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Questions Every Project Manager Really Needs Answered

OFTEN THE PROBLEM between project managers and their sponsors starts right at the beginning. That is why I am encouraging you to work with your sponsor to get the answers to the questions posed in this chapter. Keep in mind that the sponsor:

May not have the answer but can help you find someone who does have that answer.

Can facilitate a meeting with key stakeholders who would often be difficult for you to access on your own.

A project manager may have a contract or a Charter, but these documents do not really answer some critical questions that you, as project manager, need the answers to. Why? As one example, if you are reviewing a contract, remember its source and context. This document was written by an attorney or by multiple attorneys and uses their language and context. While it can be helpful in understanding some high-level considerations such as deliverables, many other pieces are missing.

In my experience in doing projects over the years, I have learned that there is seldom just one technical way to fix an issue or address a problem. So how do we choose the best solution to the problem? Most of the time, the choice is what we, as project managers, or our team technical leads believe is the best technical solution. While that sounds simple and logical, we can find that we picked the answer that was not what our sponsor was looking for. Let me provide an example from my experience.

Earlier in my career, before I learned to ask these questions, I was in charge of implementing a new automation system for my client’s onshore oil fields across North America. The desire of my sponsor, as expressed to me, was to create a system that provided data faster to the central command centers that monitored and operated the fields. The mistake I made was not asking my sponsor to define what he meant when he used the term “faster.” You can probably already guess what happened. My team and I worked very hard and brought the system upgrade online with speeds that were 20% faster than before. We all congratulated ourselves with high-fives all around. However, all that was short-lived. When I reported our success to the sponsor, that was when I learned that, in his mind, faster meant that the data would be near real-time, which was more than 50% faster than the old system. Therefore, in his mind, the project was really a business failure even though I could claim it as a technical success.

Could we have given him a system that was nearly real-time? Absolutely, but not with the budget and schedule we had been given. If I had asked the questions you will read in the following pages, I would have realized that we—the sponsor and project manager—were not on the same page. I could have explained that the system he envisioned could be delivered but would have required a major retrofit of hardware in many of the fields, plus an upgrade in the connectivity components. The project would have easily cost twice what our budget was and at least an additional year. My guess is that had I understood his definition of faster and explained what would be required to make it happen, he would have been quite pleased with a 20% increase in speed. I don’t think there would have been an appetite for that much more money and time.

If my sponsor and I were aligned in the definition of faster, I believe the project would have been perceived as a business success as well as a technical success.

So what are the questions that help you get inside the head of your sponsor? Here are the questions that can provide you with crucial background that will allow you to be aligned with your sponsor.

What Is Broken or Not Working as Expected?

In uncovering the answer to this question, think about the classic questions for inquiry:

Who is impacted or affected?

How does this impact the business?

What are your role and responsibilities as sponsor?

What are the role and responsibilities of those who report to you?

How frequently does this situation occur?

What would you like to be able to do?

What constraints, assumptions, and complexities exist?

Let’s look at each of these questions as a way to ensure that we understand the scope of the project. See Figure 3.1.

Who Is Impacted or Affected?

The answer to this question is crucial to help us understand who the key stakeholders are for our project. This answer is probably why the executive who became your sponsor is overseeing the project. Other key stakeholders may not have any decision-making role in the project, but they may have veto power over some portions of it. Their satisfaction with the solution will be a significant opinion in whether the project is ultimately viewed as a success. In uncovering the answer here, try to get as specific or as granular as possible.

Figure 3.1: Understanding the Context

In a project for an SAP (systems applications and products) upgrade, the project was moving along well until SAP announced that the company was releasing an upgraded module for procurement. As you can imagine, the supply chain people wanted to increase the scope of the project to include this module.

In briefing the sponsor and then the Steering Committee, the project team explained what the change in scope would mean. One of the impacts was to the accounting department. Just understanding that it impacts the accounting department was not going to be sufficient. What the accounting department explained to us and then to the Steering Committee was that the impact was on their year-end ability to close the books. They were very worried about trying to complete their work before the system had been stabilized.

The Steering Committee understood the concern and decided to delay the supply chain module and complete it as part of a new phase in the second quarter of the following year.

Please consider that, when you are getting your answers to these questions, in many large companies, even though there can be a large number of people, they are grouped in multiple subdivisions. Discovering the target audience who are impacted by the project is a key to success.

How Does It Impact the Business?

Often this information may be included in some way in the contract or Charter since it feeds the Business Case for investing time and money in the project. However, it is important for you to understand the assumptions utilized to build the Business Case. These are much more specific in what the problem costs the business and why. You should try to uncover who arrived at the assumptions and/or how. This is important because it may very well be that your sponsor provided the Business Case assumptions.

How Does This Problem/Issue Impact the Sponsor’s Role and Responsibilities?

