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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/.

Is the PMO Necessary for Project Success?

Written by Brad Egeland on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Is the PMO Necessary for Project Success?

The project management office – or PMO – is generally considered the proper project management infrastructure for project-centric organizations.

Does your organization run and manage individual projects to get internal and external customers work done? Or do they just assign people to develop software and work with clients in planning, risk and issue management? If they run mostly projects than you likely have – or should have – a centrally focused and managed project office. Why? Well, to know that let’s discuss the major benefits that such a project-centric focus can bring to the organization and the customers it serves…

Consistent delivery.

Having a central project office or PMO allows an organization to staff and plan work for experienced project managers who are trained to effectively and efficiently lead projects, manage financials, lead skilled project teams and the customers they serve. The PMO guarantees the PM focus. Without that infrastructure, it’s difficult to justify putting a PM team together not knowing what type of utilization those resources will actually have.

Consistent and repeatable project successes.

Having skilled project team members ready and a trained pool of experienced projects managers available helps organizations to better serve their project clients. Having the tools and templates those team members and project leaders need available for every project helps increase the likelihood of ongoing project successes on a consistent basis rather than just succeeding on projects based on luck. Everyone will take a little luck now and then, but consistent project success comes from an experienced staff and defined, repeatable processes and re-useable tools and templates.

Budget management.

Rather than just running projects or doing work, with the PMO in place the project managers will be performing better project budget management by utilizing structured processes for estimating, tracking, analyzing, forecasting and re-forecasting project financials. Watching them closely on a weekly basis and getting accurate updates from accounting for actual project expenses means they can stay aware and keep potential project budget overruns in check. Watching and re-forecasting weekly means project budgets will likely never go more than 10% over plan – a very fixable number. Left unchecked, it’s so easy to end up with a 50%+ budget overrun without realizing – a hole that is nearly impossible to dig yourself out of.

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More effective use of project support resources.

With the project office, project resources will be tracked better and utilized more efficiently. How? Through proper tracking, utilizing a recognized pool of skilled project resources with the right tool set and a gate-keeper process of requesting and getting the right mix of talent added to your project team. When projects or work is done in a non-PMO environment, resources are not generally considered assignable from a skill set standpoint like in a professional services matrix type resource environment that is focused on a project-centric delivery organization. The PMO brings structure to that process and helps make each project team the best it can be at any given moment and the right fit for the project and project customer.

Improved financial performance for the organization.

From the always critical financial performance standpoint, the PMO will bring improved financial performance to the organization. Project finances are considered on a project by project basis as well as across the portfolio of projects, and structured processes are generally in place to ensure budgets, budget health, and overall financial performance is a key factor in all project status considerations. It’s not just about getting the work done as can be the case in organizations that are just performing work on an as needed or requested basis without planned tools in place. It’s about managing each project right from the outset – including planning and financial oversight utilizing consistent tools, delivery and status reporting ensuring that each project budget never gets too far out of hand no matter what issues arise.

Continued organizational growth.

With a structured PMO, the organization has a better chance to achieve continued organizational growth. Why? Because a structured PMO will allow the organization to better plan for customer projects and have staff available and ready to assign to project work. In the non-PMO environment, work is often promised to customers based more on financial need and customer need without also considering “can we deliver?” and “do we have the right staff available at this time to deliver?” Too often resource shortages come up when critical work needs to be done because the non-PMO environment makes it much more difficult to look at and consider the entire landscape of resource needs and availability to successfully deliver on the projects you are lining when the customer needs those projects completed. It’s an awkward situation to walk into when you must explain to a customer that you just don’t have the right resources available at this time even though they are expecting you to start delivering on a $650,000 technical project. Oops.

Better career leadership growth to serve projects, the customer and the organization.

The PMO is usually in place for several reasons – the #1 reason being to enable the organization to more consistently deliver successful projects to the customer that are also profitable to the company. But another key consideration is acquiring and nurturing a skilled staff of project delivery personnel and included in that is the planning for training and career growth for each of those individuals. In the non-PMO environment, project leaders and team personnel may be just warm bodies available at that moment to take on the next customer engagement. The PMO plans for this and makes sure that the resources are skilled and continue to grow those skills allowing the organization to take on new and different projects resulting in increased revenue in new technical and project delivery niches because the staff is continually growing in skill set and delivery ability.

Summary / call for input

The bottom line for me anyway is that yes, the organized PMO approach is necessary for project successes on a regular basis in the organization. What your important customers will see is an organized and professional effort – every time out – to deliver expertly on each of the project engagements. And that’s huge – that’s what project management is all about, right?

