Tag: Skills

Streamlining Project Communication: A Guide to Simplifying Technical Jargon in Reports

Written by Queen Oppong on May 3, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Reading a document and struggling to understand the information presented is a common experience, especially in specialized fields like Information Technology (IT). As a project management consultant specializing in IT reporting, I frequently encounter industry jargon from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). My role is to ensure these reports are clear and comprehensible for their intended audience. This article discusses my approach to simplifying reports by eliminating technical jargon, providing real-life examples, and offering practical tools and resources.

In project management, reports are documents that record and convey information to a specific audience. Since reports are vital communication tools, it is crucial to adhere to specific guidelines to ensure effectiveness in communicating information. By following these criteria, project managers can support informed decision-making and promote overall project success.

Clarity: Ensuring clarity in reports is paramount, as it allows readers to easily comprehend the information presented. To achieve this, I use simple language and avoid jargon or technical terms that may confuse readers. When introducing new ideas or concepts, I aim to present them in their simplest form. For example, in a software development project report, instead of writing “The system’s API will employ OAuth 2.0 protocol for authentication,” opt for a more accessible explanation, such as “The system will use a widely-accepted, secure method to confirm user identity.” In another instance, instead of using the term “bandwidth” to describe available resources, use “capacity” or “availability.“
Accuracy: Accurate and reliable data is the backbone of any effective report. Reports should draw information from credible sources and avoid biases or errors that may distort the information. For example, when discussing a construction project’s progress, rather than stating, “The construction is ahead of schedule,” provide specific, verifiable data: “The construction is 10% ahead of schedule, as confirmed by the project’s timeline and the latest site inspection.“
Relevance: Reports must be tailored to the intended audience, providing information that aligns with their needs and interests. If writing a report for a project’s executive sponsors for instance, focus on high-level insights, financial data, and overall progress. In contrast, a report for a project team may require more detailed information about individual tasks, deadlines, and technical challenges.
Timeliness: Reports should be current and up to date, reflecting the most recent information available. For example, if submitting a monthly financial report for a project, ensure that the data included is from the most recent month and not outdated or incomplete figures. Staying current is essential for stakeholders to make informed decisions based on the latest information.
Completeness: Comprehensive reports provide a thorough analysis of the presented data and information without omitting important details. For example, in a risk assessment report, include all identified risks, their potential impact on the project, and proposed mitigation strategies. Leaving out critical information could lead to uninformed decision-making and negatively impact project’s outcome.
Consistency: Maintaining a consistent format and style in reports is essential for presenting information in a logical and organized manner. Consistency includes using the same headings, fonts, and colour schemes throughout the document. In addition, reports should have a clear structure, with sections divided into logical categories, such as background, objectives, methods, findings, and conclusions. This consistency enables readers to follow the report more easily and quickly locate specific information they seek.

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In addition to the above guidelines, it is essential to consider the training and education of both report writers and the intended audience. Providing education on avoiding jargon and understanding the needs of different audiences can significantly improve report quality. Additionally, fostering collaboration between SMEs and report writers can facilitate the process of simplifying jargon and creating more accessible reports.

When writing reports, it is important to tailor the level of jargon or technical language to the audience’s expertise. For instance, when writing for experts in a particular field, some degree of technical language might be appropriate. However, for a more general audience, strive to use more accessible language.

To further streamline the report writing process, consider using tools and resources such as readability checkers, jargon busters, and style guides to ensure clarity and simplicity. These tools can assist in identifying complex language and suggest alternatives that are easier to understand.

Measuring the effectiveness of simplified reports is crucial to understanding the impact on reader comprehension which may support decision-making. Some methods for assessing the success of simplified reports may include reader feedback surveys, comprehension tests, or monitoring the outcomes of decisions made based on the reports.

In conclusion, reports play a crucial role in project communication, documenting and conveying vital information to stakeholders such as team members, management, clients, and investors. Detailed analysis of data, trends, and other relevant information in reports helps project managers make informed decisions and improve project performance. By simplifying jargon, providing training, fostering collaboration, and using available tools, project managers can create more effective reports that drive informed decision-making and overall project success.

