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Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.

Accountability and Performance

A recent experience with my local phone company and some discussions in a recent project management class I led brought up the importance of accountability as a motivator, and the difficulty of really making it work in a large organization.

The phone company event had me waiting for five hours for an installer who never came and never bothered to call to say he wasn’t coming. When I called around 4:30 PM to see what was happening to my 12 – 4 window appointment they said we’d have to reschedule. No apology, no explanation. Then, to make matters worse, the central office did something that made it impossible for me to check my messages. This time an apology and another appointment but no one to hold accountable. No attempt at a lessons learned process. No one seemed to care that someone did something that caused client dissatisfaction and rework.

In my PM class, participants (all team leaders and project managers) identified lack of accountability as a chronic cause of performance shortfalls and conflicts. They said people make commitments and do not fulfill them. They make errors that cause rework and client dissatisfaction. No one is accountable. The same problems occur over and over again until they became the norm. Because PMs could not get candid progress reports from the functional groups and performers they relied upon, the PMs often failed to report progress accurately and found themselves blamed for late and over budget projects.

Accountability, Not Blaming

Accountability, according to the Business Dictionary is the “Obligation of an individual, firm, or institution to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.” Accountability is critical in project management. Without it projects cannot be effectively controlled and managed, nor can performance be improved. This is widely agreed upon and yet we find that there is little or no accountability in many organizations and their projects. Instead we see finger pointing, hiding and blaming, among other practices to avoid accountability.

A big part of the problem is the tendency to equate accountability with blame. Who wants to be accountable when owning up to a shortfall or defect or late delivery results in a tongue lashing or worse? So as Dr. Deming advised, banish blaming and focus instead on an attitude that is built on the idea that it is only by clearly acknowledging things as they are that we can make them better, or at least make the best of the current situation.

Promote Accountability

The effective project manager makes accountability an issue at the earliest possible time in the project’s life. It becomes a topic for discussion at kick-off and is built into the project’s communication and project control plan. Ideally, commitments are made and documented in the project plan. The control process requires that performers candidly and regularly report their effort and progress. Everyone understands and agrees that the project manager will make sure that progress results, issues, problems, etc. are regularly and candidly reported. Issues such as probable or actual late delivery are addressed by looking at their impact and cause and then taking appropriate action. Action in the short term attempts to mitigate negative effects within the project. In the long term, action seeks to eliminate the cause, through training, staff changes and/or process improvement across future projects.

People with a positive work ethic recognize the need for accountability and accept the fact that, even when they have to own up to errors and omissions they have made, both they and their teams and organizations will benefit. People with less positive work ethics, especially if they work in punitive, blaming organizations, must be made to understand that avoiding accountability by hiding the reality of their actions is completely unacceptable.

Kick-off is a Process, Not Just a Meeting

All too often project managers settle for kick-offs that fail to set the stage for optimal project performance. This is because they do not address the “softer side” of the project, the interpersonal relationships and communications issues.

It is also because they see kick-off as an event rather than a process that may include several kick-off meetings with various groups of stakeholders and ongoing refinements of understandings, particularly as new people join the team.

Develop the Project Team

The PMI PMBoK® Guide does not define kick-off and has no indexed reference to it at all. Though, it is implied in the Develop Project Team process under Human Resource Management by “improving competencies, team interaction and the overall team environment to enhance project performance.” The objectives of developing a project team are to improve knowledge and skills, improve feelings of trust, and to promote mutual understanding and agreement among team members. Overall the objective of team development is to improve performance.

Project team development begins during the initiation of the project and continues across the life of the project and, in many cases, across multiple projects. Kick-off is the process of getting things started. A kick-off meeting is a critical part of it. Its objectives are to make sure that everyone’s understandings are aligned regarding objectives, procedures, and plans (including roles and responsibilities) and to begin or continue the team development process.

Kick-off Meetings

Kick-off meetings take place at the beginning of the project and at the beginning of major phases, for larger projects. As new people join the team, they must be “kicked-off” into the project. Depending on the size and structure of the project team and other stakeholders there may be more than one kick-off meeting. The core team may be involved in a one to three day or more, workshop in which they validate the project charter, begin the high-level planning and address team building and communication issues through discussions and exercises. Other groups may have kick-off meetings at which key people present project plans and objectives, seek feedback and get commitment regarding roles and responsibilities, objectives and processes and procedures. These mini kick-off meetings may also be workshops to address the kick-off of sub-projects and large complex activities.

While it is ideal to have the team co-located for the kick-off event, virtual meetings using web based conferencing or video conferencing or, as a last resort, teleconferencing can be effective if they are well planned and facilitated. Synchronous meetings are strongly recommended as they are far more likely to make an impact and enable the team to address complex and sensitive issues quickly and candidly.

Project performance is improved when we consider both the left brain, analytical aspects of the project – objectives, roles and responsibilities, designs, procedures, etc. – and the right brain, feelings oriented aspects, such as interpersonal relationships, emotional intelligence, diversity awareness, conflict management, etc. The team environment that is characterized by trust, mutual understanding, respect and harmony is likely to promote success even in the face of “less than perfect” planning and execution. Even the most accurately estimated, well planned and meticulously controlled projects, however, are prone to failure when the project environment is unhealthy. Use the kick-off process as a means for ensuring a healthy team environment.

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What is a Successful Project?

I noticed that a well respected PM guru has stated that he “believes that the triple constraint, as we know it, may have to be modified to include a value component for these nontraditional projects and the traditional earned value measurement system will be replaced with a value measurement methodology.”

What he may be getting at is the recognition that there are two principal criteria for project success. One is the traditional triple constraints based criteria and the other is the value that the project result brings. There’s nothing new here.

Don’t Over Simplify!

