Tag: Program Management

The PMBOK guide® – Seventh Edition Summary

Written by Giovanny Guillen on October 19, 2021. Posted in Articles.

In this article, I show a forecast of the new edition of the PMBOK-7 Guide for Project Management. I have read the new guide and it is important to show everyone how this guide can help us and how we can apply it to our role as project managers.

The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) has been the go-to resource to help Project Management professionals use best practices to add value to their work.

However, rapid improvements in technology and the need for organizations and professionals to adapt more quickly to changes in the market, have made our profession evolve incorporating agile approaches in projects. Professionals now have the responsibility to select the most appropriate management approach (predictive, agile, or hybrid) to do their job and deliver value.

Therefore, for the new PMBOK Guide® – to remain useful, it must reflect this flexibility and help the professional in decision-making and the management of their projects, in a way that allows them to obtain the expected results.

Thus, the PMBOK® Guide supports this need for flexibility by adopting a structure based on principles and domains, rather than groups of processes and areas of knowledge from the above versions.

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

Some key facts from the new guide

The PMBOK® Guide provides a framework for applying the ISO-21500 Project Management
This edition reflects the full range of development approaches, with no preference for any of them.
Instead of focusing solely on project deliverables, it also places great importance on the results/value the project brings.

Figure 1. PMBOK-7 Changes. Source PMI

Structure and Content

The Guide is separated into two blocks “The Standard for Project Management” and the “Guide to Project Management: Body of Knowledge”.

Figure 2. PMBOK-7 Structure

The main sections of the new guide are described below.

System to deliver value

The main purpose of a project is to deliver value to the organization where it is executed. This value is achieved through customer satisfaction, the creation of a new product or service, the improvement of a process, or the implementation of a new change that can enhance the process and operations.

The approach is that projects are considered as systems to deliver value. That is, the strategies, missions, and objectives of an organization determine the portfolios of projects. In other words, the value that a project brings to the organization has a relevant weight, without excluding the rest of the aspects of the triple constraint triangle that ensure the success of the project (Scope, Time, Cost).

The achievement of benefits in the broad sense is closely linked to value management. Value management is described as “a management approach that focuses on motivating people, developing skills, and fostering synergies and innovation with the ultimate goal of optimizing overall organizational performance.” In a sense, the value that projects brings to an organization is especially focused on those organizations that implement project management at their full capacity. In this case, the business value is achieved through the optimization of business functions in several ways, including:

Alignment of business strategy and execution
Integration of business functions
Navigating, evaluating, and watching environmental and business ambiguity
Achieve enterprise scalability
Distributed collaboration management
Reduced time to profit

Figure 3. PMBOK-7 Factors to consider

Project Management Principles

Figure 4. PMBOK-7 Principles

The guide has 12 generally accepted principles used in project management. A Principle is “A statement, truth or rule that guides and leads our thoughts and actions“. Principles guide the actions, but do not detail how to do things, and are not strict. To ensure the expected results of project delivery, project team members should follow these principles:

(Stewardship) Pay Attention/Care: Be a diligent, respectful, and caring steward. Carry out activities with integrity, care, and trustworthiness while maintaining compliance with internal and external guidelines. They demonstrate a broad commitment to the financial, social, and environmental impacts of the projects they support.
Team: Create a collaborative project team environment. Project teams that work collaboratively can accomplish a shared objective more effectively and efficiently than individuals working on their own.
Stakeholders: Engage stakeholders to understand their interests and needs.
Value: Focus on value. Align the project with the objectives of the organization. Continually evaluate and adjust project alignment to business objectives and intended benefits and value
System thinking: Recognize, evaluate, and respond to system interactions, with the aim to respond to the dynamic circumstances within and surrounding the project in a holistic way to positively affect project performance.
Leadership: Motivate, influence, train and learn. Demonstrate leadership behaviors in areas of honesty, integrity, and ethical conduct and adapting leadership style to the situation.
Tailoring: Adapt the approach of deliveries according to the context. Adaptability is the key through the use of an iterative approach.
Quality: Incorporate quality into processes and results. Maintain a focus on quality that produces deliverables that meet project objectives and align to the needs, uses, and acceptance requirements set forth by relevant stakeholders.
Complexity: Address complexity using knowledge, experience, and learning. Continually evaluate and navigate project complexity so that approaches and plans enable the project team to successfully navigate the project life cycle.
(Risk) Opportunities and threats: Optimize responses to opportunities and threats. Maximize positive impacts and minimize negative impacts to the project and its outcomes.
Adaptability and resilience: Be adaptable and resilient depending on the context to help the project accommodate change, recover from setbacks, and advance the work of the project.
Change management: Enable change to achieve the expected future state.

