When it comes to managing a project, we all know the drill. Phases like planning, objective identification and streamlining project development process are all part of our daily bread, but are there any practices which project managers miss out on? Here are a few unique practices which will spark the interest of every project manager who wants to succeed.

Market and customer research

You’d be surprised to learn how many project managers never bother to find out who is their client. Just like before a job interview, project managers should investigate the organization and prepare the outline of the project that will satisfy their client and perfectly fit their industry expectations.

As a project manager, you’ll need to know where they’re coming from and where they’re headed. This information about history and projected future of client organization will help you to  understand their needs and document crucial customer information. It will grant you more credibility with your client – they’ll be impressed that you’ve done your homework.

Compile project information early on

Before planning your project, you’ll need as much information as you can get. Contact anyone who might dish you some key facts – it can be an account manager, the project sponsor or the owner of the company. Make sure to familiarize yourself with all the requirements, estimates or past project mockups. You’ll need it all to put together a working project schedule.

The power of change management

Stakeholders might change their minds about project deliverables any time. Sometimes business environments change after the project starts, so assumptions powering the project may no longer be valid. Successful project managers realize that the scope or deliverables of the project are never stable.

But changes cannot be accepted – they need to be managed. Project managers are there to make the necessary decisions about which changes to incorporate immediately and which ones can wait. The project manager should control how changes are applied, plan them and allocate appropriate resources accordingly.

The importance of a kickoff session

A proper project kickoff session is a must. Gather all your team and communicate the project plan to them. Set proper expectations, finalize key milestones, be clear about assumptions and create a schedule for the project. This session is crucial for fostering team engagement with the project.

Risk management

Risks can impact the successful outcome of the project. Be it lack of technical skills or delayed hardware delivery, you’ll need to identify main risks and prepare to deal with them. Ideally, you should construct a plan to avoid or mitigate the risks and reduce their impact.

Naturally, it’s impossible to manage all risks – there’s simply way too many of them and not all will have the same impact on the project. Identify the risks, estimate the likelihood of each risk occurring and then consider their impact on the project. Manage risks which bear the highest risk factors. Make sure to keep an eye on them and look for new ones – they really pop out of thin air. Project managers who don’t bother to consider the risks will be usually unprepared to manage them once they occur and so might put the entire project in danger of a failure.

Project management requires quite a few skills and a lot of know-how, but there are certain things which should become the habit of all project managers. All tips listed above will significantly help to improve their chances of success in any industry.

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Why ITIL Can Be Dangerous to Business Relationship Management Health
By Vaughan Merlyn
First, let me be clear—establishing robust Service Management discipline is essential ‘table stakes’ for an IT organization with low supply maturity (i.e., one that is not good at keeping the proverbial ‘lights on and trains running on time.’) If your Business Partners don’t understand […]

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As we draw towards the end of the year and as the holiday season kicks in, you’re likely to find most of your friends or family asking you about the plans you have for this holiday away from your regular job. This gets your mind thinking about travelling, shopping, budgeting for holiday activities and probably even the weather that will be. It is however important to remember that at the end of the year, you are expected to continue with your regular job or take part in different seasonal initiatives.

This means that you have to remain focused on your obligations at work. Here are some relatively simple ways to maintain your focus this November and December.

Don’t Allow Yourself To Be Interrupted In Any Way

Being a holiday season, interruptions are bound to be very many. You’ll be tempted a lot to keep on checking your mail while in the office, to reply mails from maybe your travel companions or to check notifications of retail promotion and flash sales. Yes, it may take just a few minutes of your time, but did you know that recent studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University have proven that such short regular spans of interruptions can significantly cause the decline of the quality of your work output? Well, if you didn’t know, there’s no cause for worry because the studies have also provided a viable solution for this.

Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson, who were part of the study, explained that the individuals who were fore-warned of a possible interruption that actually never happened at all, had a performance improvement of up to 43%, outperforming by far the individuals who were not warned of any possible interruptions. The former, used the expected interruption as a sort of deadline which enabled them to channel all their brain power into the task at hand remaining focused throughout the test study.

