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Improving Project and Engagement Management Performance

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Project management is a business process. Like all business processes, it is subject to improvement.

This article addresses the relationship between project and engagement management and the improvement program that seeks to optimize their performance to satisfy stakeholder expectations. Wise organizations and teams seek to continuously improve processes to optimize performance. That is what assessments,  coaching, consulting, and training are about. Wise individual practitioners also seek to continuously improve processes to optimize performance. They learn new skills, keep an open mind, and cultivate adaptability and resilience. Both organizations and individuals understand the need to define their performance values and indicators so they can measure improvement success.

No Process is an Island

No business process is an island. Project management is performed within an enterprise. It is integrated into engagement management, new product development, maintenance, facilities management, or other processes. While improving a process like project management, be careful not to sub-optimize other related processes. Pay attention to the “system” as a whole and its goals and values. See the article Vision and Systems View to Improve Performance.

Engagement Management

Engagement management encompasses the full range of activities from the initial contact with prospective clients, through the identification and qualification of opportunities, proposal development/quotations, portfolio-level decision making, negotiating and closing the sale, delivery and managing the ongoing relationship, including billing and the extension of services over time to serve the client’s evolving needs.

Engagement management is not limited to business-to-business organizations like consulting and engineering firms that sell services. In-house software development groups and other groups that perform projects to serve operational departments within their enterprise can gain from taking an engagement management approach.

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Improvement Is a Program

To improve any process, treat improvement as a program. If sustained optimal performance is a goal (if it isn’t, think about that!), then coordinate assessment, consulting, coaching, and training to achieve the results you want.

This means going beyond courses and a training curriculum to a formal performance enhancement program with acknowledged leadership, a plan, multiple coordinated improvement projects and training, and regular assessment and review to measure progress and adjust accordingly.

Focused skills training is a vital part of any improvement program. However, unless it is part of an overall program it is likely to go to waste or be far less effective than expected.  For example, training a cadre of project managers on how to schedule and manage risk more effectively may make those managers better at performing those tasks but can lead to conflict with management, staff, salespeople, and clients. Training salespeople in contact and closing skills can bring in more sales.  But organizational performance can suffer unless the participants have learned about and are accountable for a “sale’s” profitability and that they understand delivery pipelines.

A program to improve engagement performance includes project management courses for both hard-core PMs and other stakeholders, sales training, methodology training, emotional intelligence and mindfulness training, relationship and communications training, performance assessments, regular facilitated reviews, and team and individual coaching to better enable putting skills to work collaboratively.

 Evaluating Results

The Kirkpatrick training evaluation model is as applicable to projects and client engagement as it is to training.  The model rates training in four levels – Reaction (Did participants like it? Are stakeholders happy?), Learning (Were skills and concepts learned? Were objectives met?), Behavior (were learned skills applied? Was the product used?), and Results (Were desired performance improvements realized?).

The reaction is easy to measure. Learning is a bit more complex but still not so difficult. These two are measured at training time, or, in the case of projects, upon project or phase completion.  Behavior and Results require assessment over time. Behavior assessment is easy if leadership understands that for skills and products to be useful, they must be used.  To determine if they are used requires resources, assessments, and reporting.

Results are the bottom line. Measuring results is not so easy and is frequently not done. It requires clarity about performance indicators, a baseline, regular and ongoing review, and recognition that multiple interacting factors drive results like greater profitability and higher quality.

Desired Project and Engagement Management Results

When we focus on projects, the desired results are outcomes that consistently meet stakeholder expectations (including benefits realization) by delivering the agreed-upon product or service, on-time and within budget.

When using the term “stakeholder”, remember that it refers to anyone who may impact or be affected by the project, including project performers. Optimally, a project results in a viable product or service that makes a positive difference in terms of cost and effort reduction, improved quality, profitability, and healthy client and staff relations.

