Tag: Leadership

We Don’t Always Start Fresh

Written by Martin Fenelon on February 21, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Project Management texts usually assume we’re starting at the beginning of a project, with control over scope, schedule, and resources. Frequently, project scope, resources, and schedule are already determined through strategic planning, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), or the project charter process. In other cases, we take on projects that are in progress. This can occur as a normal part of the project lifecycle as a hand-off from a project initiation team to a project delivery team or due to other circumstances. The existing Project Manager (PM) may be moving to a different, higher priority project, assuming other responsibilities within the organization, leaving the organization for other career opportunities, or leaving the project due to the problems that have arisen. In all these cases, the new PM is required to assess the current status of the project, update or create a plan leading to a successful conclusion of the project, and execute that plan through project completion.

There are specific things that a PM can do to improve their chances of successfully completing the ongoing project, regardless of its current state or delivery phase. While these will be covered in future articles, and in my book, There’s a New Sheriff in Town: The Project Manager’s Proven Guide to Successfully Taking Over Ongoing Projects and Getting the Work Done, in this article we will examine how likely it is for a PM to step into an ongoing project.

Assuming management of an ongoing project is a lot more common than many people think. All the PMs that I’ve met over the years, through work, at conferences, and online, have taken over projects that were already started. Industry results and surveys also show that the overwhelming majority of PMs have had to assume projects or programs that were already in flight. Close to 200 project managers responded in 2022 to an online global survey on their experience with joining projects that had already been started.

PMs are much more likely to take over existing projects than to start with a “clean slate.”

Roughly 93% of the PMs responding have had to take over a project that was already started at least once in their careers. There are significant differences and additional challenges when taking over projects that have already started. Despite these circumstances being very common, they are not routine and should not be treated as such. We need to recognize the challenges of joining a project that has already started, along with the typical challenges of managing projects.

How frequently does this happen?

Two-thirds (67%) of all the projects managed by these PMs had a different PM when they finished.

Far from being a rare occurrence, we should assume that most projects will have a change in leadership before they finish. How many PMs plan to hand over leadership to another PM? All too often, we assume that we will finish what we start, so if a change in leadership does occur, we are not prepared for it. Whether we are handing off the project to another PM, or if we are the incoming PM, the hand-off will be more challenging and less successful if we are not prepared for it.

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Why is assuming management of an ongoing project different than starting a new project? Table 1-1 provides a brief listing of project characteristics, components, and key management decisions that are still being formulated when a project is initiated but are usually set once a project has started. We’ll discuss some of these issues, and how to handle them as an incoming PM, in future articles.

Table 1-1: New Projects Versus Ongoing Projects

COMPONENT	NEW PROJECT	ONGOING PROJECT
Objectives	Loosely Defined	Established
Scope/Requirements	Being Determined	Preliminary or Approved
Quality	Being Negotiated	Defined
Schedule	Being Negotiated	Set
Budget	Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM)	Set
Delivery Method	Candidates identified	Chosen
Technology	May be defined, flexibility will vary	Selected
Delivery Team	Being Selected	Created and working
Delivery Location	May be open	Set
Delivery Tools	Being determined based on technology and delivery methodology selected	In Use
Project Plans	Being Drafted	Published and Approved

The results of the survey, discussions with PMs across the globe, and personal experience have all shown that we don’t always start on a project with a clean slate where we can work with the sponsor and business owner to establish the triple constraints. In fact, it is almost guaranteed that during our PM careers we will have to take over an ongoing project. The bad news is that this can be very different from initiating a project, with additional challenges that make it hard to succeed. The good news is that we are not alone in facing these challenges, and that there are proven techniques that greatly increase the likelihood of success. In addition to covering these in my book, we will address many of them in future articles.

A Project Sponsor Wrecked My Project

Written by Anju Aggarwal on February 1, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Sponsors play an important role throughout the life of a project. They help support, shape, and integrate the project to realize the benefits for the business. But the Sponsors can also hinder the success of a project. They can harm a project by becoming too elusive or too intrusive. In this article, I will share the havoc caused by an intrusive sponsor.

An Intrusive sponsor tries to take too much control over the project. It is important to remember that the Sponsor is not the Project Manager and, as such, should not be trying to micromanage the project.

Let us first start with the definition of a project sponsor.

A Project Sponsor is a person or group who owns the project and provides resources and support for the project, program, or portfolio to enable its success. Every project has at least one project sponsor. Project sponsors are senior managers or executives who liaise between the project and organizational goals.

