Author: Cynthia Low

Dashboarding Redux

Written by Cynthia Low on April 14, 2008. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Dashboarding Redux

I thought I’d take the opportunity to bring several conversations I’ve had with you here together under the heading of Dashboarding.

I’ve talked about the attractiveness of dashboards in here before, but the continual movement towards dashboard displays for senior management in all types of industries means we’re not going to be able to get away from them any time soon. For those of you who have not seen this phenomenon in the project management industry, you won’t be able to avoid it for long. A project dashboard is an onscreen view of several key performance indicators (KPIs), which show the measures for different aspects of your business in easy-to-understand displays. There’s no restriction on how to display this information or what to include in the dashboard. The sky’s the limit!

A dashboard may be dynamic or static. A static dashboard lets you see the indicators somewhat like a printed report. A dynamic view might let you click on the screen to change the display by filtering or selecting certain data or to drill down into one indicator to see the source information it was established from.

The views in a dashboard can be very creative. Rather than a simple columnar text report, you might be looking at a green/yellow/red traffic light report or perhaps a tachometer with an indicator on how far “in the red” this indicator is. There might be a curve view showing costs, or a graphical flag showing red for danger, or a checkered flag for something that’s complete. There can be histograms, pictures, colors or anything else that might allow the viewer to get their answers at a glance.

The data that drives a dashboard is also not restricted to project management information or even information from one application. It’s not uncommon to see some indicators from the project management system, some from the financial system, some from production software, and so on. There can even be indicators that compare the data from one system to another such as the budget cost from the project management system and actual cost from Finance.

As attractive as all that sounds (and believe me, management finds this kind of thing very attractive) it comes with a range of pitfalls. Let’s take a look at a couple of obvious ones.

The Wizard of Oz Syndrome

This is stunningly common. Management decides that they’ve got to have a dashboard right away. It’s so compelling that they make up a “dashboard” project. The hapless project manager realizes quickly that creating the dashboard isn’t the problem… getting the data to drive the indicators is. Management has little tolerance for a story of how it will be months before the data is complete enough or of sufficient quality to be trusted to move a dial on a dynamic dashboard and so, our luckless project manager becomes the Wizard of Oz. He or she creates the beautiful front-facing view and then manually fills in all the elements to make the indicators move where they think they should.

The pitfall here should now be obvious. The assumption of management is that what they’re looking at is an objective view, built from the ground up, to show summaries and analyses of critical data. In fact, what they’re getting is a totally subjective view that is being typed in by a small number or even a single employee.

Measure It All!

The challenge for some organizations is finding the “key” in key performance indicators. They decide to put into the dashboard everything they can measure. The dashboard quickly fills with information of all sorts and doesn’t leave the organization any more empowered. One of our standards for dashboard design is to ensure that every indicator on the dashboard results in the viewer being empowered to take business decisions.

The Glass is Half Full

One of the big challenges with dashboard data is determining that all the data required has been collected. I met with a very senior CIO a few months ago who was so excited when I showed him some dashboard examples that he asked if we could create it for him as our first part of the Enterprise Project Management deployment.

“Can it be ready for Friday?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied, rather shocked that he’d asked.

“Really?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It can be ready Friday. Well, not this Friday. But some Friday …some time.”

He wasn’t amused. The problem, I explained is that, while I could create the dashboard itself in a very short amount of time, the data that we needed to drive such a screen was part of an extensive process that would take months to design and deploy.

“What if I could give you an indicator for resource capacity planning, but it only measured half the total projects?” I asked. “What could you do with that view?”

The answer of course is: nothing. What if the half of the projects that weren’t measured contained 80% of the resource requirements?

Even if we make a design that we train and deploy to everyone, we need to be sure that the dial we’re looking at can be counted on. In our office, we insist on a dashboard indicator that shows the reader the level of compliancy within the view. They should be able to see at a glance if the data is all being measured before they make a decision based on the indicator in question.

Multi-aged Measures

It’s not enough to know that all the projects are included in the measure of this indicator. When we’re talking about project management data, we also need to know how timely it is. What if a particular indicator is made up from some projects that were statused yesterday, some projects that haven’t been updated since last week and some projects that haven’t ever been statused? Clearly the timeliness of the data colors significantly the value of that metric. When we create dashboards around here, we always insist on indicators that show how recently the data has been updated and show a warning if some of the data is significantly out of date.

What’s the Source?

We want to avoid as many subjective measures as possible so whenever we can, we thwart the Wizard of Oz syndrome by showing indicators of where the data has come from and, even better, by allowing a drill-down into the source data whenever possible.