To determine if an engagement is successful, it is necessary to look at relationships over time and across multiple projects with the same client. Measure financial and social impact regularly. Recognize that the value of many, if not most, products and services are the result of sustained use and the effectiveness of maintenance, enhancement, support, and customer service. Measure the degree to which project and service staff are happy, healthy, and can sustain effective performance without burning out. Assess attitudes, turnover rates, productivity vs. effectiveness, and the degree to which conflicts are effectively resolved.

Optimizing Performance

Achieving optimal performance requires an improvement program that combines assessment, coaching, consulting, and training to ensure that desired results are achieved consistently over time.  Because improvement occurs through a program its success is measured in the same way any program is measured – have desired results been achieved?

Optimal performance relies upon healthy projects within a well-oiled engagement management process in which success boils down to achieving value and stakeholder satisfaction. An improvement program is essential. Success requires a “contract” and a governance process. The contract (we use the term to include any agreement) provides the objective criteria for measuring success. The governance process makes sure that the flow of improvement and operational projects is moderated to satisfy client expectations, maximize value, and not overburden the performance staff.  It considers success from an enterprise perspective.

Training Your Mind to Stay Focused

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Training Your Mind to Stay Focused

Do you find yourself distracted, jumping from one thing to another, unable or unwilling to stay focused? 

This “monkey mind” phenomena occurs at meetings, when reading, watching a video, writing, or creating a product, when in conversation, when meditating to cultivate calm and clarity of mind, or when relaxing and trying to fall asleep.

When working a project, staying focused on the tasks that will satisfy objectives is a critical success factor.  Focused attention on a single task leads to greater performance effectiveness than popping from one thing to another.

The tendency to become distracted by monkey mind is not limited to project work.  It occurs in every aspect of life. 

One can exercise the mind to reduce the effects of “monkey mind” in meditation and in daily life, at work and at play.

Monkey Mind

“Monkey mind” is a mind that jumps from one thought to another, often unconsciously.  Thoughts are triggered by the experience of another thought, a feeling, sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch.  Something ‘interesting’ comes along and the mind is off and running.  It spins a web of thoughts, elaborates on the experience; repeats.  Some thoughts lead to actions, others to obsessing about some fantasy, worry, experience, or any concept and the feelings it brings up.

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For example, here is a sequence that took place over half an hour, moving from observations to feelings, thoughts, activities, more observations, feelings, thoughts, etc.  

  1. Objective – verify when a new policy is to begin by emailing Amanda, the administrator
  2. Go to the email program to compose the email
  3. Notice a new batch of emails
  4. Feel annoyance about the number of junk emails
  5. Obsess a bit about the “junk” proliferation
  6. Review and delete junk emails
  7. Notice an interesting email with a quote from Ram Dass’ Words of Wisdom
  8. Contemplate the wisdom (this could set the mind off on a major diversion)
  9. Deciding to not take the diversion, copy the quote into Evernote for later reading
  10. Tag the note to a writing project
  11. Return to the email list
  12. Notice an email from one of the writing project team members
  13. Respond to that email
  14. Write a short email to the writing project team about the quote
  15. Return to the emails and finish reviewing
  16. Write and send the email to Amanda
  17. Create this list in Evernote
  18. Write notes about the list and the concept of monkey mind.
  19. Create this article.

Distractions

This tendency for thoughts to proliferate and to become entangled in a web of feelings, mental commentary and actions is natural.  Everyone experiences it from time to time.  There are distractions and we are often easily distracted.

Sometimes a message comes in that starts another chain of events that may go on for hours moving from one thing to another.   Then there is the break for coffee or conversation with a co-worker.  Or, any number of other things.

The initial objective may be forgotten for days or until something comes up to trigger a need to get back to getting it done.   If the wisdom quote in step 7 triggered writing an article about the content of the quote, instead of putting the quote aside for later use, the diversion could have taken many hours.