Readers – what is your reaction to this list? Please share your ideas.

Project 9 from Outer Space

Written by Brad Egeland on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Project 9 from Outer Space

“Plan 9 from Outer Space” is generally considered to be the worst motion picture ever made and one of the biggest box office flops of all-time.

Personally, I would place “Ishtar” and “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl” in this category, but that’s just my opinion. Plan 9 was such an epic failure that a movie was made in the not too recent past about the misguided and unaware director of the movie, Ed Wood entitled… appropriately enough… “Ed Wood.”

What does this have to do with project management? Not much, so far. But I’ll get to that ttie-in Right now I’m just sharing a fun fact that came to mind. Just be glad, I guess, that Ed Wood isn’t lined up to manage your next project.

Ok, now it’s time for an end to tie it all together. Much like Ed Wood was truly unaware at what a failure his Plan 9 project was turning out to be, project managers can fall into the same “blinders on” vision when things start to go poorly. In fact, others – and in some cases ,everyone – may see it before the project manager does because the fearless misguided leader is so busy with the current tasks at hand and keeping the project on budget and on schedule that they aren’t seeing the big project picture.

So you think to yourself now – “how can I avoid being one of those blindsided idiots managing a project that is sinking fast and I don’t even realize it?” It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Seriously. The right practices will keep you from being targeted. Read on…

Communicate effectively with your team.

One key to not failing miserably on your project is to be certain that you are always maintaining a good communication line with your team. Both giving and receiving. Outgoing communication and listening. Regular team meetings. Frequent emails with project status updates to the team and stakeholders. All this serves to keep people informed, keep the project manager informed because the communication will trigger two-way communication, and help ensure that key information isn’t falling through the cracks.

Communicate effectively with your customer and listen – really listen.

Conduct regular weekly status meetings with the project client. Don’t skip these – even if there isn’t much to discuss on a given week. At least go quickly over the project schedule and go around the room to see what everyone is working on. These are the times where a piece of information that might otherwise slip through the cracks will come out and could potentially save thousands of dollars of re-work just because you didn’t cancel the “unnecessary’ meeting. On top of that, by not canceling you keep everyone on schedule and ready to come next week. As soon as you start to cancel it becomes easier and easier to cancel and regular attendees stop coming because they now consider your project meetings to be irregular and non-essential. Don’t fall into that category.

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Look at the numbers – follow the evidence.

If you are regularly forecasting and re-forecasting the project budget and the resource planning and usage you are almost guaranteed to stay on track – or as close as is humanly possible. When you start to take it for granted and let days and weeks slip by without revising these two essential pieces of the project management puzzle – that’s when they start to slide out of the range of fixable should things start getting out of hand. A 10% budget overrun is fixable… a 50% budget overrun because you weren’t paying attention is probably not fixable and your engagement is destined to be judged a failure in terms of financial performance and profitability. Likewise, if you aren’t tracking your project resources their availability and planned usage on the project, you may end up keeping them on board 100% when they aren’t needed… resulting in added expenses on the project which will affect the project budget significantly and can even affect the project timeline.

Keep the communication stream going with upper management.

You may not like to deal with those on the leadership team. They sometimes can seem to have their hands too much in the pie. When they ask questions about your project often times it’s because they are trying to figure out if you have overstaffed and are hoarding talent they want for another project. Do I sound paranoid? Has this happened to you? Or they are looking for financial updates to squeeze into their revenue forecasts for the C-level looking for higher quarterly earnings forecasts. More true on large programs than on individual projects, but still true. So, yes you can be skeptical when they are poking around at your project that their motives are pure. You’re working hard for your project and customer. They want that, yes, but their priorities are often much different than yours. However, it is still in your best interest to communicate project status with them. In fact, be proactive about it so you can be sure that is one thing they are not coming to look for. By proactively reporting, they know your project and can be able to react faster to needs for funding, resources, decision making and information. And they know you are hard at work on a key project. It may seem contrary to every fiber in your project management being, but making your project more visible rather than less visible is a good thing. Flag it!

Summary / call for input

Don’t be an Ed Wood. Don’t be so unaware that you think the right lane takes you to Unicorn land and the left lane is the path to the Land of Rainbows and Candy Canes. The world isn’t always fair and your project is never going to be perfect. We sort of always need to be managing projects like we are afraid which shoe is going to drop next. That’s why it’s recommended that we start every project thinking of what could go terribly wrong… i.e. risk planning. But that way we can be prepared if and when the bad does happen. There are only going to be two possibilities when a project manager gets a movie made about him… when he successfully gets a man to the moon or when a project ends in a catastrophic explosion. Don’t be an Ed Wood.

