INTRODUCTON

 

 

When you improve your capacity to manage projects, you affect a large chunk of your life, so my goal for you as you move through this book has two parts:

1.  that you realize how much of your time actually is spent on project management, both at work and at home

2.  that you learn simple, useful ways to improve your project management velocity.

When you go looking for a book on project management, you have a lot of choices, but many of the books are written for people who are certified project managers or are running large organizationwide projects at global companies. Many of us need a complementary but simpler approach.

I've found expert information in surprising places, from NASA to the women who run the Christmas drive at church. One of the metaphors from NASA that influenced my thinking a great deal is the story of the Three Little Pigs.

Discovering the Basic Principles of Project Management

NASA has a wonderful web magazine called ASK that it uses to share lessons learned on projects. At the January 2006 Professional Development Conference of the National Society of Professional Engineers, NASA's administrator Michael D. Griffin described ASK in this way:

One of the innovations of the Academy is the Academy Sharing Knowledge, or ASK magazine, which gives NASA managers the opportunity to swiftly tell each other about successes, failures and lessons learned. These “after action reports” were featured in a recent issue of Government Executive Magazine as a model for what every federal manager should be able to tap into. (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/141294main_NSPE_19_Jan_06.pdf)

This award-winning magazine is available to all of us at http://appel.nasa.gov/ask/.

A few years ago, Dr. Edward Hoffman edited an early version of the magazine, and he challenged my project management thought process with an editorial about the Three Little Pigs and project management. Here is an excerpt of that editorial:

Remember the fairy tale, “The Three Little Pigs,” and how the first pig built a house of straw? Nice, light, cost-conscious straw. The only problem was the hungry wolf that came along one day and knocked on the door. The wolf asked to be let in, and the pig quite reasonably replied, “Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin.” Unfortunately, the wolf simply huffed and puffed and blew the straw house down, and pig number one had to shake his bacon to get to the second pig's house.

The second pig had nominally improved the quality of construction by using wood. Once again, however, the pigs were forced to scurry when the wolf's resolve proved stronger than the structure. In the end, our pigs were saved by the foresight, concern for quality and use of top materials by the third pig, who had built his house of brick. The wolf could not get into the house and the pigs survived, presumably to live happily ever after.

At first glance, the lessons are obvious. Be industrious, plan for future threats and never short-change quality specifications. On further review, the difficulty and risks of project planning are much more complex. (http://appel.nasa.gov/ask/issues/11/overview/ask11_resources_directorsdesk.html)

Since childhood we have heard this story and been clearly taught that the two pigs who were lazy and cheap were wrong. The hero of the tale was the pig who took the time to plan and deliver a top-quality brick house. The admonition given to us as children through this story has influenced our project management beliefs as adults: We expect organizations managing projects to approach their work with the same methodical and ultimately successful set of steps that the wise pig used, and we expect these steps to emulate NASA's legendary success. After all, it was NASA that put men on the moon using less computing power than most high-end calculators have today. Still, however, we all have a nagging voice in our minds telling us that our business will not allow this expensive focus on quality.

NASA itself has had similar challenges recently. NASA has enjoyed a number of project successes since their Apollo achievements, but it also has suffered some tragic setbacks, such as the shuttle disasters. The reasons for project failures at NASA are complex and include faulty oversight, arrogance, and budget cuts—or, more accurately, the real world of project planning. Many of these specific challenges are discussed with surprising candor in ASK magazine.

Hoffman challenges us to look deeper at the players. The “quality” pig would not have been the star had it not been for the wolf.

Imagine the story without the wolf. Suddenly, the third pig becomes a goat. His mug appears on the cover of newspapers exposing and criticizing the flagrant and excessive costs of the brick house. Pigs one and two are lauded for exceptional and efficient construction management, while pig three is used as a case study in mismanagement. The wolf is so vital to the definition of success that one might be led to wonder if pig three contracted with the wolf to harass and threaten the others.

The wolf represents the constraints of this construction project. Like a well-run business, the wise wolf builds a project that meets the unique need at that point in time—in this story, a wolf with very strong breath.

Each of us struggles with our own constraints on our own projects. Many novice project managers try to ignore them, hoping they'll just go away. They don't. Constraints require us to be flexible in implementing a project management structure that will move us through chaos to success. And our encounters with those constraints teach us that there is no single path to project management success. Each project is unique. Each project comes with different wolves.

The constraints come from the business. The project may have to be done quickly to meet a regulatory requirement. The project may need to be done on a limited budget because the competitive market demands a cheaper product. The project may have to be done at high quality because people's lives are at stake. Each project has its own constraints dictated by strategy and the marketplace.

