After my post on Friday about building a team, the folks at Steelray Software sent me a link to a great blog post covering the subject of teams, and the different personalities in them. You really should go and read Why That Urge to Scream is Totally Valid.

So thanks to Steelray for sending me that link on Twitter. (Hey, don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter too!)

Don’t forget to send me your tips on building a team!

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In this video, Alain de Botton talks about a different way of looking at success. It’s a good video, Alain is a witty and amusing speaker. He got me thinking about this blog, and whether it has been successful.

It’s been eight months since I started this blog, and seven since I really threw myself into it at the start of the year. Over that time, I’ve produced almost 100 posts. But has the whole process been a success?

As project managers, it’s too easy for us to get bogged down in one definition of success - the same we use when we are dealing with projects. Did it deliver to requirements, was it on time, and so on.

But, of course, this blog isn’t really a project - for a start, it doesn’t have an end-date! I also didn’t set myself goals when I started it, other than writing about project management.

So when it comes to deciding whether it has been a success, it has to be a personal and relative judgement, not an objective one. And looked at that way, I’m pretty happy. I have indeed been writing about project management, and I like to think my writing has been getting better. There are now a considerable number of people who read the blog, and I thank each of you.

More importantly than the numbers and the writing, though, is that working on the blog has forced me to take the time and give myself the space to think more deeply about project management, and about what it means to be a project manager. I’ve clarified my own feelings on what is important, how we should handle teams and managers, and how to be more successful in our projects.

I’ve also had my eyes opened to new ways of sharing my passion for and knowledge about project management. I’m currently working on another project (this one really is a project!) to help me do this, and will be able to talk about this more soon.

I’ve also been lucky enough to share in a whole world of online project management blogging, tips, advice, podcasts, information and community. Project management can sometimes get lonely, and it’s good to remember we are all part of a global community of professionals.

So has it been a success? Personally, yes, it has. I’ve got a lot out of it, and I hope you have got something out of it too!

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So, last Friday I asked “What’s the point of project managers?” Not surprisingly, as a project manager myself, I think project managers are very useful! But I wanted to throw it open to you guys, and see what reasons you have for the importance of project managers. And you didn’t let me down, especially on LinkedIn!

John Burke says:
“Having someone trying to manage a project alongside the day job has never worked successfully wherever I’ve seen it tried. The individuals, when stretched with ever increasing workloads, have always reverted to completing day job tasks first at the expense of the project”

Dveirel Kovalsky says:
“Project managers contribute to the Knowledge Management and ‘wisdom’ of the company as an asset.”

Mahesh Subramaniam says:
“It is only the project manager whose sole aim is to keep an eye on the deliverables and align the individual objectives towards the common goal of delivering the business product that represents more or less the vision of all interested parties on the project.”

Karl Geppert says:
“The project manager is the valve between the business and the project team. They are needed to focus the whole project team on the business outcome ensure that this is planned, scheduled and delivered on targeted date and content.”

Tom Andries says:
“What’s the point of an architect? What’s the point of a clown? What’s the point of a designer?
With each profession are associated a set of skills that an individual tries to embody and practice.”

Mark Parrish says:
“Since most people got into PM as a SME, I think that they could do it. If people had the time and training.”

As for me, in common with many of these comments, I believe that a full-time project manager provides much more value above a part-time one than he costs. Yes, as Mark Parrish says, with training, the tools we use, the processes we follow, these can be learned, but that doesn’t make you a project manager.

Ultimately, a project manager needs to manage the project well, and for most of us this means, wherever possible, making sure the project is completed in a successful manner. And that takes more than pieces of paper.

Imagine the all too familiar situation that one of the project tasks is stalled, because the person working on it needs information from someone else in the organisation – information that just isn’t forthcoming. The monitoring of the project you have been doing means you have become aware of this problem, and that means you need to take steps to solve it. So what do you do? Well, you go to where the information is supposed to be coming from, and you talk to them, you smooth things over, you negotiate with them to get the information the project needs delivered as soon as possible.

