Author: Brad Egeland

Brad Egeland is a Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Creative Design, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. He has been named the “#1 Provider of Project Management Content in the World” with over 7,000 published articles, eBooks, white papers and videos. Brad is married, a father of 11, and living in sunny Las Vegas, NV. Visit Brad's site at http://www.bradegeland.com/.

4 Signs You Need a Different Project Management Tool

Written by Brad Egeland on August 9, 2016. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on 4 Signs You Need a Different Project Management Tool

Just because we have a project management tool that seems to be working and that we have money invested in it doesn’t mean we are married to it forever.

Times change. Needs change. Organizations change. Certainly, project management infrastructures and policies change. What that means, too, is that the software or the various software tools that we use to manage our projects, our project teams, and customers may also need to change.

Change can be hard – especially when there is a significant cost and a challenging and time-consuming learning curve. Adoption in the organization can be a challenge as well – and when we are looking at tools that allow for good communication and collaboration, then we are looking for enterprise-wide adoption. Why? Because anyone can be part of a project team or a project stakeholder and they need to be ready to adopt the new software tools we are utilizing. So the enterprise population has to be considered in any choices we may make when changing the way we do things and what we use to do our jobs.

What I’d like to discuss here are four signs that your project management tool or tools may need to be reviewed and changed – and we need to understand how we are going to make those changes as well…many aspects need to be considered.

So, change may need to happen when:

Collaboration isn’t happening.

Do you feel like you’re doing all the work and everyone is “watching”? Do you get the feeling when you’re talking to your project team that you are sometimes talking directly to a wall? Maybe it’s time to step your project management software solution up a notch and find one that is a bit more collaborative than the one you are currently using.

If you find you are doing all the updating, reviewing and documenting and you’re the team is just watching, then get a different tool that allows the entire team to participate and trust them to be accountable. And if they don’t become accountable by using the tool and updating their assigned issues and tasks, then take some action.

Progress, progress, progress – it isn’t happening.

Your team keeps giving you updates to the project schedule that show progress, but no apparent progress is being made.

Here’s the scenario: It’s week 32 of the project and your tech lead gives you an update to a key project task of 45% to 55% completion. From that point on you are getting updates from him that are showing minimal percent progress, but still some. Yet nothing seems to be really happening. He’s showing progress out of pressure and obligation but isn’t making progress. I know. I’ve been on both sides of the equation here as PM and as Tech Lead, and I’ve done it. We’ve all done it.

You need a tool that brings your team together, cohesively and collaboratively beyond just task completion progress on a Gantt chart. Go, search, find, test, conquer. There are lots of tools out there that will force more accountability from your team.

Issues are just a blip on your project status report.

Your issues list is just an area of your status report that you cover. That’s good and necessary. But there are plenty of full-featured project management tools out there that will do issue reporting and management for you – with custom reporting. Wow! will that make your job easier? Will that make project life a little more enjoyable? Yes – yes.

Project management tools aren’t just about watching how tasks flow and have interdependencies. There’s much more to it than that, and we all know it. It’s about custom reporting; it’s about having knowledge and insight into what is happening on the project and how issues are progressing toward resolution. It’s about communicating the big picture of project status.

Your customer isn’t getting it.

If you are shutting your customer out of the project schedule and status insight or if they don’t seem to want in, it may be time to bring in something different and better.

Sharing direct insight and collaboration with the project customer isn’t everyone’s dream and, in fact, your organization may not allow it according to policy. But look around, there are so many full-featured and affordable project tools out there that allow all stakeholders – customers included – excellent insight into the status of a project. Some can do a lot of the project reporting for the project manager and keep customer satisfaction high even in rough times because the customer has great insight into the issues, risks, tasks, collaboration, and status, usually in real-time, so they know what’s happening and that progress is, indeed, being made. Why make life as a project manager harder. Let’s make it easier; we’ve earned it.

Summary / call for input

No matter how long you’ve been using project management tool ‘x’ or how familiar your team is with it or how comfortable senior management is with it or even what a great deal you got on all the licenses you had to buy. There are tons of options available..and I’m going to start showing you some different ones next month in this space in a feature article about several different PM related tools that you should probably consider checking out. I’m not going to endorse any or rank them, but I think that many of us have blinders on and neglect some new and potentially great offerings out on the market now…some are even very low cost or even free. And many aren’t really new but were new to me when I started looking around. I think it will be an interesting trip – hopefully even a series – to consider spreading our wings and allowing our chosen project management tool to help us perform even better on our projects. If your PM tool of choice seems not to be cutting the mustard…look around.

