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Author: Elizabeth Larson

Elizabeth Larson, PMP, CBAP, CSM, PMI-PBA is a consultant and advisor for Watermark Learning/Project Management Academy, and has over 35 years of experience in project management and business analysis. Elizabeth’s speaking history includes keynotes and presentations for national and international conferences on five continents. Elizabeth has co-authored five books and chapters published in four additional books, as well as articles that appear regularly in BA Times and Project Times. Elizabeth was a lead author/expert reviewer on all editions of the BABOK® Guide, as well as several of the PMI standards. Elizabeth enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, theater, and spending time with her 6 grandsons and 1 granddaughter.

The Virtual Leader Part 1 Building Trust

Written by Elizabeth Larson on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on The Virtual Leader Part 1 Building Trust

“Community is nothing, except what is based on trust.” – Yo-Yo Ma[i]

Since so many of us are practicing social distancing by, among other things, working from home, I thought it would be a good time to review some tips and tried-and true techniques for leading teams virtually. This article focuses on the importance of and tips for establishing trust virtually.

When we work from home, it is harder for us to establish trust. Although not impossible, it’s harder to communicate, which we’ll discuss further in Part 2. It’s harder for us to recognize and address conflict. And it’s harder for us to ensure that real work gets done without being overbearing.

What can the virtual leader do to establish trust? We establish trust virtually the same way we establish trust in any work environment, but it’s harder. So here are a few tips:

Make and meet commitments

  • Make commitments purposefully. It’s well known that we need to follow through with our commitments. But that means we actually need to make them. I tell people that I once had a boss who never had to meet any commitments because he never made any. Telling people what we’re going to do and when is critical for leaders wanting to establish trust. Even if we’re not sure that we can meet the commitments, we need to make them. However, this is not license for making commitments haphazardly. They have to be realistic. We lose credibility quickly when we lack the courage to make realistic commitments—when they are either too easy or too hard to meet. Our commitments should be grounded in reality rather than being overly optimistic or so loose that it will be impossible not to meet them.
  • We need to let everyone know when we can’t meet our commitments. Life and the unexpected happen, and when they do, we need to let people know. Immediately. Many of us have fallen into the trap of waiting too long to communicate bad news. We think that somehow if we try extra hard, we’ll be able to meet pull off a miracle. But if we wait too long to communicate bad news, we will break the trust. It’s better for us to let people know if there’s a high likelihood that the commitment can’t be met. How we communicate, though, is key. For example, telling stakeholders “we’re late–sorry about that” is weak and will automatically bust any trust we want to establish. We need to let them know why we’ve missed the commitment we made, the impacts of doing so, and then make a new commitment based on data, not emotion.

Establish routines

It’s important for the virtual leader to ensure team routines are established and followed. Routines can be established for many things, and routines that work for one team might not work for another. As virtual leaders our role is to facilitate the team and help them decide on such things as how often the team will meet, for how long, and for what reasons. Routines establish a sense of normalcy. They can provide the team with a sense of purpose and security, which in turn builds trust in the virtual leader.

Our role as the virtual leader is to facilitate the conversation about routines. The team’s role is to provide recommendations to us. But we should not accept the team’s recommendation without question. An effective leader, virtual or not, ensures that the team’s recommendations have been well thought-out and will meet the goals of the team, the project, and the organization.

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Plan and monitor results

As Lewis Carroll famously said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” If we want Wonderland-style chaos, we’ll skip the planning. We might hear team members say things like “let’s just get the work done,” or “it takes longer to plan than to do the work,” but in these uncertain and chaotic times, it’s not a great way to build trust. Planning, regardless of the methodology or set of practices used, is a proven way make the team feel purposeful. It provides them with a sense of accomplishment as planned tasks get completed. And that shared sense of accomplishment is a great way to bring the team together and build trust not only with the leader, but within the entire team.

Monitoring to ensure results are complete is equally important. Monitoring has many names. Some people call it micromanagement. It’s not. It does not involve doing the work for the team. It does not involve looking over anyone’s shoulder. It’s not “Big Brother.”

Monitoring work can take many forms. It can be done in a daily meeting where members talk about what was planned, what was accomplished, and obstacles that have occurred withing the last 24 hours. It can be a status report with much of the same information. It can involve the use of software where all team members can see the progress of work items. Scrum and other agile methods are all over this concept with daily scrums and burn-down and burn-up charts. Sure, they use different terminology, but the concept is the same—let’s figure out where we are, where we should be, and what’s getting in the way of getting there.