The adoption of these principles does not mean that the process-based approaches (process groups) of the previous version are no longer relevant or useful, are still valid, and represent a way of applying the previous principles in practice.

Body of Knowledge: Performance Domains

These are areas of knowledge that must be focused on to manage the project. The goal is not only to provide deliverables but also results, regardless of how often this delivery is made periodically or at the end of the project, made through product increments or improvements all over the project life.

Figure 5. PMBOK-7 Performance Domains

Team: Develop high-performance teams.
Stakeholders: Build good relationships with Stakeholders.
Life Cycle: Develop appropriate phases and approaches for the project.
Planning: Carry out adequate planning at each precise moment.
Navigating between uncertainty and ambiguity: Analyze the project environment to anticipate risks and seize opportunities.
Delivery: Proportionate value.
Performance Measure: Track to ensure results are achieved.
Project work: Guarantee the activities to facilitate the team the delivery of results.

The way these domains interact and combine among them, it is typically different in each project.

Body of Knowledge: Tailoring

An entire section of the new guide, which significantly improves on what was included in the previous ones, is to have a framework and criteria for the adaptation (tailoring) of the approaches for each project. With conventional cascading project management approaches, it was difficult to address rapidly changing requirements in projects. That is why agile methods and approaches to project management emerged, especially in the IT and software industry. Depending on the characteristics of each project, the specific industry, stakeholder requirements, and the organization, project managers have to apply different approaches to managing projects. These approaches can be predictive, agile, hybrid, or cascading.

Sometimes we get carried away by fashions and it seems like all projects have to use an agile approach. The new project management standard is neutral in this regard, does not favor one approach over another, and provides guidance on how to carry out this “tailor-made” approach.

Figure 6. PMBOK-7 Tailoring Process. Source PMBOK7

Body of Knowledge: Models, Methods and Artifacts

This last part includes a series of models, methods, and artifacts that can be used or implemented to manage projects. Here it includes the group of processes, methods, and artifacts that allow:

Initiate: defines and authorizes the project or a phase.
Planning: clarifies and refines the objectives, planning the necessary actions to carry them out.
Execute: Integrates people and other resources to produce the deliverables and performance information of the project.
Monitoring and controlling: measures and monitors the progress of the project in order to identify possible variations and discrepancies with respect to the original plan and correct them when necessary.
Close: completes all activities of all groups of project management processes to formally complete the project (or a phase) and formalize the acceptance of the product, service, or result.

Shows the range of options that the project team can use to produce or generate project deliverables, organize work, facilitate communications and collaboration. Models, Methods, and Artifacts can be used in the Domains. In fact, the PMBOK in this section shows the crossover between them. Many of these Models, Methods, and Artifacts were mentioned in earlier versions of the PMBOK within the processes.

Figure 7. PMBOK-7 Methods

5 Ways You Could Be Improving Project Management

Written by Regina Thomas on August 18, 2021. Posted in Articles.

Even if you’re the most skillful and experienced project manager, it’s important to understand that there is always room for improvement. This is because every project presents a new set of challenges that you might not be very familiar with. Here are some ways you could be improving project management:

Build a great team

As a project manager, you need to have a great team with you to help you execute the project in the best way possible. For a successful project, you’ll need to assemble qualified and competent individuals who are ready to work together seamlessly for a common goal.
After assembling the team you’ll need for the project, the next step is assigning representatives. It is these team representatives that will help you run the project in a more organized manner. The team representatives are responsible for communicating any messages from the team members and attending meetings.
There are professionals that have more information on creating high-performance teams.

Outlining the project

As a project manager, before proceeding with any project, it’s very important that you outline it to the rest of the team. You might know everything about the project, but this doesn’t basically mean that the rest of your team is aware of everything that is expected of them.
For this reason, you need to educate all the team members about every important detail of the project. For example, you want to ensure that everyone working on the project understands the project goals, the estimated time of completion, and their job descriptions, among other aspects.
This means that before the project officially begins, you need to present the project outline to everyone involved in it. As a project manager, it’s very important to understand that communicating the project goals from the start plays a critical role in achieving them.