How about our readers? What all are you looking for in a project management tool? What are your favorites? What tool or tools help you get the job done? Why do you choose the ones you choose?

7 Things the Project Customer Should Know before the Project Starts

Written by Brad Egeland on July 5, 2016. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on 7 Things the Project Customer Should Know before the Project Starts

Starting a project engagement with everyone on the same page is critical to the project’s potential for success. I’m not sure anyone can argue with that statement. Having proper expectations set for all stakeholders as the kickoff meeting winds down and the real work is about to begin is essential to the project manager, the project, the project team, the project sponsor – everyone.

That said, I’d like to discuss seven key things that the project customer – and really every stakeholder involved with the project at that point – should know as the project kickoff session ends and the project work and real planning is about to begin.

Communication structure

The communication structure of the project is critically important. I always say that communication is Job One for the project manager. I believe that the responsibility for project communication begins and ends with the project manager. Don’t get me wrong; communication is going to happen on the project that doesn’t originate or even go through the project manager. But everything important needs to at least be cc’d to that individual and most, if not all, of anything of significance, needs to originate from the PM role. It sends the right message to all stakeholders. It gives a clear picture of who owns the communication and who is accountable for it.

Related Article: 5 Keys to the Best Project Client Retention Rate

Be consistent and the small important things won’t fall through the cracks.

Planned meeting arrangements

This goes hand in hand with the communication structure – a subset of that process. The customer and all stakeholders should leave the kickoff meeting knowing when project status calls will happen, how and when any phase reviews, planning sessions, testing sessions, design reviews, and sign off/review meetings will be scheduled and conducted. It’s all about setting expectations so that the rest of the engagement can go as smoothly as possible.

How to escalate issues

The customer needs to know how to escalate issues. Again, this is really part of the communication process, yes. But if the client does not know how to raise issue flags and who that should go to, then it may always be an awkward process and can cause customer frustration to rise and customer satisfaction to go down. Set expectations on this from the very beginning because every project has issues. You’ll probably leave the kickoff meeting with several issues and many, many action items.

Change management process

Equally important is how the entire project will handle the change control process. How will change orders be originated, managed, estimated, reviewed, approved, signed off, executed, and tracked? And what if there is a disagreement on whether or not something should be a change order? What if the customer disagrees and doesn’t believe that a certain proposed effort is really out of scope – who decides that and how? Project change orders are a reality on every project – make sure your customer knows how the project team is going to handle those change orders that will come up no matter how well everyone understands the requirements.

What happens in the first two months after kickoff

When the project kickoff session ends, the real work on the project starts. All key stakeholders on the project should have a very good feeling about what is happening over the course of at least the next two months on the project. The project schedule alone should show that. But even more specifically, that should be a goal of the project manager to thoroughly discuss what happens next on the project and to set expectations for what happens next among all project stakeholders. And I don’t mean what happens in the next week or ten days. Let’s plan and plan well. Let’s make sure that everyone knows what’s happening and what’s expected of them over the next two months. Fewer surprises = project success.

The Importance of business processes and requirements

The project customer needs to know how critical it is that the project manager and the entire project team understands the customer’s business processes – at least insofar as how they align with and rely on the goals and objectives of the project. Equally important is the customer understanding the critical need to have detailed, complex project requirements identified, documented, and approved by all involved – and signed off by the customer. This is where the project scope starts and what sets the stage for a great project and easier project testing and user acceptance testing.

Delivery team structure

While not an essential piece of the project success puzzle, I feel that it is important to define the project team roles to the customer at the beginning of the project – whether all the roles have been filled at this point or not. Knowing that the team is loaded with the right roles (and the right people) will go a long way in giving the project customer the confidence to know that his project is being handled in the best professional way possible. And it lets him know that the delivery team understands the project and what it is going to take to get it done right.

Summary / call for input

The entire project will be defined at a high level as the kickoff session ends. That better be true. Not everything will be defined in detail – and that which is can always be subject to change. The key is to have the best possible understanding of key elements of the project, who is doing what, how everything will be handled and managed, what is expected of the project customer and what the project manager role will really look. All this can definitely set the stage for a successful project engagement.

How about our readers? What are your feelings on this list of seven things I’ve presented? What would you add to it? What would you change about it? I’ve always felt that knowing these things very early on – and knowing what is specifically happening in the next two-month window at any given time – gives everyone on the project a good understanding of expectations and directions. And that’s never a bad thing.