One important component of monitoring involves learning of obstacle/impediments right away. Our role is not to chastise team members for incomplete or late work, which is guaranteed to break trust. Rather, it’s to coordinate all necessary resources to solve the problems and remove the obstacles so that team members can move forward. This is particularly important in a virtual environment. Being geographically dispersed can make some team members feel stuck and isolated, preventing them from moving forward quickly. Knowing that the goal of the leader is be “chief roadblock remover” can be comforting to the team. As virtual leaders we need to find the time and courage to:

  • Coordinate resources outside the team to solve the problems
  • With the team figure out how to keep moving forward in a parallel path as a solution is found to the obstacle at hand.
  • Get experts or other team members to help get unstuck. Having other sets of eyes is important, but it’s much harder when the team doesn’t have the benefit of being together.
  • Let the team know what we’re doing to resolve the problem. Keeping the team informed is vital to building trust.
  • Provide encouragement. Take time to let team members think through problems with you. Listen to them and do not provide easy but ineffective answers.
  • Communicate delays and problems to key stakeholders. Tell them what the delay is and what we’re doing to remove the obstacle.

There are, of course, more ways to establish trust virtually, but these tips provide a start. In Part 2 we will delve into the complex subject of communications.

 

[i] PBS Newshour, March 18, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/yo-yo-ma-on-encouraging-songs-of-comfort-amid-global-crisis

Can the Same Person Function as a PM and BA on the Same Project or Agile Effort?

Written by Elizabeth Larson on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Can the Same Person Function as a PM and BA on the Same Project or Agile Effort?

Ten years ago I wrote an article entitled, Can Same Person Function as a PM and BA on the Same Project.

I wrote that there we need to distinguish whether the same person “could” (sure they could, but with sometimes questionable results) and whether they “should.” I explained that it made complete sense to have one person play both roles in certain circumstances, like when a project is known to be “small,” or on high-performance, self-directed, cross-trained teams, when an organization lacks funds for both roles, and when an organization doesn’t recognize both roles. I said it is helpful, however, to know the differences between the roles and know when each is being played.

Ten years later I still agree with what I wrote. However, there is another question that needs to be put into the mix—what about Agile? Before we answer the question of Agile, let’s a have a quick look at some basic differences between the PM and BA roles.

Generally speaking, there is an inherent difference of objectives between the two roles. Project management is more about the project and business analysis is more about the product. The project manager’s role is to meet project objectives. The BA’s role is to help organizations reach their goals by recommending value-added solutions that solve business problems. This is a subtle but important difference. Put another way, the project objectives help the organization meet its business goals and objectives. The PM focuses on the former; the BA on the latter.

I mentioned that the PM typically focuses on the project, including resolving issues about the project, managing project risks, and getting the resources working on activities and tasks. And that the BA typically focuses on the end product, like managing risks related to the product, eliciting questions about a new product, and specifying the details of the product so that it can be developed and delivered.

Although the PM may do some work related to the product and the BA may do work related to the project, there is still a need, I think, for both roles on most projects. It seems to me that because there is a different focus and different objectives, there is often a pull in opposite directions, especially when both roles report to different organizational functions. Project managers want, among many other things, to deliver the product on time and within budget. Business analysts want to ensure that customers can actually use the product once it has been implemented.

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But wait—what about Agile?

With Agile there may or may not be a BA and PM on the team. Our question, then, is can the same person focus on both the product and the delivery of that product at the same time? For the product we mean not just the product backlog, but the details of the features that comprise the backlog. By delivery focus we mean someone to protect the Agile processes and remove roadblocks so the team can move forward. Someone who can develop burndown and burnup charts to know what’s been completed and what’s left to do.

The answer of course is yes, it’s possible to have one person focus on both. While not ideal, it may be necessary when there are not enough resources to have a dedicated product owner and scrum master.

It would take someone with the skills to specify the features in enough details so they can be estimated and built, like a product owner—if, and this is a critical constraint—they are authorized to make business decisions. But someone who also focuses on the delivery of the features. This can work in small organizations and on small projects. It can even work in larger organizations when the organization needs to “make do” with less than an ideal number and types of resources. And although there are inherent risks with this approach, it can work.