Let’s not over simplify by merging these two together and making the PM feel as if she should be defining the product and making portfolio management decisions.

The project manager delivers “products”. While the PM may be able to influence the value derived from that product, he or she usually has little input or control. Project manager performance is primarily measured on how well project scope, cost and time objectives have been met.

Of course there are other criteria, including the degree to which the PM can collaborate at the program and portfolio level, coach and mentor, build strong relationships, etc. But these without meeting objectives are irrelevant.

What is Value?

Value is the perceived impact (positive or negative) of the project and its results on the organization and its environment. Did the product make or save money? Did it destroy or enhance the physical and emotional environment?

Based on the PMI model, value or benefits are the focus of the program. This distinction is based on the recognition that operational use is often far more complex than product delivery. In operational use there are clients, users, support people and systems, relationship managers, etc. managing ongoing activities. The ongoing nature of operations and use adds greater complexity because it implies adapting to change within the organization, in the marketplace or in the wider environment, over an extended timeframe.

The PM Role

The PM should certainly be aware of and knowledgeable about the business and organizational implications of the project. The PM is more than a simple craftsman; he or she must consider the business and architectural work related to the project. In this way, as much as it is possible, the project manager can influence project decisions in light of the long term value perspective.

There is a tough balancing act among the trades-offs between long term value and short term delivery time and cost. It requires leadership from above the PM. The program manager, sponsors, product managers, marketing, sales and operations managers, and client ombudsmen must be responsible for delivering value. In this realm, the single point of responsibility is not the PM.

Who is it in your environment?

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Project Knowledge Management in PM – Time for Change

Last month’s blog discussed the project manager’s role in sharing PM knowledge with stakeholders as a means for creating an organic learning process. This month I will opine about the broader issue of knowledge management in the realm of project management.

PM Learning Historical Perspective

Before the 1990s most project managers were trained on the job through a combination of coaching and self discovery. The very largest projects, particularly in aerospace, engineering and construction used “professional” PM methods. Out of this experience has grown a cadre of professional PMs and practitioners who have evolved Agile and other approaches to managing projects to improve the probability of project success.

Knowledge management is an integral part of project management (KM). The knowledge consists of information about current performance (e.g., status reports, risk registers, etc.), information about the process (e.g., methodologies, best practices, tutorials, etc.) and information on past performance (e.g., estimating data bases, project archives, etc.)

Process Learning

The process information is at the heart of performance improvement. In the past, the principle approach here has been formal training and relatively rigid methodologies. This is changing and hopefully changing quickly. Would-be project managers can learn the basics with self paced courses but can only learn the realities in practical, well facilitated workshops and through ongoing dialogues with their peers and experts in the field.

Advanced PM

Advanced PM training has been pretty much a joke, with training providers offering up academic courses in the various areas of knowledge. How many PMs actually need an advanced risk course? Advanced learning in PM is about application, not academics. We need workshops and coaching blended with self-paced options for academic information and just-in-time sharing for best practices and specific how-to’s.

Knowledge management is the discipline that seeks to find the best way to share knowledge in the organization. Learning and development is a significant part of KM but certainly not the whole. KM is the realm of taxonomies to organize knowledge, technologies to collect and distribute knowledge and support social computing, and governance, editing and filtering to make sure the knowledge being shared is accurate and relevant and being used.

Consciously engineered KM reduces the burden on the PM to educate everyone on PM benefits, principles and responsibilities. The PM is still responsible for creating and maintaining a learning environment in his/her project but this is far easier when there is an organization-wide structure in place, supported by effective content.

What are you doing to integrate KM into your PM process?

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Educating the Stakeholders: Whose Job is it Anyway?

I closed last month’s post with “As a project manager (PM) it is your responsibility to educate your team, your client, sponsor, manager and those responsible for setting client expectations so that they all understand the realities of estimating.”

Taking it a step further, it is the PM’s responsibility to educate all the other stakeholders regarding the principles, techniques, costs and benefits of project management. Of course, some may be thinking that there is enough on their plate without having to educate the world about PM. If not you, who?

Without a conscious effort to educate the stakeholders about project management, there is the risk that they will not adhere to PM best practices or, if they do, they may do it without the real buy-in that makes for effective performance.

Sharing Practical Knowledge

What do we mean by educating? It is sharing knowledge in a way that better enables stakeholders to play their roles effectively and to clearly understand the trade-offs and benefits of applied project management. Don’t bore people to death by telling them everything you know about the PMBOK. Instead bring out the right knowledge in the right way at the right time. It is just-in-time learning. It is not theory; it is practical and completely relevant to the situation at hand.

A Good Example

For example, the lesson on realistic estimating is best given in the context of estimate negotiation when you share the need to consider deliverables, past performance, resource capacity and availability, uncertainty, environmental conditions and other factors when estimating.

In the midst of the estimate negotiation you have peoples’ attention. Take a few minutes to bring out the fact that, in the past, unrealistic estimates have caused serious problems. See if you can get the other parties to acknowledge the truth of that statement. Then ask “Do we want to repeat that behavior knowing what we know from our experience?” Maybe that will bring up questions about what you (collectively) have learned from past experience. If it does, you are at a ‘learning moment’.

Organic Learning

Estimating is only one topic for educating stakeholders. As the project proceeds there are lessons on project risk management, monitoring and controlling and anything else that is relevant, given the nature of the project, the people and the situation at hand. As you share your PM knowledge in this way, you create and take part in organic learning. Learning and reinforcing learning and best practices becomes a natural part of the process.

As a project manager, it is part of your responsibility to make sure you are sharing your PM knowledge and experience with the greater team so that everyone can perform effectively, eliminating waste, staying in control and delivering quality results.

If not you, who?

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