Gaming the Process

Once you deploy a dashboard and people figure out what it’s measuring, there is bound to be someone who tries to “Game” the process. They will try to show how well they’re doing by entering data into the system that generates a particular effect. (Yes, I know that’s bad.) This is human nature and, fortunately, doesn’t happen all that often. We can do a lot though to disincentivize such behavior by implementing checks and balances right on the dashboard. Whenever we can find data that has some correlate (such as progress in a task and hours spent on a timesheet) we try to tie them together and show warnings or indicators when these numbers don’t make sense.

Dashboards can be a powerful tool and, one of the things I like best about them is they bring our project management perspective right into the executive suite. If you’re being called upon to create a project dashboard, then take pause to make sure the decisions that will be made from it are going to be looking at the right data and the right analysis.

Chris Vandersluis is the founder and president of HMS Software based in Montreal, Canada. He has an economics degree from Montreal’s McGill University and over 22 years experience in the automation of project control systems. He is a long-standing member of both the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and is the founder of the Montreal Chapter of the Microsoft Project Association. Mr. Vandersluis has been published in numerous publications including Fortune Magazine, Heavy Construction News, the Ivey Business Journal, PMI’s PMNetwork and Computing Canada. Mr. Vandersluis has been part of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Partner Advisory Council since 2003. He teaches Advanced Project Management at McGill University’s Executive Institute. He can be reached at chrisv@hmssoftware.

Stop! Something

Written by Cynthia Low on April 2, 2008. Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Stop! Something

Editor’s Comments

You’ve probably at some time in your career been involved in one or more projects that went off-track although everything seemed fine. And you probably didn’t see the warning signs until the problem arrived. In Early Warning Signs, Mike Stapenhurst provides some pointers that suggest a project may be headed for trouble. But he points out that projects seldom go from success to disaster overnight and highlights some of the early warning signs to look out for over time.

And the good news is that more and more companies are looking for highly competent project managers, the ones that anticipate problems, can spot the warning signs, and take corrective action. Catherine Daw, in her article Take Charge: Manage Your Career, examines what it takes to become an outstanding project manager. It takes a mix of decision-making, team building and business acumen – a blend of skills that takes time and experience to accumulate.

Our bloggers, as usual, offer their distinct views on aspects of the Project Management scene. You may agree with them or you may not – but we (and they) always want to hear your views, so do get in touch.

Also, this month, we’ve revised our poll question format to allow you to answer the question AND speak your mind. Take a look!

Take Charge: Manage Your PM Career

Written by Cynthia Low on April 2, 2008. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Take Charge: Manage Your PM Career

Today, being a project manager with a Project Management Professional (PMP) designation just isn’t enough. So how do you, as a project manager committed to a career in this field, take control of your own self-development and create future opportunities?

Trends in the marketplace suggest companies are seeking to hire highly competent project managers rather than develop existing employees. Competency is expected from day one. Individuals are sought who embody the ability to transfer skills and knowledge to new situations and environments. This is made up of three key factors: fitness (to new situations and environments), capability (applied and demonstrated), and ability (skills and know-how e.g. PMP).

Research shows that we gain or develop our competency through: experience (70%), feedback (20% – on ‘how’ to do the job, not results), and structured training and seminars (10%). The attributes that many employers expect a competent project manager to possess when they enter the job are:

Manage and lead
Able to influence
Positive and confident
Demonstrates initiative
Proactive
Results oriented
Creative

Conceptual and analytical
Flexible
Risk taker
Innovative
Focused
Energetic
Competitive

It is unreasonable to expect a first time manager, or a first time project manager to excel in work balance, decision-making, team building and business acumen right out of school. It appears the mature and competent project manager is also a seasoned individual who needs to plan their project management career. That’s why the competent PM will depend on much more than simply the knowledge and skills of PMBOK. There is a need for maturity only gained through ongoing experience and skill development outside of project management.