Let’s look at a real example. A small organization used an outside IT resource to develop a product and a member of the management team to be the product owner. This manager not only was able to make business decisions, but also had both a BA and a development background. The features were developed “agily” and were scheduled to be delivered every few weeks. The acting product owner and developer worked through complex design issues and the features were implemented almost flawlessly. So far so good.

The difficulty was that although the PO and developer worked together superbly on the product features, there was no one looking after the delivery of those features. There was no one, in other words, to support or protect an Agile process. There were occasional Scrum meetings, but no daily meetings to review status and issues. The progress was not routinely monitored, and weeks would go by with no results delivered and no clear idea of when the next feature would be released. There were no retrospectives and not many reviews of the features with other key stakeholders. Because this was a small company and everyone was doing a million other tasks, this process more or less worked. But the lack of focus on the project proved frustrating for almost everyone involved.

Finally, I want to emphasize again that we’re talking about focus, not job titles. We’re talking about someone who not only has the skills to focus on both the project and product, but the time. So even on Agile projects, can the same person be both a BA and a PM, that is, be able to focus on both the product features and the delivery of those features? Sure, but when the main focus is the product, the delivery might suffer and vice versa. On projects of any size, there is less risk when these job functions are separated.

2018 Trends in Business Analysis and Project Management

Written by Elizabeth Larson on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on 2018 Trends in Business Analysis and Project Management

Since 2009 we have enjoyed reflecting on what’s happened the previous year on projects and making predictions for the upcoming year. Here are some of the recent trends we have discussed:

  • Agile successes, challenges, and use beyond software
  • Organizations recognize the importance of roles that help maximize value
  • Scaling Agile
  • Certification trends in business analysis and project management
  • Implications of a changing workforce on projects
  • BAs and PMs in the gig economy
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Here are the seven industry trends that we have chosen for 2018:

    1. The Digital BA. Many organizations are anxious to participate in the “digital transformation.” They want to be able to mine data, use predictive analytics, and have apps for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Some are beginning to get a handle on the complexity of this transformation, and are turning to digital business analysts (BAs) to help them succeed. Digital BAs work with the organization to understand what it’s up against. They recommend the best process and software solutions to meet the business needs, help implement this solution, facilitate issue resolution, and work with business stakeholders to help them understand how various aspects of the digital transformation will affect them. The best way a BA can help the organization is by having a deep understanding of the digital world, so days of the business-only BA are over. The BAs who will provide the most value are those who understand the technology needed for the digital world and can communicate in business language how it will affect the jobs of all levels of business stakeholders.
    2. PMs on Agile Projects. As organizations continue to embrace agile, project managers are evolving their role to integrate into project environments with agile teams. Obviously, ScrumMaster or coach is one role PMs are moving into, but in many instances, the organization’s need for project management exceeds what the traditional agile team provides. Project management activities pertaining to contracting, communication with the larger organization, particularly senior management, and reporting beyond flip charts posted on team walls are all needs that that PMs logically fill and that may go unmet. The hybrid ScrumMaster/PM role is one many are taking on to address the agile team needs as well as the wider organizational need for a more holistic perspective and broader communication of the project.
    3. Business Architecture Gains Interest. Although business architecture started in 1980’s, it wasn’t until the mid-2000’s it became a formal profession with its own support organizations such as OMG’s Business Architecture Special Interest Group, Business Architecture Guild, and other architecture forums and guilds that have sprung up. Business leaders are starting to see the value of business architects who can help organizations build and maintain the business architecture knowledge base, help strategically align projects, and maximize organizational capabilities. According to Gartner Research 60% of the companies surveyed are planning to have business architects in the next few years. Plan to see this as a growing profession.
    4. Lean and Scalable Business Cases. We have seen increased interest lately in business cases, particularly leaner ones. Even with wider use of Agile approaches, and possibly because of that, the need to justify projects is greater than ever. The way that business cases are created is changing though. There will always be the need for detailed and extensive proposals, replete with cost-benefit analysis. But, not every proposal warrants that treatment, and leaner and more agile business cases are trending. In PMI’s newest edition of the PMBOK® Guide, business cases are defined as proposing projects or components. That is a clear reflection of this trend. Some examples include getting just enough funding to develop a prototype before launching a new app, developing a lean business case based on the product roadmap, or developing a business case on phase 1 of a large, traditional project.
    5. DevOps. Organizations are looking for ways to support continuous (or at least more frequent) delivery of software without throwing the production environment into chaos. One answer is DevOps, which seeks to balance frequent implementation of product increments with operational stability. To that end, organizations are expanding Agile teams to include other areas of IT, such as Operations, Security, Infrastructure, and Architecture. In addition, many recognize the importance of using a set of automated tools, known as a toolchain, to automate traditionally time-consuming and risky aspects of software development. BAs can help organizations develop a toolchain strategy, choose and implement appropriate tools, and facilitate meetings within IT silos for speedy decision-making and issue resolution.
    6. Sponsors Are Finally Getting It: Sponsors are stepping up to own projects at a rate that we haven’t seen in, well, ever. We are seeing them reaching out to have real, meaningful discussions about how to fill their role effectively and how to partner with the project manager and other key stakeholders. Considering the sponsor’s role in defining the value proposition for the project, this eagerness to own the project bodes well for the projects and the organizations in which they are happening, so this is a trend we are all too happy to see.
    7. Strategic Thinking as a Key Capability. Until recently strategic thinking was thought to be a skill exclusively used at the Director and “C” club level. Now more and more organizations are realizing that to ensure various key roles provide value to the organization, they either need to hire people who can think strategically or develop them. We are seeing this competency included in bodies of knowledge, such as IIBA’s BABOK® Guide and the latest edition PMI’s PMBOK® Guide, as well as a competency needed to pass certification exams like the PMI-ACP and Business Relationship Management Professional (BRMP). Many Agile and Scrum team members are also realizing that strategic thinking is a key to success. We predict that as business solutions become more complex, this need to think strategically will expand even more.