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

Focus on communication

If you’re looking to improve your project management skills for the best results possible, you need to improve your communication skills. You could be a very great planner, but without good communication between you and your team members, your project is bound to fail.
For this reason, if you’re going to improve your project management, you need to be ready to communicate your expectations, project goals, deadlines and always provide updates to the team and the stakeholders in the project.
With good communication, you can undoubtedly transform any team and get the best out of it. It’s important to note that good communication doesn’t only improve the performance of the team, but also enhances the overall quality of the project.

Establish and prioritize goals

For better project management, you need to establish firm goals for the project. This is very important because it lets your team members know what exactly they’re aiming for and what they have to accomplish for the project to be labeled done.
After you’ve established clear project goals for the entire team, the next step is to ensure that you prioritize these goals. You need to ensure that every task that is carried out by the team is only focused on achieving the set goals within the time limit set.
By doing so, your team will gain a better understanding of the expectations you have for the project and the deadlines to meet them. In simple terms, prioritizing the project goals will optimize the project progress and put you in a better place to succeed.

Set realistic expectations

Everything from good project planning, communication, and getting the best out of the team is fueled by realistic expectations. You can never build a successful project if the goals you’re setting for the team are not realistic.
You need to consider your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and all the challenges they might encounter throughout the project before setting any goals for them. When you set realistic goals, it will motivate the team, and you’re likely to achieve great success by the end of the project.
Setting goals that way above your team’s capabilities will only demoralize them and derail the whole project.

Conclusion

The above tips will guide you better to improve your project management. However, you should always be open to new ideas and particularly new learning opportunities to perfect your skills.

Part II: A Simplified Approach to Determine IT Project Complexity

Written by Conrad MacCue on April 7, 2021. Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Part II: A Simplified Approach to Determine IT Project Complexity

Abstract

This paper is Part II of the paper entitled “A Simplified Approach to Determine IT Project Complexity”, (MacCue, C., 2021, March 5). Its purpose is to further explain the rationale behind the Core IT Complexity Model within the framework of the broader topic of IT project complexity. It will discuss why the Core IT Complexity model is a good approach for most IT organizations and why it is important to determine project complexity as an ongoing and integral part of the Change Management and Risk Management process.

Keywords

Project Complexity, Project Risks, Managing Projects, Project Complexity Formula, Project Difficulty, Risk Management

Introduction

There are many details and intricacies to consider when managing a complex project to its successful outcome. While that may seem obvious to many IT PM professionals, that is not necessarily the case with many business executives looking for payback from their expensive IT department. IT Executives are constantly justifying their department to the C-Level executives’ cries to exactly why “does IT need so many people, and what do they actually do”? IT is perceived by many as this black box where work gets done, but no one outside of IT really knows how. This is why many IT organizations are under constant pressure to re-organize or transform to new project management approaches to managing projects, improving visibility, and showing their contributions. Much credit should be given to organizations like the PMI Institute. They have made a science out of project management as much as possible and have provided roadmaps for maximizing the potential for success to the greatest extent possible. Most companies now seek project managers who follow the PMO processes like Waterfall or Agile and many C-Level executives support the PMO process. However, a formally adopted PMO process to implement and closely monitor projects and portfolios does not account for everything occurring in IT. And while meeting objectives in a project may be pleasing to stakeholders, it may not answer the question as to why does it take so long to do something that appears to be very simple? Or why can’t a task be done today rather than waiting for some other task to be completed first? Why can’t we add in a bunch of other projects to do so that an IT person can work on those when they are not doing anything? It’s this constant struggle of demonstrating an ROI from IT that makes the life of a CIO challenging. This is the reason for relatively high turnover rates of CIO and the adopted tag of ‘Career is Over’. Even IT executives who have come from the Non-IT worlds may have this perception and might explain why there is sometimes distrust within IT organizational management.

