipline and are seeing stellar results.

• Focus on the pain you can fix. Give them examples of what’s not working right now. The reason you want to add PM process is probably because something isn’t working as well as they could or something is just broken.

• Make it real for them. When I do my project management training courses, I often walk people through very simple examples of applying project management techniques to day-to-day life. For example, when you are planning a trip, you apply a lot of the best practices of project management to plan the trip effectively. Just getting from point A to point B, you plan your route, plan for issues that can come up along the way, develop a timeline, plan for stops along the way, etc. Many times, applying project management to the “real world” makes it easier to see the value.

• And the most important way to make a non-believer a believer is to get something done. Perform. Perform relentlessly and then explain to them that project management techniques are what got you there and got the outstanding results.

There is no greater way to transform a non-believer into a believer than to get something done for them that has extremely high value and creates a big impact.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,