    About the Authors

    Elizabeth Larson, PMP, CBAP, CSM, PMI-PBA is Co-Principal and CEO of Watermark Learning and has over 30 years of experience in project management and business analysis. Elizabeth’s speaking history includes repeat presentations for national and international conferences on five continents.

    Elizabeth has co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation. She has also co-authored chapters published in four separate books. Elizabeth was a lead author on several standards including the PMBOK® Guide, BABOK® Guide, and PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide.

    Andrea Brockmeier, PMP, CSM, PMI-ACP, is the Director of Project Management at Watermark Learning. She has 20+ years of experience in project management and related practice and training. She writes and teaches courses in project management, business analysis, and influencing skills. She has long been involved with the PMI® chapter in Minnesota where she is a member of the certification team. She has a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and is particularly interested in the cultural aspects of team development, as well as the impact of social media and new technologies on organizations and projects.

    Richard Larson, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, President and Founder of Watermark Learning, is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on business analysis and project management topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents.

    Rich loves to combine industry best practices with a practical approach and has contributed to those practices through numerous speaking sessions around the world. He has also worked on the BA Body of Knowledge versions 1.6-3.0, the PMI BA Practice Guide, and the PM Body of Knowledge, 4th edition. He and his wife Elizabeth Larson have co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation.

    Dr. Susan Heidorn, BRMP, PMP, CBAP, is the Director of Business Solutions at Watermark Leaning. She is also an experienced consultant, facilitator, speaker, and trainer, with over twenty-five years of business experience. She provides project management, business analysis, strategic thinking & planning, leadership development, facilitation, process improvement, change management, and team development to her clients based on best practices in the industry. Susan has been a speaker at a number of IIBA and PMI conferences as well as local and regional organizations, boards and private client development sessions. She is a lifelong learner whose passion it is to guide people into achieving excellence in their personal and professional lives.

5 Trends in Business Analysis, Project Management, and Agile for 2017

Written by Elizabeth Larson on . Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on 5 Trends in Business Analysis, Project Management, and Agile for 2017

Since 2009 we have enjoyed reflecting on what’s happened the previous year on projects and making predictions for the upcoming year. To summarize the `trends” we saw in 2016:

  • Emergence of the Business Relationship Manager (BRM) to maximize value
  • Agile successes, challenges, and use beyond software
  • Trends in business analysis and project management certifications
  • Implications of a changing workforce

Here are five industry trends we see happening for 2017. We’ve added two brief bonus trends at the end of the article.

