Here’s a selection of project management articles I’ve been reading over the last week. Hope you find them useful!

• Project Manager By Choice or Default? - PM Hut
  

  The reasons for assigning a project manager role to an individual from within an organization are sound ones – knowledge of the company, its products and people should by no means be underestimated. But whether that person has the necessary skills to lead a project is not always taken into account and there can be just as many problems with promoting internally as in hiring an unknown, but experienced, person from a different organization who has specifically chosen this profession.

• Making Decisions Like Sherlock Holmes - Herding Cats
  

  Just as in The Sign of Four, Holmes makes use of these three powers to solve crimes. A PM can make use the same three powers to make decisions on the project.

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Working in IT project management, I’ve had a lot of experience in building interfaces as part of my projects. But the important ones are nothing to do with the technology.

When you are working on an IT project, it can be too easy to get carried away with the technical possibilities. I have worked with many excellent technical staff, some of whom are more interested in seeing how far they can push the technology than in ‘just’ hitting the requirements.

Often they find it difficult to explain how the new possibilities the technology opens up could be applied in the business. Sometimes they don’t know – your technical staff will not know everything the business needs to do. Sometimes it’s because they aren’t able to explain it in terms that the rest of the business understands.

This is where you as a project manager can help. As well as running the project, you are also a major link between the project and the external environment. You are, in fact, an interface between what is going on inside, and what is going on outside.

For many of the projects I have worked on, an important part of my role has been to explain the technical process to others, and in turn explain business requirements back into technical steps that need to be taken.

The only way to do this is through listening – listening to what your technical team is telling you, and listening to what the business, or non-technical members of the team, are telling you. Only by listening can you find out both what is possible, and what is needed.

Interfaces aren’t dumb devices that just parrot what one side says to the other. They also need to do some conversion, some translation, to make sure both sides understand each other clearly.

So remember, listen carefully, understand what is being said, and make sure you help others understand too.

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Elizabeth Harrin has an interesting post up at A Girl’s Guide to Project Management called Use your experts. Despite my general lack of understanding of the importance of a good haircut (as anyone who has seen me recently can confirm…) I was interested by the idea of a project manager as someone who knows the right people to ask.

I’m fully on board with this idea, as I think a good project manager has a set of skills around helping people to work together, recognising when expertise is needed, and bringing in advice when necessary.

For those of us looking for contracts, though, we’re seeing a different trend among recruiters. While there has always been a bias towards hiring project managers who have already worked in a specific industry for that specific industry, it seems to me that this is getting worse.

Often I am seeing contracts coming up advertised as project manager positions which seem to be something else. Many of them are starting to really be adverts for a subject matter expert, with a bit of project management thrown in on the side. For example, I recently looked at a position which was asking for someone who could carry out a technical analysis, complete a full network design, and be able to go hands on to deliver it, dealing with all the technical issues along the way. The project management of this was really an afterthought, tacked on to the role.

Now, it’s understandable, with the constraints on funding in all businesses, for businesses to be trying to get this kind of ‘two for one’ type of individual. Many project managers, having come from a background where they did this work before moving onto project management, may indeed be able to fill this kind of role.

Is this a trend away from the idea of a ‘generalist’ project manager, I wonder? Is project management coming to be seen as a set of ancillary skills, something which can be of support in your usual role, rather than a role in itself?

What do you think? Are you an expert who does project management, or a project management expert?

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Here’s a selection of project management articles I’ve been reading over the last week. Hope you find them useful!

• I Just Want Everyone To Be Happy! – PM Hut
  

  It may seen at times that the success of the project is measured by the percentage of “smiley faces” among the project participants. However, project managers know that there are often unpopular decisions that must be made for the overall good of the project. While no project manager lasts long if everyone is always unhappy, there are times when s/he may have to make some people temporarily unhappy.

• Finding the Reasons for a Project – Herding Cats
  

  If anyone is looking for one killer answer to why we need Project Managers in IT or software development, this is it. Who manages the demand? Who manages the capacity?

• An Approach For Wording Risks – Better Projects
  

  Sometimes a risk is expressed as just a couple of words, which although may speak volumes to its author, don’t always give enough information to all relevant project stakeholders – for example, ‘content migration’ or ‘server load’ or ‘key resources unavailable’ are some risks I have seen recently documented. The ambiguous language can become a problem when it comes time to rate the risk and to devise mitigation strategies.

• The Need for Definition in Ethical Project Management – The Art Of Project Management
  

  Is it possible that company leaders are causing ethical dilemmas by not really understanding philosophical aspects of ethics? The importance of ethical business practices are being stressed, as are the findings that ethical leaders tend to be more successful. However, leaders don’t seem to be spending enough time stressing the simple truth that what is ethical to one stakeholder may not be ethical to the next.

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I read an interesting blog post the other day, called How Consensus Decision-Making Creates Shared Direction in a Team. The gist of the article is that for a team to be highly energised and committed to their work, they need to share a sense of direction.