One of the critical success factors for any project is the presence and participation of an effective project sponsor. The Project Management Institute reports that the top driver of those projects meeting their original business goals is an actively engaged executive sponsor (PMI, 2018). However, the same project management research also found that one in three failed projects are linked to poorly engaged executive sponsorship.

Sponsor’s Primary responsibilities:

– Sponsors help clarify project goals from the organization’s perspective and guide project managers to make consistent tradeoffs across the project’s schedule, scope, and resources.

– Sponsors serve as a point of escalation when decisions or actions are needed to keep the project on track for matters outside the authority of the project manager.

BUT…

Not every Sponsor wants to be confined to their primary responsibilities.

Not every Sponsor wants to guide PMs, preferring to micromanage them.

Not every Sponsor respects the PMs boundaries and authority.

In some cases, a sponsor’s overzealousness to make a project successful can sabotage the project. A sponsor can create or destroy value for a business. They can act as a hinderance to project success.

Here is my true story between myself (the Project Manager) and the Sponsor. Let’s call him Mr. A.

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A brief background about this project

It was a project in a startup company. I was well supported by the Sponsor, who also happened to be the owner of that company.

Here are the few scenarios which lead to the project’s doom:

Micromanaging

As the project had aggressive timelines, Mr. A suggested hiring freelancers to expedite the work. He recommended a few profiles that he had shortlisted from LinkedIn. I selected one freelancer from that list and started working with him.

What an excellent camaraderie between a Sponsor and a PM. Right?

Wrong!

The supportive Sponsor wanted to give more support. He started micromanaging me. He was asking questions like:

How frequently do you connect with that freelancer? How are you tracking his work?

As the freelancer was doing data entry work, I delegated the supervision of his work to another team member. This way, I could concentrate on more pressing issues in the project.

But Mr. A did not like it. He wanted me to supervise that freelancer directly.

Overriding PM’s decisions

We were working hard to achieve the unrealistic timelines. As the due date got closer, I decided to share the actual situation with the customer and ask for more time. I hope that sharing the information about the real efforts to complete the ongoing tasks would help the customers see the massiveness of the work. I would own the misjudgments of estimates done earlier in the project (although those commitments were made by Mr. A.)

But it does not matter as we are one team, Right?

Wrong!

Alas, I did not get to share this information with the customer. Instead, Mr. A had a private conversation with the customer and asked for a one-week extension timeline. In place of the extension, he also committed to doing some extra work.

I was caught unaware when I received this information from the customer on a slack group channel.

Expect the impossible

We could not deliver the work we had already committed for this week, on top of the extra work due in another week. I became furious! How could Mr. A have this conversation without first discussing the impact of the scope changes with me? Mr. A crossed a boundry and overstepped my authority on this project.

Many other things unfolded after that and I eventually left the project. Mr. A eagerly stepped into the shoes of interim Project Manager.

I became an observer on this project and provided my help as and when required.

How the wrecked project looked

Firstly, the project could not be delivered even after the time extension that Mr. A got from the customer.

Secondly, he made the entire company work on that project.

And thirdly, the customer was unhappy about this delay and voiced his concern over the slack channel by sending angry messages to the entire team.

We all know that for a project to be successful, the Project Manager and the Sponsor need to work hand in hand. And we also know that this collaboration is often missing in projects.

In many cases, the PM has to spend more time handling Sponsor queries rather than project queries.

How should a PM handle an intrusive Sponsor?

Before talking more about this subject, understand that it is a sensitive topic to handle. As in most cases, the Sponsor also happens to be the PM’s immediate boss.

Hence PMs need to handle it so they do not damage the working relationship with their manager.

Train and Educate – Sponsors (specifically, those who are also startup owners) must be educated on what it takes to effectively work with a project team. Sponsors should be explicitly and deliberately taught to deal with projects, project issues, and project people. In addition, they need to learn about change management – the effective tradeoff between cost, duration, and performance.

Clarify Expectations – Understanding what the Sponsor expects from a PM. They may have a different understanding of what project managers do and how PMs can help them. For example, some people might think PMs just do all the paperwork and nothing else. Ensure the Sponsor completely understands a PMs roles and responsibilities.

Set up the Communication plan – Establish the frequency, granularity, and channels for communication between the PM and the Sponsor to share the project progress or impediments. Communication channels include status meetings, automated reports, dashboards, and impromptu conversations. When sponsors start weighing in on all the minor details, the PM can remind them about the agreements made in the communication plan.

