Tag: Leadership

Opportunity is Everywhere for Project Managers

Written by Karla Eidem on April 18, 2023. Posted in Articles.

The world is changing fast, and so is the future of project management. For new and established project professionals, the challenge to stay competitive and relevant in our ever-evolving work environment can be daunting – particularly in the face of constant disruption and economic uncertainty.

The good news is project talent is still in high demand. My organization, Project Management Institute (PMI), recently released its Global Project Management Job Trends for 2023 showing that – despite the disruption and economic uncertainty – this demand will only increase, presenting a strong opportunity for project professionals to advance their careers over the next decade. In fact, from now until 2030, 2.3 million people will be needed each year to fill open project management-oriented positions, according to PMI’s most recent Talent Gap report.

So, what will these positions look like, and how can you take advantage of these opportunities? Here are the sectors to watch for and ways you can upskill or reskill to prepare for your next career move:

Construction
Despite setbacks including the global pandemic, supply chain issues, and inflation, the construction industry continues to grow and expand, creating job openings for project professionals. The recent investment in U.S. infrastructure also provides a significant opportunity, with an estimated 17 million infrastructure-related jobs to be filled by 2031, many of those in construction and built areas.

If you are interested in beginning or advancing your career in construction, the opportunities are endless with projects touching telecom, power, water, and more. It’s important to note that this is a rapidly evolving industry, so you must develop relevant skills, including the mastery of digital tools like building information management and cutting-edge tech to allow virtual building tours before ground has been broken.

If you have at least three years of project experience in the construction field, the Construction Professional in Built Environment Projects (PMI-CP)™ can help you acquire skills like stakeholder communication and scope and risk management, using construction-specific context to prime you for future opportunities in the industry.

Consulting & ESG
While consulting was previously more aligned with late-career professionals to leverage their professional expertise, a career in consulting is now a space for all project professionals. Project management consultants are often brought in to implement organizational transformations, requiring them to keep pace with the latest developments in new technologies like AI and low-code or no-code tools. A successful career in consulting also requires proficiency in interpersonal skills, like communication and active listening – which PMI calls “power skills” – to provide the best possible guidance to employers and clients, solve pain points, and demonstrate value aligned with organizational goals.

With an increasing demand for organizations to invest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, this also presents a new path for project managers to build a career in ESG. Project professionals have the necessary tools and skillset that make them well-suited to manage complex, long-term projects that require implementation, stakeholder management, and designating and meeting KPIs.

Financial Services
With this sector rapidly moving toward a fintech future, project professionals have an opportunity for a career in financial services to help drive this industry’s digital revolution. Gaining knowledge of data privacy, legal and regulatory requirements, and consumer expectations is crucial as financial services companies look to balance the pursuit of profit with innovation to redefine industry services.

Project professionals who achieve this balance will be invaluable to their teams, helping to vet and implement trends and technology to improve customer services and advance the business, while avoiding those which do not. Because working with data privacy and regulatory factors comes with a bit of inherent risk, the PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP)® certification, for example, can help arm you with knowledge for industry success – from registering threats and risks to developing mitigation plans and customer solutions.

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PMOs: The Project Management Office
For professionals eager to help a business ensure their various projects and programs create value, consider a career in a PMO, or project management office. In the last decade, the role of the PMO has evolved. They are increasingly focused on helping organizations adapt to innovative processes as they embrace new ways of working, while also ensuring capabilities – like data and technology – are maximized in the implementation process. This requires alignment with the processes and decision-making behind a company’s big-picture objectives.

To pursue a role in a PMO, seeking a PMO mentor is a good first step. You might consider joining a professional association, which offers opportunities to seek out mentors specific to your desired career path. Additionally, if you have experience leading projects, obtaining a globally-recognized certification like the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification can set you apart and prepare you to succeed and create value in a PMO.

Prepare for Your Next Career Move
For project professionals unsure of their preferred industry or area of focus, there are many ways to learn more about the different career paths available. Attending in-person or virtual events is one way to gain greater knowledge of trends and growth areas, with many free of charge. Events like the Virtual Experience Series 2023: PMXPO, for example, offer a chance for professionals to broaden their perspective on project management and connect with peers.

Additionally, membership within a professional organization like PMI® provides opportunities to network with other project professionals across industries and sectors, sharing best practices and career experiences – including tips and strategies to upskill and reskill. PMI also offers local chapter membership, which allows you to take the power of networking further with those in your own community – this can be a great way to also volunteer in chapter activities and even learn about new job openings.