Now, I have to say that I broadly agree with that. When working with a project team, one of the most important things you can do to build that team spirit, and the commitment to work through the problems that will inevitably arise, is making sure everyone knows the end goal, and wants to achieve it.

But I don’t think it is possible to get 100% consensus on every decision, every time. Sometimes it may just be that there isn’t time to go through all the other options to come to the full consensus. This is unfortunate, and if at all possible you should seek to make the time.

Other times, though, it will be because the people in your team also have competing and conflicting aims. The nature of a project team means you are likely to have people from many different areas of the organisation, and some of their aims may be different to the aim of the project.

For example, I recently worked on a project to completely change the way printing was handled across an organisation. The aim of the project was, ultimately, to save the organisation money, by eliminating excess capacity, and expensive processes used. One of the areas of excess capacity was in an internal print unit.

Now, the person who lead the team responsible for the internal print unit had, not unnaturally, a desire to protect her team from any possible cost-savings, and, ultimately, from possible redundancies. This is a perfectly natural desire for a manager who has worked with their team for many years – but it was at odds with the aim of the project.

One way of dealing with this would be to simply exclude that person from the team – if they have a competing goal, it makes no sense for them to be involved, right? But that person was also a source of valuable information about the current situation, the demand they currently deal with, and so forth. For the project to be a success, that information was needed and so, in at least some way, they needed to be part of the team.

So if exclusion is not an option, and you can’t reach consensus on the way forward, what do you do?

Well, then someone has to be the bad guy. Someone has to make the decision about what is the right way forward for the project. That means taking account of concerns about other areas, certainly, but it also means having to make a decision that some in the team may disagree with.

Of course, this is an awful situation to be in for the dissenting member of the team, and it’s important you understand that. But the project is working to provide a benefit to the organisation as a whole, and sometimes that may mean certain parts of that organisation suffer. Someone needs to make the decision to move forward.

It’s not nice, it’s not fun, and I hope it’s not just a desire for alpha male behaviour coming through, but sometimes you have to be the bad guy – and be willing to take the fallout from that.

Technorati Tags: project management, project management blog, project management techniques

Times are tough for everyone out there at the moment. The economies of Europe and the US are slowing down again, and there are real fears that they could dip back down into recession. So it’s only natural that businesses are looking to cut their costs – but sometimes they are making the wasteful saving of doing without good project management.

I’m hearing of companies who are running projects to try to save money, but starting themselves off on the wrong foot by not putting in place adequate project management. Projects designed to reduce costs, ranging from outsourcing entire IT departments to staff reduction work, are being begun, but there is a reluctance to bring in the necessary project management expertise. This can either mean internal project management resource is being overstretched, or someone with little to no experience is asked to make do as best they can.

The problem with this is that effective project management will actually save these companies money. Think about it – a good project manager will anticipate problems, and avoid or solve them. A good project manager will have planned well, so there isn’t any wasted time waiting for something else to be done before work can continue.

Too often the perception is that project management is a mostly unnecessary overhead, because it is all too difficult to demonstrate the ways we have reduced timescales, or avoided problem – some senior managers seem to think a problem avoided is one that never really existed.

By cutting project management, companies are making problems more likely to occur – and any delay they cause is a cost. I worked on a project recently that would, when it was implemented, start saving the organisation thousands of pounds a week – or to put it another way, the company was currently losing thousands of pounds a week. That means any delay quickly starts to cost far more than a project manager would!

I understand the temptation that senior managers may feel to cut the upfront cost they can see, but it is something we as project managers need to fight against – because down the line, problems will crop up which cost more than the solution of good project management does.

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Here’s a selection of project management articles I’ve been reading over the last week. Hope you find them useful!

• A Manager’s Guide to Building a Relationship with the Team – PMHut
• My Story: Working Smarter; Not Harder – Project Smart
• Plans Are Meant To Be Changed – Herding Cats
• Will Project Management Software Solve the Project Failure Problem? – A Girl’s Guide To Project Management
• Agile? Waterfall? CMMI? EVM? All of Them and More! – Software Project Management
• The Cult of Done Manifesto – Better Projects

Technorati Tags: project management, project management blog, project management resource

We all want to have successful projects. But what do we mean by successful? It’s not just a matter of hitting our milestones, on time and on budget. It’s also about making sure that the project goals are of value to the organisation we are working for.

At the start of every project, you will produce, or help produce, a document that sets out what success looks like, the business case. That means you need to be able to examine the situation the organisation is in, and identify what problem the project will solve.

But this work doesn’t just stop there – while you may be working away on your project just fine, there will be other things happening in the world! It’s important that you remember to revisit the business case often, to check that the project is still meeting a need.

Remember, a project that is managed perfectly won’t necessarily be a success. Don’t forget to look up now and then, and take a look at the wider picture. A successful project isn’t about perfect documentation, it’s about delivering something that benefits your organisation.