Disagreements, Decision Making and the Evaporating Cloud

Written by George Pitagorsky on May 2, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Is it too much to ask that decision makers make use of a collaborative goal and values-based conflict resolution approach to come to effective resolutions that satisfy needs?

Whether decisions are made in socio-political, organizational, and personal realms we all know that they are important. They direct action, resolve and cause disagreements. Decisions, if carried out, have physical, financial, emotional and relationship impacts.

Decisions are most likely to be “good” ones when disagreements or conflicts are well managed. The best decisions are made with clear objectivity and lead to achieving goals.

In my article Arguing to Learn and to Win I described a hybrid approach between arguing to learn (ATL) and arguing to win (ATW). This article focuses on ATL and how winning can emerge from learning through a collaborative approach like the Evaporating Cloud[1] (EC), one of the six thinking processes in Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints.

Fulfilling goals

The process is a technique designed to cut through disagreements by turning attention to fulfilling all parties’ goals rather than seeking only what each person wants.

In short, EC works on the premise that conflicts can be resolved when the parties get what they need. They satisfy their goals and values.

If the overarching goal is prosperity, peace, health, freedom, and happiness, decision makers must have an accurate sense of what each term means in concrete practical terms.

In the world of projects, goals like prosperity are expressed in terms of cost savings, revenue, and profit. Happiness is satisfying stakeholder expectations. Health is about the goal of sustaining the wellbeing of project performers to enable effective performance over time.

With an understanding of goals, we can identify relative weights. For example, are financial goals more important than employee health and wellbeing? Are the weights negotiable?

In projects it is much easier to attain consensus about goals than it is in social and political disagreements. Projects are objective focused and, assuming the project is a healthy one, the objectives align with organizational goals.

When there is no consensus on goals and values, we have a zero-sum game with winners and losers. Handling those is a subject for a future article on arguing to win.

The Evaporating Cloud (EC)

Now, back to the Evaporating Cloud (EC) technique and finding win-win resolution.

“If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.^[6]^“

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“The Evaporating Cloud tool is intended to similarly “vaporize” difficult problems by collaboratively resolving an underlying conflict. “[Goldratt teaches] that every problem is a conflict, and that conflicts arise because we create them by believing at least one erroneous assumption. Thus, simply by thinking about the assumptions that enforce the existence of a conflict, we should be able to resolve any conflict by evaporating it with the power of our thinking.[2]^“

Though the power of thinking has its limitations. To use a collaborative approach, at least one of the parties must step back to objectively perceive the cloud, and their place in it:

Emotions
Needs vs. Wants
Willingness to negotiate and collaborate to face the issues not the opponent.

Sharing Goals

In addition, the parties’ goals, values, and priorities must be compatible. For example, is getting elected or promoted more important than deciding on an optimal decision to serve the organization? Is your goal to have your design selected or to achieve project and organizational goals. Is one design demonstratively better than another? Is objectivity and telling the truth a shared value?

To answer these questions you must identify, understand, describe, and prioritize goals and values. What would happen if your goals weren’t met? Can you live with a negotiated compromise solution? Will the other parties agree to a solution that doesn’t give them everything they want?

Mutually exposing goals makes negotiation easier. Though, without open sharing it is still possible to use EC by subtly facilitating a discovery process. It is important to consider that sometimes openly sharing one’s goals may not be possible or desirable. There may be hidden agendas and motivations. Cultural norms may not support such openness. There are trust and personality issues.

Addressing the Wants

Knowing the goals, attention goes from Needs to Wants. Wants are about the way to achieve the goals and get what you need. For example, in projects a key goal is to satisfy stakeholders’ expectations. There are several ways to do that and there are often conflicting views on which is best.

If one way is as good as another, what does it matter which you choose? Flip a coin. Decision made. Can you and the others give up getting what you want if you get what you need? If one way is best, what makes it so? What are the criteria for deciding? Who will decide and how and when will they do it? Will they rely on emotional rhetoric, hierarchy, or analysis?