1. Business analysis as a focal point for scaling Agile

Many organizations are delighted with the results produced on Agile projects, but are struggling with its application on large, complex projects, as well as its adoption enterprise-wide. Many of the discussions focus on which Agile framework works best for scaling Agile. Some of the common frameworks often discussed are scrum of scrums, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), and Nexus.

  • Large, complex projects. While there is a great deal of contention about which framework is “best,” there seems to be an agreement that there is a need for coordination, integration, and communication among Agile teams related to the solution being developed. Regardless of the title of the person doing this work, it is business analysis work. And it’s work that has always been needed on large, integrated projects—the coordination of dependencies, security, business and technical impacts, and version control.
  • Enterprise-wide Agile. Many large organizations have adopted Agile in a hodgepodge of ways, and these different areas have become quite fond of doing Agile “their” way. Adopting Agile across the enterprise will require skills of people not only familiar with Agile, but also with understanding the Agile current state and working with stakeholders to reach consensus on a unified future Agile state. This will involve being able to influence, resolve conflict, and to think both creatively and critically—skills well suited to experienced BAs.

2. Digital Transformation: Profound Change for Business Analysis…or is it?

The “digital transformation” movement means we must change the way we handle business analysis and requirements. Or does it? Consider two trends commonly mentioned today.

  • Cloud Computing. Security is a bigger concern when storing data in the cloud than if it is on-site under “lock and key.” Considerations for recovering data must be employed over and above normal backup and restore. Access rights are also more complicated than with traditional applications.
  • Mobile apps. Mobile applications provide data for sensitive banking, investment, or insurance applications. Security is a bigger concern on mobile devices given they are, well, mobile. It is much easier for a thief to access a bank account from a mobile device than a desktop. Modern apps need to have “mobile responsive” features and usability.

What we conclude is that these two technical trends will continue to affect business analysis. The trend, though, is not so much with functional requirements as it is with non-functional requirements (NFRs). The two examples above feature important NFRs including security, accessibility, recoverability, and usability, including user experience. NFRs are traditional aspects of business analysis, and any profound effect on it is that we will need to pay even greater attention to them with digital transformation.

3. Freelance BAs and PMs in the Gig Economy

Currently 40% of the US workforce is part of the Gig or on-demand economy1 and that number is growing. Intuit breaks this on-demand economy into 5 groups.2 We describe these groups below and briefly discuss how they apply to the project manager (PM) and business analyst (BA). Here are the 5 groups:

  • Side Giggers (26%). These are PMs and BAs who want to supplement their existing income. Examples include PMs and BAs who take vacation, days without pay, or who work off-hours to do training classes or short-term consulting gigs.
  • Business builders (22%). BAs and PMs who are tired of working for others and want to be their own bosses fall into this category. Many of these will create their own companies and hire others. We can expect these companies to be based on the owners’ experience in project management and business analysis. Examples include consulting and training companies.
  • Career freelancers (20%). These PMs and BAs love their work, love working independently, and want to use their skills to build their careers, not to build a company that hires others. These folks usually establish themselves as independent contractors with their small own company, usually an LLC.
  • Substituters (18%). PMs and BAs who want to work in the gig economy temporarily. Whether laid off from their former organizations or for other reasons they view “gig” work as temporary while they look for full-time employment.
  • Passionistas (14%). PMs and BAs who love what they do and are primarily motivated by their desire for greater flexibility than is usually provided by a more traditional organization.

4. The shifting sands of the BA and PM roles

Many project professionals find their roles changing so rapidly that it feels like the earth is shifting below their feet. Roles are being combined (BA and PM or BA and QA) or being torn apart (formerly hybrid PM/BAs are now full-time PMs or BAs). In some organizations BAs thrive on Agile projects working hand-in-hand with product owners (POs), while in others become part of the development team doing testing because there are no BAs,. PMs become scrum masters as do BAs. Sometimes the BA becomes a product owner, but one without the authority to make decisions.

In addition, both BAs and PMs are working strategically, doing business cases and recommending enterprise-wide solutions. And more and more organizations recognize the importance of the business relationship manager (BRM), to maximize value and help set the strategic agenda.

So what is the trend? For the foreseeable future, roles and titles will vary widely from organization to organization. Equally certain is that both project management and business analysis work, both strategic and tactical, have always been required and will always be needed, regardless of the role or the title or the role.

