No profession is immune to problems and shortcomings, and project management is no exception. In my opinion, the most critical issue with the profession today is as follows: it is just not strategic enough. What on earth does this mean, you ask? Let me explain.
The famous quote from Peter Drucker goes like this:
This is a rant of mine from a year ago, but I think it’s well worth repeating.
Many industries, organizations, departments, divisions and people find our professional world of project management intimidating, confusing and all too much to be able to apply to their projects.
Their projects are not big enough to apply most of our processes. But more importantly, the people managing these projects are not full time project managers and they will never be full time project managers. Typically, these people are part time project managers with MANY small projects on the go at once. They are office administrators, operations people, managers and directors of departments. To all of them, there is no time or energy for PMBOK, PMI, Gantt charts, pert charts, risk assessment plans nor a quality plan.
But what is there time for? What can our big bad world of project management offer these people and their projects to help them deliver on time, on budget and within scope?
If I had to pick the key ingredients to small project success I would group them into three areas:
A Solid Foundation
Every project, regardless of its size must be built on a solid foundation. A well-defined objective answering the question: what are we building? You should create some sort of scope definition document or project charter. Force every initiative into a brief, simple series of questions: who, what, why, when, where.
But there’s more. You also need a key stakeholder – someone who is ultimately responsible, who you can count on for support, funding and receipt of the final product.
The right team – making sure you have the right people in place before you start. This could include suppliers, vendors and, of course, anyone internal or external who you need to complete the project.
Enough time – you need to take time out to outline the schedule of work – no detailed scheduling tool required, no task dependencies – just a simple, to-the-point schedule.
Enough money – do a budget! No matter how small the project. Be sure your stakeholder understands ALL the costs.
A Stake in the Ground
By this I mean a solid start date, end date and all major milestones defined. And a name! Give your projects a name. All of this will give the initiative some sort of form – and form is important when it comes to communicating to the outside world. It is also crucial to the declaration at the end that the project was a success or failure it terms of delivery.
A kick-off meeting is difficult if there is just one of you. But more than one? You should be sitting down at least over coffee to shoot off the start pistol. This is great opportunity to confirm you are all on the same page.
A Plan and a Process
Here is where all full time project managers fail when we are asked for help on small projects. You do not need a detailed plan. But you do need a simple, high-level list of work to be done, who will be doing it and when it should be complete. You should establish a series of regular meetings with stakeholders and a regular reporting method. Communication within every project is the key to success – but it is one of the hardest things to do – because we all want to ‘over report’. Do a simple communication plan – who will get what information, when, how and WHY? Go through this exercise and you will start to wonder why you have been sending detailed 100 page reports to people who don’t care, shouldn’t care or never read it because it is too long.
And finally – after the project. You should take a moment to close out – record lessons learned, say thank you to all involved and make a graceful exit.
Simple? Sure. Be there are lots of risks to every project:
People are the toughest part of any project. They must be managed as much as you are managing the work they are doing. Technology will kill you at the 11th hour – we all know that one. And beware of change – the change in corporate direction in the middle of your project, the change in personnel, change in technology, to name a few.
All projects, regardless of size deserve to be managed properly. For those people out there who are not full time project managers, we need to help them with some simple, basic guidelines from our professional world of project management.
Editor’s Comments
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It may be the rough state the economy is in or it could be pure coincidence, but in this issue of Project Times we feature two articles focusing on the financial and value aspects of projects. Then again it’s an area that’s always worth taking a look at, especially since we all want our projects to be successful and on budget. Right?
In EVM: Project Management with the Lights On!, Brian Egan makes the point that project managers should be aware of the progress and status of their projects at all times. He also maintains that a benefit of Earned Value Management (EVM) is that it is basic cost accounting that extracts valuable information from work you’re routinely doing, so there are no major additional costs.
The importance of tracking actual costs and resource usage on a project depends upon the project, according to Tom Clark. In Why Track Actual Costs and Resource Usage on Projects, he says that in some cases tracking the actuals is not worth the effort involved. In other cases, however, he believes tracking actual costs and resource usage is an essential component of the project control function.
Our bloggers are back with their own distinctive views. Agree or disagree, your opinion matters to us, the bloggers and your fellow readers. Please share them through commenting at the bottom of each blog. Also place your vote with this issue’s poll question regarding PM education.
And finally, please enjoy this edition of Project Times.
If you’re looking at improving your project portfolio efficiency and effectiveness be clear on what you need to focus on.
I experienced a situation recently where the motivation for project portfolio management was limited human resources. True, resource management is integral to portfolio management but broaching a limited resources problem with a portfolio management solution is overkill.