In developing your career plan you will need to consider:

Accepting more managerial and leadership responsibilities, letting technical responsibilities diminish to zero
Partnering with corporate management to know and understand executive concerns, demonstrate value, speak their business language
How to maximize trust tools – who can you trust, who can trust you, ethical (will you protect my interests), emotional (does this relationship feel right)
Becoming internal sales people selling the strategic value of project management and building relationships
Global context – global projects will require global project managers who can manage business to business alliances, understand that loyalty is a critical issue, and will protect assets

While looking internally at ourselves it is important in developing our career path and plans, you need to understand and know the environment in which we play

So what do CEOs want? Who and what are critically important in achieving results for their organizations in a global economy. According to sources, including Harvard Business Review’s Burning Question forum (www.burningquestions.com), CEOs are:

Looking for leaders
Focused on execution of strategy (and that’s project management after all)
Wondering how to innovate – how to build organizations where discipline and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive
Dealing with the cultural issues of building and changing to meet the demands of the market while still delivering results

All of these aspects are critical to the success of the maturing project manager who is developing from junior project manager to portfolio manager to leader.

The changing workforce will also play a role in career management. Here are just some of the factors that will impact your career planning:

It is not just looming; there is already a shortage of skilled resources, and immigration will not solve it all as demand continues to grow exponentially
Lean structures of the past will continue to be challenged in the future
There is an increasing need for managers and leaders
Succession planning for most organizations is only just underway
The profile of today’s worker will be different tomorrow – affected by differences in the younger generation and their attitudes to work/life balance
Training isn’t performance and availability isn’t a skill

And what about the world of project management itself? PMI has announced it is developing a career path framework. There is an ongoing search for new sources of project managers – driven by the looming shortage of resources and a better understanding of the importance of project management. The definition of a project manager is changing to include such factors as change management, governance, leadership and ethics.

So what path do you wish to follow? One of a traditional direction: project manager, program manager, director, PMO head or lead. Or an executive route: strategic planning, portfolio management , leadership and executive management. Remembering the 70/20/10 rule, you must not only pursue formal training and education, but seek those experiences that will give you the opportunities to pick your direction or test it out as you go. When a fork in the road presents itself you can decide if it is right for you now or later.

In the short term consider:

What competencies you need to manage your own career path if your organization is not doing it for you
If the organization is not going to get serious you must take control to get the training that will propel you forward
Rotate through assignments that will give you increasing experience, expertise, and help you develop your own ‘brand’
Foster internal communities that encourage sharing, generation of new ideas, and mentoring

Longer term concepts and strategies may not bear fruit today but will help you decide where you go in two to three years from now. These may include:

Get an education that is beyond ‘training’. This could include MBA, Certified Management Consultant designation, something outside of ‘traditional’ project management education
Focus on leadership and getting promoted. Corporations need to seek out superior project managers and promote them. Are you one of them?
Times have changed – company loyalty is not the same. Lifestyle and quality of life choices are increasingly important.
Trial runs: test out your direction and be willing to take risk at different levels.

Look at your career as a bridge – today you are on this side of the bridge and in the future you’ll want to get to the other side. You should be constantly asking yourself what you need to do today to get across to the bridge. Remember it is more than just education and designations – competency and where we fit are built on 70% experience, 20% feedback on how we are doing, and 10% on training and education.

And finally it is all about leadership and relationships: who we know, who knows us, and the trust factor.

Take Charge: Manage your PM career by Catherine Daw
©SPM Group Ltd.

Catherine Daw, MBA, PMP, is President and co-founder of SPM Group Ltd. She provides the vision and leadership needed to evolve the firm and the current corporate direction to enabling the effective enterprise through strategic initiative management. Her focus is on results that matter to SPM’s clients and help clients achieve superior business benefits.

Early Warning Signs

Written by Cynthia Low on April 2, 2008. Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Early Warning Signs

Ever seen a project that seems to be doing great for six months or so, and then you come in one Monday morning and find out it’s way off track? The questions and conflicting comments abound:

– “How did it get that way so fast?”
– “I thought John (the project manager) was doing great!”
– “I knew things were too rosy!” etc, etc.

Anyway, you get the picture…

The purpose of this article is to provide the project stakeholders, and the project manager, with some key pointers that indicate a project may be headed for trouble – before it is too late. The fact is, projects seldom go from success to disaster overnight. Most projects are behind schedule from day one! How many projects do you know of that really get going on time, and are where they said they would be one month later?

Starting up a project (getting staff, facilities, agreement on scope, etc.) is a process that is often under-estimated. I believe one of the main reasons for this is failure on the part of the project manager to realize:

a) Just how many other departments and staff outside of his immediate project team are required for start-up; and
b) That his project is not necessarily a top priority for them.

Whatever the reason, many projects are playing catch up from the start. As time goes by the project can fall further and further behind the original (but not always well documented!!) expectations. So really the Friday-to-Monday crash could have been detected (and hopefully avoided) long before it happened.