5 Reasons Why Some Projects are Harder Than Others

Written by Brad Egeland on June 7, 2016. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on 5 Reasons Why Some Projects are Harder Than Others

As I’ve always said, no two projects are the same and all projects are not created equal.

While those are definitely not profound words, we still get perplexed sometimes as to why one project may seem so much harder than all the others. Why do some projects we are managing seem to go off without a hitch (that’s just a perception – they all have hitches), and then others can leave us struggling so much we come out the other side thinking “I am never going to go through this again”?

My take – from experience, observation and logic – has narrowed it down to five common problems that can make one project stand out from the others in terms of difficulty and issues experienced when all else seems to be about equal.

Please be thinking about your own experiences and reasons as you read these and feel from to share and discuss at the end. Here are my reasons:

1. Different level of complexity

While we think a given project was about the same as other similar projects we have managed or are managing, we eventually find out there was an underlying complexity to the current project that caught us off guard, made it stand out in terms of issues, pain and suffering. Often times when we find this out after the fact, we are faced with rework, missed deadlines, over budget issues, and customer frustrations that only add to the pain and suffering.

Usually this is related to requirements, but it may also be a product of not accurately or fully assessing the project client’s environment and the eventual integration that will be required as part of the project.

2. The unknowns outweigh the knowns

We may not immediately realize this – which can get us into a mess quickly – but the unknowns on the project may actually outweigh the knowns. In short – don’t start until you eliminate as many unknowns as possible!

Very early on – during project kickoff preferably – discuss assumptions and unknowns with the project client. Do they know their environment well enough to move forward? Do they know the real need well enough to move forward? Have they truly identified the real need? Do they understand the impact to the rest of their organization to move forward with the project and the proposed solution? If not, then the implementation phase is going to surprise you and everyone else and likely be very, very painful. You may satisfy one group of end users, and completely stop another group in their tracks who were not intended to be affected at all.

Seriously, if the project client comes in with more questions than answers, you may need to double or triple your planning phase time and budget, or you will live to regret it.

3. The customer is disengaged

While it may seem like a customer who isn’t around to ask questions and slow your team down during a technical project is a blessing, the exact opposite is, in fact, true.

You need the customer to be engaged. You need them available to answer questions, clarify requirements when you hit a questionable area, explain a business process you don’t quite understand, and take care of the project tasks that you have assigned to them.

Yes, many project sponsors have lots of responsibilities other than the project you are managing for them, but you need them available so that key decisions can be made and the project can stay on time and on budget.

4. The project team is in flux

When your project team is changing or being slowed down by other project responsibilities, team members may have it can cause major issues on a complex project that needs their attention and focus now.

Taking drastic action to replace distracted or overloaded resources is the last thing you want to do as it can be costly and time-consuming. If your team seems to be experiencing issues like this or internal conflicts, try to recognize it as early as possible and be proactive rather than reactive in fixing the problem. The longer you “wait and see if it will fix itself”, the more problems you will have. Rarely does it just fix itself. Rarely does anything just fix itself.

5. Project requirements lack the necessary detail

Project requirements are the lifeblood of the project engagement. They must be complete. They must be detailed. They must be understandable. And it would be nice if they were accurate. Poor requirements result in rework, scope creep, questionable change orders (whose fault is it, who should be responsible, who should pay?), and missed deadlines. It’s a difficult call especially at the euphoric beginning of a big project, but if the requirements are questionable, and you feel there needs to be more detail and work put into them, don’t move forward. Go back to the drawing board. Requirements are the basis for functional design, technical design, user acceptance testing, and ultimately project approval and sign off. If you don’t have it right at the beginning of the project, the rest of the project can be in question.

Summary / call for input

In reality, there can be about a million reason why one project is much harder to manage and control than another. What I’ve presented here are just five of the more common ones that can negatively impact just about any project in any industry.

It takes a confident, detail-oriented project manager to watch out for these, to halt the project when it needs to be stopped and assessed and to make the quick decisions and tough calls to get it back on track. The indecisive project manager may let the project proceed without stopping and taking proactive action leaving the project limping forward while hoping it will get better in the next phase. It won’t! You’re left with a project that ends up being more difficult than the others and more difficult than it needed to be.