The chain from the initial objective through its accomplishment took a half hour.   Without the distractions, writing and sending the email to Amanda would have taken less than five minutes, with no risk of getting lost in the chain.  Further, process quality and project management wisdom, including Critical Chain/Theory of Constraints, tells us that productivity and the quality of the outcome are enhanced by staying focused on one objective at a time – minimizing distractions and their effects.

Reduce Distractions

To minimize distractions and their effects, you have two challenges, 1) reduce the number of distractions and 2) better manage the distractions that will not go away.   Yes, you can minimize the number and frequency of distractions, but you cannot eliminate them.

You can reduce the number and frequency of external distractions like pings and rings, by turning off notifications and devices (if you dare take the risk of missing something really important).  Treat your solo work sessions as if they were meetings with an important stakeholder.  Do not allow interruptions for the length of your work session.

Unless you are a “surgeon” who must respond to emergency calls to action, you can be “off the grid” for an hour or so without fear of the world ending unless you take the call or respond to the text immediately.  If you do have emergency response responsibilities or high priority callers, set up your devices to filter out everything or everyone else.

 When it comes to internal distractions – thoughts and feelings – reducing the distracting events is not so easy.  It is hard to stop the mind from thinking or stop yourself from feeling angry, sad, frustrated, when triggered.

Train the Monkey

The second challenge is to better manage distractions.  It begins by seeing the monkey mind for what it is and to train it to think and decide before jumping.  And, to do that in a way that enables the kind of adaptive flow that promotes creativity and ease of being.

When you train the monkey, you can just go along in a stream of consciousness or pull back and stay on a chosen object – the task at hand or the content in your conversation or article.

The monkey is not some primate that lives in your mind.  It is the habit of grasping at the next “interesting” thing (thought feeling, sound, image, etc.) that comes up.  It might be something pleasant or painful.  The more interesting it is, the stickier it gets. Sticky thoughts attract and adhere to other related thoughts and feelings.  A momentum builds and the mind is off in a new direction. The more momentum, the stronger the new chain.  The stronger the chain the more difficult it is to break it and get back to the chosen object of your attention or the chain of thought that you were on before the distraction.

To break the habit, apply the effort required to cultivate mindfulness and concentration. That effort begins with the intention to be more in control of where your mind goes and what you do with it.  Then you find a meditation discipline to use to exercise the part of your mind that decides what to do.  You use formal and informal meditation techniques to confront and quiet the monkey mind.  You increase your mindful awareness so that you can recognize distractions as they occur and get back to your chosen object before the distraction takes hold. 

What are the techniques? 
Check out the videos at www.Self-AwareLiving.com/videos.

How long does it take to train the monkey?
As consultants and project managers say, “It depends.” The factors are strength of your intention, the effort you put in, the monkey’s willfulness and strength. With practice you can see some results in a few weeks, but don’t be impatient, taming the mind, like keeping your body in shape, is a process.

How much time and effort do I have to spend?
Not as much as you may think. It can be anywhere from five to twenty minutes of formal practice and intentional attention during the day, integrated into the daily routine so no extra dedicated time is needed.

You may want to checkout my past PM Times article, How to Mindfully Manage Emotions at https://www.projecttimes.com/george-pitagorsky/how-to-mindfully-manage-emotions.html. It contains an instruction for a formal mindfulness practice.

Five Crossword Tricks to Help Pass Certification Exams

Written by Richard Larson on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Five Crossword Tricks to Help Pass Certification Exams

I love to complete crossword puzzles. More than a pastime, they are more like an addiction for me.

At any one time I have 3-4 different puzzles in progress, of varying levels. I am no expert, but I have learned a few techniques that surprisingly matches advice I have given over the years to help candidates pass their certification exams.

You see, it helps to approach your exam like a puzzle. Why is that? The “puzzle” creators, the certification exam writers, devise tricky and challenging questions like a crossword editor does. They are difficult because the exam writers want to test your knowledge of business analysis, project management, agile, security or whatever your certification interest. I think it will be helpful to treat your exam like a puzzle to help get in the right mind frame.