Benefits

A collaborative approach makes resolving conflicts a game that you can both learn from and enjoy while you find an optimal resolution and promote healthy ongoing relationships.

Relationship health is an often-overlooked benefit of collaborative decision making. “Don’t burn bridges” is good advice. Winning is great but if you are not playing the long game, you are likely to have a Pyrrhic victory. You win but at a price that is so costly that victory is tantamount to defeat.

For example, you or your team win an argument by undermining and alienating another team that you must work with to implement the decision or collaborate on future projects. How will that affect the organization’s goals? You may think you will never see your opponents again, but you never know if you will encounter one of them in an interview for a job you have applied for.

Less likely to be overlooked is the benefit of finding an optimal solution, whether it is a blend of elements from alternatives or choosing a demonstrably more effective outcome. Of course, there is no guarantee. But if people commit to an analytical process, collective intelligence and multiple perspectives should result in higher quality decisions.

Taking It Home

Assess your personal approach to conflict resolution, disagreements, and decision making? Assess your team’s and organization’s approach? Is there room for improvement?

Share this article to start a conversation as the first step in adopting a collaborative approach and adapting it to your situation.

[1]There are many references for EC, Wikipedia is a good place to start for further information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporating_Cloud

[2] Scheinkopf, Lisa J. Thinking for a change: Putting the TOC thinking processes to use. CRC Press, 2002.

Best of PMTimes: How to Avoid Project Management Failure – Top Tactics

Written by Christine Maugustus on April 26, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Whenever you take on a project, you are taking on some level of risk — a chance that the project might fail.

No one is perfect, not even highly trained project managers; but you do have a responsibility to do all you can to ensure your project doesn’t fail. After all, your business is counting on this to work. When you propose a project, you are essentially promising to execute it successfully, and failure to do so for any reason will reflect poorly on you. While you can only control your part, careful planning and strong leadership can go a long way in ensuring the success of a project.

Here are some tactics successful project managers use to avoid failure:

Know What Causes Failure

In order to avoid failure, you first have to have an understanding of what most often causes project failure. Some common reasons are: lack of communication, poor planning or risk management, or a lack of discipline. Bringing a project to successful completion is hard work and requires someone who’s willing to roll up their sleeves and stick with it, meticulously, until the end.

But don’t just look at general reasons that any project might fail. Look at the weak points within your own organization. If you’ve been there for some time, you may already have an idea of the pitfalls into which your workplace tends to fall. If not, keep your eyes open. It’s good to know your specific weaknesses so that you can think of a way to avoid or strengthen them.

Enhance Your Strengths

Strong management is an absolute must for successful project management. If the project manager isn’t up to the task, it’s doomed from the start. Part of this is in knowing the weaknesses of your team and your organization. Another part of this is in knowing your team’s strengths, and how to best bring out those strengths to finish a project efficiently and successfully.

Being a project manager is more than just overseeing the project. It’s also motivating those working on it. Again, projects require strong discipline. Lead by example with your own strength of discipline and encourage that in your team. If you can bring the best out of a good team, they’ll be strong enough to handle any obstacles that your project throws their way.

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Plan Carefully

Too often, project managers don’t dedicate enough time to planning. Maybe this comes from over eagerness to get started, or maybe project managers and stakeholders worry that if you’re planning, you’re not actively working towards the goal. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If it’s done right, planning is at least half the work. Before you begin putting your project into action, you should have every nuance planned. What is your strategy to finish the project? How do you plan to minimize risk at each step of the way? What is your goal at every milestone and how can you best reach it?

Some people become frustrated and bogged down by spending too much time in planning, but this shouldn’t be a problem for a project manager. It’s your job to be able to look at the big picture. If you have a solid, thoroughly thought out plan, the execution of the project should be smooth and easy. Think of planning like a garden stream: with the path already set, the water will naturally flow in that direction.