Project sponsors are essential to the success of any project. They provide the financial support and resources necessary for a project to exist. They can have a hugely positive impact on the success of a project. While they can be helpful, they can also hinder if not properly managed.

The three ways in which we can handle the intrusive Sponsor is:

– Educate them about Sponsor and PM roles and responsibilities

– Set the clear expectations

– Be honest with them to ensure a successful project outcome

We can also sum up the above three points in a single sentence – A Sponsor needs to know their boundaries and accept the boundaries of a Project Manager!

Maximizing Impact and Efficiency with Zero-Based Portfolio Prioritization

Written by Paul Oppong on January 31, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Introduction

In today’s competitive business environment, it’s important for organizations to stay ahead of the game. One key to success is being able to effectively prioritize and deliver on projects that will drive strategic goals and bring about competitive advantage. This is where zero-based portfolio prioritization comes in.

But first, let’s consider the importance of prioritization to your portfolio and your business.

Why Prioritize?

Effective project prioritization can bring a number of benefits to your organization, including:

Improved return on investment: Studies have shown that prioritized projects are more likely to drive greater ROI and overall value, as they are more closely aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. Additionally, projects that are well-aligned with strategy are 45% more likely to be delivered to budget and 50% more likely to be delivered on time.

Better support from senior management and other key stakeholders: When projects are clearly linked to strategic imperatives, they have a 57% higher likelihood of success. This is due in part to increased engagement from senior leadership and greater energy behind the projects, which can result in more resources being made available to deliver them.

Reduction of waste: Prioritization ensures that organizations are focused on projects that will add value, rather than those that are no longer relevant. All too often, organizations continue working on outdated projects that consume valuable resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.

Avoidance of resource overload: When organizations do not focus on the most important projects, resources can be stretched too thin, leading to bottlenecks and delays on critical projects. Prioritizing projects effectively frees up people to work on the things that really matter, which can also be more motivating for team members.

What is the Zero-based Portfolio Prioritization Process?

Zero-based portfolio prioritization is a method of evaluating and prioritizing projects based on their potential value, rather than their place in a pre-existing hierarchy or list of priorities. It involves starting with a blank slate and reviewing each project based on its current potential value to the organization.

There are a few different methods that can be used for zero-based portfolio prioritization, including weighted scoring, MoSCoW prioritization, the Eisenhower Matrix, and the Impact and Effort Matrix.

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Implementing Zero-based Portfolio Prioritization

So, how do you go about implementing zero-based portfolio prioritization in your organization? Here are the key steps to follow:

Define your criteria: To effectively evaluate and prioritize projects, you’ll need to decide on the criteria you will use. This could include things like ROI, risk level, resource requirements, and cost-benefit ratio. Involve key stakeholders in this process to ensure that the criteria align with the organization’s strategic goals and needs.

Review and evaluate projects: Once you have your criteria defined, review and evaluate each project based on how it aligns with the criteria. This could involve creating a matrix or other tool to help you score and compare projects. Be sure to consider both quantitative and qualitative benefits in your evaluation.

Communicate and act: Once you have your prioritized list of projects, it’s important to communicate the changes to all stakeholders and start working on the revised plan. This can be challenging, as some team members may be disappointed if their projects are deprioritized. Be sure to clearly communicate the reasons for the changes and how they align with the organization’s goals to help mitigate resistance.

Monitor and evaluate: Ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the prioritized projects is key to ensuring that they remain aligned with the organization’s goals and that resources are being used effectively. This may involve regularly reviewing and adjusting the criteria used to evaluate projects, as well as tracking progress and outcomes.

Challenges and Considerations

While zero-based portfolio prioritization can bring many benefits to an organization, it’s important to be aware of the potential challenges and considerations that may come up. These could include:

Resistance to change: As mentioned, it’s common for team members to resist changes to project priorities, especially if their own projects are deprioritized. It’s important to clearly communicate the reasons for the changes and how they align with the organization’s goals to help mitigate resistance.

Difficulty in evaluating and comparing projects: It can be challenging to accurately evaluate and compare projects, especially when some benefits are hard to quantify. It’s important to be thorough and use a consistent approach to ensure that projects are being compared fairly.

Ensuring alignment with strategic goals: It’s essential to ensure that the prioritized projects are aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. This may require regular review and adjustment of the criteria used to evaluate projects.