Because the constraints are dictated by the business, successful project management comes from a collaboration nurtured by ongoing communication with the business. In today's frantic business environment, there's nothing more challenging than communication. To address that challenge, this book will help you set the stage early for collaboration with your sponsors, and help you continue communicating through the unpredictable surprises that arise. And here's something that adds to the overall complexity: it isn't all that rare for a constraint to change after a project has started!

The business tells the project manager the reason that money is being allotted and spent on this project instead of on something else. Initiating this conversation and understanding the business case reveal both the business constraints and the expected business impact of project success. This gives the project manager the background to make adjustments when the project runs into bumps along the way.

You will learn how to build a plan based on your project's specific business need. Because all projects are unique, each project plan will be different from any other project plan you have built. The model for project management that you'll learn from this book will be the same, but the way you apply it will depend on the specific business opportunity you're addressing.

You'll learn that, after the project begins, everything will change. Your ability to practice ‘”flexible structure” will be tested. Finally, you'll learn how to end a project, and how to review lessons gained from the experience.

This book is full of checklists, diagramming techniques, models, and processes to help you through each phase of the project. You'll discover, however, that project management is all about relationships and communication, and that using tools, techniques, and processes alone won't guarantee success. A fool with a great technique is still a fool. Projects succeed or fail because of people.

And you'll learn to expect the unexpected. Project management is about risk mitigation, and you have to identify and react to project risk in ways that build rather than destroy collaboration. Again in the words of Hoffman:

In any event, the uncertainty of future events makes project planning a slippery endeavor. Was the third pig a better strategic and tactical planner, or just lucky? Did the use of risk management techniques indicate the probability of marauding wolves? Was the selection of brick based on a cost-benefit analysis of the situation? One will never know. That sort of background information wasn't included in the fairy tale.

One thing we can say for certain is that experienced project managers realize that environmental realities figure prominently when determining what risks jeopardize a project. To what extent they plan for a wolf at the door probably depends on what experience they have that a wolf will show up there. The dilemma all project managers face is deciding which risks are too costly to plan for and which ones are too costly not to plan for.

What You'll Find in This Book

I've broken the project management process into 10 steps and covered each step separately. You'll get the most out of the book if you first read it through without skipping around. I also recommend that you select a current project on which to work the steps for practice. When you've read the book from beginning to end, you'll be able to jump around to the steps you need when you need them. Use table I.1 to figure out where to go to review material for specific issues.

POINTER

An Overview of the 10 Steps

Here is a brief overview of the 10 steps to successful project management:

  Step 1: Decide If You Have a Real Project to Manage—Many of the students in my classes are there because they've unexpectedly become project managers. They never planned for this role, but now find that they spend most of their time working on projects. Here you'll learn how to tell the difference between a task, a process, and a project. Many of the things now on your to-do list really aren't tasks—they're projects. By treating them as such, you'll work more effectively.

  Step 2: Prove Your Project Is Worth Your Time—In both profit and nonprofit entities, there is a limited amount of money and a finite number of people to get things done. Here you'll learn how to discern and document the business reason for the project. When you understand the financial part of project management, you clearly will see the impact of projects that wrap up late or come in over budget.