Early-stage project professionals should consider PMI’s free, 45-minute introductory KICKOFF™ course, or its Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® certification, a highly regarded certification that serves as a crucial stepping-stone on your path to career advancement. Professionals at all levels might also consider exploring PMI’s Career Navigator tool, which provides a personalized action plans to help users meet their goals.

Despite the uncertain economic forecast, project talent will be in demand for years to come. And fortunately for project professionals, career paths are not limited to one industry; opportunity exists across many sectors. And while the specific skillsets required of project managers somewhat varies across industries, knowledge and understanding of cutting-edge trends and technology, a mastery of power skills, a commitment to upskilling and reskilling, and connecting with a professional network are of the utmost importance. Opportunity is everywhere for project professionals; be ready when it knocks.

Practical PM for Everyone

Written by George Pitagorsky on April 12, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Project management is a process that, when done well, enables optimal performance. Why wouldn’t everyone want to know how to manage projects?

Everyone Has Projects

A project is an effort to create a result in a finite time. According to PMI, “a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.”

Everyone is part of projects. Some projects are long, large, and complex, like a lunar expedition or the implementation of a new system in an organization. Others are moderate and more personal – planning a party, buying a car, moving, painting your house. Others are quite simple, for example getting up and out of the house, packing for a vacation, grocery shopping, doing the dishes, cooking a meal. Even the individual activities of regular operations like answering emails or working to close a sale fit the definition of projects. we can consider them as mini-projects.

Therefore, everyone would do well to know the basic principles of project management and adapt them to the size and complexity of the projects at hand.

Professional PMs would add value by promoting wide-spread appreciation and knowledge of project management for all.

Agile Adaptability

Applying a complex project management process with forms, protocols, and reports to manage your at home cooking dinner project or a small project that is repeated many times is not skillful.

You might like to be formal and explicit because it makes you feel good but if there are others involved you might drive them crazy and waste lots of time and effort.

At the same time, doing any project without a plan, without writing things down (for example a shopping list), with ambiguous or inadequate communication, and without looking back to learn from the experience is equally unskillful. It is likely to lead to extra trips to the store to get missing ingredients, too much or too little food, misunderstandings of who will do what, and when.

Planning, performing, monitoring, controlling, and closing happen in every project, the way we do them varies widely depending on the situation. It was the intention of the earlier founders of the agile approach to point this out and promote the idea that the project team does best to adapt practices to the needs of their project, stakeholders, and setting, while being aware of the need for a degree of structure and discipline.

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The Agile Manifesto:

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

http://agilemanifesto.org

Communication and Collaboration

To enable an adaptive and agile approach make sure that all stakeholders have a sense of the basic principles of project management.

The basics are what everyone should know about managing a project, even if they are not managing one. Knowing the process and principles stakeholders can assess how well the project is being managed. They will be able to connect a sense of the project’s health accomplishment and progress.

The basics are:

Plan, to create a clear sense of what is to be accomplished, how, where, by when, by whom, and for how much it will cost. Remember that plans are always subject to change. Planning is not over until the project is over.
Let go into execution, the performance. It’s like dance or a play. You learn the steps and your role and surrender into performing them.
Mindfully monitor and control to assess progress against the plan and to adjust. Make it part of the performance so it doesn’t get in the way.
Close. Take a step back to assess performance. Tie up loose ends. Learn from the experience. Turn over the results.

So simple, if there is understanding, adaptability, effective communication and collaboration.

Without these the project management process becomes a burden. With them the probability of project success goes way up.

What gets in the Way?

You’d think that everyone would be eager to apply the basics and to understand, adapt, communicate, and collaborate. But it is not the case. The principle things that get in the way are:

Lack of process thinking – Thinking all that is needed is to put heads down and do the work instead of recognizing that objectives are met by skillfully applying effort to perform a set of definable steps or tasks.
Too much process thinking – over formalizing project management, creating unnecessary bureaucracy and overhead.
Not recognizing the value – thinking that the effort to manage the project is not worthwhile.
Thinking that it is too hard to engage others in the work required – believing that changing stakeholder mindsets about project management is impossible.
Personality traits – for example, closed-mindedness, impatience, fear of being criticized and controlled, and over confidence block attempts to implement some degree of planning and control.

What to Do About It

Removing the obstacles to implementing the right kind of project management (PM) requires a learning process in which PM champions convince stakeholders that PM is a practical process that adds value by upgrading performance and promoting project success.

Breaking through resistance to PM requires mindset change and changing people’s minds is no easy task.

It is not just about getting people to take a PM course, though an appropriate one, with a skilled facilitator, is a good place to start. It is committing to a dialog that addresses resistance to applying PM principles coupled with a commitment to the agility to adapt the principles to fit the projects being performed and the people who manage and perform them.