For this, and many other reasons, as part of an overall risk assessment, the subject of project complexity should be taken seriously by executives when considering new IT projects. An understatement of a project’s magnitude can lead to an inaccurate ROI is where many IT Organizations introduce risks and instability into an IT organization. It will not eliminate all the CIOs problems, but it can help identify the projects upfront that have the greatest risk in the Initiation Phase before a project is launched. It can also indicate potential risks to existing projects. As viewed in this model, project complexity is intended to be a recurring process of evaluation and not a one-time fixed assessment at the beginning of the project. Moreover, the information derived from determining complexity can be used to rationalize overall work efforts in IT.

Background

This paper is not intended to provide readers with a holistic view of what project complexity is. There are hundreds of papers already written on that subject. One such paper “Profiling Project Complexity: Insights from Complexity Science and Project Management Literature.” (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A. 2016) synthesized views from 42 relevant papers on the subject matter and was able to classify them into 17 categories. That paper and the authors cited is a recommended reading for anyone interested in an all-encompassing view of project complexity.

To familiarize the reader with the subject of project complexity, below are three (3) important points from that paper.

A complex project is not the same as a complicated project. “The distinction between the two is the nature of the relationships between the elements of the project system (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A.,2016)” as explained by Chapman. “For instance, large-scale engineering and construction projects are considered to be complicated projects, but they may not necessarily be complex projects (provided that the interactions with and the influences of the environment are trivial or rather predictable). If the nature of relationships between various elements of a project is such that interactions between elements are non-linear and, therefore, will result in emergent behavior of the system, then it has been referred to as a “truly” complex project (Whitty & Maylor, 2009; Maylor et al., 2008)”.
The field of Project Complexity is wide-open and not well defined. (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A., 2016) state “However, our review of the literature reveals that such broad generalized statements about project complexity to be somewhat inadequate or incomplete, in terms of providing any guidance for project management practice or the development of appropriate tools and techniques to deal with complexity”.
The natural progression for the subject of project complexity is to narrow it to a specific industry. (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A., 2016) states “There have also been several recent attempts at developing frameworks or models for capturing and measuring project complexity within particular industry sectors (Chapman, 2016; Lu et al., 2015; Dunovic et al., 2014; Lessard et al., 2013)”.

The (3) three points above provide a basis to move forward then with the Core IT Complexity Model to achieve the objectives of:

(1) Expanding knowledge into the field of Project Complexity, drilling down into and applying it to the IT Industry,

(2) Using the guiding principle and common theme prevalent in all prior work on this subject in defining complexity as “non-linear interactions”.

Current Methods

Current methods for evaluating IT project complexity are limited and seem to fall into three (3) Tiers.

1. Tier 1: Non-existent. No assessment or evaluation. One can imagine a small to medium sized company with a few IT associates that are mostly supporting networking, desktops, mobile devices, where complexity is not relevant. It could be labeled production support.
2. Tier 2: Simple bucketing of low, medium, and high categories determined by someone who most likely has a “feel” of the project’s size. This individual would most likely be someone in the organization that has a good sense of the work involved and enters the data point into a system or spreadsheet associated with the project. Information is most likely not utilized for decision-making and has no supporting data.
3. Tier 3: Companies who have made an ongoing program out of determining project complexity. Methods are characterized by teams that have established a series of complexity criteria tailored to their environment and use spreadsheets or custom-developed applications. Their complexity modeling could be part of a larger overall Risk Management process.

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

The Core IT Complexity Model in this paper fits somewhere in between Tier 2 and Tier 3 and is not intended as a replacement for Tier 3. If a company should choose to use a Tier 3 approach, it could lead to significant paybacks. One such method was successfully developed at Intel (McBride, M. 2014). Not only were they able to evaluate complexity, but they also used the data to estimate resources and project duration in a matter of minutes. It deployed a sophisticated approach referencing historical information and a scoring tailored to their environment. Another IT organization, Department of Information Technology, City of Seattle, Seattle, Washington, wrote a paper entitled “Early risk assessment in IT projects: integrating risk research into project management practice.”, (Taylor, H. A. & Artman, E. 2014). They included project complexity as a part of their comprehensive risk assessment program. There are other examples of deploying Tier 3 methods that can be found on the internet and in journals.

When appropriate, a Tier 3 model is best, but most companies do not adopt a structured method, particularly small and medium sized companies. One can imagine that the value of a Tier 3 approach would increase dramatically if it could be sponsored and accepted by business executives who could actively participate.