Keep It Realistic

Many projects begin in an optimistic light…perhaps more optimistic than they should be in reality. In excitement, it’s easy to set too-short deadlines or over the top goals. Don’t let eagerness determine your goals. Take a step back and look at this project and your team realistically. Don’t think about what you want to achieve here, but what you can feasibly achieve and give yourself enough time to achieve that. You may want to impress stakeholders with goals and timeframes that wow, but they’ll be more impressed in the end with a project successfully and realistically managed.

Track Everything

Don’t trust anything to memory or verbal conversations. Everything to do with your project needs to be written down and stored in one place. This could be a log that you keep or a project management software, and the log itself will depend on the size and scope of the project. You should have your progress tracked, an index of your performance so far, and all of the goals you’re striving to reach or have reached. This will make it easier, too, in case you need to adjust goals or deadlines. The more you track, the better prepared you are.

Communicate

Keep the work stream running smoothly with open and available communication. You should communicate regularly with everyone involved in this project, and encourage others involved to do the same. This will keep stakeholders from worrying about the status of the project and keep the team encouraged and knowledgeable. Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and little mistakes that can snowball into big failures as the project goes on. As we discussed before, it’s one of the biggest culprits when it comes to project failure. Avoid it by making sure everyone has a part in tracking progress and keeping everyone posted regularly.

Expect the Unexpected

Even with careful planning, you may hit a curveball along the way that threatens to set back or harm your project. You can’t account for everything, so you should definitely prepare to hit an unexpected roadblock along the way. Maybe this means giving the budget a little padding in case of trouble or having a risk strategy in place. Maybe this means having a plan B in case plan A falls through. But no matter what, you should expect to be surprised at some point along the way.

Life isn’t perfect, business isn’t perfect, and you should probably expect that your project won’t be perfect, either. However, a prepared project manager who knows their team and communicates thoroughly can ensure that the project weathers any storm and ends successfully.

Best of PMTimes: Managing Stress in Project Management

Written by Ong Jing Teak on April 25, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Introduction

Project Manager (PM) is no doubt one of the most stressful jobs out there as the PM is directly responsible and accountable for the success or failure of a project. Some PMs believed that they can handle and cope with the high level of stress but there are some who are ignoring or refuse to recognize that they are under stress. The experience of stress is not only impacting the cognitive and behavioral performance, it can also have a negative impact on your personal health, wellbeing, and family life. You might not able to change the amount of stress you have on a daily basis, but you can change how you deal with it. It is important to manage the stress before it becomes more and more difficult to handle and manage.

The Yerkes-Dodson Curve

Based on the Yerkes-Dodson curve, moderate level of stress improves performance and when the stress level increases more, the performance decreases. Hence, it is crucial for project managers to be able to moderate the stress levels for optimal performance.

Causes of Stress in Project Management

Imaging the project deadline is 2 weeks away and there are still some critical issues to be resolved. To make it worse, one of your key team members has been hospitalized. Customer is unhappy and management is requesting for a daily review. The source of stress in Project Management can be many and varied. Some common sources are listed below:

Unrealistic timeline
Working in a matrix system which PM does not have the full control of the resources
Lack of resources – human and/or equipment
Proliferation of virtual teams and cross cultural influences
Inter-group conflict in organization
Project environment

And the list goes on.

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Stress Management Techniques

Project Manager must first acknowledge or recognize that he or she is being under stress and then develop self-discipline before proceeding to learn and practice what are the techniques to manage stress. Learning to manage stress successfully begins with our willingness to take an honest look at ourselves.

Many techniques can help to manage stress. There is no-one-size-fits-all technique and no technique will be able to eliminate stress totally. Each person must decide what will work best for him or her. A few techniques should be explored to determine which works best and once they have found some strategies that work, commitment to practicing them is the key for managing stress.

