Easy in theory, difficult in practice

A few of the examples of weak project manager behavior that Neal Whitten highlights in his Too Soft! list directly relate to escalation.

This is not surprising, since escalation is a hard thing to do – it will usually put a PM directly in the cross-hairs of one or more stakeholders, and if the escalation was unnecessary, it will rebound on them.

It’s important for a PM to understand when escalation is warranted.  Unfortunately, like the threshold test for pornography, you know it when you see it, but that subjectivity will occasionally cause false positives or negatives!

Some questions to consider include:

1. Will it measurably affect your project’s success criteria or constraints?  If an unresolved issue is going to cause your project to fail, the time for being nice has likely passed.
2. Have you tried (and tried again) to address the issue through normal channels?  As I’d referenced in an earlier article, some people persist in escalation when it is obviously not required – a direct communication would resolve the situation quicker and with less wasted effort for all concerned.  Sometimes, this behavior is a form of “empire-building” or even a form of laziness (e.g. why use a sniper rifle when a tactical nuke would be simpler!).  If you have exhausted all regular avenues and the issue still persists, then escalation might be the only answer.
3. Have you asked an unbiased, but respected, third-party?  Many times in the heat of the battle, we get so focused on an issue that we lose perspective, and escalation appears to be the only answer.  This is the right time to leverage the services of a mentor who does NOT have skin in the game to provide some advice.

If escalation is required, don’t immediately shoot from the hip.  To reduce blow-back, it’s a good idea to have a private discussion with the stakeholders that are likely to bear the brunt of your escalation to remind them of the project’s objectives, the impact of the issue on these objectives, remind them that you had tried to gain their assistance in resolving the issue and to let them know that you see no alternative other than bringing the issue to a higher authority.

A key for this discussion will be to focus on the issue and not the individual (no matter how often the stakeholder tries to draw you into THAT argument!).  In a best case scenario, the implication of escalation might be sufficient to break the logjam on issue resolution, but at the very least you won’t have blind-sided the stakeholder if you have to follow through with the escalation.

Escalation is never a pleasant activity – you can guarantee that someone is going to be hurt by it.  But always remember that if your project suffers because of your desire to be a nice guy/gal or because you are afraid of the repercussions, you can’t call yourself a professional project manager.

(Note: this article was originally written & published by me in June 2012 on my personal blog, kbondale.wordpress.com)

When companies identify a capability gap in one of their business areas, it is common to bring in outside assistance to help assess and fill this gap.  Generically, this would seem to be common sense – if I know that I need to improve my knowledge of plumbing, I am likely to fare better if I hire a professional plumber than if I try to figure things out on my own (even if there are some really good YouTube videos available on home improvement)!

However, when it comes to project management effectiveness, the merits of this practice are questionable.  No doubt, a consulting firm that specializes in delivering such services is likely to have more focused capability improvement experience than the knowledge of your project management team but your gap is rarely about tools and techniques (which are easy to fix) and more about behavior modification at multiple levels of your organization.

The companies that may benefit the most from a focused consulting engagement are those at either the lowest level of project management maturity, or those at a higher-than-average one. 

At the lower end of the spectrum, they may not have the shared knowledge to institute even the most basic project governance and management practices, and yet, if there is internal support from the top-down, they could achieve some quick wins by adopting some “out-of-the-box” generic practices coupled with some foundation PM training for all project-involved staff. 

For those near-world class organizations, a consulting gig can help to identify and address the few remaining areas for improvement or could ensure that their self-assessment of capability superiority is, in fact, accurate.

For the larger group of companies that have instituted project management practices and tools but are struggling with achieving the behavior changes essential to realizing project management’s true benefits, utilizing external consultants is unlikely to provide any more benefit than an internally staffed improvement initiative.  For such organizations, the value of project management is conceptually understood by all but the challenge exists with “walking the walk”.  It’s a sure sign of this state of limbo if the majority of the lessons captured in post-project reviews are behavioral reminders.

Don’t get me wrong – significant value can be delivered by an external firm that provides executive coaching and training to your leadership team to help them truly absorb the value of project management and can facilitate the implementation of standard practices.  However, unless your organization is ready to engage these consultants for a long-term sustained on-site (i.e. costly) campaign, it is unlikely that they will be able to truly influence positive behavior changes.

Unfortunately achieving higher levels of project management maturity is often a case of “Physician, heal thyself”!

(Note: this article was originally written and published by me in August 2012 on my personal blog, kbondale.wordpress.com)

Those of us who have managed projects with team members dispersed across distant time zones are well aware of the risks caused by geographic, cultural and temporal distance. The benefits of thoughtful co-location for right-sized teams are also well recognized, but even in such ideal situations, we face a different challenge which Daniel Pink covers in his latest book, When.

We know that some of us tend to deliver our best work first thing in the morning, whereas others are late bloomers who are most productive much later in the day. Daniel uses the common terminology of larks and owls to refer to those people who act as bookends of the working day, and refers to the majority who fall somewhere between these extremes as third birds.

He also provides guidance on the type of work which, for the majority of people, are best performed at specific times of day. For early birds, analytic tasks or critical decisions are better made in the morning whereas tasks requiring insight are better done in the late afternoon or early evening when analytical safeguards are down. For night owls, the opposite pattern appears to hold true.