There are two things that project portfolio management aims at: alignment and contribution. ‘Alignment’ refers to aligning strategic objectives to investments, to projects and ultimately to resources. ‘Contribution’ means ensuring the benefits of the project as outlined in the business case are realized.
Resource management, on the other hand, involves putting the right type and amount of resources where they need to be, for the right amount of time. It assumes that decisions around what projects to do, over what periods, have already been made.
There’s a big difference between the two management activities. The most striking of these is the scope.
Portfolio management involves linkages between business strategy and execution. This requires a very different skill set than what you’d expect from a resource manager. It also requires continuous monitoring of project performance and risk indicators in order that the investment is protected.
Resource management is limited to resources not business decisions and not project health reporting.
If business decisions have been made to proceed with several projects, and there are insufficient resources to execute these projects in the time frames expected, then there is disconnect between the strategy and execution arms of the business. Either the total budget is not sufficient to support the aggregate cost (in terms of resources) of the projects, or the business cases have understated the amount of resources required. This is a problem portfolio management can resolve because it ensures projects are selected and prioritized based on total budget and resources available. Resource management will tell you to hire more people.
Today many organizations are faced with having to achieve more with less. There is always a strain on the resource pool in getting all work done. Targeting the problem of resource management by broaching assignment and allocation with a defined process, a skills inventory and a focused mandate can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall project portfolio. It may not solve the problem of pushing too much work into the pipeline, but it will highlight disconnects between a strategic decision to proceed with projects and the ability to execute on these decisions.
It’s a great first step to introducing or improving portfolio management.
Mike Lecky is a consultant at The Manta Group, a management consulting company specializing in IT governance, Project and Portfolio Management, Service Management, Risk and Compliance. Mike has degrees from the University of Waterloo (BScEng), The University of Western Ontario (MBA) and the University of Liverpool (MScIT). He worked for 12 years in aerospace electronics and as a Project Engineer managed several general aviation and US Military contracts. He teaches project management online with the School of Applied Technology at Humber College. Now, with over 25 years experience, he is a PMP and an information security professional (CISSP) and has a broad range of program and technology implementation experiences in the high tech and service sectors. Mike can be reached at [email protected]
Now, when I say fight, of course I do not mean an all out Battle Royal cage match with your Project Executive (PE). I mean, when you come to a point in the project and you and the PE disagree, fundamentally (on a particular vendor, let’s say). Let’s assume, for the purpose of this article, that you have already sat down and discussed the issue on reasonable terms and you still both sit on opposite sides of the issue…what do you do? As the Project Manager (PM), you are responsible for ensuring the success of the project. As the PE, your colleague will be accountable for the success of the project. You both have a lot at stake, so some discussions can get quite heated. There are a few things you can do to resolve this:
Try to determine the PE’s motivation for their decision.
Are they motivated purely by the success of the project, or are there other areas that may be influencing them? Their boss? Office politics? Desire to be recognized? Once you have determined this, it may make compromise a little easier.
Acknowledge their position, but also identify its risks.
You can always say things like “I realize that choosing the smaller vendor will be less expensive in the short-term, but my experience has shown that you may end up doubling your costs later when we realize the vendor’s short-comings. It is not right or wrong, only a legitimate risk.” By identifying the risks, you are separating the idea from the person and judging purely based on the merits of the idea, not who came up with it.
Know when to concede and put it behind you.
After going through all of the right steps and your PE is still standing firm on their position, you also need to know when to let it go. The PE has ultimate accountability, so at some point you need to move forward. This is not easy or fun, but is sometimes in the best interest of the project. This is not “giving in,” it is just being smart. You are not going to win every battle. Put it behind you and move on.
There is no right answer to this situation, but you should only be doing what you are comfortable with. I have previously told clients that I disagree with their opinion, but I will go along with it because they are the client and have the final say. I agree to move forward reticently, but I also make clear that the risks have been identified and that I will not be held accountable if the decision turns out to be the wrong one! However, it is also important that if the decision turns out to be the right one, give your PE some credit.
Andrew Miller is President of ACM Consulting Inc. (www.acmconsulting.ca), a company that provides supply chain and project management solutions. Andrew is PMP certified and has led a variety of clients through complex systems implementations and organizational changes. He is an Instructor of the Procurement and Contracting course, part of the Masters Certificate in Project Management program through the Schulich School of Business Executive Education Centre (SEEC) in Toronto. Andrew has an International MBA from the Schulich School of Business with majors in Logistics and Marketing. He can be reached at [email protected].