Proposed Method

The Core IT complexity Model states that key complexity factors of the number of resources, roles, allocations, calculated team stress, and communications provide the most valuable information in determining project complexity for a Tier 2+ approach. Chart I depicts many of the factors that have potential to affect IT project complexity, how it affects complexity, and the compensating actions. There may be other factors, however, I do not believe that it would alter the analyses in this paper. The complexity factors are presented in time order sequence, identified by their project phase using phases from the PMI institute of Initiation, Planning, and Execution. The phases of Controlling and Closing are not applicable for the purposes of this paper.

Again, the common theme for project complexity is “non-linear interactions”, as cited under the Background section above. More predictability (linear) will mean greater anticipation and preparedness to deal with the situation, identify it as a risk before it becomes an issue.

Discussion

In reviewing the complexity factors in Chart I, we can see that one of the major challenges is that much of the information helpful to assess complexity is not known until later phases of a project. For example, how many lines of code, number of tasks, number of issues, number of task dependencies, the exact number of requirements, and whether or not they are understandable. And therefore, an IT department needs to use the little information it can gain based upon high-level discussions about the project, its goals, and high-level requirements. This could be the function of a PMO board that has a list of initial scoping questions that would be asked of SMEs. Whether there is a formal PMO process or not, ultimately, the assessment will require the involvement of IT department heads when projects enter the Initiation Phase. This leads to one of the fundamental understandings when applying the Core IT Complexity Model to a project.

IT Management intuitively thinks in terms of resources, roles, and time when assessing project complexity. IT Management department heads and managers understand what is going on in their departments. They understand the inventory of skillsets, resource knowledge, approximate utilization of resources, and the backlog in their departments. Moreover, when evaluating a new project, IT management will typically enlist knowledgeable resources to tackle the early initial determination of a project’s magnitude, feasibility, and high-level costs. They will involve other department managers and SMEs who will have a series of meetings as required to discuss feasibility and overall level of effort. The feasibility of using internal resources will be heavily weighted by the novelty of the technology being implemented. That will in turn determine whether outside consultants will be required. If the project initiation analysis continues, an overall scope will take shape. Over the course of time in the Initiation Phase, depending on the magnitude of the project, details will become more apparent, and a high-level Charter stating goals and deliverables can be developed. For experienced and mature department heads and their reliance on internal knowledge and past experiences, they will be able to formulate an overall resource plan along with a ballpark cost estimate. And this can be done without knowing the details of the project plan. For example, take an IT eCommerce project; anyone experienced in this field will know right off the top, that it would need roles of business analysts, database engineers, application engineers, infrastructure server engineers, networking engineers, IT security and architects to name a few. One can safely estimate that at least 10% of the time will be needed by the department managers to understand the high-level requirements. Before the project exits the Initiation Phase, most experienced managers can provide roles and time estimates for their resources to participate in the requirements gatherings. Once requirements are understood, a good ballpark estimate can be made for detailed engineering resources.

Therefore, as we can see from the above flow, resources, roles, and rough allocation of resources can be estimated early in the project life cycle. As the project matures, other qualitative and quantitative information will help right-size the team to keep pace once the project duration has been determined.

In some cases, for novel technologies where there are no prior experiences, consulting firms will need to be brought in to perform the analysis, and therefore resource and time estimations may take longer.

Compensating factors ultimately affect resources and/or allocations. Some other important observations can be made about the complexity factors in Chart I. The compensating actions for many of the complexity factors result in an adjustment to resources or allocations of time. For example, if we look at the number of systems interfaces, we see that having the correct number of resources and time to handle the scope of the interfaces would be required. Having clear requirements means that we have the right number of BA resources allocated to the team. Similar reasoning can be applied to project duration, time zones, number of detailed tasks, number of task dependencies, number of lines of code. Each would ultimately result in an adjustment to resources or allocated time to right-size the team for the tasks at hand.

There are qualitative complexities that this model does not address and cannot be solved by increasing resources, allocation of time, or adding more roles.

Knowledge of resources
Team organization
Communications (Value-added
Changes in Scope

Knowledge of resources is, of course, very important. A project with knowledgeable resources will be more likely to complete tasks on time with fewer issues and be less likely to introduce chaos into the project. Team organization is about adopting the suitable project management methodology for the project at hand and adherence thereto, recognizing that no one approach will fit each project. For example, using an Agile process for an Infrastructure project is not a good fit. Nor is using a highly structured planned-based (i.e. Waterfall) methodology for a highly dynamic software project (Butler, C. W., Vijayasarathy, L. R., & Roberts, N., 2020). But adhering to the steps established within the framework of the project methodology selected by the company is key and deviating will add more chaos affecting all team members. Communication that adds value to the project goals is key to a project’s success.