Readers – I realize this may have been a bit of a cynical article, but hopefully it touched on some nerves for all of us and was maybe a bit entertaining at the same time. What’s your take? We must ensure we aren’t clueless to the bad stuff, right? Be proactive, but prepare to be defensive as well. Thoughts? Let’s discuss.

Never Make the Project About the Technology

Written by Brad Egeland on . Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Never Make the Project About the Technology

Is that cutting edge Cybersecurity technology making your CSO drool and ready to pay boo coos of internal dollars on a bleeding edge tech project to showcase at the next user conference or Black Hat digital security convention?

Is that latest platform recently available to showcase your web apps on recently available and ready for you to use?

Making a project come to life because of the technology that an executive wants to try or wants to say that his division is using is a bad reason to have a project. And I feel it goes against some sort of unwritten code of ethics for project managers but I will get to that in another article, most likely (these ideas have to come from somewhere).

Here’s my take… never ever ever ever make the project about the technology. It can be awesome. And it can be disastrous. You can end up being in the latest tech magazine and your stock may soar. Or you may end up on the heaping pile of Ryan Leaf NFL busts in terms of tech failures. You may find that bust lands you with a headline on CNN about a tech startup losing a billion dollars on a failed project to implement a new security solution that ended up in security breeches, identity theft and lawsuits because your tech team wasn’t quite ready to handle such a project. But then again, they say “there is no such thing as bad publicity” – there is always tomorrow to fix it or capitalize on it. Unless of course this bad decision put you out of business. Then there is no tomorrow.

So what do you do when it appears that the customer or your senior management wants to jump in head first because of the technology? For me, it comes down to these three things…

The end does not justify the means.

Getting there isn’t really half the battle. Getting there successfully with the right solution is the whole battle – the whole project. There is no half battle or partial project. It’s all or nothing. It’s not about the right process or the coolest technology or the headlines… good or bad. It’s about the successful solution. I had one organization I was leading a project for where the client company was so excited about our solution we were implementing – the first of it’s kind in their industry – that they went ahead and published go-live dates in a major industry publication under assumptions made with and by the account manager in our organization who sold them the project.

Unfortunately, those dates became the hard and fast – or “drop dead” – deliverable and implementation dates that I had to build my project schedule backwards from in order to complete and meet the deadlines. There were no other options and no option for me to put together the realistic schedule that I knew and my team knew we could meet safely and accurately. What happened? My team and I found ourselves working onsite at the customer location for two weeks just before Christmas working through issues to get to go-live on time. Blew through money (beyond budget) faster than Usain Bolt can run 100 meters, but we made it!

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The desired technology may not be right.

The obvious problem is that the desired technology – this bleeding edge choice for the solution – may not be the right technology. The project team needs to understand business processes, what the “as is” environment is and what the desired “to be” environment should look like and figure out if the customer’s perception of the project is the true need or if the project is bigger (or smaller) and the customer request or need is merely a symptom of the real project. Then, and only then, can the project team step back and formulate the real project. Following that, they can – with the customer’s input – identify what a technical solution should look like including what the proper technology to implement really is. Still hopefully a cool one, but it may not be what the customer is hoping for. “Backing into” the solution from the technology is the wrong way to go… it’s like reading English from right to left… pretty painful… bad outcome… headaches.

The skill set may not be there.

Finally, the team may not have the skill set to implement the desired technology. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. But it probably can’t be done without a change order to get the right resource or resources onboard – at least temporarily and probably expensively – for this specific project. Don’t get me wrong, implementing a bleeding edge technology in any industry for the first time is feather in the cap of the delivery organization as well as a gem on the resume of the project manager, the business analyst and the entire project technical team. Win-win-win. And the customer organization comes out looking great, too. So if they want it, and it’s the right technology for the project team and the customer is willing to pay for it – or your organization can see the benefits of the end publicity – then go for it. The return on investment (ROI) for all involved to eat some costs will be high.

Summary / call for input

The project is the project. That’s what the team needs to focus on. It’s like putting blinders on because sometimes the customer or senior management will interject their needs and desires and those may be in direct contrast to what is best for them and for the project – and they don’t realize it. Stay focused on the successful end solution while taking all these suggestions along the way, but resist the urge to act upon them. At least not until you’ve ensured that they are the best roadmap to success.