5. Generalists helping teams to self-organize

If descriptions of job openings are an indication, specialization seems to have wide appeal. But breadth of capabilities will continue to provide the flexibility that organizations need to respond to the hyper pace of change. BAs who code. Engineers who do project management. It’s the number of arrows in the team members’ quivers that defines an organization’s competitiveness – and contributes to the team’s ability to self-organize. Not only do organizations need self-organizing teams, but the teams themselves also need the flexibility to pick up tasks that are ready to go, so the more diverse the team members’ skills, the more work can be done in parallel and completed sooner.

Although varied work appeals to many younger workers, this isn’t just about attracting millennial talent. Self-organizing teams provide the structure organizations need in order to react quickly. Self-organizing teams and the ability of team members to wear multiple hats and get things done as they see fit will continue to become the best way for organizations to respond to external influences. The self-organizing team is not a new thing, but it is going to increasingly become the norm.

Two bonus trends

  • Short business cases and quick value. The trend is to provide business cases on slices of the initiative, slices that can bring quick value to the organization, rather than spending weeks or months detailing out costs and benefits and a return on investment showing a multi-year payback.
  • Dev Ops3 This trend relates to the first and fourth trends, scaling Agile and the shifting project roles. BAs and PMs now find themselves participating as DevOps Engineers on Agile teams that emphasize collaboration not just between the customer and development team, but also among such areas as development, operations, security, infrastructure, integration, etc.

Footnotes:
1 Forbes, January, 2016
2 Intuit Investor Relations, February 3, 2016, http://investors.intuit.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2016/The-Five-Faces-of-the-On-Demand-Economy/default.aspx
3 Dev Ops is “a cross-disciplinary community of practice dedicated to the study of building, evolving and operating rapidly-changing resilient systems at scale.” https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-devops/. Ernest Mueller, Aug 2, 2010 – Last Revised Dec 7, 2016. He attributes this definition to Jez Humble.

About the Authors

Elizabeth Larson, PMP, CBAP, CSM, PMI-PBA is Co-Principal and CEO of Watermark Learning and has over 30 years of experience in project management and business analysis. Elizabeth’s speaking history includes repeat presentations for national and international conferences on five continents.

Elizabeth has co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation. She has also co-authored chapters published in four separate books. Elizabeth was a lead author on several standards including the PMBOK® Guide, BABOK® Guide, and PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide.

Richard Larson, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, President and Founder of Watermark Learning, is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on business analysis and project management topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents.

Rich loves to combine industry best practices with a practical approach and has contributed to those practices through numerous speaking sessions around the world. He has also worked on the BA Body of Knowledge versions 1.6-3.0, the PMI BA Practice Guide, and the PM Body of Knowledge, 4th edition. He and his wife Elizabeth Larson have co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation.

Andrea Brockmeier, PMP, CSM, PMI-ACP, is the Director of Project Management at Watermark Learning. She has 20+ years of experience in project management and related practice and training. She writes and teaches courses in project management, business analysis, and influencing skills. She has long been involved with the PMI® chapter in Minnesota where she is a member of the certification team. She has a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and is particularly interested in the cultural aspects of team development, as well as the impact of social media and new technologies on organizations and projects.

5 Daily Tips for Successful Projects

Written by Elizabeth Larson on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on 5 Daily Tips for Successful Projects

An ad at the end of one of my workout videos caught my attention. A kitchen timer is ticking away. A voice says “It’s about time. Time. Time.”

A trainer appears and says, “The number one reason people don’t work out is time.” A woman appears and says, “I can’t work out for an hour. Are you kidding me? I don’t have time!”i Another ad has a trainer saying something like, “Nobody has time, but if you give me just 30 minutes every day for 21 days, I’ll give you the body you’ve always wanted.”ii Oh were it that easy!

The point is, though, that the world has become a very busy place. Everywhere we go we hear the same message—I don’t have time. I don’t have time to innovate. I don’t have time to manage my project. I don’t have time to get the requirements right. To make time, some people banish project management and business analysis under a magic invisibility cloak (under the guise of doing “Agile”), making anything to do with project management and requirements disappear altogether.

So how do we make time? We would like to propose that if you give us 30 minutes every day, we will give you that project that you’ve always wanted. Here’s how.

1. Track the effort

Tracking? That’s big brother! In project management parlance this is Monitoring and in our opinion, it’s even more important than planning. We know, though, that the very words “tracking” and monitoring” often conjure up images of Big Brother. We can already hear the accusations of “that’s micromanagement.” So let us explain what we mean by tracking.