While this is intellectually stimulating, what’s the relevance to our teams?

When our teams are forming, if we take some time to understand which of the three categories our team members fall into we might be able to more fully realize their collective potential. If we have a team which is predominantly larks, daily stand ups or other planning or analytical activities might better be done first thing in the morning whereas solving a particularly challenging problem or tapping into the team’s creativity might be better done during the latter part of the afternoon.

For a parliament of owls, you could consider the opposite approach. Such homogeneous cases rarely occur, so it is helps to understand each individual’s preferences. The book provides a number of simple tools as well as references to more advanced assessments to facilitate this discovery process.

Daniel also highlights a darker pattern – the early to mid-afternoon time tends to be both productivity and quality quicksand. Daniel provides the example of a hospital where the probability of an avoidable surgical problem was shown to increase from one percent in the early morning to four percent in the mid-afternoon. While this might not hold true for all people, the majority of larks and third birds are affected. However, the impacts of this can be significantly reduced through preventative measures such as short breaks and the use of quality methods such as checklists or non-solo work.

When it comes to productivity and quality, timing is everything.

We might assume that organizations have well defined criteria that are used to decide which projects should be terminated. Unfortunately, most organizations are haunted by the un-dead corpses of those projects that have survived long past their useful life. A contributing factor to the proliferation of these zombies is the lack of objective criteria as well as inconsistent decision-making regarding project termination.

In this economic climate, the inability to consistently terminate projects is competitive disadvantage as it robs organizations of the ability to focus on high value projects that will help them survive a downturn and come out much stronger on the other side than their competitors.

To improve the consistency of project termination decisions, introduce an impartial project delivery assurance process that gets executed on all active projects (over a certain size) on a quarterly basis. This delivery assurance process could look for the following tell-tale signs of project "rigor mortis":

• The project's business benefits (tangible or not) are not expected until the end of time.
• The project sponsor never existed, is the Invisible Man, or has entered the Witness Protection Program.
• Ask the question of your portfolio steering committee or of all Department heads - will you care if this project gets axed. If no one says "yes" or no one can remember the rationale for the project, get it off the books!
• Ask the question of the sponsor (if you've located him/her) - "Would you initiate this project today?" See if they can look you in the eyes when they answer "Yes"...
• The achievement of the project's business benefits is heavily tied to external factors or to the successful completion of high risk internal initiatives.
• (Re)do a risk/reward evaluation of the project (which had hopefully been done prior to the project being approved) - if the project now looks more like a dead dog than a cash cow, you've found a winner!

Do you see a trend?

None of the questions I've asked are using traditional ways of evaluating project health - this does not mean that we are ignoring earned value management, the triple constraint and your issue logs, but we simply can't afford to have successful operations, but dead (or un-dead) patients!

(Note: this article was originally written and published by me in July 2009 on Projecttimes.com)

Ridley Scott’s movie, The Martian, enjoyed great returns at the box office and has received positive feedback from most film critics and viewers. While it is exciting and funny, the film also manages to showcase some good project management lessons. In case you haven’t seen the movie yet, there are spoilers ahead, so proceed at your own peril!

Validate critical assumptions

It was a reasonable assumption that Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, had perished in the dust storm due to the lack of biometric data being communicated from his suit. However, once the remaining crew members had communicated with NASA that they believed Mark lost, the NASA ground team could have immediately started to review satellite imagery from near the Hab to eliminate any doubts about his status. While they eventually do realize he has survived based on the movements of the rover, a few precious days were lost. While there might not be a benefit in confirming all assumptions made on a project, you should identify the vital few which present the greatest risk of impact to your project outcomes if they are proven to be wrong.

Attitude IS everything

Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds of survival, most people would have given up hope and focused on enjoying the handful of days which they believed would be left to them. Mark briefly contemplates his imminent mortality, but quickly refocuses his efforts on survival. No doubt, his knowledge and experience help him to construct a plan of attack, but his positive attitude and sustained sense of humor ensure that he doesn’t give in to despair. The uncertainty that is native to project work will guarantee a fair share of bad days – we might not be able to control those, but we can control how we respond to them.

Creativity flourishes with constraints

Faced with being marooned on Earth, a castaway might expend valuable time in coming up with options to prolong survival. In the barren Mars environment, with only the contents of the Hab and rover at his disposal, Mark’s is able to narrow his focus to unleash his creativity. When confronting project issues, team members might pursue the path of least resistance resulting in a less than optimal resolution. Introduce smart constraints, and they might be forced to MacGuyver their way to something brilliant.

Stakeholders are your hidden strength

After the failure of first supply probe mission, things look very bleak for Mark. But thanks to the positive relationship between NASA and the Chinese National Space Administration, the opportunity emerges for another shot at it. We might feel that a given stakeholder has low influence or interest in our project – this should never be an invitation to ignore them. You never know when their support might be the last piece of the puzzle required for your project’s success.

Incorporate some of these lessons into your routine and you can help to successfully bring your project home!

(Note: this article was originally written and published by me in December 2015 on my personal blog, kbondale.wordpress.com)