The Accidental Project Manager – Part 2

January 31, 2010 — Bruce McGraw

Or, Improving the Perceived Value of Project Management

In Part 1, we talked about how some people end up with the title “project manager”.  It sometimes seems that organizations created the position of project manager so they will have someone to ask about project status and someone to blame when a project goes south. This is sometimes due to project management being seen as a task, not a career or profession. In addition, project managers are rarely part of the greater management team—those who possess knowledge, vision, and skills essential to driving the organization. So why is a function so critical to project and business success trivialized and minimized in the organization?  Or better yet, how do we help project managers become more respected or valued?

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar)

A bit of history
In 19th and 20th century business models (think Henry Ford), projects were activities outside of business-as-usual. Projects were managed ad hoc, operated for a short time, and then disbanded. According to Wikipedia on the history of project management, the 1950s marked the beginning of the modern project management as a specialized field with the advent of formal mathematical project-scheduling tools.

As Information Technology matured in the latter half of the 20th century to become profitable businesses, projects became business models in many companies. Perhaps because those who managed IT projects were technically trained rather than business trained, managing projects was deemed a support function rather than a skill essential to success. Companies valued those who brought project dollars in the door more highly than those responsible for executing the project.  As Harold Kerzner states in his book Advanced Project Management, “For almost 35 years project management was viewed as a process that might be nice to have, but not one that was necessary for the survival of the organization.”

How to improve the perception of value
As a reader of Fear No Project, you know I believe strongly that project management can be done well or done badly. Project management is a profession, and businesses that understand, embrace and reward effective project management will do better in the marketplace than those that do not.  So, how does a project manager or project management organization (PMO) improve the over-all corporate perception of its value?

Think like a CEO when you interact with clients, create status reports, ask for resources, make assignments, establish priorities, create benchmarks, monitor expenses:

  • Consider the value of your project in terms of corporate identity and long-range plans. (To the CEO, projects are rarely ends in themselves, but part of a bigger picture.)
  • Understand the importance of risk identification and risk management
  • Work to get new customers and keep existing customers happy
  • Look for and become an advocate for opportunities
  • Think outcome not process (process is what you do, outcome is the result)
  • Solve problems do not present them. In the words of a CEO Curt Finch, “Be an executor and not an academic.”  If you cannot solve the problem, see “Talk like a CFO”.

Talk like a CFO when you create a project budget, present project status, or identify and solve project issues:

  • Know the status of key project tasks at all times
  • Become comfortable assessing costs of labor, time, success, and failure
  • Talk in dollars made, dollars lost, and dollars at risk
  • Evaluate recommendations in terms of ROI (return on investments) and ROA (return on assets)
  • Project costs forward relative to project budget
  • Present possible negative outcomes that might result from failure to follow correct PM processes in terms of tangible costs and intangible impact on reputation

Sell like a Salesman by using data and specifics. Your instincts and intuition—based on years of project experience—may be correct. However, real data talks louder and with more credibility than opinions, no matter how well founded.

  • Use costs and LOE estimates based on previous project experiences
  • Track project costs in terms of actual versus planned costs
  • Apply predictive scheduling to show dependencies and implications of schedule variations
  • Analyze prior project debriefings or lessons learned. Use summary data to backup recommendations or conclusions
  • When presenting opportunities, quantify the risks and benefits of action and inaction
  • Check out Jimmie White’s post “Selling the Value of Project Management”. He references a new report from PMI that promises specific research data on project management value added.

Act like a politician when you engage executives, stakeholders, customers, and other parts of the organization:

  • Know what is important to the person you are talking to
  • Form a relationship with the influencers and decision makers
  • Learn to negotiate in order to be successful

Alright, so you start behaving and performing with these four attributes – what does this do?  It begins a process that shows a huge difference between the accidental project manager and the dedicated professional.  I have always held the belief that if you want to be something, like a vice president or manager, then start behaving like you are one.  And the best way to show an organization the value of a good project manager is to perform.  I am not saying this will be a quick process, but I will bet that when you and all career PMs start behaving and performing this way, your organization will take notice and have a new respect and value for the profession and role.

So what do you think?  Do you face any of these challenges in your organization?  Please leave me a comment or suggestion on how to address the culture of accidental project management.

Posted in General Project Management, Leadership, management, Professional Development, project management office, Strategy. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

The Accidental Project Manager – Part 1

January 21, 2010 — Bruce McGraw

Did you hear the one about Jim? It seems that the boss called the project team together and asked a volunteer to step forward to manage the project. Instantly, everyone but Jim (because they knew the drill) stepped back. Congratulations Jim, you are now a project manager.

I am appalled when I encounter the attitude toward project management reflected in the above anecdote.  In the minds of some managers and executives, a project manager is just the person who could not do anything else useful. That attitude is so wrong and so damaging to the project, the organization, and the profession. Poorly managed projects lead to cost over-runs, failures to deliver what the client wanted on time (or even at all), and often is a valid reason that developers look for alternate employers. It also undermines the value that good and professional project managers bring to a project.