Early Warning Signs

What are some of the things to look for? Like catching the flu there are some telltale signs. Here are some of the key symptoms that all may not be right with the project.

Does the project have an approved charter?
This is the document that gives formal management approval for the project to proceed. It outlines the scope and identifies key resource requirements. It should be reviewed and approved by all major project stakeholders. Projects proceeding without this key document are very likely to find themselves in trouble later on in the project life cycle.

Does the project have a plan defined in sufficient detail?
When individual tasks on the project schedule are described at too high a level, such as several weeks duration and hundreds of hours of effort, the margin of error is just to great. The industry standard is to have tasks defined to the level where resource assignments are 80 hours or less, and each task duration is less than three weeks. (Of course there are exceptions to this such as ongoing project management and administration tasks).

Are all project deliverables identified in the project schedule? Too often I see project tasks such as “Testing” – 600 hours, 6 weeks duration with no mention of related deliverables such as test strategy and plan, accepted test results, etc.

Is the project team tracking the schedule properly?
Is the project schedule being updated in an accurate fashion that clearly reflects actual progress made? Earned Value is a tremendously useful tool for measuring true progress and predicting future project performance. It should be used whenever possible. At the very least the project schedule should be maintained regularly with input from the team members.

Missed or poor quality deliverables:
Not all deliverables on a project are equally important, but if the team is consistently missing deadlines on scheduled deliverables, then take a closer look at the reasons why.

Quality issues are another sign that things may be going wrong. If your QA team finds standards are not being followed, or methodology steps are being skipped, this could be another reason things are slipping out of control.

Morale issues:
A dead give-away that a project could be headed for trouble, is staff morale problems. Are people complaining about poor conditions, constant overtime, the project manager? These are all symptoms that all is not well on the team. If not corrected, they can send the project into a tailspin in short order.

Lack of communications from the team:
Are meeting minutes published regularly and distributed to key stakeholders? Is a concise progress report, containing quantifiable information and variance explanations being produced? When the project team is silent, again this is usually a warning sign.

Avoid the Problems

Prevention is better than cure! As the project manager you need to do a self-assessment of your project on a regular basis. Take a step back, and pretend someone else is running the project. Your job is to provide a QA review. Ask the following questions:

Do stakeholders, team members and the project manager agree completely on the project scope?
Are scope changes documented? (Is a formal Change Control process in place?)
Has the team identified all project deliverables? (At least for the current phase of the project life cycle)
Do you have the right number and type of resources on the team?
Are team member roles and responsibilities clearly defined and understood?
Does the project team meet on a regular basis?
Are project tasks defined in sufficient detail so progress can be tracked accurately?
Is the project schedule updated regularly?
Is a progress report produced for key stakeholders on a regular basis?
Are project issues documented and tracked? Is there an escalation process in place?

If you answered “No” to any of these, you need to ask yourself why. If necessary correct the oversight and make sure the project stays on track. Don’t wait for the project sponsor to ask, “What’s going on”?

Mike Stapenhurst, PMP, is an experienced Project Manager and Information Technology consultant of more than 20 years, with a successful track record managing IT projects. He graduated from Concordia University in Montreal with a Summa Cum Laude degree in Commerce. He has worked in several sectors, including insurance companies, government departments, and financial institutions. Mike currently works as an independent project management consultant, specializing in project assessment and PM coaching. He can be reached at [email protected] or 506-454-2716.

A Look at Soft Skills and Project Value

Written by Cynthia Low on March 18, 2008. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on A Look at Soft Skills and Project Value

Editor’s Comments

There’s a lot of technical wizardry involved in running a successful projects, but the kind of skills often described as “soft” are important too. They could be described as the general management skills that help make things happen in every corner of the business environment, including the project management office.

Chris Vandersluis shares some thoughts about the soft skills that need to be part of the project manager’s armoury in his article Serving Up Soft Skills, including the importance of presentation skills, negotiation and other important aspects of management that are critical to project success.

In their piece, Prioritization and Scheduling Based on Value, Bob McMurray and Steve Chamberlin believe that getting a project completed is not where the real project portfolio management challenge lies. Their view is that the most serious obstacles to overcome are those in the path of choosing the right projects in the first place. In their article they give some ideas on how to prioritize and schdule projects to maximize project value.

Monthly blogger Andrew Miller expresses the possibly controversial view that Project Measurements are Waste of Time – and explains why he holds that view. Mike Lecky talks about a number of integration tools that help to make work easier for project managers and help ensure the success of projects.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Project Times and that you’ll give us your valuable feedback to help us with future issues.