Joseph ThompsonIT Project Coordinator| Nova Home LoansTucson, Az, United States
I work in IT. My current position is IT Project Coordinator. We have 4 Business Analysts. My job is to manage our list of projects (portfolio), work with the software engineers, infrastructure guys, stakeholders, etc. When I pass my PMP Exam, I will be the IT Project Manager. I am the only one and I have to work with executives to prioritize projects, plan, etc. Recently we promoted someone to another Project Coordinator position, but this person specializes in only a group of projects (program). We have over 100 projects waiting. I don't know how to discuss with my boss (CTO) that my role is not a project manager or coordinator and that it is more of a portfolio manager. What do I do with this? How do I handle this massive amount of projects? With this structure what is my role vs the BAs? The priority of our projects can change daily and it slows us down. My boss is focused on is closing projects, but his changing of the priorities is counterproductive. What can I do to ensure success? We have 3-4 years of work and it grows all the time. We cannot slow down enough or get structured enough to plan out our projects and estimate when we could even do a project. I am being told constantly to add a project and make it a high priority, but the only way to do that is stop work on a current project. HELP Saving Changes...
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Sisca YuliharyaniSr. PM Consultant | Chief Strategy Officer| IndonesiaBandung, West Java, Indonesia
Hi Joseph,
I understand your headache :), that problem seems similar when i was PMO in state own enterprise that has 27000 employee. and i am the PMO of IT unit that has 4 Vice President (VP) : Planning, Design & Development, Operation, and ERP. Each of those VP has many software engineers, Analyst, infrastructure & network guy and the only people that know the project management is me (at that time). I told you this so that you know that i have been there.
My suggestion to make your CTO understand about your role : You can create the presentation that contains of the differences among project, program, and portfolio and the people that supposed to be on each of those position (the knowledge requirement). Also the importance of Planning (i presume you and your team is lack of planning according to your story above) That presentation must contains of the "as is" condition in your company, the "to be" (the ideal condition) and the "gap" (between the "as is" and "to be") and what the action required to make the gap smaller or disappear, then you send it to your CTO. After that you can ask his/her time to present and have a deep discussion about it.
Hope this help :) Saving Changes...
Eric SimmsSenior Program ManagerBaltimore, Maryland, United States
Your boss sounds like some of mine, who constantly shuffle resources around without considering the impact of doing so. You need to make your boss understand that this is unproductive, and works against his objective of closing projects. He will likely not want to hear this, so you’ll need to prove to him how much time and money he’s wasting doing things his way. Invoke your authority as the company's leading project management expert. Saving Changes...
I would suggest you to discuss all the issues with your immediate boss and his boss. On the other hand, try utilizing project and task management tools like TaskQue for prioritizing your work and have a bird view of all the created projects. Using tools would provide you with better structure in handling your projects. Saving Changes...
Krishna PakkiProject Services Manager| Rio TintoGilbert, Az, United States
I am not in IT industry, but have been in similar situations.
Take a breath, and one step at a time. First you need to understand what is expected from your role (dont be overwhelmed by all the things what you assume you should be doing). Second, come up with a solution, a frame work to manage your scope. Then only you can get buy-in from your manager. Do you have one? When you dont have a choice to choose your Boss, try the other way, manage the Boss :-), a powerful and influential stakeholder. Saving Changes...
Krishna PakkiProject Services Manager| Rio TintoGilbert, Az, United States
I am not in IT industry, but have been in similar situations.
Take a breath, and one step at a time. First you need to understand what is expected from your role (dont be overwhelmed by all the things what you assume you should be doing). Second, come up with a solution, a frame work to manage your scope. Then only you can get buy-in from your manager. Do you have one? When you dont have a choice to choose your Boss, try the other way, manage the Boss :-), a powerful and influential stakeholder.
Good Luck ! Saving Changes...
Saji VargheseSaji Varghese PMP| Virtusa (Formarly Polaris Consulting and services Ltd.)Thane, Maharashtra, India
I think a to do list will help you here. This will help you to prioritize your tasks. Prioritize, plan, do, check and act ;) Saving Changes...
I don’t know your boss, so I ‘m going to make some assumptions.
Your boss wants you to be successful. At the same time, your boss does not want to solve your problems for you. You are in the position you are in because your boss believes you are capable. Your job is to prove that. Your job is not to just take your problems to your boss, but to take solutions to your boss; to get things done. This brings us to your question - how?
You stated that you have over 100 projects in queue – 3-4 years’ worth of work. How much of it adds value to the company and helps the company achieve its goals? If it takes 4 years to complete one of the projects, will it still be worth delivering by then?
As others have mentioned, you have a prioritization issue. Do you have, or can you establish, a cross functional group of decision makers who can manage the priority of the list? My first thoughts on an approach, which might not work at your company, would consist of the following:
1) Get a champion from higher up the food chain; explain the situation to the champion and the help you need from him or her.
2) Working with the champion, gather together the decision makers and go through the list of projects. Determine if any can be closed and prioritize the rest.
3) Establish a regular review process to manage ongoing priorities and to prioritize any new projects.
This approach might not work at your company, but it is the outcome you want – a process for managing the priority of existing and new projects. If it isn’t a strategic initiative that helps the company meet its objectives, a mandatory compliance initiative, or a requirement to keep the business functioning, you should question whether or not to close it.
I have a couple of other thoughts on some of your points:
• Don’t worry about discussing your role with your boss, for now. Have that discussion after you help get things under control.
• Is slowing down and planning a project really going to slow anything down? You don’t have time to do a project right, but you have time to do it wrong, 3 or 4 times?