TABLE I.1

Issues Addressed by Specific Steps

Issue	Step	General Advice
You want to learn how to start a project well	2, 3, 4	Investing energy and effort at the beginning of a project pays off at the end.
You want to learn how to plan a project well	5, 6	It helps to build a project plan based on the business constraints.
You want to learn how to manage a project that is under way	7, 8	Practice flexible structure: at all times, have a plan but be ready to bend it when project conditions dictate.
You want to learn how to end a project	9	Communicate clearly when a project is done.
You want to grow your own project management competency	10	Conducting a post-project review will jump-start your competency—even if you do the review alone.
You're overwhelmed with work and don't feel that you're making any progress	1	You may be managing tasks rather than projects. Organizing and prioritizing your work by project will improve your ability to deliver more work.
You've been assigned a project, but have not been told why this project suddenly is funded	2	Most project managers are not very aware of the financial impact of their projects. It's important that the company clearly defines the anticipated return-on-investment for each project; it's equally important that the project manager be aware of this expectation.
You feel that the project boundaries are shifting continually, and that the size of the project is increasing without an equal increase in time and budget	3	The primary killer of project success is scope creep. Even if it's late in the project, it's never too late to stop and define the scope with the stakeholders. Negotiating more time and money requires a joint agreement on the scope of the project.
A nervous little voice in your head is asking if this project can be done successfully	4	Your little voice is always right. It's critical that you take time to brainstorm possible risks that may challenge project success because it gives you the opportunity to build a mitigation plan to avoid or react to those risks. You won't guess all of them, but you'll be ready for most.
Members of the project team spend all their time fighting among them-selves or avoiding each other	5	Companies are organized to compete across functional areas for resources. These dynamics can paralyze a project, so the project manager must nurture collaboration—it's the only way to success.
It's difficult to coordinate the array of things that different people are doing on this project, and sometimes a late activity slows down someone else	6	Creating a project plan informs everyone on the project about exactly what's expected of them, when it's due, and how it affects others. Without a solid plan, individuals either will get distracted by other work or will repeatedly interrupt the project manager for information or direction.
You just got a major change to the project requirements, and you're afraid you won't complete the project on time	7	Project managers must learn to think in contingency terms. Contingency planning is an in-the-moment type of risk management. When change occurs in a project, the project manager must have two or three alternatives to keep the project on track.
The stakeholders keep changing their minds about what they want, and the project is stalled by all the chaos	8	Chaos is the norm in project management, not the exception. Businesses must react at the speed of the Internet to market trends, and this makes the requirements of many projects unstable at best. Flexible structure is an important key to accepting chaos and managing through it.
You finished your project a month ago, but the stakeholders keep coming in with small changes.	9	It seems like a simple concept, but “done” is a tough thing to define for projects. Learn to establish a project's completion criteria and to communicate and reinforce them effectively.
It seems as if the same mistakes are repeated on every project	10	Learning how best to invest the time in a post-project review will increase your project management competency and that of the business.

  Step 3: Manage Scope Creep—Ask 100 people if documenting scope is critical to project success and I bet that 99 percent of them would say “yes.” I also think that at least 70 percent don't document scope at all. Most people feel that describing the scope in writing requires difficult conversations with busy executives and page after page of contract-like text demanding sign-off. They assume it's better just to get going on the project. They're wrong. Here you'll discover how to document scope graphically to enhance communication and limit scope creep.

  Step 4: Identify, Rate, and Manage Risks—A project risk is something that could happen during the project, and it's something you make plans to mitigate or avoid. By brainstorming at the outset about what could go wrong during the project and how such situations might be managed or mitigated, you take some of the pain of interruption out of project work. Remember, however, that you'll never think of everything that might happen on a project, and sometimes it's not worth the extra energy to preplan for a risk that not very likely or won't have a great impact. Here you'll learn how to brainstorm and to prioritize risk mitigation.

  Step 5: Collaborate Successfully—One of the most important things I've learned about project management is the usefulness of collaboration. It sounds simple but, in practice, collaboration is extremely difficult. There will be many times when you're angry with someone on the team or with one of the stakeholders because a promise has been broken, a change has been made, or some other bomb has been dropped. At this moment of anger, you choose between collaboration and payback (a project killer). Here you'll find how to take a deep breath and create collaboration without regard to the turmoil and personal agendas.

  Step 6: Gather Your Team and Make a Schedule—In many project management classes, you learn how to make a work breakdown structure to brainstorm the tasks needed in a project, and then how to hook all the tasks together along a timeline. It's a good academic exercise but is rarely done in the real world. On an actual project, you're given the end date and a bank of resources that usually seem unreasonable and inadequate, respectively, and you have to fit the tasks you want to do into that tight space. In this step you'll learn how to create a plan from a fixed date, a fixed budget, and constrained resources.

  Step 7: Adjust Your Schedule—When the project starts, it's challenging to monitor how it's going. Project status meetings can become “who hunts” in which participants spend the entire meeting figuring out who's at fault. Keeping track of all the people whose work you need at critical times is very difficult. Here you'll learn quick, repeatable ways to communicate status and keep everyone aligned with the project. You'll discover some warning signs that reveal the project is drifting into trouble. And we'll take a look at the importance of conducting those difficult conversations that can get your project back on track.

  Step 8: Embrace the Natural Chaos of People—Chaos happens—that's a given. But chaos really is just the result of people changing their minds, getting angry and frustrated, misunderstanding directions, and working under stress. Here you'll learn the people skills required to build relationships, manage conflict, and negotiate disagreements.

  Step 9: Know When You're Done—Ending a project doesn't begin when the project is complete; it begins in Steps 1 through 4. Clearly defining and communicating what “done” means throughout a project are critical aspects of ending well. This step helps you define and communicate clear completion criteria.

  Step 10: Follow Up to Learn Lessons—The most important and least practiced project management skill is the ability to do a post-project review. Having the discipline to set aside time and reflect on a project, alone or with others, ensures that future projects will be better managed. In this step you'll learn to apply a standard template to help capture lessons learned during the project. You'll also learn when and how to facilitate a follow-up discussion.