These are the kind of soft skills you must have. You have to be a manager, laying down the law to team members who aren’t pulling their weight – and supporting them to solve whatever is stopping them. You have to be a negotiator, making sure suppliers, internal and external, deliver what the project needs when it needs it. You have to be a politician, talking to senior managers to make sure the staff the project needs are available at the right time. You need to be an advisor, giving the Executive the information he needs to make decisions about the project.

In short, you need to be a problem solver. You need to be able to handle any of the situations project management can throw at you. Some of this can be improved by training. A lot more of it can be improved through experience. But a lot of it is down to your own personal inclinations. Regardless of the type of projects you do, regardless of the industry area, you are going to have to be good at dealing with people. You could be working on the most high-tech space-age wonder gadgets, but it will still be people that will cause your biggest problems – and give you your greatest successes.

To be this kind of person usually takes: time, to gain the bitter experience; effort, to learn the tools, techniques and processes; and the right personality, one that enjoys solving these types of problems.

Now, that’s not to say that a member of the team couldn’t do these things, and be good at them. But the skills that make someone, say, a good programmer, aren’t necessarily the same skills that would make a good project manager. And besides, wouldn’t you rather have your good programmers spending their time actually programming, instead of project managing?

I’ll leave you with the most poetic of the comments received, from Eugenio Magnone:
“Scattered bright and colorful pebbles do not create a mosaic.”

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Seriously, what’s the point? Note that I’m not asking what the point of project management is - any project needs project management of some sort. But what is the point of having a dedicated project manager?

Think about it. What if you just gave, for example, your lead programmer enough time to do some project management as well as coding? Wouldn’t that work just as well? After all, he’d be closer to the work, he’d have a good idea of how well it was progressing, and he’d know exactly what technical difficulties are cropping up - and how tough they are to solve.

Or what about an infrastructure upgrade. Why not trust the ICT manager to handle the negotiations with suppliers, and chase them up to ensure delivery? Couldn’t she better allocate work to her team than a project manager?

There’s actually a lot of sense in this view. Detailed knowledge of the subject of the project can be a great advantage, and naturally the people doing the work have a lot of this knowledge! If they can be given the time and training in project management, why not do this?

Now, naturally as a project manager I am not fully convinced by this argument! But this means I believe project managers provide benefits above and beyond what a subject matter expert could. I can think of a few, but I’m interested to hear what you think. So, how about it? What do full-time project managers provide to a project that a part-timer can’t?

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40 years ago, man walked on the moon for the first time. This was an incredible achievement, the culmination of an immense project. This project had a lot of advantages:

• Clear objective - to send a man to the moon, and bring him back again
• Clear quality requirements - keep them alive
• Strong support from senior stakeholders - Presidential support
• Extensive funding - between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (or approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars)

But, of course, the project had an awful lot of difficulties too. Not only were they trying to do something never done before, but they also had a clear and public deadline - the end of the decade. It took determination, hard work, acts of genius and even a bit of luck to get there. And, of course, good project management!

The other thing the project had going for it, though, was a healthy attitude to risk. The project was trying to do something incredible, and the people involved, most especially the astronauts, accepted that there was a genuine risk they could lose their lives. But they believed that the risk was low enough, and the prize was great enough, that it was a risk worth taking.

As we look back at the achievements of the Apollo programme, it’s also worth looking forward, to see where we want to get to now, and how we want to do it. There is talk of establishing a permanent base on the moon. This presents all sorts of engineering challenges, and is an interesting proposition.

But to me, the real excitement comes at the thought of sending a man to another planet, of getting completely out of our little Earth-Moon gravity well. Putting humans on Mars would be a herculean task, a task to truly challenge the science and technology of our era. The biggest challenge, though, seems to be cultivating a mindset that accepts the ultimate risk, that helps all of us again believe that some things are worth risking everything for.

I hope you’ll forgive my self-indulgence in writing this post, but sending humans to another planet is important to me. Yes, for the scientific knowledge we would gain. Yes, for the chance of spreading humanity that little bit wider in this universe. But most of all, for the adventure, because I believe seeking out this kind of adventure is part of what it means to be human. Here’s hoping it’s not another 40 years before we make another giant leap for mankind.

(Image courtesy of dcysurfer. Some rights reserved.)

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In this video, the lead author of the 2009 refresh of PRINCE2, Andy Murray, talks us through the new Directing guide for PRINCE2. This guide is aimed at project board / Executive level project members.