• You need to understand and be able to communicate your resource & personnel capacity. As you are experiencing, if there is too much work in progress, there is not enough work getting done. Identify your limits and, as projects are prioritized, identify which will be worked on with the available resources and personnel. If someone wants a lower priority project worked on, as long as it doesn’t create conflicts with resources and personnel needed for higher priority work, your team of decision-makers can make that person responsible for obtaining the resources and personnel needed to work on the project.
Don’t try to follow my advice exactly; I can’t guarantee how successful you will be. Figure out what you want your final solution to look like and take that to your boss. Your boss may have some feedback and help you refine your idea. Your boss may shoot you down or love the idea. However you approach it, don’t put your boss on the defensive or tell your boss that it’s his job to solve the problem. He may take it over, but if your concern is the desired outcome and you want to stay a project coordinator/manager, that’s not a bad thing.
Does any of this help?
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1 reply by anonymous
Apr 02, 2018 12:12 PM
anonymous
...
Hi Aaron, and others. All of your posts are helpful. I started out 2018 with a plan. I looked at our current/active projects and created a plan for completing them. I then planned out the entire year with projects by quarter and who would work on them (BA & Software Engineer). I have worked closely with our Software Engineer Manager to refine this and keep projects on pace. Things are improving, and to accomplish this, we have had to just decide on things and share the solutions with our CTO. His buy in/support is improving as he is seeing improvements. I am working with key people in our department to document policies and procedures for our department (we need this and our CTO refuses to do it himself). It may take another year to get through all of the documentation and process changes, but we are heading in a good direction.
Saving Changes...
Mikel SteadmanPMO Leader| Development Dimensions InternationalTroy, Nh, United States
I have some advice for you. Connect with me on LinkedIn and I will call you.
Summary of what will be a 20 minute phone call is you can change this by making your leaders feel like they are accountable to the priorities and coach them to pick the workload and priorities.
Yes. I am willing to share. Connect with me on LinkedIN and give me a good email, and I will send along what I use. It's not spectacular, but it's lean and effective for me and my projects.
The other part of what I will share with you is how to pull your fingers out of the holes in the dam. Sometimes, you have to let pain happen, so long as it's not malicious. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Aug 18, 2017 12:52 PM
Replying to Aaron Porter
...
I don’t know your boss, so I ‘m going to make some assumptions.
Your boss wants you to be successful. At the same time, your boss does not want to solve your problems for you. You are in the position you are in because your boss believes you are capable. Your job is to prove that. Your job is not to just take your problems to your boss, but to take solutions to your boss; to get things done. This brings us to your question - how?
You stated that you have over 100 projects in queue – 3-4 years’ worth of work. How much of it adds value to the company and helps the company achieve its goals? If it takes 4 years to complete one of the projects, will it still be worth delivering by then?
As others have mentioned, you have a prioritization issue. Do you have, or can you establish, a cross functional group of decision makers who can manage the priority of the list? My first thoughts on an approach, which might not work at your company, would consist of the following:
1) Get a champion from higher up the food chain; explain the situation to the champion and the help you need from him or her.
2) Working with the champion, gather together the decision makers and go through the list of projects. Determine if any can be closed and prioritize the rest.
3) Establish a regular review process to manage ongoing priorities and to prioritize any new projects.
This approach might not work at your company, but it is the outcome you want – a process for managing the priority of existing and new projects. If it isn’t a strategic initiative that helps the company meet its objectives, a mandatory compliance initiative, or a requirement to keep the business functioning, you should question whether or not to close it.
I have a couple of other thoughts on some of your points:
• Don’t worry about discussing your role with your boss, for now. Have that discussion after you help get things under control.
• Is slowing down and planning a project really going to slow anything down? You don’t have time to do a project right, but you have time to do it wrong, 3 or 4 times?
• You need to understand and be able to communicate your resource & personnel capacity. As you are experiencing, if there is too much work in progress, there is not enough work getting done. Identify your limits and, as projects are prioritized, identify which will be worked on with the available resources and personnel. If someone wants a lower priority project worked on, as long as it doesn’t create conflicts with resources and personnel needed for higher priority work, your team of decision-makers can make that person responsible for obtaining the resources and personnel needed to work on the project.
Don’t try to follow my advice exactly; I can’t guarantee how successful you will be. Figure out what you want your final solution to look like and take that to your boss. Your boss may have some feedback and help you refine your idea. Your boss may shoot you down or love the idea. However you approach it, don’t put your boss on the defensive or tell your boss that it’s his job to solve the problem. He may take it over, but if your concern is the desired outcome and you want to stay a project coordinator/manager, that’s not a bad thing.
Does any of this help?
Hi Aaron, and others. All of your posts are helpful. I started out 2018 with a plan. I looked at our current/active projects and created a plan for completing them. I then planned out the entire year with projects by quarter and who would work on them (BA & Software Engineer). I have worked closely with our Software Engineer Manager to refine this and keep projects on pace. Things are improving, and to accomplish this, we have had to just decide on things and share the solutions with our CTO. His buy in/support is improving as he is seeing improvements. I am working with key people in our department to document policies and procedures for our department (we need this and our CTO refuses to do it himself). It may take another year to get through all of the documentation and process changes, but we are heading in a good direction. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I face this type of situations from years in some places I have the opportunity to work. I can write lot of things but all we do is to summarize everything in one sentence: it is up to you. Based on your own cost-benefit analysis about to continue in this situation you have to take actions. Actions must be oriented to give visibility to all you do and about to put clear what each role means for your organization not for your boss. Things like organizational culture must be taken into account. Your boss is accountable for helping you to achieve the objectives so you must not decide on things about she/he must decide. Most of the time your work if to prepare the needed information and present it to she/he to take the decisions. As the joke we have here in Argentina said: due to Pope Francisco is Argentine I have the possibility to get a meeting with God. We talked about project management and we get an agreement: as God, he will not perform project manager, as project manager I will not make miracles. Saving Changes...
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