Topics Covered in the Steps

You'll find the following topics covered in most of the steps:

  Time to Complete—gives the project manager a general sense of how long it will take to finish the work in a step and describes the factors that influence the time required.

  Stakeholders—describes those who have a vested interest in the project. This section helps you identify the people with whom you should spend most of your limited time, especially those with whom you'll need to communicate most frequently.

  Questions to Ask—tells you what to ask and of whom to ask it. This section helps you pose well-thought-out questions about the project requirements. Succinct and appropriate questions show your respect for your stakeholders by taking as little of their time as possible.

  Project Manager's Toolkit—presents the tools, techniques, and processes you'll use to accomplish the step successfully. You can try out everything you find in this section on your own current project.

  Communication—explains how and what to communicate in the step. In earlier sections, you've read about stakeholders, the questions to ask them, and the tools and techniques you'll use to complete the step. Communication includes determining what questions or documents will be sent to stakeholders either to get their feedback or to keep them in the loop about the project's status.

  What If I Skip This Step?—describes the risk you take if you skip a specific step in managing the project. This section helps you make a conscious evaluation of potential shortcuts, realizing that there may be times when it makes sense to skip some steps.

  Lurking Landmines—points out common problems that may occur in the step. This section shows you that “surprises” are predictable.

  Step Checklist—offers a quick review of the step. Use this as you grow in project management competency to make sure that you haven't forgotten critical activities in the step.

Finally, you will find many other elements, including pointers, tools, tables, figures, worksheets, and examples that show you how to use tools and techniques. These valuable resources are provided for you to print out from the companion CD-ROM. To provide you with a practical sample, I'll use a blog project as the case study throughout the steps.

The Dare Model of Project Management

In this book you'll read about my project management model. It's called the Dare to Properly Manage Resources Model—the Dare Model, for short (Project Management for Trainers, ASTD, 2000). The model has these four phases:

1.  Define—Explain why the business is committing resources to this project instead of spending the money on something else.

2.  Plan—Given the business need, describe how people and other resources will be assigned to project tasks.

3.  Manage—Adapt to the changing project by practicing “flexible structure.” This is a phrase I use to explain a dichotomy in managing projects: At all times you have a plan (structure), but at all times you're ready to adapt the plan (flexible) when it no longer meets the needs of the business. You'll find this phrase often in the descriptions of tools and techniques that build adaptability into the project management process.

4.  Review—Learn from the project experiences to grow future project success.

You'll find a schematic of this model in Step 1 (figure 1.2), with lists of tasks for each phase. This model is based on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) published and supported by the Project Management Institute (www.pmi.org). The 10 steps in this book are consistent with the PMBOK as well. You'll read a more complete explanation of this model in Step 1.

The Three Pigs

You'll find in each of the steps that I adapt the tale of the Three Little Pigs to illustrate some common project dynamics. I've also used the story in a few places to give you practice in one or another aspect of project management. You won't miss any crucial information if you skip the stories, but you may find it comforting to know that you're not the first person to see insanity on a project. I've named the three pigs to illustrate their focus and their project management style: Speedy likes to do things fast, Goldy likes to save money, and Demmy (with homage to W. Edwards Deming) likes high-quality work. As their adventures with BB Wolf unfold, you'll read how each of these types of project managers adds value and makes mistakes on every project.

One Caveat Before You Begin

If you were hoping for an infallible and reproducible to-do list that guarantees your success on any project with any constraints, you won't find it here. Some projects are impossible. I've never been on one, but I have had customers who have. In most cases, there are alternatives and creative adjustments that can make an impossible project possible. And many projects, although possible, are very difficult.

Every project is unique, and every one will present you with something you've never had to deal with before. I once heard information technology consultant Tim Lister say, “If you do two different projects the same way, you have done both incorrectly.” My experience confirms that. I do apply the same model to all my projects, but the detail work in each one is completely different because the people and business issues involved are unique.

A good project management approach, combined with appropriately used tools and techniques chosen by a good project manager, creates project management success. To that end, I make the following assumptions in offering you this book:

  You really want to be successful with your projects.

  You're willing to step up and be accountable for that success.

  You're willing to learn and grow as a project manager.

  You're willing to become more agile and collaborative in that journey.

If this sounds like you, I'm excited to share with you my successes and failures in project management. Our guiding principle going forward will be flexible structure. At all times, we'll have a plan for making a project successful, and at all times, we'll be willing to adapt that plan and create a new plan when everything changes.