This means that, for you to be focused and in-turn be more productive, you have to do two things this holiday. The first being, accepting within yourself the fact that interruptions are bound to be there during this holiday. Secondly, and most importantly, promise yourself not to give into any of them. Set the time to work and time to take a break, then work fast but keenly while looking forward to your set break time only. Any break invitations you get midway should not derail you from focusing on your work.

Take Up Projects That Are Favorable For You

During the holiday season, you and most of your coworkers will be working different schedules. You may find that your shifts or schedules are slated for the days before major holidays such as Christmas or Thanksgiving. At such a time, most of your friends or coworkers will be out of reach. This may seem a very boring time, but if used wisely, can be fun. You could use this time to catch up on the very many mails you hadn’t read or replied. You can also take advantage of this time to focus on some self guided projects because you have all the time to work on them exhaustively.

Always remember that the holiday related activities and projects that you take up, such as socializing with coworkers at a party or retreats with colleagues, are a meaningful part of your work.

Use Your Off Hours Well

It is very important to separate work time from free time. It may seem like a good idea to cut into your free time in order to complete office tasks early, but this is what causes distractions and interruptions in future. This is because of your failure to use your off time to do things that you needed to do outside the office such as shopping, budgeting or planning. They come back to distract you during your office time.

Create a detailed and exhaustive in-office and out of office schedule, allotting adequate time for each of the tasks you need to do. This gives you inner confidence that you have time to do everything eliminating the need for working late or leaving work early to do personal things. The holiday-season-at-work is all about finding the best ways to cope with interruptions and distractions. This way, you’ll be starting off your new year with your head perfectly in the game.

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How Resource Requests Made Me a Thankful PMO Manager
By Kristyn Medeiros
Thanksgiving time always gives me the chance to take a step back and look at all the things that I am grateful for. Of course, I am thankful for family, friends, my health, and all the things that make my world go around. But beyond […]

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The first time I heard about scrum was around 2009. I am usually not an early adaptor because I have seen so many hypes; stuff comes and goes. My suspicion was that Scrum would be one of those hypes. Software development companies suddenly all claimed to be agile and work with scrum. And in many cases this is marketing talk, not operational reality. But a couple of year’s back I decided to dig a bit deeper and found out that scrum is way more than a hype.

In his article ‘Scrum is a major management discovery’, Steve Denning explains the origins of scrum and why it should be applied to the whole company and not only to the software department. In Steve’s words:

“If there was a Nobel Prize for management, and if there was any justice in the world, I believe that the prize would be awarded, among others, to Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn for their contributions to the invention of Scrum.”

At the basis of scrum lies the Agile Manifesto, a set of guidelines to drive team behavior. Steve translates this to broader management in an interesting way:

“If you extract the practices of Scrum from the esoteric vocabulary in which it is expressed for software developers (“sprints”, “burndown charts”, “product owner”, “scrum-master”) it comprises in essence the following core practices:

1. Organize work in short cycles:
2. The management doesn’t interrupt the team during a work cycle.
3. The team reports to the client, not the manager:
4. The team estimates how much time work will take:
5. The team decides how much work it can do in an iteration:
6. The team decides how to do the work in the iteration:
7. The  team measures its own performance:
8. Define work goals before each cycle starts:
9. Define work goals through user stories:
10. Systematically remove impediments:

None of these practices is by itself new. What is new is doing all the practices together in a disciplined way of getting all work done.”

Although some people claim that Scrum is meant to be practiced with collocated teams, I am a strong believer in the power of distributed scrum. Of course, working with people in one office is ‘easier’. We’re creatures of habit and we’re social, so if we can work like we always did and talk to each other all day long, it feels more natural. With software development, it does help to have your team at arm’s length. But distributed teams are today’s reality. And I have not found a better process than scrum in a remote collaboration.