What about our readers? What comes to mind as to reasons why some projects you’ve managed have been harder than others when the project may have seemed to be about the same as others you’ve taken on? What can turn the tables? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

The Greatest Challenges When Managing a Project

Written by Brad Egeland on April 5, 2016. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on The Greatest Challenges When Managing a Project

What do you find to be the hardest part of managing a project? I bet if you asked ten different project managers that question you would get at least six or seven different answers.

I believe that many on the outside of project management looking in probably think it is easy. Be organized and you’ve got it made, right? I wish it was that easy but then again if that was all there was to it I guess the pay would be considerably less than it is and we’d all miss the challenge.

No, project management about much more than just being organized but you already know that. What do you find to be the most difficult aspects of the daily project management grind? For me, and from what I’ve perceived from many of my colleagues, it comes down to a fairly common list of about five things, depending on the types and sizes of projects and the clients we are dealing with, of course. There are always those variances. Let’s consider these five items.

The project budget.

The project budget has to be on here, likely always #1 or #2 on every project. 95% of the population has problems managing their own money! That doesn’t make them that much better at managing someone else’s!

Related Article: A Project Manager’s Four Greatest Challenges

The project budget is always a challenge. Unlike your own budget where it’s only you or a few people spending, for a project budget, you may have 87 different people, places or things charging to it. The project budget status can go from healthy to dire straits overnight as charges come through accounting and hit your project and now you must go figure out why.

Staying on top of the budget every week by updating the budget forecast with actual charges from the week before and re-forecasting it for the remainder of the project is one way to combat those budget surprises. Perhaps the only way. And, by doing this you can just about guarantee that it doesn’t go more than 10% out of control vs. the 50% overage that an unchecked budget can quickly realize. The 10% overage is a fairly reasonable/easy fix. You may never recover from the 50% overage.

Scope management / change control.

Scope management and change control are two of those two-word phrases that are basically like four-letter words in the world of project management. Scope management is always a challenge for the project manager and project team because some things are close calls on whether they are in or out of scope. Plus, we aren’t always thinking in terms of “scope” when we are plugging through the work or fixing issues. And change control results in those ugly change orders for which customers have to pay extra, and that’s always a fun thing for the PM to bring to the project sponsor’s attention to obtain approval.

Resolving team conflicts.

Some people actually thrive on conflict. Not me. I’d prefer that we all just get along and do our jobs. That’s why I like project management better than, say, managing a team of application developers who report directly to me. I’ve done that; I’ve had staff at several different organizations where I’ve worked. Resolving conflicts, personnel issues, giving performance reviews – these are a few of my least favorite things.

Pleasing everyone with the status report.

You can please some of the people all of the time. You can please all of the people some of the time. But you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Is this true? With status reporting it seems to be the case. But if you want to maintain your sanity and have time to manage your other projects and job requirements, it is in your best interest to find a status report format that works for everyone. By everyone I mean all stakeholders who care to hold your status report in their hands and a few who don’t care but you want them to care.

Create a usable and informative dashboard for everyone – especially for the project sponsor’s and senior management’s viewing pleasure. For your senior management, a few of the key stakeholders, and possibly some high-level players on the customer side, this may be all they ever want to see. It can be some high-level percentages or possibly a green-yellow-red stoplight approach to reporting the timeline, tasks, and budget health. Beyond that you want the weekly detail that goes into any good status report. This status report should drive the weekly team and client meetings. You will want to report on completed tasks, what’s happening now, what’s coming up soon and all outstanding issues and change orders.

The status report can be painful and a huge weekly chore on your to-do list, but if you can figure out how to create a one-size-fits-all approach to status reporting on your project, you’ll save time and effort overall by not creating several different reports trying to please everyone on your project routing list.

Getting all detailed requirements documented.

This one can be a real headache. Why? Because it seems that no matter how hard you try, no matter how many eyes are on it, no matter how many experts are involved and no matter how much your project client participates and insists “that’s it”, you’ll eventually find that something was overlooked.

It’s ok because the fault usually lies with the project customer and they end up paying for the extra work and time in the form of a change order. Still, customers don’t like change orders, and it usually means some painful re-work. It would be nice always to get it right the first time. But that’s almost never the case.

Call for input

Project management is challenging. Period. Some parts are harder than others. Some we master. Some we never really get used to or we seem to at least always make them hard. I wish I had a magic formula or all the time in the world on every project so that we could do everything well and everything right, but that is never the case. We always need to cut corners somewhere, and that doesn’t make most of these challenges easier…only harder.

How about our readers? What are your biggest challenges or least favorite activities associated with managing projects? What have you found to be your most troubling parts of managing a project?