Conversely, communication that does not add value will steal time and resources away from the project and could potentially add confusion and chaos. A team with many roles will need more value-added communications between team members to collaborate and work on interdependent tasks. Communicating status to the team’s project manager and the executive team for risk and issue identification and resolution is critical to a project’s health. But of course, the more communication required, the greater the interactions required, and the greater the complexity. Finally, Changes in Scope need to be controlled to minimize impact on the overall project goals and timeline.

Conclusion

As shown above, the Core IT Complexity model uses key quantifiable data elements of resources, roles, allocations, and communication (channels) that are most likely to be estimated early in the project lifecycle to calculate a value for complexity. This approach is an improvement over a simplified Tier 2 level. (It does require that the IT department collect this information). It does not replace all the other strategic and qualitative decision-making that no system could ever replace. Applied effectively, it could be used to estimate a project’s complexity, provide useful input into the project initiation process, assess the impact on other projects being executed, and rank projects relative to each other in the portfolio. This data taken together with other qualitative information will provide company executives with better information to make decisions on project initiatives.

Five Ways Leankor’s Enterprise Work and Project Management Solution Transforms Complexity to Profitability

Written by Brad Egeland on March 31, 2021. Posted in Articles. 13 Comments on Five Ways Leankor’s Enterprise Work and Project Management Solution Transforms Complexity to Profitability

My next installment in this exclusive Project Times series on project management related tools and services looks at Leankor’s offering that promises to make projects more profitable while also making them easier to manage during these remote PM and virtual project teams real world times.

Remote teams. Tighter budget controls. Efficiency mandates. For enterprise organizations already navigating the complexities of large-scale initiatives, 2020 brought further complication with the disruptive effects of a global crisis. And while some degree of the former normal may eventually return, the heightened pandemic-era pressure to accelerate delivery while driving profitability is here to stay—regardless of where teams work.

Fortunately, as the world changed, enterprise organizations have been able to rely on Leankor’s sophisticated enterprise work and project management solution to seamlessly transform operations and combat the challenges that have resulted from this evolution. With super-charged collaboration features, Leankor’s next-generation solution transforms complex, interconnected workflows and business processes into easy-to-manage plans for faster delivery and profitability. Here are five ways Leankor helps teams do their best work.

Closer Collaboration When Teams Are Farther Apart

While the future of the remote workplace is still evolving, collaboration among distributed teams will always be critical to enterprise work and project management success. According to a December 2020 PwC survey, 87% of employees say the office is important for collaborating with team members. Salesforce research finds 96% of workers believe lack of collaboration is the source of workplace failures.

To bridge the collaboration gap, Leankor’s sophisticated, cloud-based work and project management solution links distributed internal and external teams with full transparency into planning, execution and strategy. For the most complex, large-scale projects, stakeholders must align from kickoff to delivery, and often even as early as the opportunity development stage. That includes not only remote office employees but also contractors, field services teams and even customers. Leankor empowers teams with tools to conduct virtual discussions, brainstorm and quickly solve problems from anywhere.

360-Degree Visibility for Clear Context in Uncertain Times

Remote collaboration requires all team members to have access to the same, updated information for context and effective decision making. When distributed teams can sync and share files in one central location in the cloud, it eliminates disconnected spreadsheets and disparate servers, mitigating the risk of decisions based on the wrong data. Because we live in times marked by uncertainty, the data-driven context and clarity provided by Leankor’s next-level solution help guide individuals, teams and organizations to more certain and better outcomes.

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

Flexible Work Management Aligned to How People Work Best Now

McKinsey research suggests 70 percent of companies use the Agile methodology in some form to run their organizations. But that doesn’t mean Agile-only support is sufficient for effective work and project management. For optimal efficiency, most organizations operate with a variety of methodologies and use hybrid approaches across projects and departments. However, some organizations are still using time intensive, manual approaches to manage their complex projects.