It takes time and patience with an understanding that much of the resistance is reasonable given experience with dysfunctional PM and rigid project management professionals who don’t adapt the process to the situation at hand.

To Drive Project Excellence, Take Charge of Your L&D Efforts

Written by Gary Scharf on March 29, 2023. Posted in Articles.

In an ideal world, you should be able to draw a straight line from your organization’s Learning and Development (L&D) initiatives to business success. It follows then that, as increased business success depends on excellence in project delivery, more companies should focus on building project management training into their core L&D programs.

Some already do. Sixty-one percent of respondents to Project Management Institute (PMI)’s 2020 Pulse of the Profession® Report say their organizations provide some level of project management training. And more than two-thirds (69 percent) say their senior leadership values project management.

But the world is becoming even more “projectified.” Seventy-nine percent of executives in an Accenture study say that work in the future will be based more on specific projects than on roles. And for some companies, project management has become so central to how they operate that it is now considered a core competency.

For all these reasons, some companies are developing more holistic approaches to project management training where the employee experience is embedded into the core of the program.

One of the finest examples of this is the L&D program at CGI. Among the world’s largest independent IT and business consulting services firms, CGI began offering formalized project management training and certification in-house to drive business performance and enhance client relationships. It has now expanded its training efforts to all employees – not just people with ‘project’ in their title.

“Project success is paramount to our company,” says Melissa Reeder, Director of Consulting and Project Management Center of Excellence at CGI. “Engagements are integral to service delivery, so we emphasize providing high-quality project management training to our consultants.”

An important related goal, Melissa says, is to improve its employee career journey and to create a supportive career-building environment. The CGI initiative empowers their employees to take charge of their career development by providing an all-inclusive project management track tailored to each employee’s career stage and project experience.

CGI now views project management/leadership as a core skillset and an essential element in driving improved client delivery success. This skillset, the firm believes, will only grow in importance as work becomes more hybrid.

But there’s another factor behind the CGI training effort. Several of its US-based clients in the government and healthcare sectors require project leaders to be certified in project management – specifically to hold PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP)®certification.

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As PMI’s Leader for North American Client Engagement, that’s how I became familiar with the CGI program. We began working with the firm to develop its project management training track in 2010.

“PMI best practice guidelines are recognized worldwide, and its certifications align with the many types of services CGI provides our clients,” Melissa says. “CGI’s project delivery frameworks are based on industry best practices, so it makes sense for our people to have the same standards of training and credibility that comes with PMI certification.”

To develop well-rounded project professionals, CGI offers its employees the following:

PMI Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification: Recognized by CGI clients as the project management certification of choice, the PMP certification distinguishes project managers who have proven they have the skills to manage complex projects successfully. The PMP exam covers the latest business trends across three domains – people, process, and business environment – giving certification holders the tools to determine the best way of working and the ability to manage any project using predictive, agile, or hybrid methodologies.
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® Certification: The PMI-ACP formally recognizes the practitioner’s knowledge of agile principles and skills with agile techniques. The PMI-ACP spans many approaches to agile such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP), and test-driven development (TDD).
PMI Membership: Through the PMI partnership, CGI members also have access to discounted PMI membership to help build a professional network. Becoming part of a professional practice community creates informal learning opportunities with peers, a ready-made professional support network, and space to share knowledge and expertise.

Since the start of the program, more than a thousand CGI members have successfully been PMP certified. The firm is now looking to expand its partnership by connecting its people in Australia and Canada with local PMI chapters.

“Membership in a professional organization is another way to enhance the employee experience at CGI,” Melissa says. “There are vast opportunities to connect and learn from each other, plus it’s a great chance for CGI employees to enrich the profession with their frontline experiences and knowledge. I’ve been an active member of my local PMI chapter for a few years. It’s a great way to meet new people who share a common passion and to give back by volunteering.”

CGI’s employee-centered approach to project management training shows that employee experience and client satisfaction go hand-in-hand. When you deliver quality project training across your organization, it will inevitably impact client delivery for the better.

“We are always looking at ways to enhance our project delivery and client relationships,” says Melissa. Leaders strive to exceed client expectations and the firm’s project management L&D training track is now an integral part of its client engagement strategy.

Delivering consistently high service standards leads to delivering strong projects and value for clients. By offering project-oriented training programs within an organization, your teams will be equipped with the tools and know-how to do just that.

Potential Challenges With Ongoing Projects

Written by Martin Fenelon on March 28, 2023. Posted in Articles.