The Basics
So, thinking of Jim, who became a manager by accident, here are some resources to help get your management feet on the ground. I want you to see project management as an opportunity not a penalty. Project management can be fun. Effective project management makes a difference, period. In addition, being a good project manager can become a career path.

Being a project manager requires knowledge, skills, attitude, and tools. It all may seem a bit overwhelming, so here are some resource suggestions that may help. First, step back and reflect on the project managers who know, have worked with, wish you had worked with, or glad you didn’t. Can you summarize character traits and behaviors that distinguished the good project managers from the bad ones? Try to emulate what you respected.

Learn what being a project manager is about from professionals. One place to start is the Project Management Institute which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the profession of project management (Most of the time – I will cover that one in another post). Membership offers guidance and resources including PM Network, Project Management Journal, and PMI Today. But mostly it is the PM Body of Knowledge that they have nurtured that gives the practitioners something to guide the profession.  There are many other valuable resources available and I have listed some of my favorite project management blogs and websites in a past post – Bruce’s Favorites.

Scott Berkun, one of my favorite bloggers, posted an interesting take on this conundrum of project management as a profession and not just a glorified administrator in his thought piece, Why Project Managers Get No Respect. Scott suggests that to gain respect for project management, PMs should focus on achieving and communicating outcomes. The process minutiae are what you know has to be done to achieve the desired outcome. However, the ability to predictably produce desired outcomes is what differentiates a professional project manager from an accidental one.  

What about project management tools?
Professional project managers know the status of their project, they create schedules and assignments that make sense, they know when trouble is on the horizon, they solve problems, and they keep stakeholders informed. Your basic PM tools must cover scheduling, budgeting, communication.  Looking back over previous posts at Fear No Project, here are three that focus on the tools and techniques professional project managers use.

Predictive Scheduling

Collaboration Tools for Virtual Project Teams

Why Projects Fail

Next week, I will look at how to make project management and project managers valued positions in your organization. Meanwhile, any comments or suggestions are encouraged.

Posted in management, pm, Professional Development, Tools. Tags: , . 5 Comments »

Project Management and Social Networking

January 15, 2010 — Bruce McGraw

Dr. Karen McGraw, founder and CEO of Cognitive Technologies, recently published a very thoughtful article for project managers in PM World called, “The Social Project Team: Using Social Collaboration & Networking to Enhance Project Success”. In the article, she addressed:

  • Facilitating informal learning through collaboration and social networking. Did you know that 75 percent of corporate learning and training is informal?
  • Making everyone on the team a thought leader by taking advantage of simple, open, and honest collaborative conversations.
  • Improving information access with tools that support of group working environment such as Microsoft SharePoint.

The social networking tickler in her article got me to thinking about how social media services can help build a sense of community and the willingness to collaborate that includes and extends beyond a single project. The operative word here is community. A community is more than a group of people that jointly inhabit a locale or serve a project.

Communities share experiences, know other community members, and work cooperatively to achieve objectives. To stretch a metaphor, just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to execute a project and business successfully. Judicious use of social networking can further the goal of building a project community.

Why Facebook
Actually, I am not recommending Facebook, per se.  It is just one of many social networking sites. However, Facebook is the most popular with over 300M users and many people are already familiar with the setup, on-line applications, and site etiquette.

The characteristics of Facebook that deserve consideration in building a project community include the requirement to limit updates to 420 characters—this is not the place for long, time-consuming diatribes. It is easy to share links, photos, screen shots and movies. Moreover, Facebook’s connectivity supports mobile phones, laptops, and desk computers.

Your project can be a group on Facebook. A group is by-invitation-only. Therefore, you can limit access to those stakeholders that need and want to share updates and information. Your group may include people outside your direct purview such as users, consultants, suppliers, and other departments within the organization. All members of a group have the ability to contribute content to the Group’s wall.

Facebook’s visual organization has lots of white space, color cues, and pictures that support rapid scanning of who, what, and why. Group members can quickly check project updates, event information, questions, and comments.

Potential Benefits of a Social Media Project Group

  • Share information outside the established organization hierarchy
  • Give employees a chance to have input on something they might otherwise not have. For example, “Does anyone have an idea for a facility to celebrate the delivery of Phase I?”
  • Provide an opportunity to get to know project members as people—here is a chance to share accomplishments or interests not directly related to project tasks. For example:
    • XYZ Corporation CEO was nominated for a Crunchie
    • Karen’s book made Amazon’s top 25 books on project management
    • Son Johnny’s varsity soccer team won the state title
    • Need help with school science project on hydroponics
  • Take advantage of the informal style to share bits of information that may not make it into formal project or organization communiqués.
  • Improve morale and positively influence retention through the sense of community that results from sharing on a social media site.

