Category Archives for 3=Execution

"Why am I still having problems with small projects?

This plaintive question is one I'm asked from time to time. I'd like to give a few brief reasons why project managers struggle with small projects.

Pitfalls of Small Projects

1. You think these projects are simple. In general, smaller projects have less risk. However, small projects may have a complex set of variables.

Be sure to analyze the complexity of the project. For example, you may engage your team to draw a context diagram and/or data flow diagrams early in the project. This exercise allows the team to understand the context of the project.

2. You don't have a project charter. Project managers are assigned projects at the last minute with a tight deadline. Rather than discussing the project with stakeholders and documenting the business case, problems, goals, and deliverables, the project manager hits the ground running. Later, stakeholders demand costly changes.

Make it a priority to engage your key stakeholders and develop a project charter. This exercise will provide a good foundation and reduce the changes later in the project. For smaller projects, the project manager should be able to create a charter in short order.

3. You are applying the wrong level of rigor. I see two extremes: First, project managers do not follow any methodology. 

Second, project managers undertake numerous tasks usually performed for large, complex projects.

Keep it simple. Determine the steps you plan to take and develop the planning documents that will provide real value. Execute and stay with the plan.

5. Your team has been poorly staffed. These projects often get the leftover resources. Any warm body will do or will it?

For all projects, define the required knowledge and skills. Seek to staff the project team accordingly.

6. You are not performing project risk management. Yes, smaller projects typically have less risk. This does not mean there are zero risks.

Risk management should not take much time, but be sure to integrate risk management in your project activities. Simple qualitative analysis should be sufficient for evaluating the risks.

7. You are not performing change management. A stakeholder asks for a change in the scope. It's not a big change. You say okay.

Users request additional changes over time. The cumulative effect becomes significant.

Decide up front how you will manage, track, and report changes. When is a change order required? Who has to approve it? 

The success of a project manager largely lies in the individual’s ability to communicate. Some project managers have great oratory skills but don’t ask the right questions at the right time.

Here are some key questions for each of the project management process groups. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list; just some questions to get you thinking. Neither will you need to ask all of these questions for every project.

Keep in mind, the project process groups are seldom sequential, one-time events; they are overlapping activities that occur throughout the project.

Initiating Process Group

1. Why are we doing this project?
2. Is your project sponsor fully engaged and on board?
3. What is the authority level of the project manager?
4. What do we wish to accomplish?
5. What are the products and services we wish to deliver?
6. What are the budget constraints?
7. What are the schedule constraints?
8. What assumptions are being made?
9. Who will be impacted? Which stakeholders have the greatest interest and power?
10. Who will comprise the project team?
11. What are the most significant risks?
12. How will we know if the project was successful?

Most of us have personal and career goals. Our ability to achieve those goals is dependent on our risk management skills, that is our ability to manage opportunities and threats. We seek to make good things happen and to eliminate or reduce the bad things.

Through the years, I have captured my favorite quotes related to the art and science of risk management. I hope you enjoy the insights as well as the humor.

1. "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." —NELSON MANDELA, SOUTH AFRICAN STATESMAN

2. "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." —THOMAS JEFFERSON, U.S. PRESIDENT

3. “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.” —EARL NIGHTINGALE, MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER AND AUTHOR

4. “A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses those skills to accomplish his goals.” —LARRY BIRD, NBA PLAYER AND COACH

5. "The world is getting to be such a dangerous place, a man is lucky to get out of it alive." —W.C. FIELDS, COMEDIAN AND MOVIE STAR

6. “There is a myth that people hate change. Not true! What scares them isn’t change, it’s uncertainty. They worry about whether the changes are good or bad. People love change when it involves pleasant surprises. What they fear are the unpleasant ones.” —ALAN MULALLY, CEO OF FORD MOTOR COMPANY

7. “Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.” —WINSTON CHURCHILL, PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

8. “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” —FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, U.S. PRESIDENT

9. "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." —GEORGE S. PATTON, GENERAL IN THE U.S. ARMY

10. “The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster, or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.” —J. PAUL GETTY, ANGLO-AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIST

This is a guest article by Elizabeth Harrin from GirlsGuideToPM.com.

Much of the time, risk management at the beginning of a project looks like getting the team in a room to review the whole project and work out what might be coming that could affect how the project proceeds.

The project manager writes up the discussion in the risk register along with what the team is going to do to avoid or amplify (in the case of positive risk) the risks. As the project progresses, more risks are identified, dutifully added and managed.

What’s happening here is that we’re looking at the work and impacts on the work. This approach to risk management is very task driven. We ask questions like:

• What might prevent us from hitting that milestone on time?
• What might mean we need to ask for a budget increase during this phase?
• What quality problems might we come across that would give the client an issue?
• Who might be a difficult stakeholder on the project?

These are all valid questions. But they miss one crucial area that massively affects everything on the project every day. Us. The project team.

Our skills, ability to work together as a team, or lack thereof, present the biggest chance of success for the project and also the biggest risk.

Here are some examples of how the people on your team make your project inherently more risky.

Do you have problems? Projects running behind schedule? Cycle time for a business process increasing? Sales down? People continuing to live in silos? Let's discuss a simple but powerful tool for solving problems - the Cause and Effect Diagram (alias Fishbone Diagram).

Steps to Create a Cause and Effect Diagram

1. Identify and clarify the problem. State the problem objectively. Ask questions concerning the problem. As Jack Welch said, “Continually expand your definition of the problem, and you expand your view of all the different ways that it can be solved.” Write out the problem or effect on the far-right-hand side of the diagram. Draw a horizontal line (the spine of the fish) to the problem.
2. Identify the cause categories. For example, use the 4 M categories: Machine, Method, Materials, Manpower. Add the categories to the diagram. Draw diagonal lines (bones of the fish) to each category.
3. Brainstorm causes for each category. Add causes to the appropriate category lines.
4. Identify the most significant causes.  Ask the team to identify the most significant causes. Remember the Pareto Principle - 80% of the problem comes from 20% of the causes.
5. Define the risk response plan. What can be done to eliminate or reduce the most significant causal factors? Who will be responsible for taking actions? When are the actions due? 

It's Your Turn

Some Project Management Offices (PMOs) never get off the ground. I've seen others that are started and a year or so later die a slow painful death. So, how can you build a PMO you can be proud of, one that thrives?

Why Are There So Many Troubled PMOs?

No one intends to build an impotent PMO, but it happens. The PMO lacks power and effectiveness. Therefore, people see the PMO as a hindrance, not an enabler.

Click here to discover 40 reasons PMOs fail. Furthermore, I describe how to handle PMO threats—things that may hinder your ability to build a PMO—here.

Let's look at five ways we can improve vitality and provide value to our organization.