To support the way an organization works best, Leankor allows multiple methodologies to co-exist, including Kanban, Lean, Agile, Gantt, Waterfall, hybrid, pull-planning and others, adapting and translating for streamlined project and risk management. All methods can be interconnected and unified in a virtual platform to communicate with ease, making progress seamless. This can happen even when people are socially distanced in home offices or in clusters of teams in regional satellite locations.

When Agile work methods exist with traditional Gantt project planning processes, Leankor allows organizations to create projects using traditional methods and for work and tasks to be executed at the team level using Agile approaches. This means teams work the way they want from a single system while increasing organization-wide efficiency, control and velocity.

Interconnected Resources to Drive Profitability—from Opportunity to Delivery

When teams, data and customers come together, efficiency translates to profitability. Amid global economic uncertainty, on-time, on-budget has never been more critical, and neither has customer satisfaction and loyalty. For large-scale, long-lasting projects across multiple sites, Leankor can have a direct, positive order-to-cash revenue impact. It’s a user-friendly uber orchestrator, managing interconnected resources, timelines and workflows.

When powerfully integrated with Salesforce applications like Service Cloud, Einstein AI, Community Cloud, CPQ, MuleSoft, Field Service Management, Vlocity, Chatter and QUIP, Leankor goes far beyond traditional project management to become a comprehensive enterprise work management solution, transforming large-scale project complexity into efficiency. And ultimately, that translates into profitability.

Analytics for the Agility to Manage Now and What Comes Next

Leankor’s powerful analytics are designed for users of all technical levels. They empower people to make informed decisions throughout the project lifecycle and improve the outcomes of work. From streamlining request-for-proposal (RFP) processes for multi-service-point quotes to enabling customer-centric master dashboards for better customer service and P&L insight, Leankor drives revenue from opportunity to delivery. Individuals meet timelines and budget expectations with robust analytical and reporting features. Executives get visibility into resource allocation and financials to better manage profitability. Teams identify risk with AI, advanced reporting and predictive, next-best actions to eliminate or mitigate costly issues before they occur. Informed decision making throughout project lifecycles provides the agility to manage for project success and long-term organizational success.

A Next-Gen Solution for the New Age of Work and Project Management

The pandemic and resulting global economic crisis have made work and project management especially challenging for organizations across industries and around the globe. But with the right solution to manage people, processes and technology, any organization can drive efficiency that empowers teams to do their best work, keeps stakeholders informed and accelerates delivery. The result is greater profitability across projects and elevated work enterprise-wide. It’s an approach that will help organizations thrive in this crisis and through whatever lies ahead.

Summary / more about Leankor

Leankor is a highly visual work and project management solution built on the Salesforce Cloud. Designed for the enterprise customer, Leankor helps companies execute complex projects at scale. A transformative solution, it links different styles of methodologies and processes, empowering people to work more effectively. Leankor enables teams to organize, manage, collaborate and deliver better projects, helps decision-makers measure effectiveness, and allows companies to deliver quicker revenue cycles. Leveraging the power of Salesforce, it brings together customer, project, and resource data, extending the Customer 360 vision. Leankor is used by many of the world’s leading brands with focused solutions for industrial enterprises in Manufacturing, Construction, Solar, Energy and B2B Telecom, with additional emphasis on R&D, quality management, product launches and manufacturing for Biotech, Medtech and Pharma.

The Paradox of Patience, Planning and Expectations

Written by George Pitagorsky on November 18, 2020. Posted in Articles. 11 Comments on The Paradox of Patience, Planning and Expectations

If your goal is optimal performance, cultivate the mindful awareness that enables clarity and responsiveness. Accept and work with paradoxes to embrace both-and thinking.

A well-respected mindfulness meditation master, advised that “A mind which thinks, expects, and plans, blocks off wisdom.” Following this advice would leave most of our projects at sea without a rudder. That is the problem with a great deal of the mindfulness teachings that have become common in the project management and general business communities – over simplification. The wise embrace both-and thinking.

The full quote is:
“Notice every time the mind is eager for
results and remind yourself of the right attitude.
You need to practice patience.
Only when the mind is simple, can wisdom develop.
A mind which thinks, expects, and plans, blocks off wisdom.” Tejaniya

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to objectively observe everything occurring within and externally. It is beneficial, based on many studies and personal experience. Mindfulness techniques – formal and informal meditation methods – increase mindfulness and concentration. Mindfulness enables responsiveness as opposed to reactivity. Concentration brings calm, relieves stress and enables focus in the face of distractions. Together with effort mindfulness and concentration promote wisdom.