Related Article: A Plan is Useful Fiction: How Realistic Can It Be?

Tracking involves seeing where we are against where we thought we’d be at this point in time. Tracking can be done formally or informally. It can be a conversation, can include charts like burn-down charts, can include some form of time sheet, or any combination. The most important part of tracking is to take a few minutes every day to see what we’ve accomplished, what work products/features have been produced, where we are now, and most importantly, what issues are getting in the way of getting our job done. We prefer daily conversations. We have found that this type of informal communications keeps people up-to-date and prevents our projects from getting too far off-track.

Having this kind of monitoring mechanism, particularly a visual chart like a burn-down chart, is a great way to report progress. It gives us instant credibility. Anyone can ask us where we are on our project and we know. Such a tool shows on a daily basis where we thought we’d be vs. where we actually are. This can be in the form of a big visual chart posted in the project team area, or the information can be logged in a spreadsheet and sent to various stakeholders. If tracked daily, this information can be easily rolled up into a weekly, monthly, or quarterly report for sponsors, executives, and other interested stakeholders.

2. Plan the effort

Planning? That’s so old school! We’ve certainly met team members who argue that since things change, and since they embrace change, there’s no need to plan. And while if we had to choose between planning and tracking we’d choose tracking, we still believe in planning the work. Daily. We can hear you making a thousand excuses why you don’t have time to plan. Let’s keep in mind, though, that planning, like tracking, can be formal or informal. And the smaller the deliverables, the less formal planning needs to be. Daily planning may simply be a conversation with the team about tasks to complete that day. Taking 5 minutes each day to organize our thoughts will have huge long-term benefits.

3. Monitor the requirements

Old school and big brother! There’s that Big Brother word again—monitor. In our 30 minutes, we don’t have time to elicit, analyze, document, or do anything else with the requirements. However, we do have time to be sure that the requirements are getting to the level of detail needed to get the job done. We can look at our backlog of requirements and review the progress that is being made to refine them—to get big requirements into small features that are defined in a way that is clear to everyone. We can review what is being done to ensure that issues, dependencies, and impacts are being addressed. If the meaning of the requirement is not crystal clear, we can ask questions.

4. Improve

Why?! We already do retrospectives! What we have in mind here is to every day spot problems and opportunities and recommend ways to make either the process for developing the product or the product itself better. Sure it’s similar to what we typically do during retrospectives and lessons learned workshops. The difference is when we spot problems daily, we can quickly prevent bad practices from spreading and a defective product from implementing.

5. Commit

Getting in shape requires other activities beyond our daily routine, and having successful projects involves more than daily planning, tracking, and improving. But these daily activities do make it easier to meet everyone’s expectations. Sure it involves doing things we have little appetite for. No one said having successful projects was easy. Like working out, it sometimes means committing to do what we don’t want to do. As the trainer in the video says, “Not always fun, but we have to do it”iii if we want project success.

i https://www.beachbody.com/product/fitness_programs/focus-t25-workout.do
ii https://www.beachbody.com/product/fitness_programs/21-day-fix-simple-fitness-eating.do?e=460115
iii https://www.beachbody.com/search.do?query=21+day+fix+video

About the Authors

Elizabeth Larson, PMP, CBAP, CSM, PMI-PBA is Co-Principal and CEO of Watermark Learning and has over 30 years of experience in project management and business analysis. Elizabeth’s speaking history includes repeat presentations for national and international conferences on five continents.

Elizabeth has co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation. She has also co-authored chapters published in four separate books. Elizabeth was a lead author on several standards including the PMBOK® Guide, BABOK® Guide, and PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners – A Practice Guide.

Richard Larson, PMP, CBAP, PMI-PBA, President and Founder of Watermark Learning, is a successful entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business analysis, project management, training, and consulting. He has presented workshops and seminars on business analysis and project management topics to over 10,000 participants on five different continents.

Rich loves to combine industry best practices with a practical approach and has contributed to those practices through numerous speaking sessions around the world. He has also worked on the BA Body of Knowledge versions 1.6-3.0, the PMI BA Practice Guide, and the PM Body of Knowledge, 4th edition. He and his wife Elizabeth Larson have co-authored five books on business analysis and certification preparation.