To that end, I have developed a few tricks over the years to help me solve crossword puzzles. Here are five of my best tricks and an explanation of how they apply to cert exams.

  • Skip over hard answers – work the easy ones first. No matter how easy or difficult a puzzle I work on, there are always some clues and sections that are easier than others. Use those to help answer harder ones and to build confidence. Leave answers blank you are unsure of and only lightly pencil in those you are partly sure of.

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: Skip hard questions and leave them blank the first or second time through your exam. Exam creators like to devilishly put hard questions near the beginning to test your meddle. It is easy to spend 10 or more minutes on early difficult questions, which leaves you that much less time for the remainder. Skip them! From my own and others’ experience, difficult questions are easier the 2nd or 3rd time through.

  • Rely on patterns to figure out answers you are unsure of. When I am uncertain of a crossword answer, I find it helpful to look at surrounding words and letters for clues. In English, certain letter combinations are more common and others will not occur at all. For example, if a word ends in “K,” odds are the preceding letter is an A, E, C, L, N, R, or S.

CERTIFICATION: APPLICATION: Look for distracters (e.g., oxymorons like “assumption constraint”) to spot incorrect answers. Look for answers that have 3 commonalities between them and one that does not (odds are good that is the correct answer, but not always.) Wording from one question can help you with others (this happened on every certification exam I took).

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  • Make sure you understand the correct meaning of a question. Clever crossword editors use clues that could have several meanings depending on how you interpret them. For instance, a simple clue of “Free” on a puzzle I just finished could mean the verb “to free” or the noun “to be free”. It could be free of cost, free of constraint, or carefree, such as “free and easy.”

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: Just like clever crossword editors, clever exam writers try similar tricks to make you think and not just recall. For instance, suppose you encountered a question that makes common sense but contradicts your body of knowledge. Once example I remember from my PMP preparation had to do with paying bribes to get a project approved in a foreign country where that was common practice. That option would not be the correct answer because it violates the PM Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide®).

  • Use multiple iterations to complete your answers. I have heard of expert puzzlers who complete the Sunday New York Times in one sitting (in ink no less). Most people cannot do this and on difficult puzzles I need several attempts to complete it and I always use a pencil!

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: Unless you are an expert test taker, expect to do two or three iterations of reading through and answering questions on your exam. If you follow rule #1, you should leave blank every hard answer on your first read-through. You should also flag any questions you are partly sure of as mentioned in rule #2. From observations in teaching numerous certification classes I know the importance of this. After practice exams in class, many students reported they changed an answer or two only to discover their first one was correct. Do not let this to happen to you on your exam! Leave answers blank until you are sure of them.

  • Use your best guess if you must. Sometimes I will write down a crossword answer even if I am not sure of it. I do this more often near the end of a puzzle to help me with adjacent answers. Confession: I have been known to fill in words to complete a puzzle just so I can finish it and move on.

CERTIFICATION APPLICATION: If your time is nearly up and you have unanswered questions, by all means use your best guess. There is no penalty for guessing, only for not answering a question. Try to pace yourself so you have time to make an educated guess. If you are seriously close to the end, put down any answer. In other words, like a crossword, go with those “lightly penciled in” answers. One of my students early on told me an urban myth that answer “b” occurs most often in exams. I am not sure if that is true but putting answer “b” on say five blank answers probably ensures you get one or two of them correct.

I have worked with certification preparation and exam strategies for many years, including training countless candidates. One common denominator among virtually all my students has been exam anxiety. We all face it and there is more than one approach to combatting it.

Treating an exam like a puzzle is one approach to reducing exam anxiety by providing strategies for navigating difficult questions on your exam. Using crossword tricks like the ones outlined above can help reduce your exam anxiety and improve your score. Let me know what you think and share your own tricks that have worked.

Embracing technology to become a pandemic resilient team

Written by Dr Gennadii Miroshnikov on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Embracing technology to become a pandemic resilient team

How technology could help project management teams to succeed in the unprecedented global remote working experiment during coronavirus pandemic.