I find five interpersonal skills and/or attitudes that help reduce stress taken from “Tangible Tips for Handling the Endless Stress in Project Management” by Steven Flannes, Ph.D., Principal, Flannes & Associates below to be really helpful in managing stress in Project Management:

Detach or dissociate: Consider the team meeting where you are extremely frustrated by seeing wasted time or the personal posturing from a team member. To use detachment or dissociation, allow yourself to mentally “check out” of the meeting as much as is appropriate, letting your mind wander to a more pleasant image. Obviously, these approaches are used selectively and discretely.
Monitor “what if?” thinking: In the middle of a stressful event, it is natural to engage in “what if thinking,” asking ourselves “What if we’d only done this in the past, then we might not be in this crisis right now?” As is evident, this form of “what if” thinking involves a focus that is not present oriented. An alternative to this form of thinking is to focus very much in the present, such as posing this question to yourself: “It’s Thursday at 3:17 PM, I’ve just received bad news about the project. What can I do in the next hour to take a small step towards improving the situation?”
Develop potent conflict resolution skills: We add stress to our work lives by either under reacting to the stressful situation (avoiding or denying it) or over reacting to the stressful situation (coming on too strong). Both approaches increase our stress. A menu of conflict resolution skills (which will help reduce stress) is found in Flannes and Levin (2005).
Know when enough is enough, and stay away from debating: A natural but often unproductive approach to resolve a stressful situation is to debate another person about the wisdom of your point of view. This does not mean you should not assert your belief, but you should know when to stop, often when your message has been heard. At this point in the dialogue, if we continue try to be seen as “right,” we are actually increasing our stress. It’s better to stop earlier than later; it can be a matter of diminishing returns to continue to be seen as “right.”
Look for a paradoxical component in the situation: In the midst of a situation that is legitimately stressful, we may find ourselves taking ourselves, or the situation, too seriously. Cognitive behavioral psychologists would say that we are engaging in “catastrophizing” behavior, in which we take a singular, negative event, cognitively “run with it,” and then find ourselves believing, for example, that the entire project is probably doomed because of this one serious problem. An antidote to this is to find a paradoxical cognition that you can hold onto, something that will put your stress and worries in perspective.

Other techniques:

Prioritize: Put up a priority matrix and assign every task based on its urgency and importance. Focus on the tasks that are urgent and important. Don’t overwhelm yourself by worrying about your entire workload.
Avoid extreme reactions: Why hate when a little dislike will do? Why generate anxiety when you can be nervous? Why rage when anger will do the job? Why be depressed when you can just be sad?
Applying NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) to Stress Reduction: NLP provides a number of excellent tools and concepts to empower individuals to cope with or change non-resourceful or negative stress to resourceful or positive resources.With NLP you can change overwhelming, immobilizing feelings into powerful motivating forces.
Exercise: Take some time off from your busy schedule and plan for some physical activities, whether it’s jogging, cycling, hiking or other activities to work off stress.
Meditation: Learn how to best relax yourself. Meditation and breathing exercises have been proven to be very effective in controlling stress. Practice clearing your mind of disturbing thoughts.

Summary

The success in managing stress does not depend solely on the type of technique that is used, but instead the commitment from the individual that makes the difference. The same strategy might not work for everyone. Individual must take an honest look within him or herself and determine what is practical and make the most sense. Working to reduce stress can enhance happiness and health for many years. It does make a difference!

References:

Remove Causes to Solve Problems

Written by George Pitagorsky on January 10, 2023. Posted in Articles.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” ― Albert Einstein

Performance problems are found wherever projects exist. There are two ways to resolve a performance problem: address its causes and address its symptoms. Effective problem-solving uses both approaches. Remove or remediate the symptoms while doing the work to address the causes.

Einstein’s advice is to think about a problem before jumping into to solve it. The solutions will be obvious as the problem is analyzed. This advice works well if you adapt the amount of time you spend thinking to the needs of the situation.

If the problem requires immediate attention, you still do better to think about it before deciding what to do and doing it. Then you can treat the symptoms with a temporary solution while you figure out what to do longer term to address the causes and conditions that gave rise to the problem.