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Project management is about creating change. All projects invole some sort of change, a change that will be beneficial to the organisation running the project. That’s why we have to be comfortable with change.

Embracing change is one of the ways that project management is different from other sorts of management. In a business as usual situation, management is supposed to keep things the same. Unleashing change there can be dangerous and chaotic.

Project management, though, is about controlling that change, as much as we can. We work to channel the change in useful ways, to make sure it doesn’t descend into chaos. But the thing about change is it will always lead to some unexpected consequences.

That means we need to be relaxed about facing those consequences. Sometimes, they will be issues that need to be solved, and solved quickly, to keep the project on track. But other times they will be opportunities instead, and we need to be flexible enough to recognise them, and divert the project to take advantage of them.

We are always dealing with change. And that’s one of the best things about project management – because it means we’re making a difference.

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Recently, I wrote about a preliminary study that had been done attempting to compare the value of various project management qualifications. I pointed out that, at least in part, it seemed to comparing apples with oranges, in that one qualification considered (PRINCE2) doesn’t try to sell itself as a general project management qualification, but specifically as a qualification in implementing one particular methodology.

But there is a wider issue here. The explicit statement was made that those qualifications which require longer levels of experience before being awarded were inherently better than others. I think the important point to consider is: better for whom?

Some of the bodies involved with project management at the moment are perfectly clear that they are trying to professionalise the career. When I say this, I am trying to use the precise meaning of professionalisation. This is not a matter of taking pride in your work, of always trying to do the best you can. No, this is about defining a set of formal requirements that someone must meet before they can even become a project manager. It is, in effect, an attempt to raise the barriers for entry into the profession considerably.

On the one hand, this is fantastic news for project managers who meet these requirements. By raising barriers to entry, they naturally decrease the total amount of people considered project managers. By decreasing the supply of project managers, it is likely, almost inevitable in fact, that the average salary of project managers will rise. I make no bones about it, professionalisation of a career is very good news financially for people in that career.

But the flip-side of this is that there are costs to the rest of society for doing this. Traditionally, these costs have been tolerated and accepted because society also gains a benefit. Let’s consider some of the traditional professions. Medicine is highly professionalised, allowing doctors to charge more, but that is accepted because the cost of having amateur medics running around was very high. The law is professional, because there needs to be a defined set of rules, and people who can interpret these rules, to allow society to function effectively.

Over time, as society has become more complex, more and more careers have professionalised. Accountancy, architecture, engineering, dentistry, and so on, become professions. It is possible to point at all of these and see how the benefits to society have developed, meaning the higher financial costs are accepted. Importantly, it is also possible to see how there were few external factors, other than the drive from within those careers, for regulation, of which professionalisation is one. Often, in fact, there is a pressure against professionalisation, and regulation, because the upfront costs would be lower (as generally people are poor at taking into account the future costs of, for example, a poorly engineered bridge).

We can see, then, that professionalisation can be seen as a deal between a particular career and society – if society is willing to pay more, they will, overall get a better service, to the benefit of all.

But, importantly, in those cases there were no other clear and immediate external pressures to ensure quality. Yes, poor medicine will cause problems, but often only after a significant time has passed. The punishment for accepting poorer work came much later than the reward of getting a cheaper deal.

With project management, however, I am not sure whether this holds. Often, poor project management will lead to a relatively quick poor result, as the project fails, or costs rise dramatically. Organisations that use project management already have a significant incentive to ensure good project management, because the cost of poor project management is quickly felt.

What this means, then, is that there is already a significant pressure on project management to be good, and effective. Is, therefore, a move towards full professionalisation something that would be welcomed by the rest of society – if society is already paying for good project management, because it is in their interests, would they really want to pay even more as the career raises the barriers to entry through professionalisation?

I’m not saying here that the professionalisation of project management is a bad thing. I am saying it needs to be considered. Some of the best project managers I have met are people who never expected to start out on that career path, but instead, after a period of years or decades doing something else, they were able to enter the career, bringing fresh thinking, and new techniques, which ultimately end up enriching all of project management. Would they still have done that if there was a major barrier for entry later in their career? How many people do you know who train to become a doctor in their forties?

Professionalisation would have benefits to the project management career, but we’d be foolish to think there weren’t also costs. Excluding effective people from outside is a cost. Even the higher salaries could be a cost, if they simply turn some businesses away from innovating with new projects.

What we as project managers have to do is make sure we go into this with open eyes. And if professionalisation is a path the career wants to go down (and, frankly, once the process has begun, I don’t think it could be stopped even if a significant number wanted it to) we need to remember that this is a deal between us and society. That means we need to be better at showing what the benefits of project management, and of people experienced in it, are, not only to the business we are directly working for, but to wider society.

In essence, much as professions such as medicine and the law have a wider duty to the public good, project management would need to as well. That means a clear formulation of what that duty is would need to be distilled, and that, when asked to do something that goes against it, we would have to be willing to say no.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what that formulation would look like. I’m open to suggestions.

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