The novel coronavirus is posing one of the greatest challenges to organizations around the globe. And the mitigation of its negative impact depends on how fast and effective the response is. The pandemic has already triggered the greatest remote working experiment in history. Therefore, smart adoption and use of technologies are critical for the appropriate response. The main characteristics of this approach are adaptability, agility, and learning.

Starting with inventory

A good starting point is to do an inventory of the existing IT infrastructure of your company and to understand what is already available across the organisation, what systems, apps, and tools are already being used by teams and how they feel about them. The resulting list should include not only the names of the systems recommended by other teams, but lessons learned, tips, and best practices for roll-out and examples of the usage. Focusing on already utilized systems allows you to significantly speed up the process of mass adoption, as the systems are already familiar to some teams and some volunteers will be ready to share their experience.

Digital Champions

The next step is to form a team of digital champions, enthusiastic early adopters who are happy to volunteer to share their knowledge. There are different possible ways to conduct knowledge sharing. It could be regular short walk-in show and tell sessions for example in the lunch and learn format, or it could be more detailed sessions by request. Running short webinars with demonstrations and screen shares could be another way and, in this case, it is always useful to record sessions and share the link with those who could not attend. It would be also helpful to create an e-hub, for instance in a form of a classified discussion forum, where anyone could ask questions and digital champions would be able to respond. A further development of this e-hub could be the growth of a knowledge base, which also promotes peer-to-peer learning across the organization.

Systems most commonly used to maintain the viability of remote teams include the well-known email systems, teamwork collaboration spaces, cloud storage, and video conferencing services.

Collaboration space

Chat-based workplace communication tools such as Microsoft Teams or Slack are designed to keep conversations organized and work collaboratively on documents. An important feature of the functionality of such systems is the ability to integrate with other applications that are necessary for the team to work, such as task management, project management tools, file sharing etc. Despite the popularity of systems like Microsoft Teams or Slack, it might be worthwhile for small teams to check alternative systems (e.g. Workplace from Facebook, Flock, HeySpace), some of which have free plans and are easier in deployment.

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Cloud Storage

Although teamwork hubs typically provide cloud storage and file collaboration capabilities, there are cases when a team will benefit from having separate cloud storage. As one example, this could be if there is a need for sharing files with external people. Having a transparent structure of files and folders with clear rules for ownership and granting access has a positive impact. Among the most popular solutions are OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox, and for small teams, it is quite possible to get a free tariff plan with limited disk space.

Virtual meetings

Many organizations have already been using Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Zoom, or Webex for virtual meetings and video calls. However, as a result of this pandemic, they have completely replaced offline meetings. Even a new term ‘over-zoomed’ has emerged demonstrating fatigue from the rapidly skyrocketing number of virtual meetings. When planning a virtual meeting, it is useful to think through its format, which will depend on the topic, the number of participants, and other factors. Meetings with a large number of participants will benefit from the appointment of a Chair or moderator and a notetaker. It is also important to build five minutes of chat into virtual meetings to ensure your team doesn’t lose “high touch”. Another approach to avoid or at least mitigate “over-zooming” is to implement interactive tools such as voting, whiteboards, non-verbal reactions, etc. For example, for a brainstorming session, the use of a free tool Padlet during meetings allows the posting of notes on a common page.

Don’t forget about fun

Another small tip is not to forget about fun and find time for informal communication with your colleagues. Friday’s evening quiz in WhatsApp, Jackbox over Zoom or a lunch-time 15 minutes HIIT workout over Skype, Slack or MS Teams with your colleagues are great ways to keep your team engaged and in good spirits.

Best Practices for Decision Management

Written by Gregory V. Chapman on . Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Best Practices for Decision Management

As an entrepreneur or manager of an organization, you encounter multiple problems that need to be solved as quickly as they arise.