Of course, there is the exception to every rule. If a lion is attacking you, don’t think for too long or you’ll get eaten. Fortunately, in projects we rarely encounter immediate threats. If we frequently react rather than respond thoughtfully, that’s a problem.

Everything is Caused by Something

Problem solving is on a firm foundation if you accept the systems and process thinking principle that everything is caused by something under existing conditions.

If everything results from causes and conditions, then resolve the causes and change the conditions, and the problem’s symptoms are resolved.

The symptoms are what tell us that a problem exists. For example, unhealthy conflict is a symptom, it can be addressed by separating the conflicting parties, so they don’t get into arguments. That solution removes the symptom without addressing its causes.

Symptoms are easier to remove, but the solution is temporary. On a personal level, treating the causes of anxiety or depression by taking drugs has side effects and fails to address the cause so that when the drugs wear off one either must take more or be anxious or depressed. The symptoms, or others that can be worse, return as the impact of the causes take effect.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. In our example, separating conflicting parties stops the conflicts. But if skillfully exploring differences would add value in planning, design, or making other decisions, removing the symptoms not only makes decision making less effective but it perpetuates the problem of unhealthy conflict management.

Causes are more difficult to remove than symptoms. They take much more time, sometimes years, and patient effort to change systemic factors and old habits. But once the causes are addressed the problem can be permanently resolved. Of course, the solution might generate future problems. So be ready to refine any solution.

Example: Estimating

In projects, problems that effect performance include inaccurate estimating, unnecessary unhealthy conflict, perpetual performance shortfalls, high turnover of the most valuable staff, and poor decision making.

To address them all is beyond the scope of this article, so we will use the problem of inaccurate estimating as a prime example.

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The practice of padding (unjustifiably adding time or costs) to an estimate solves the problem of underestimating a single project’s costs and duration but undermines best practices and leads to distrust in the effectiveness of the estimators. It perpetuates padding.

With or without padding, continuous estimate adjustments throughout the life of a project gives stakeholders a continuously truer sense of cost and duration. Though, again, there may be distrust in the estimating process, particularly if the adjustments are too frequent and the result is far off from the original estimate. There is perpetual uncertainty.

The solution to the problem of chronic inaccurate estimating is found by exploring its causes and doing something about them. For example, causes may be the absence of historical project data that can be used in future estimating, unskilled estimators, fear of giving a realistic estimate that would displease clients or other powerful stakeholders, etc.

Note that, conceptually, the solution is the same for all performance problems – courageously and objectively look to the system (the organizational setting) and the mindset of the stakeholders in it. Be ready to eliminate the causes you find and at the same time apply temporary fixes to minimize the symptoms project by project.

Old Habits are Hard to break: Manage the Process

Solving chronic project management and performance problems through cause removal is a critical part of process and quality management.

Tactics like padding estimates to address inaccurate estimates become habits. Over time they get so ingrained in everyday activity that they become accepted normal behavior and after a while become part of the organization’s character..

You know that from personal experience that habits are hard to break. Changing or removing habits requires that first you recognize and acknowledge them. Then you can identify the ones that get in the way of improved performance, decide what (if anything) to do about them and do it.

Knowing that every outcome is caused by a process, a chain of causes and effects under conditions, processes like estimating, conflict, and quality management can be analyzed to enable assessment and the discovery of the causes of current or potential problem causes. Once causes are discovered you can decide what to do. You can live with things as they are, keep applying band-aid symptom removal solutions, or change the process to address the causes. If you choose to address the causes, you may find the need for anything from minor tweaks to cultural transformation. Bring cost, benefits, and risk assessment into play to decide what to do and when to do it.

The bottom line is to recognize that problems are natural parts of life. And the best way to work through them is to:

Step back, accept, describe, and think about the problem,
Weave a solution from options to let the problem persist, apply symptom removal, and cause removal solutions to address immediate symptoms and long-term effects,
Assess and refine, as needed.

Stepping back and accepting is often the most difficult part of solving performance problems. It takes objectivity and courage, remembering that ignoring problems will not make them go away and that limiting solutions to symptom removal will perpetuate the problem.