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Tom Wujec talks about how we understand ideas. He discusses the different ways our brain interprets what we see around us, and how this builds up into a mental map of what is happening.

This is a good video, but what I found particularly interesting was the look at how Autodesk work to create strategic plans. They make sure they get everyone involved, on their feet, and putting information up on the wall. This is a great way of enabling everyone to see how they fit into the big picture, and to understand the way it all hangs together.

This is similar to the technique I use when building up a project plan and schedule. Get the team involved, use their expertise, and put the information up on the wall, so everyone can see. I wrote about it a little in What happens now? - Scheduling a project.

Enjoy the video!

(From TED.)

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If you look at pretty much any contract job board online, you’ll see an awful lot of the project management roles call for someone with the ability to ‘handle senior stakeholders’.  I think this is a pretty revealing request in a job advert.

For a start, while I don’t deny this should be part of any project manager’s job, the main work of handling senior stakeholders should be done by the Executive.  This is, after all, part of why they are in position - not only to give authorisation for the project to go ahead, but to gain support from senior stakeholders.

When I see a job advert asking for someone who can ‘handle’ senior stakeholders, it makes me think that the organisation as a whole probably doesn’t really embrace project management.  The Executive probably doesn’t understand, or doesn’t carry out, the responsibilities their role brings.  Project managers are probably engaged in a perpetual struggle to get support for their projects.

Unfortunately, this type of organisation isn’t unusual.  The situation described above is one I have often gone into as a contract project manager.  Part of me even kind of enjoys it - even though it certainly makes life more difficult.  But it does give an opportunity to transfer some project management knowledge to the organisation as a whole, and hopefully leave them in a stronger position for the next project!

What about you?  Have you come across this problem?

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The folks at Best Management Practice have now put up the footage from the PRINCE2:2009 launch event. Enjoy!

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There are three broad types of project manager - the Courier, the Facilitator, and the Thinker.

The Courier is, I am afraid, the worst type of manager.  He doesn’t actually add value to his team, and in fact often gets in the way.  But what does he do?

Well, the Courier just acts as the communication point between the project team and the senior management.  But he adds no value to that communication.  For example, if senior management puts pressure on him to deliver the project sooner, all he will do is pass the message on.  If he then gets pressure back from the team that what he is asking for just isn’t possible, he just passes that information back to the senior management.

In other words, he doesn’t make a decision.  When he is pressured from above, he doesn’t try and negotiate to get, say, more resources to enable a shorter timescale.  When he is pressured from below, he doesn’t try to explore different options with the team.

The Courier could be replaced by a telephone - it would be quicker, and cheaper.

The Facilitator is a big step up from the Courier.  While he may still sometimes get in the way, in general he is good at helping the team.  How does he do this?

The Facilitator is great at solving problems.  When an issue hits the project, he works with the team to find a solution, and implements it.  For example, if a supplier falls behind, he will work with the team to see how the tasks can be juggled to lessen the impact.  He would also go to the supplier and either help or chide them along.

In other words, he is a fire-fighter.  When problems crop up, he is excellent at solving them - but not so good at avoiding them in the first place.

The Facilitator tends to be appreciated by his team, and by management, but they sometimes wonder if life shouldn’t be a little less stressful.

The Thinker is another step up from the Facilitator.  He doesn’t seem to swoop in and solve as many problems as the Facilitator, but oddly there don’t seem to be as many problems either.  Why is that?

The Thinker spends considerable time thinking about the project.  He works with his team to identify potential problems, and also uses his own experience to identify possible issues.  Then he works to prevent these issues occurring.  For example, if he knows from previous experience that procurement takes longer than it should, then he will start that process earlier.

In other words, he removes problems before anyone else sees them.  He uses the project management tools, such as the project plan, the work breakdown structure, and lessons learned from previous projects, to gain foresight of the project.  He uses this foresight to make the whole process smoother.

The Thinker tends to be seen as unnecessary by his team, and by senior management - until they don’t have him anymore.

Of course, these are just the broad types, there are many sub-types for each one.  Do you know of some more?

(Image courtesy of gerlos. Some rights reserved.)

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