Readers – have you had customer project scenario where it was all about the technology and the success of a new solution? How did you calm the enthusiasm while you sorted through the need to determine if that was the best path for the project. You can just proceed with the customer request as is, but if you get to the end and implement something that doesn’t really solve the need, the onus is on the delivery team, not the customer.

Therein Squats the Toad

Written by Brad Egeland on . Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Therein Squats the Toad

Is there always just one way of doing something? Almost never.

There are almost always several paths to the same outcome. And I thought of that the other day when I heard the quote I am using as the title of this article. The 90’s US TV sitcom show “Dharma and Greg” features straight-laced Greg from a rich family married to off the wall free spirit Dharma from a hippie anti-establishment family. Dharma used this quote “Therein squats the toad” instead of the far more mainstream version of the old saying, “Therein lies the problem.” One is normal, one is a funny new version. I liked it, I laughed, and I’m using it here.

So what am I getting at? Not everything has to happen the same way on every project. Not everything has to be either “waterfall” or “agile.” Not everything has to be by the book. Variation is fun and often necessary. I know I’ve had some off the wall clients who wanted very non-standard “project” things because they didn’t want to deal with the normal status junk. Ok, I’m game… tell me what you do want and I’ll make it happen.

Status reporting – same but different.

Is there one way to report project status? No. I always say that the project manager should look for one overall status report layout that will satisfy all key stakeholders. Their job is hard enough as it is, why go about creating the project status reporting wheel over and over again? Create a good project status reporting format that is rather simple and easy to read, come up with a nice dashboard feature on it at the beginning that gives the higher ups, the C-levels and all the stakeholders who are too important to read the details everything they need to see at a glance concerning the health of the project like status, budget, resources, issues and change orders. But standard won’t always do it and you must be open to that. Sometimes customers only want to see this or that… for whatever reason. I had a nice elaborate project status report ready for a new client complete with automated reporting on tasks just completed, in progress, and starting soon coming out of the project schedule. I was really proud of it. All he wanted was an issues list. Umm.. ok, your wish is my command. I just went ahead and managed my team with the first version I created but he never saw it again.

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Budget management.

Here’s another one. Nearly every tool out there on project management offers it’s own ways of managing the project budget – usually in terms of inputting resources costs to a project management timeline and then tracking actuals vs. planned/forecast that way. I will admit that 90% of the time I still prefer to use my handy Excel spreadsheet budget/resource forecasting template for most of the projects I run. Why? Because every customer is different, I often work for different clients at the same time leading THEIR projects for THEIR customers. Their tools are all different, of course.. so unless someone objects I use my own or kind of use theirs while mainly using my own tried, tested and trusted method. More than one way of doing the same thing. And I am a firm believer of working smarter, not harder. It saves the customer dollars and it saves me time.

Project tracking.

Whatever works for you, right? Somewhat, but again, sometimes you are mandated by the organization you are working for to use their chosen tool that works best with their chosen methodology. And I do hope you’re not using an Excel spreadsheet for this activity on any project over 100 hours in length… then I don’t care if you are tracking it out in pencil. Too small to worry about.

Transparency or not?

I, for one believe in complete transparency with the project customer. Well, as transparent as makes sense for the project, customer and the situation. But keeping anything negative from the project customer can prove to be a real bad idea because they usually hear everything or find out everything eventually and you’ll just look bad when they do. But there is no harm in keeping bad news quiet for a short period of time while the project manager and team run through scenarios for the best possible courses of action to take. It’s always best to present bad news with some possible solutions. It will go miles on the customer confidence and satisfaction scale. So you can tell the customer right away or come up with some mitigation scenarios first – I prefer the later. Both will work.

Summary / call for input

The bottom line is there is rarely one specific right way to do things and everything else is wrong. Michael Jordan once said that he misses 100% of the shots he doesn’t take. Think about that. Really think about that. You can track your life and see places now in your younger days where you probably zigged when it was definitely an option to zag. I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone but my wonderful wife, but I can see now that some of my “friends” in high school could have been more if I had acted on that interaction… just didn’t see it at the time. Life is full of opportunities… we just need to have more open eyes and take them. What is the worst that could happen? Success earlier? Failure earlier? The best minds and the best project managers and yes, the best players like Michael Jordan have failed a lot. Many things in life are full of different ways of doing a very familiar thing. Managing a project and the tasks associated with it are no different.