Here you are getting very precise about what is at stake for your sponsor. For example, if your sponsor tells you that this project or initiative is part of a change in strategy or direction for the company, you must realize that the sponsor is probably accountable to the president of the division, at a minimum, if not the CEO.

What Other Options Did You Consider?

Receiving the answer to this question will help you understand why your project was sanctioned in the first place and why your sponsor was chosen. The answer here is important because, as issues arise in your project as they always do, you won’t want to suggest a solution that was already considered and rejected by the executive team.

I remember quite clearly that I was leading a systems project, and during the course of the technical work, we discovered that we had to change the configuration significantly from where we started. The problem was that this particular option had been considered and rejected by the senior management team as too expensive when they sanctioned the project. The technical team leads and I had to make the case that the only way this project could be a success would be to utilize the rejected option. We considered this option to be the best one, so we knew we had to be prepared to provide convincing evidence that would change the minds of senior management. It also had an impact on the Business Case. We had to recognize that senior management might shut down the project.

The first step was to clearly explain the situation to the sponsor and get her to agree that this was the right answer to solving the problem. She suggested that we gather additional data that would support the recommendation because she knew where the resistance would come from and what information might sway those individuals.

Then she and I set up meetings to presell the idea to those key individuals. We were not going to the full Steering Committee with this recommendation until we knew we had the support of key decision makers.

Through following these steps, we were prepared for the Steering Committee. I was definitely grilled about the change, particularly why we had no other options to offer. My sponsor was great in that she defended the recommendations of the team knowing that she had the support of other executives in the room. Our recommendation was accepted and allowed us to successfully deliver the project.

How Frequently Does This Problem Occur?

This question should help you uncover the root cause of the issue/ problem that the project was designed to fix. You need to be able to determine the area where that root cause lies. It may be:

People

Materials

Equipment

Procedures

It is helpful to remember that often problems that people see are sometimes only symptoms of the real problem and that their perspective is influenced by the symptom they view. The answer to this question will help you to understand the answers you have received to your earlier questions and provide context for the next question.

It is important to remember that projects often uncover bad business practices that are out of scope for a project. You will need to work with your sponsor to ensure you don’t get dragged into a war over fixing the poor practice. The best way to address the issue and not get caught up in scope creep is to ask your sponsor to establish a working group outside the team with a charge to bring a recommendation that will address this business practice.

What Would You Like to Be Able to Do?

Asking this question will help you to unlock two keys that are important for a project to succeed:

1. Understanding what is really new about the solution this project is providing and

2. Acceptance criteria for the solution.

However, remember that often a sponsor may be someone who has not been “in the trenches” for quite a while. You might think about taking the answer and discussing it with some key, friendly managers who actually supervise the work that is done. These people are often at the director level in most large organizations. These people frequently have one foot in each world—both operational and strategic. Just remember that if these directors report to the sponsor, politics are involved as well. So as part of your discussion, you may want to paraphrase what you have heard so that there is an understanding that these are your words rather than the sponsor’s words. If you receive answers that are somewhat different (I doubt you will hear something that is a complete disconnect), you can circle back to the sponsor and get further clarification on the solution. It is important that you satisfy both your sponsor and those directors.

Also, you are trying to gather information on the acceptance criteria for the solution. Be sure to get as many details as possible. If someone says the solution should save time, be sure you get a definition about how much time they are talking about. And define who’s saving that time. If they mention that the process should be more streamlined, determine how they would assess whether a new process is more streamlined. In all this, you are seeking the acceptance criteria for your project.

One risk a project manager faces while determining the acceptance criteria can be that there are gross misunderstandings and inflated expectations. Too many times vendors have sold a solution to senior management and that vendor has been fast and loose with the facts. If you believe your sponsor has been a victim, you will need to discuss that as soon as you have enough evidence to reset expectations. I will provide more guidance on how to handle this situation in Chapter 13.

What Constraints, Assumptions, and Complexities Exist for Delivering the Project?

For example, you need to understand the assumptions that were used to build the Business Case. As part of your risk assessment, you will need to do some what-if scenarios should circumstances change the reality behind the assumptions. This will be particularly important if you have a project that takes a year or more to complete. You should discuss these potential risks with your sponsor to make certain that they agree with your mitigation strategy. If they don’t, they will probably offer their own mitigation, which is even better because they will defend that strategy if the risk becomes an issue.

Another key element involves the complexities related to these assumptions. As an illustration, a project that I led involved the installation of upgrades on oceangoing ships. However, the upgrade could occur only when the vessels were in port and docked. Clearly one constraint was getting our team members to the port locations at the same time as the ships arrived. Any changes in the shipping schedule automatically changed our schedule.

As you can imagine, we had delays while installing the systems on the ships, and I needed my sponsor and champion to support me when changes occurred that were beyond my control.

Points to Remember

Review the questions from this chapter, and see which ones are relevant to you and your project.

Be sure you understand the impact to the business.

Other options considered are important for you to know.

Identify constraints, assumptions, and complexities from your sponsor’s point of view.