When joining a project that has already started or when tasked to review an existing project, a Project Manager is faced with a number of challenges. These primarily relate to not having been with the project team from the beginning and, therefore, not having been part of the planning process. As noted in a prior article, scope, schedule, and budget are probably already set. Many other decisions have also been made, some explicit, some implicit. This leads to the first challenge that the new PM has—what is the true status of the project? We’ll describe how to determine the true status of the project in more detail in a future article, along with providing some useful tools. Before going there, we should look at potential challenges that arise because a change in PM is contemplated or occurring. These challenges or issues will be added to those that already exist in the project and will also need to be addressed as part of the takeover and recovery plan.

There are many reasons for another PM taking over a project, and the project itself may not be in trouble; it may truly be in “Green” status. While that is great and makes things easier for the incoming PM, there are still challenges tied to the change in management that must be dealt with. Let’s review a few of these.

First, the previous PM may no longer be available. They may have left the organization, be out on extended personal leave, been moved to a different project, and not available for a hand-off, etc. This means the incoming PM is unlikely to have access to all the information that the previous PM had, especially around the reasons why certain decisions were made. For example, why was the delivery broken into three increments? Why are there four Scrum Teams instead of three? While interviewing the Business Owner (BO), Sponsor, Customer, and delivery team should provide some insights, if we can’t talk to the previous PM directly, we are unlikely to know why they made the decisions that they did.

Second, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the former PM may still be around, perhaps due to subject matter or technical expertise. Since they are still part of the delivery team, there are likely to be team and political issues with them no longer being in charge. The incoming PM needs to understand the reasons for the change and the decision to keep the former PM on the team. Specific actions will be needed to reduce any team or political fallout from the change and to ensure that the team continues to move forward as a team.

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Another challenge can arise if the Sponsor, Business Owner, or Customer change at the same time as the PM. Or if one is assessing a project due to a Business Owner change and a project review is requested. There have been cases where a successful Business Owner and PM that work well together are moved to higher priority programs or projects, especially if the current project is going well. This adds to the existing incoming PM challenge of building a relationship with the new Business Owner and rebuilding the team dynamic. Many Business Owners joining a project want to review prior decisions, change requirements and agreements, and potentially alter the goals of the project, all to mold the project to meet their goals and add their personal stamp onto the project. While this is a natural human reaction, it can be deadly in a project. The incoming PM needs to hold the line and minimize the disruption to the project, often without a full understanding of the rationale behind decisions already made. This is difficult to do, even while promising to look further into issues raised by the Business Owner. Diplomacy and firmness are both needed to avoid unnecessarily impacting the project.

Of course, there can be non-political challenges as well. When Project Managers discuss situations that they have found when assuming leadership of a project, it is striking how different they are from starting a new project. One of the key differences is that the ongoing project may already show evidence of problems, or have challenges. We’ve listed some common project challenges and possible causes in the table below. The challenges identified when a new PM is being asked to take over a project will influence the initial steps in assuming command, and should be discussed with management as part of accepting the new assignment. We’ll cover how to handle this in upcoming articles.

As you can see in the table, many challenges (symptoms) can result from similar causes and be related to multiple issues. It is important to avoid jumping to conclusions or developing action plans before getting to the real causes of the challenges. Future articles will describe the how to get to the root causes and ways to address them. In the meantime, how would you assess the true status of a project that you are joining?

For more information on how to handle this situation, and a guide for taking over an in-flight project, please check out my book on the topic. There’s a New Sheriff in Town: The Project Manager’s Proven Guide to Taking Over Ongoing Projects and Getting the Work Done. https://www.amazon.com/Theres-New-Sheriff-Town-Successfully/dp/B0BMJ4J7GL

Psychology at Work to Improve Performance

Written by George Pitagorsky on March 22, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Most of what gets in the way of optimal performance is rooted in psychological or emotional issues. That is why the most valued traits for a manager are communication, emotional and social intelligence, empathy, and adaptability.

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the way the mind functions and influences behavior. Individual psychology influences relationships and relationships are the key to effective performance, wellness, and optimal living. It follows that attention to psychology is a pillar of performance management.

Though, in many organizations, psychology has gotten a bad name. It falls into the mental health realm. Attention to it is often avoided unless behavior gets so severe that it undeniably gets in the way of living and performing well.

Take for example a steering group of peers charged with making important decisions. One member is designated as chairperson. The chairperson takes the title to heart, does a lot of good work, but attempts to silence anyone who raises issues regarding the team’s process and performance.

One team member confronts the chairperson by raising uncomfortable issues. Over time the relationship between the two deteriorated. The chairperson has left the team member out of important meetings, does not respond to emails and has ignored a direct outreach by the team member to meet and discuss their relationship in any way the chairperson chooses – one on one, mediated, in person, virtual, etc.