There are four reasons why scrum is the best solution to manage distributed work. And these four reasons hold true for any type of work, not only software development. For managing other types of distributed work, I have found ‘the Rockefeller habits’ to be the most effective process. A lot of elements are similar to Scrum. Let’s look at the four reasons:

1. You work in short cycles

Each ‘sprint’ takes 1-4 weeks (scrum typically talks about 2-4 weeks, but in my experience 1 week can bring wonders in some projects). In a remote collaboration, you don’t speak to each other regularly. You can’t see what your foreign colleagues are doing. If you have a big project and you organize that work as a long term big project with deadlines far ahead, you loose ‘grip’. With scrum, work is cut into small iterations. Each 1-4 weeks you plan the sprint, the team gets to work and you see results after the sprint. This enables the team to learn faster what does and does not work. It also enables the team to incorporate changes brought by new ideas and customer feedback.

For more general management, this is also very valuable. If you have a team of let’s say marketers, they have projects. Those projects may span many months. By cutting those projects into weekly iterations, you continuously have an orchestrated team effort to bring those projects to completion. And because you learn and implement changes along the way, the result of the project is better.

2. The team decides

As you see from the above list, several points state ‘the team decides’. With a remote team, it’s crucial that you move the authority for the results of your project to the remote team. You can indicate and discuss with the team what you believe needs to get done. But the team decides ‘how’ they’ll tackle this. I think this is a powerful management mindset. You have hired a team of experts. Those experts know their line of business. So you should let them decide how to complete your projects. If you bring your car to a garage, you trust the mechanic to fix it (because you probably have no idea how to do it yourself).

One ‘method’ that I often think about during my workdays is ‘monkey management’ as described by Ken Blanchard. Here’s an excerpt from ‘how we lead’ that explains well what monkey management entails:

“A “monkey” is the next move after two individuals meet, as illustrated here:  Say you meet an employee in the hallway.  He says, “Can I see you for a minute?  We have a problem.”  He explains; you listen; time flies. Twenty minutes later you know enough about the problem to realize you’ll have to be involved, but you don’t know enough to make a decision.  So you say, “This is very important, but I don’t have time to discuss it now.  Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.”

The detached observer understands what just happened, but when you’re in the middle, it’s harder to see the big picture.  Before you met your staff member in that hall, the monkey was on his back.  While you were talking, the matter was under joint consideration, so the monkey had one leg on each of your backs.  But when you said, “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you,” the monkey moved squarely onto your back.

The problem may have been part of your employee’s job, and he may have been perfectly capable of proposing a solution.  But when you allowed that monkey to leap onto your back, you volunteered to do two things that this person was generally expected to do as part of his job:  (1) You accepted the responsibility for the problem, and (2) you promised him a progress report.  Just be sure it’s clear who’s in charge now, your staff member will stop in on you several times the next few days to say, “Hi!  How’s it coming?”  If you haven’t resolved the matter to your employee’s satisfaction, he may begin to pressure you to do what is actually his job.”

3. The team measures its own performance

In scrum, a software development team measures its own velocity. Velocity as defined by the scrum alliance:

“In Scrum, velocity is how much product backlog effort a team can handle in one sprint. This can be estimated by viewing previous sprints, assuming the team composition and sprint duration are kept constant. It can also be established on a sprint-by-sprint basis, using commitment-based planning.”

Velocity is the key driver of performance for a software team. In most software tools that support remote software teamwork, velocity is calculated automatically.

For broader management, it’s useful to have the team members define their own KPI’s. Let them think what’s the most important impact they can have on your project and how to measure this. They can report progress in a sheet or system each week, which you then discuss in your weekly meeting. I always use a google sheet which has a kpi dashboard on top. Each team member can access this sheet so the whole team knows what each person’s up to.

4. Meeting rhythm

Scrum has a structured set of meetings. This excerpt from the scrum primer describes each meeting (I recommend the scrum primer to learn more about scrum):

Sprint Planning
Summary: A meeting to prepare for the Sprint, typically divided into two parts (part one is “what” and part two is “how”). 
Participants: Part One: Product Owner, Team, ScrumMaster. Part Two: Team, ScrumMaster, Product Owner (optional but should be reachable for questions) 
Duration: Each part is timeboxed to one hour per week of Sprint.

Daily Scrum 
Summary: Update and coordination between the Team members.
Participants: Team is required; Product Owner is optional; ScrumMaster is usually present but ensures Team holds one. 
Duration: Maximum length of 15 minutes.