The Pros and Cons of Working Outside Your Comfort Zone

Written by Brad Egeland on March 16, 2016. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on The Pros and Cons of Working Outside Your Comfort Zone

We often find ourselves working on the familiar things, things we have had repeated success with and things where we are least likely to fail.

We often like to stay in our comfort zone, going with what we know. That’s the easy route. The projects may not always end successfully, but we go into them knowing more and start with a greater chance of success.

It’s easy to start familiar projects with confidence, to win our clients over right out of the gate and start fresh with a new project team knowing we are going down a familiar path. The confidence we start these projects with shows to our customers, and it certainly makes it easier to get these projects off on the right foot because we know what we are doing – there really isn’t any learning curve. But keep in mind there really isn’t much career or professional growth involved, either.

On the other side of the fence, going outside our comfort zone can feel awkward, cause us great concern and stress, and if not handled properly, cause our customers concern and stress as well if we appear to lack confidence. Let’s look at the pros and cons of taking on projects within and outside of our professional comfort zone.

The Pros

Going outside of our comfort zone and immediate areas of knowledge can serve several very positive purposes including:

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Knowledge gain. By going outside our comfort zone, we can acquire new knowledge, try new strategies, test new technology and keep challenging ourselves. At the same time, we bring new project capabilities to our organization’s project offerings.

Expansion of client base. By going outside our comfort zone, we can appeal to a broader client base. As a consultant, I’ve been able to do that by attracting customers that may not be very related to project management and / or professional services. As a project manager, I’ve done that by leading projects for clients outside the area of normal usage for our products and services, thus expanding our niche in the industry and our client base at the same time.

Expansion of services offered. When we go outside our comfort zone, we are open to new and innovative requests from our current project clients. I’ve had several innovative clients ask for services or content that I had not worked on previously, but in the long run, it greatly increased my service offerings to all clients and, therefore, my revenue as well as my service offerings became even broader and more appealing.

The cons

Obviously, there are some very good reasons for going outside of our comfort zones. But with this shift in focus outside of our comfort zone and immediate areas of expertise, comes a realization of a few potential risks. What these are and how we deal with them are specific to our industry, service niche, and the types of customers we are working with, but some general ones that come to mind include:

Vulnerability to cyber crime or data breaches due to working outside expertise and safety zone. Let’s assume that you and / or your organization are as tuned into cyber security as you may claim. Even if you are, once you stroll outside your area of comfort and expertise you may also be taking a walk outside your area of data and data center protection. If you are going where no man in has gone before in your organization, that doesn’t mean you aren’t going right where the hackers find you the most vulnerable. And we now know that everyone and everything can eventually be hacked we are all merely just trying to catch up with the hackers at all times. They are ahead of us, not vice versa, no matter what your IT guys claim.

Increased project failure potential. Project failure happens more frequently than we care to admit and accept anyway, even when we are operating within our comfort zone and areas of expertise. Once we venture outside of that and take on projects in unfamiliar surroundings using unfamiliar technologies with customers in new industries that we haven’t worked in before, we increase the possibility of project failure – at least at first – exponentially. It’s ok, you have to start somewhere, just be mentally prepared and do some extra risk planning just in case.

Winning these projects may be a tougher sell. If you’re used to winning projects easily within your comfort zone, you may need to check your ego at the door and be ready to face some rejections. When asked what credentials you have to take on these new and different projects, don’t lie. But be ready to be heavily questioned by cautious potential clients as to why they should go with you over ‘x’ competitor who has expertise in this particular area where you are lacking. Do research and be ready to respond to such questions. They will come.

Summary / call for input

I’ll be the first to admit; I ‘m not usually one who likes to go outside my comfort zone. At least, I wasn’t most of my life – I’ve gotten better at it in recent years. I even liked to take the same vacations over and over again. Trying new foods? Never. Now – fortunately, or, unfortunately, depending on how you look at it – there isn’t much I won’t eat. Thankfully, my wife is a great cook and takes pride in serving our large family healthy food, so my new lack of pickiness has made her very happy. I’ve managed to take that same open mind into the things I do professionally – including the projects I work on and the customers and technology I work with. It’s opened me up to new project and consulting opportunities, helped increase my revenue and the revenue of the organizations that I work with, and it’s made me a better and more well-rounded professional.

How about our readers? Are you comfortable outside your general area of expertise? Are you comfortable learning new things? Have you taken on projects for your organization that were outside either your comfort zone or the organization’s normal area of focus? How did it go? What did you learn?