Getting Started
Before rushing to implement social media in support of your organizational projects, first take a deep breath and focus a couple of guidelines suggested by William Azaroff in a classic blog article “Key Success Factors for Social Media”:

  • Identify your goals and critical success metrics. What are you really trying to achieve? Can you measure it? How when you know you have succeeded?
  • Create a set of community guidelines. This includes the “do’s and don’ts for participating. Here are a few of mine:
    • Never, ever, post anything on a social media site that you would not say directly to anyone who might read it or be willing to be questioned about on 60 Minutes.
    • Do not use a social media site as a replacement for formal project or organization communication.
    • Be careful about sharing any information that might be proprietary to the organization. Even though the Group has limited access, accidents happen.
    • Do separate fact from opinion.
    • Always follow basic rules of civility.
  • Appoint a moderator and ensure you have good moderation capabilities.  Don’t just set it up and “leave it.” Moderators encourage communication among members, post interesting discussion questions, present a problem that needs to be solved quickly, and help keep the postings calm (no virtual “yelling,” please).

I know that some organizations discourage, limit or even completely ban visiting social media sites during official work hours—abuse can happen. However, I think there is a place for social networking to help create group cohesiveness and a sense community. As Bob Larrivee notes in his LinkedIn blog, “effective use of collaboration [and social media] tools requires a cultural mindset and managerial support that fosters one to be open and share information and knowledge.”  This means that as organizations we must first take the time to understand what project collaboration and community mean to us in terms of how our projects and organizations plan to use it.

Please share your thoughts and experience in using social networks on your projects via comments.

Posted in Collaboration, General Project Management, management, Tools. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Project Team Member Development

January 10, 2010 — Bruce McGraw

Happy New Year!  I have taken some time off during the transition to 2010 and hope you have been able to take some time with your family and friends also.  I want to continue my discussion on careers and share the 3rd in the series on Career development.

One of the most rewarding aspects of a project manager’s job can be team member development. Helping and watching individuals grow and mature is sometimes our greatest accomplishment.  It can also be trivial and useless if not taken seriously. Which side of the coin you reside on depends on how you do it and the attitude you bring to the process. In my experience, the best PM’s are committed to developing team members because it improves the individual, the team, and the organization.

What is Team Member Development?
Team member development has two parts. The first is helping an individual become a more effective contributor to a project. The second is helping the individual achieve personal career goals while furthering organizational goals.

New project managers often get their first exposure to thinking about team member’s career development when they are involved in personnel reviews – you know that activity that is part of human resource management. The evaluation process includes rating the employee’s skills and performance against an idealized standard. Any skill or behavior considered less than acceptable or only “good” points to areas for team member development.

Helping an employee achieve longer-term goals requires understanding what the employee desires as well as seeing how his potential can be shaped into skills required by the organization. The formal performance review may serve as a catalyst for a project manager to think about the career development of team members. However, it should not be the only time. Team member development must be an ongoing process that effects assignments, training, and feedback.

For example, let us say that there is a project task to evaluate new software testing tools. It may be tempting to give that assignment to the lead testing engineer or a senior developer who the PM knows can do the task quickly and correctly. A no-brainer, huh?

Alternatively, consider the task assignment from the perspective of team member development. In that case, a PM may assign the task to a less senior team member who could achieve the same useful result, perhaps a bit more slowly, while learning skills that would be useful to him and the organization in the future. Make no mistake, in this scenario the PM takes a risk on an untried performer and may need to provide more support or coaching to get the job done than going with a senior staff member. However, that task will still be done and the PM may find that the developing employee took the software evaluation more seriously and tried harder because she viewed the assignment as an opportunity, not just another task.

Why is Team Member Development a PM Task?
Project managers are well positioned to foster the development of team members. They know individual capabilities, work attitudes, and skill gaps through frequent direct contact and observation. They know the skills needed because of their project planning responsibility. In addition, project managers have a broader view than team members of corporate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats possibly because of the vision and planning meetings they are required to attend. Here are a few ways a PM can positively influence team member development:

  1. Make assignments designed to build skills through experience and opportunities to work closely with seasoned professionals.
  2. Ensure that in house or external training is consistent with career goals as well as project requirements
  3. Use one-on-one feedback meetings to help employees make an honest assessment of their skills and improve understanding of the skills needed in current and potential positions
  4. Include career planning in performance reviews and create a career development plan with each individual
  5. Offer development opportunities such as rotating work assignments, cross training, or special projects that have wide corporate interest
  6. Make sure the employee knows about company training and educational assistance programs.
  7. Provide suggestions on courses or seminars that you found useful
  8. Work cooperatively with other project and program managers to recommend individuals for assignments that offer advancement opportunities or learning experience even if that means you will have to fill the project gap

Project managers who do team member development successfully (and enjoy it) are often those who were coached and mentored in their own career by senior managers with a vision of what their future could be. They appreciate the guidance, role modeling, and support they received in their career development and want to be part of helping others achieve.

Hope this gives you some good tips on the role of assisting in team member development.

 

Posted in Best Practice, Professional Development. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »
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