Sprint Review 
Summary: Inspection and adaption related to the product increment of functionality. 
Participants: Team, Product Owner, ScrumMaster. Other stakeholders as appropriate, invited by the Product Owner. Duration: Timeboxed to one hour per week of Sprint.

Sprint Retrospective 
Summary: Inspection and adaption related to the process and environment. 
Participants: Team, ScrumMaster, Product Owner (optional). Other stakeholders may be invited by the Team, but are not otherwise allowed to attend. 
Duration: Timeboxed to 45 minutes per week of Sprint.

In a remote team, this meeting rhythm enables the team to stay aligned. If you don’t schedule this, days or weeks may pass without alignment talks. This can completely derail your project.

For a non-software team, the Rockefeller habits uses a rhythm of yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily meetings to align your distributed management team.

Conclusion

Remote teams can be managed more effectively with a strong process. Scrum is by far the best process to manage distributed software projects. For other work, the Rockefeller habits offers a strong framework. There are four things that both methods have in common which are specifically well suited for distributed work: work is done in short cycles of 1 – 4 weeks which enables quick learning and adaptation; the remote team decides on ‘how’ they will get work done, moving the ‘monkey’ fully on their shoulders; the team (members) measure their own performance using velocity or other KPI’s; and there’s a scheduled meeting rhythm which enables the globally distributed team to continually align and progress towards its goals.

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The Importance of Trust in Business
By Timothy Prosser
Trust is essential to getting anything done. How it is expressed makes a huge difference in how things go, however, and it’s one of those things you can ignore (though you may do this at your peril). I always told my kids “trust, but verify”. Trust is earned […]

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Introduction

Complex projects are always fraught with a variety of risks ranging from scope risk to cost overruns. One of the main duties of a project manager is to manage these risks and prevent them from ruining the project. In this post, I will cover the major risks involved in a typical project.

1. Scope Risk

This risk includes changes in scope caused by the following factors:

• Scope creep – the project grows in complexity as clients add to the requirements and developers start gold plating.
• Integration issues
• Hardware & Software defects
• Change in dependencies

2. Scheduling Risk

There are a number of reasons why the project might not proceed in the way you scheduled. These include unexpected delays at an external vendor, natural factors, errors in estimation and delays in acquisition of parts. For instance, the test team cannot begin the work until the developers finish their milestone deliverables and a delay in those can cause cascading delays.

To reduce scheduling risks use tools such as a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and RACI matrix (Responsibilities, Accountabilities, Consulting and Information) and Gantt charts to help you in scheduling.

3. Resource Risk

This risk mainly arises from outsourcing and personnel related issues. A big project might involve dozens or even hundreds of employees and it is essential to manage the attrition issues and leaving of key personnel. Bringing in a new worker at a later stage in the project can significantly slow down the project.

Apart from attrition, there is a skill related risk too. For instance, if the project requires a lot of website front end work and your team doesn’t have a designer skilled in HTML/CSS, you could face unexpected delays there.

Another source of the risk includes lack of availability of funds. This could happen if you are relying on an external source of funding (such as a client who pays per milestone) and the client suddenly faces a cash crunch.

4. Technology Risk

This risk includes delays arising out of software & hardware defects or the failure of an underlying service or a platform. For instance, halfway through the project you might realize the cloud service provider you are using doesn’t satisfy your performance benchmarks. Apart from this, there could be issues in the platform used to build your software or a software update of a critical tool that no longer supports some of your functions.

Conclusion

If you want to go deeper into this subject, you could consider buying the book that is suggested for PMI preparation – Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project.

Using a Project Management Tool to Help Mitigate Risk?

Many of the risks mentioned above could be minimized or eliminated by implementing robust project management tracking and communication through the many online tools now available. Take at look at a few mentioned below to see if one could fit in your reality:

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Introduction

As a project management consultant at JPStewart Associates, I have discovered that many projects fail outright. And further, that many of them fail for the same reasons. So I have compiled a Top Ten list of Reasons Why Projects Fail, largely from my own experience.  I’ve also tried to share some ideas about how each of these problems can be overcome.