Limited resources: Even with effective prioritization, there may be times when the organization simply doesn’t have the resources to tackle all of the highest-priority projects. In these cases, it may be necessary to prioritize further or look for ways to free up resources.

Overall, zero-based portfolio prioritization can be a powerful tool for organizations looking to align their priorities with their strategic goals and ensure that resources are being used effectively. By carefully defining criteria, evaluating, and comparing projects, communicating and acting on the revised plan, and monitoring and evaluating progress, organizations can make the most of their resources and drive greater success.

Wabi-Sabi: Embrace Imperfection to Continuously Improve

Written by George Pitagorsky on January 25, 2023. Posted in Articles.

“There’s a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese wisdom principle that has great relevance to project management and, in fact, any management, including self-management.

The principle is to embrace imperfection, surrendering to the reality that nothing is permanent, and nothing is complete. In the complex world of projects, imperfection is inevitable.

In my forthcoming book on achieving optimal performance, I include Wabi-sabi as one of the elements that treat the cause of unnecessary stress. I tell the story of the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma who had a string break in the middle of a performance. Rather than being set off balance by the disturbance, he paused, changed the string and continued his performance. He was practicing wabi-sabi, cool and accepting. Equanimous. Imagine how it might have been had Yo-Yo Ma not been so equanimous, calmly accepting the situation. Likely, his performance would have suffered.

In organizations, a Wabi-sabi attitude is instrumental in promoting continuous improvement and avoiding the blaming that creates conflict, motivates people to hide errors and defects, and gets in the way of learning.

Acceptance that there will be imperfections eliminates the denial, anger, and fear that arises when the imperfections appear.

Active Acceptance

There is often a misunderstanding about the attitude of accepting and embracing imperfection. “What! Accept imperfection?” some might think. “Isn’t perfection what we are after. We want to be free of defects, errors, and omissions, not accept and embrace them.”

To clarify the misunderstanding, we have to explore what it means to accept and to embrace.

To accept in our context is to realize that things are as they are. It does not mean to accept that they will continue. Acceptance is active when we realize that everything is continuously moving, in process. Nothing is complete. Accepting the present reality, things as they are, is an ideal foundation for planning and moving forward to a desired outcome.

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When an error is detected, will it go away if you deny it or try to cover it up? No. It is there. Accept it. The alternative is not pretty. Deny or hide the error and it is likely to come to light again, probably when it is even less convenient. When it does, there is a sense of distrust. The error has been compounded because imperfection was not accepted.

Acceptance allows embracing. To embrace means to accept something willingly and enthusiastically. You don’t have to hug and kiss the imperfections. The method is to be grateful that the error has been identified so you can enthusiastically see what you can do with and about the particular imperfection you have encountered.

This attitude motivates project team members to bring existing imperfections to the surface (not to create new ones). Embracing imperfection leads to actively improving performance and product quality by assessing each imperfection to determine its impact, its cause, and what to about it – in the short term, to manage the impact and longer term, to learn and improve.

Yes, we want to be free of errors and omissions. Learning from the ones we or others have experienced, is the basis for being free of them in the future. We can’t change the past or the present moment but using the knowledge of them we can influence the future.

What Gets in the Way

So, if it is such a good thing, why isn’t it universally applied? What gets in the way of taking a wabi-sabi attitude? Perfectionism, emotional reactivity, and an ambiguous definition of perfection are the primary obstacles to embracing imperfection.

Perfectionism is the drive to make things perfect. It can be healthy or unhealthy. If it is managed, it is a highly valued trait, a success factor. But unacknowledged and uncontrolled, it comes to the surface as unhealthy self-criticism and criticism of others, frustration, anger, and overcontrol. Perfectionism is often institutionalized, making it a cultural trait as well as an individual one.

The unhealthy perfectionist is caught up in the obsession to achieve unrealistic goals. The healthy perfectionist is aware of their tendency and can moderate the emotional drive to be perfect or have everything be perfect by rationally assessing how realistic their expectation is.

When perfection includes imperfection (“There’s a crack in everything“) and the imperfection is embraced, perfectionism is channeled into continuous improvement. For example when there is an effective process for managing quality, errors, and issues, and there is more than lip service to wabi-sabi it is a sign of healthy perfectionism.

Emotional reactivity is the second major obstacle to adopting a wabi-sabi attitude. It is related to perfectionism and to unrealistic expectations. In a perfectionist setting the emotions that arise when things are not perfect include anger, frustration, aggression, fear, anxiety, pride, jealousy.