But how many project managers will sign up for simple mindedness? How many organizations will hire simple minded project managers who are not eager for results? Not many.

The Wisdom of Paradox – Eager and Patient

Yet, there is wisdom in the master’s advice. Like all quotes it is taken out of context. No meaningful statement about the nature of mind and mindfulness is absolutely true. There is paradox – events or ideas that are unlikely to coexist. Paradox is “seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true:” Oxford Dictionaries.

Investigating more deeply, we can know that to be aware of the eagerness for results and to have patience is good advice. Over eagerness in projects leads to rushing to complete, by-passing risk management, testing, and other parts of planning and controlling the project. The over eager stakeholder is more likely to make mistakes and set unreasonable expectations. The eager stakeholder is motivated to achieve.

Right Attitude – Patience

The “right attitude,” is to be both eager and patient. Patience is a tough one, particularly when faced with high ranking stakeholders who are eager for results. Patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset:” Oxford Dictionaries

Patience requires a stepping back to mindfully observe the uncomfortable feelings that get in the way of consciously taking stock of the situation, planning, communicating, and establishing the most effective foundation for performance. Alan Lokos, in his book “Patience:The Art of Peaceful Living” makes the point that patience is not passivity. Patience is taking control of thinking, speech, and action so that what you say and do makes good sense and gets the results that you want. Patience is an ingredient for effective project management and performance.

Practicing patience requires effort. It requires the ability to notice and be able to accept the urge to dismiss the annoying functional manager or team member who is ‘obstructing’ progress. Noticing and accepting are part of the practice of mindfulness. When I teach meditation practices, I often recommend “sitting with an itch,” patiently waiting for the itch to change or disappear on its own rather than scratching it. Try it the next time you have an annoying itch. It builds the patience “muscle.”

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

Who Wants a Simple Mind?

Now lets turn our attention to “Only when the mind is simple, can wisdom develop.”

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein

To have a simple mind does not mean to be simple minded. A simple mind, in the context of mindful awareness, is a calm mind that sees things objectively, as they are. There is elegance in simplicity. The simple mind can integrate the sophisticated, complex skills and thoughts needed to manage and perform complex tasks in a complex, changing environment. The simple mind is free of the unnecessary noise of biases, confusion, and obsessive thinking.

Bertrand Russell said, “Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.” The simple mind, the mind that is mindfully aware, sits behind it all, open-minded, free of the comforting convictions. It observes objectively. The simple mind is like the eye of the storm – calm and clear while the storm rages. The flies are still there but they no longer get in the way of clear, focused thinking. In fact, mindful awareness promotes greater clarity and focus.

We can have a simple mind and simultaneously achieve objectives by applying our intelligence, skills and knowledge.

Planning, Expectations and Wisdom

To say that “A mind which thinks, expects, and plans, blocks off wisdom.” is overly simplistic. It is misleading. It is the kind of thing that can drive people, particularly project managers, away from the practice of mindfulness and the benefits it brings. The meaning is clarified by saying that a mind that is distracted by thinking, that unrealistically expects, and over-plans blocks off wisdom.

Wisdom is seeing things as they are and having wise intention. Wisdom can be blocked by Russell’s “flies.”

In Buddhist thought, things are impermanent, imperfect and the result of a continuous process of causes and effects. Wise intention is to give up the causes of suffering, cultivate good will, do no harm, and to ethically achieve objectives to benefit stakeholders.

Expectations are normal. Planning is necessary if you want to successfully achieve project goals and satisfy stakeholder expectations. However, having irrational, unrealistic expectations leads to disappointment and suffering. Constantly changing the plan moment to moment, gets in the way of being in the moment and performing optimally.

The Bottom-line

In the spirit of both-and thinking, we can say that we can both be patient and take skillful action. We can keep the mind simple and apply complex skills and knowledge to complex problems. And we can expect and plan and be in the moment, performing optimally, while allowing wisdom to develop.

Mindful awareness is the foundation for optimal performance. Cultivate it by practicing to focus the mind and open it to the full range of internal and external experience. Practice both-and thinking.