#1 – Scope Creep

Scope is everything that you are going to do and conversely, not going to do. So once you’ve figured out exactly what the project work is, usually via a Work Breakdown Structure, you need to freeze it and zealously guard against unplanned changes to it. So planned changes via a change control board are ok, since then the PM can issue a new schedule, risk and budget plan as needed. Otherwise, you will surely miss your target and make both the management and customer unhappy.

#2 – Overallocated Resources

Often there are too few resources working on too many projects at the same time. In conjunction with that, managers don’t seem to have a grip on what their resources are doing all the time.  Team members are left to figure out for themselves what projects they should be working on and when. Better is for managers to meet weekly to discuss resource usage perhaps using a spreadsheet to track.

#3 – Poor Communications

Many people on a project will know the project manager only through his or her communications. And they will know him by how his voice comes across over the phone or especially by how well-written his emails are. If the project manager is not a clear unambiguous communicator, chaos and confusion will ensue.

#4 –Bad Stakeholder Management

Stakeholders have a vested interest in the project for the good or sometimes to the detriment of the project. It is the project manager’s job not only to identify all stakeholders, but know how to manage and communicate with them in a timely fashion.  A communication management plan helps here.

#5 – Unreliable Estimates

Estimates are very often just guesstimates by team members who are trying to calculate duration of tasks based on how long it took them last time. This may turn out to be totally accurate or may be completely wrong.  And if wrong, leads to a flawed schedule and increased risk. Historical records kept between projects helps solve this.

#6 – No Risk Management

Every project is unique and hence, has uncertainty. When we try to qualify and quantify that uncertainty, we call it risk. It is incumbent upon the project manager to proactively anticipate things that might go wrong. Once he has identified risks, then he and the team can decide on how to respond to (e.g., mitigate, avoid) those specific risks should they occur.

#7 – Unsupported Project Culture

I was once asked to consult for a company and discovered that a complex project was being handled by an untrained secretary using 20 Excel spreadsheets. In this case, management clearly did not fully understand what it took to manage a project either in tools or using trained personnel. This is not easily solvable because it requires education of management and a cultural shift.

#8 – The Accidental Project Manager

This is similar to but not exactly the same as the unsupported project culture.  In this instance, what typically happens is that a technical person (software developer, chemist, etc.) succeeds at the job. Based on that, gets promoted to project manager and is asked to manage the types of projects they just came from. The problem is they often don’t get training in project management and may well lack the social skills the job calls for. And so they flounder and often fail despite previous successes.

#9 – Lack of Team Planning Sessions

There is no more effective way to kick off a meeting than to have the entire team come together for a planning session. This enables everyone to not only work together on project artifacts (schedule, WBS) but also to bond as a team and buy into the project.

#10 – Monitoring and Controlling

Many project managers will create a schedule and never (or rarely) update it. Or if they do, they’ll just fill in percent done, which is an arbitrary number often picked out of the air by the team member. Better if they record actuals such as date started, work accomplished and estimate of remaining work.

How about looking for a tool to eliminate project failure?

Many of the Top 10 reasons include subjects that could justify the use of a project management tool. Easy access to communications and dynamic updating of the project’s tasks as well as keeping on top of who is doing what (ie. resource allocation) are just some of the benefits that a tool such as one of those mentioned below can provide. Take a look!

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There are a lot of tips, resources, and guidelines on project management. However, one of the least discussed topics involves project failure. Very few project managers or companies want to admit their failure. Yet, it is very rampant especially in ill-defined projects. That’s the reason why it is important to evaluate all the possible challenges even at the very start. It lets the project manager, the team members, and the client mitigate risks associated with the work.