But to solve these problems, you need to have the ability to make timely and informed decision(s) that will ultimately help your organization and employees reach full potential. Additionally, the business world keeps moving at a fast pace, and you have best management practices springing up to help you make more informed, analytical, and effective decisions.

 Erik Larson, the founder and CEO of Cloverpop, states in his Harvard Business Review article that managers who implemented best practices ninety percent of the time reached their goals and exceeded these goals, forty percent of the time. Yet only a handful of managers and business owners have been able to consistently and fully implement these best practices when it comes to decision making

In reality, applying some of these best practices might not be as easy as they appear. In making these decisions, you encounter:

  • Uncertainty: Not knowing the full facts of the problem.
  • Complexity: Multiple interrelated factors that you should consider.
  • High-risk consequences: The need to consider the significant impact of the decision
  • Alternatives: Available alternatives and the uncertainties and implications of each of them.
  • Interpersonal issues–having a sense of how different people will react to the decision made, etc.

Sometimes decision making goes beyond knowing such best practices. The key factor here is the ability to implement these practices. In this article, I have not only put together some of the best practices for decision making, but I also inform you on how you can go about achieving them with more ease and desired results: 

Have Clarity of Purpose 

Experts often say that the best decisions are taken based on research, careful thought, and trust in the gut. Most effective decision-makers have the intuitive ability to look past obstacles and focus on what, when, and how each decision ought to be taken. For some people, they need first to learn clarity as a skill and then leveraged on.

 It is essential to correctly frame the perspective and parameters of the decision that needs to be taken. There is also a need for you to define the objectives and options in detail and then align the decision with desirable outcomes.

Having clarity of purpose enables you to make decisions that are appropriate and consistent with what needs to be achieved. When there is a disruption of purpose, you are likely going to lose touch and begin to make decisions without the right dependencies and resources needed for sound decision making.

Note that there is a need to clarify the level of involvement and expectation of each person involved in the decision-making process.

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Make Timely Decisions

Being decisiveness means that you also need to be timely. You find out that the decisions that do the most damage are the decisions that didn’t get made on time. When reviewing your previous decisions, you also need to look at all the decisions you didn’t get to make because you missed the time frame in which to take advantage of an opportunity.

Dave Girouard, the CEO of Upstart speaks on the importance of making timely decisions as “the first step to greasing the wheels of the decision-making progress is to begin by calculating the time and effort each decision is worth, who needs to have input, and when you’ll arrive at an answer.”

Remember that there is a shelf live placed on every decision you need to make, so you need to make sure that you set up tight timeframes during your decision-making process.

Review your Decisions and Learn from Mistakes 

For most people, myself includes the mistakes we encounter from taking the wrong decisions hunts us for a long time, or we forget about them without learning the vital lessons, this is bound to bring your business to a halt.

The truth is that mistakes will be made from time to time, and rather than let be a constant adversary in our decision making management, it is crucial to review such makes and learn the lessons we can pick from them that can help in making more informed decisions. Even the most experienced CEOs and top Mangers still mistakes. What they do to fix this is to review those decisions and identify the better choices they can make in the future.

Strike the right risk balance

Most people are averse risk-taking, primarily because of the current business environment or because they see risks as something you avoid as opposed to something you take. But in reality, for every entrepreneur or manager out there, taking risks is critical to your decision-making, effectiveness, and growth.

Henry Ristuccia, partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP in his Wall Street Journal article, gives some sound advice that “… executives overseeing risk management should consider becoming more risk intelligent” he goes further by providing skills to consider when striking the right risk balance:

  • Check your assumptions at the door
  • Maintaining vigilance
  • Anticipate causes of failure
  • Verify sources and corroborate information
  • Maintain a margin of safety
  • Sustain operational discipline, etc. 

Conclusion

As I stated earlier in the article, though these best practices may not appear as easy as they seem, with constant research and the willingness to implement them, you are bound to achieve the desired result in your decision-making process and management.