Ok, I’m getting a little surrealistic here, but what’s your take readers? Do you agree? Can you look back and say, “oh, yes… I see it now”? I worked for a place that offered a nice ERP type solution that clients would spend a million dollars for me to come in and manage a tech team on a project to configure it perfectly for their business to manage all of their projects, assets, people, work tickets, etc. It has a project management feature… did we use it ourselves on project management activities. Heck no, it sucked. But we could have and we were supposed to. Why make project management harder than it has to be?

Do These Pants Make my Project Look Fat

Written by Brad Egeland on . Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Do These Pants Make my Project Look Fat

You’ve heard the old line that every husband or significant other dreads… “Does this dress (these pants) make me look fat?”

You can never say yes or even hesitate at all to blurt out “No!” Any show of thought or hesitation means you’re considering that they might and you are dead.

How does this pertain to the workplace or a project or your job? I spent my whole career in positions worrying about what my C-levels were thinking about in terms of my performance and my projects’ performance. It probably even negatively impacted my productivity and performance quality negatively at times – thus having the exact opposite affect on my performance!

Why do we care so much? I watched my dad work himself so hard trying to get a promotion to VP in his company. It finally came after 30 years but less deserving individuals were promoted to VP before him for odd reasons. It can be so incredibly frustrating sometimes trying to please others that have this odd control over you. I can say my working life – and ultimately home life then – became much better when I took everything in to my own hands and started consulting. The work is harder in general and you’re making your own money without the guaranteed paycheck, but the quality of life is so much higher.

How does this all pertain to managing projects? It does, trust me. If we manage projects for success and for our customer’s satisfaction and for our team it will feel and be much more rewarding than managing for our C-levels. I’m not saying don’t worry about senior management at all. That would be very wrong. But don’t manage only for them and don’t obsess over it. They care and the need to know what’s going on and they need to see that you are performing well. And that will happen if you stick to what you know and do well, rather than look over your should all the time. Move forward… keep moving. To lead is to focus forward, not sideways at management. Take care of the project and everything will fall into place as well. Consider these concepts for proper focus and success…

Manage the team.

The project team members – individually and as a whole – need your focus and excellent communication. They also need to see your daily dedication to the project’s success and forward progress. If they see that and not you looking over your shoulder at management, then that will be their focus as well. They need to see that the project’s daily care and performance is what has your attention and that you have the project customer’s concerns and needs in mind at the forefront and from beginning to end. Teach them that any supervisor input or interference must be considered, discussed and dealt with, but does not always require immediate reaction and attention and should not change the course of the project or your focus as a team.

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Manage the customer.

The customer needs even more focus and care than the team. Not to make the project successful. No, the project manager could probably worry only about the team and make the project a success in terms of delivery, budget, performance, etc. But the customer focus is needed. Customer confidence and satisfaction are keys to project success overall, and customer involvement and engagement on an ongoing basis are important for decision making, information gathering and sharing and requirements or processes clarification. The project lead on the customer side has a day job most likely and this often is not it. So, keeping them involved and available to the project and team often falls to the project manager. Remain focused on the project customer throughout, keep the efficient and effective communication high with them and always ensure they are on the same page with you and that will go much farther toward project success than any intervention from key stakeholders that seems to be stakeholder centric and in contradiction with the project’s goals and mission.

Manage yourself.

Next, the project manager must manage himself. Is this the only project he has? Not likely. The project manager is prioritizing tasks at all times for himself – not only on this project but possibly on five or six projects at once. I’ve personally had times when I was managing up to 16 or 17 projects at the same time. Not all were in full motion at once, but several were and all had to be managed so prioritizing tasks and managing what you are doing as the project manager – regardless of what others are doing, saying or thinking about your projects – is key to your success overall and on each individual project that you are managing.

Managing management.

Finally, managing those in leadership. You may not be doing this directly, but you are managing what they care about and how you interact with them. They may try to change the course of your project or request that you take certain actions that benefit the organization. You must always ask yourself – and feel free to use your team for this as well – is this move in the best interest of my project and project customer as well? I had requests on two very large visible projects from my PMO director to focus elsewhere or withhold information from the project client and I complied without questioning. It was the wrong move and we ended up losing on both projects. Hindsight is 20/20, but our focus has to be on the successful forward progress of our projects and on our teams working on those projects and on keeping the client satisfied and engaged.

Summary / call for input

What others think is important. It’s always going to be something we care about. As project managers we are basically in an industry of service. And my motto is “You’re only as successful as your last customer thinks you are…” As long as we keep that attitude and focus, we should have the proper customer focus.

Readers – what are your thoughts? Do you agree with this? Do you ever struggle with your senior management’s project involvement and sometimes having their focus be in contrast to what you feel is right for the project?