The refusal to engage in a dialog effects the degree to which the group can make effective decisions because it blocks the social interaction that is critical to team performance. The rest of the team “feels” the subtle disturbance. Hearts and minds close down. The free flow of discussion is blocked. Life goes on, but it is not pleasant.

Avoidance

One doesn’t need a PhD in psychology to know that there is a psychological process at work in this relationship, that effects performance. Causes may be fear of competition, over-aggressive perfectionism, aversion to conflict, or over-controlling. These are all related to the participants’ mindsets.

This is just one example. Performance is effected by issues that stem from anxiety, depression, need for excessive control, excessive competitiveness, obsessive and compulsive urges, and addiction expressed as anger, withdrawal, and the kind of behavior that disturbs relationships – angry outbursts, abuse, withdrawal, unnecessary and poorly managed conflict, discrimination, gossiping, absenteeism, and more.

But there is avoidance. Handling psychological or emotional issues remains difficult. Some people believe that personal psychology is “too personal” to be addressed in “public”. They want to separate the personal world from their work world, as if that was possible.

Some are not introspective and don’t acknowledge the internal processes that lead to external behavior or, if they do, they may not think they can influence the process with self-management.

Some just don’t care how their behavior affects others, thinking and saying “This is who I am, live with it.”

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Changing the Narrative

Interest in emotional intelligence with a focus on performance has changed the narrative by changing the terminology – people want to be more intelligent, they do not want to be lumped into a mental health category. However, to become more emotionally intelligent one must

Acknowledge that behavior results from internal psychological processes, the individual’s mindset, and setting.
Recognize the effect on others of their speech, actions, and even their “vibe.”
Care.
Accept that mindful self-awareness enables self-management.
Manage emotions to optimally perform.

It becomes obvious that the person who expresses anger overtly or as passive aggressive behavior impacts the team’s performance. One who views any criticism as an attack gets in the way of performance improvement. One who is afraid of speaking up robs the group of valuable insights and information.

Look to the Process

Promoting process thinking is the key to being able to manage psychological issues. Process thinking recognizes that everything is caused by something – a process.

In general, a group will operate more effectively if the members acknowledge and skillfully address both the visible processes and the processes operating below the line of consciousness, as needed, to optimize performance.

For example, to overcome aversion to criticism, cultivate awareness of both the process improvement process and the presence of internal psychological processes that lead individuals to be overly and unskillfully critical or unable to accept and value criticism.

Participants can work together when they realize that the problem of aversion to criticism gets in the way of effective performance. It involves a conflict between the idea that constructive criticism makes a positive contribution vs. the need to protect oneself or one’s position.

Overcome Resistance

Cognitively knowing that behavior is the result of a process is an important starting point for cultivating the capacity to avoid unskillful behavior. However intellectually knowing that mental habits like aggression or avoidance are not effective does not immediately translate into behavioral change.

Rational thought is lost to the emotions and to unhealthy beliefs and mental habits. Psychological issues are often deep and painful. Habits are hard to change.

So how do we get people who are stuck in neurotic patterns like resistance to criticism, shutting down communication, and yelling, to change their behavior?

There is no simple formula. The complexities include the degree to which organizations can require people to be self-aware and overcome the resistance to psychotherapy.

With the knowledge that organizational performance is the sum of team and individual performance, effectiveness becomes the measure of how well teams functions. Organizations are motivated to create a culture in which addressing emotional and psychological issues is part of performance management.

At the same time the workplace is not the forum for psychotherapy. At work, addressing these issues is about changing behavior. It is up to each individual to assess the causes of the their own disruptive behavior and adapt it to benefit the health of the team.

Stop focusing on labels like depression and anxiety. Instead, focus on the symptoms and their impact on performance, where performance includes the happiness and wellbeing of the people involved.

Going Forward

There is a simple, though not easy, process: raise consciousness, apply it, and adjust so that it there is neither too much nor too little attention to psychology and its effect.

Cultural change is set in motion by training to acknowledge the need for self-management, process-awareness, and self-awareness and how to apply them in teams.

Regularly (not too often) dialogue about the symptoms and impact of psychological issues on performance and what to do about them. When issues arise address them in the context of what the team has learned. Over time, assess your process and adjust.

With the right mindset, behavior that downgrades performance automatically motivates action. That mindset needs the team to be willing and able to cut through the psychological issues that get in the way.

Depending on the culture and individuals involved, readiness for this kind of change can be quick and self-supported, or can take months or even years with expert coaching and consulting.