In this article, we’ll identify the 10 main causes of project failure. Knowing about these helps you become more prepared for the tasks ahead:

1. Poor planning and/or inadequate process – planning is central to the success of a project. It is important to define what constitutes project success or failure at the earliest stage of the process. It is also essential to drill down the big picture to smaller tasks.
2. Inefficient way to document and track progress – this is an oversight on the part of the project manager. Tracking milestones is a crucial way to see if expectations are being met. Documentation and tracking also lets the manager identify which areas require more resources to be completed on time.
3. Poor leadership at any level – the “leader” is usually identified as the project manager. However, the management-level executive also has a responsibility of ensuring the project’s success. He/she should work together with the manager to ensure that the company’s exact requirements are understood.
4. Failure to set expectations and manage them – in working in a team setting, it is critical that you’re able to manage people. If and when expectations are not met, there should be clearly-defined consequences. The task should then be prioritized and possibly reassigned to a more competent individual.
5. Inadequately-trained project managers – the project manager is taking on a heavy responsibility. It is important to assign management roles only to individuals who have the capabilities to meet requirements. In some cases, poorly-trained managers are assigned to complex projects; this is a recipe for failure.
6. Inaccurate cost estimation – there are instances when the cost of an undertaking is grossly underestimated. When it runs out of resources, the project cannot be completed. This can be mitigated when the lack of resources is identified early by the project manager.
7. Lack of communication at any level – communication between the management executive and the project manager, and between the latter and the team members are always important. Everyone should feel free to come forward to state their concern or give suggestions.
8. Culture or ethical misalignment – the culture of the company must prize competence, pro-activeness, and professionalism. If it doesn’t, the team members may not have the motivation to do their best. In essence, everyone involved must be concerned about the success of their undertaking.
9. Competing priorities – when a company’s resources are stretched, there will be competing priorities in terms of manpower and financing. Having good cost estimation at the start will eliminate this problem.
10. Disregard of project warning signs – when a project is on the verge of failing, there will always be warning signs. Taking action immediately can save the project. Otherwise, the whole endeavor can just go down the drain.

How about looking for a tool to eliminate project failure?

The points made above all demonstrate different aspects to how project failure can occur, including lack of communication and poor tracking.  There exist many tools/apps that can help in many of these and should be considered.  Here are a few below that might set your projects on a successful path.

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It’s no mystery why people can’t seem to get away from using their inboxes as their personal project & task management tool; and why companies still attempt to collaborate via long over-drawn email chains. Email is well engrained into our personal and work lives, and many of our “to-dos” arrive in the form of email – it’s a popular (and effective) way of communicating. But that’s where the line should be drawn – at communication.

Using a more sophisticated task management tool can save you a lot of time sifting through your inbox, an ultimately, leaving a lot more time to get important work done.

Email is definitely not going anywhere, and that’s probably a good thing. But we must draw the line somewhere by learning how to manage it effectively – and that doesn’t include managing tasks or projects. Here’s why:

1. It’s a constant challenge

I have no doubt anyone reading this is familiar with the struggle of trying to keep their inboxes at zero, or at least something close to it. But the hard truth is that emails are constantly flowing in and no matter how many emails you deal worth or erase, you’re bound to get just as many back in your inbox.

2. Endless distractions

Most would agree that they check their emails WAY too often. Imagine the time it takes to check an email, process it, respond to it and then attempt to get back to what you were doing before. Ultimately, emails take people out of the zone and prevent them from getting into a flow.

3. Hard to find

It can take a lot of time to sift through emails to find that certain piece of information that now seems to elude you. Keeping track of documents and tasks in your email is a pretty good way to get mixed up and lose information. Much of what is sent out in emails gets lost into a seemingly black hole. The great thing about taking these kinds of communications to a project management tool, is that exchanges are documented and can easily be found.

4. Stakeholders in the dark

Sending documents and updates over email results in leaving most project stakeholders in the dark on status updates. All those who weren’t included in the email thread won’t be kept in the loop on pertinent matters. On the contrary, updating the project details in a proper system makes it easy and time effective for keeping stakeholders up to speed.

5. Pertinent background info

Emails don’t contain all the history and background information to set the context of what you’re trying to communicate. In a PM tool, the trails of information are all there and the system does all that “background” work for you.

Conclusion: What tool should I use?

Genius Project is an ideal project management solution to get employees out of their inboxes and into an organized and easy-to-use system. Check out Project-Management.com’s review of Genius Project.

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