These, like all emotions are to be accepted as part of the perfection. But to let them take over and drive behavior is to be avoided.

Ambiguous definition of perfection is the third obstacle. On the simplest level this means to recognize that while perfection is a target, performance needs to be assessed based on realistic criteria. For example, the recognition that a given level of defect is acceptable. A performer who continuously, even after retraining, makes errors nay need to be replaced. One who makes errors occasionally, particularly when trying new things, can be a star.

On another level, recognize that an unexpected outcome is not necessarily a terrible thing. Many discoveries and breakthroughs have been the result of accidents and errors. For example, sticky notes came out of a failed attempt to develop a permanent adhesive. The ugly duckling is not so ugly when the criteria of perfection are changed.

Perfecting the Process

The motivation to avoid letting these obstacles drive behavior is the desire for a perfect process with a wabi-sabi attitude.

Overcoming the obstacles to accepting and embracing imperfection requires awareness and effort. If there as an imperfect process that wastes the opportunity to improve by hiding from imperfection, do the work of changing attitudes with revised training, policies, and procedures.

This implies that process awareness and improvement is valued as much as current performance. But that’s a subject for another time.

The Fallacy of SMART Goals

Written by Elizabeth Larson on January 24, 2023. Posted in Articles.

I recently read a news story about how to keep our New Year’s resolutions. The article was about the use of simple time management techniques, the center of which was setting SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that’s been around for decades and stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable Relevant, and Time-bound. Sometimes other words are used, such as assignable, realistic, timely, and testable.

It sounds good. It sounds useful. But simplifying time management into an acronym reduces the complexity of managing our projects to a seemingly simple formula, one that can prove frustrating. It reminds me of countless bosses and sponsors I’ve had who said, “Can’t you just tell me when the project will be done? Use SMART goals to help you figure it out!” Don’t get me wrong. I think this acronym is useful as a high-level framework. But if our goals too high-level, we run the risk of never achieving them. It’s just not that easy. Let me give you some examples using a project to build a house.

Specific. What does it mean to be specific? How are specific goals different from measurable or achievable or time-bound goals? In our house-building example house specifications are specific, as the name implies. There are specs for the exterior and the interior. Specs for landscaping, the roof, the plumbing, electrical and so forth. How specific do they need to be? Specs without detail might be helpful as an overview, but not for the actual construction of the house. We need to drill to down for the specs to be workable.

Measurable. To say that the house will be complete in 18 months, for example, is measurable. It’s a good starting point. As the homeowner I can start planning when to put my current house on the market or end my lease, when to get current utilities canceled and the new ones turned on, when to arrange for movers and so forth. But when is done really done? I’ve been told a house was done before the gas was hooked up. I was told a house was done, but movers wouldn’t unload their truck because the floors had been finished too recently. We need to get the detail to make important decisions. And as PMs we need to determine who will decide which measures to use and whether they make sense from a project perspective.

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Achievable. Achievable is another one of the squishy terms in the SMART acronym. It’s one of those words that means different things to different project stakeholders. I suspect I’m not the only PM to be told to “just make it happen.” Or “Where’s your can-do attitude?” I can certainly make almost any project happen, but at what cost? How much risk will the organization/sponsor/end users tolerate? Achieving an end quickly might mean making compromises. Who will make those decisions? What about trust and team dynamics? All these components of achievability need to be considered. And that takes time and lots of discussion.

Relevant. I’m not sure I understand what a relevant goal is. There are so many different stakeholders on our projects, some of whom do not find the project or its end product relevant at all. Hopefully it’s relevant to the organization, helping it meet its business objectives. But we all know that’s not always the case. I suspect many of us have worked on someone’s “pet project.” Or have had some stakeholder groups resist implementation. Or have managed projects highly relevant to end users but not to higher levels of management and vice versa. Getting agreement on what is relevant and how the project’s relevancy fits in with all the other projects is no easy task.

Time-bound. This usually means attaching a timeframe to the goal. I struggle with the difference between time-bound and all the other goals. I think they are intertwined. As a PM I worked on projects that were relevant only if they could be implemented in enough time to get goods from sourced locations to retail stores and on the shelves in time for the holiday season. Is that time-bound? Or relevant? Or I suspect, a bit of all the components of the acronym.

Which brings me to my original point. SMART goals are useful as a framework. But the key to time management success is going from a high-level overview to subsequently lower and lower levels of detail. We can certainly start with SMART. But we need to drill down to really achieve our goals.