Project Leadership Integration
Disaster loomed. No one knew the full scope of the software deployment project, and no one would admit their ignorance. There was no budget, just a rough-order-of-magnitude cost estimate. There was no schedule, just something that resembled a high-level project roadmap. The project team worked frantically, like bees in a hive. One worker bee, Tom, was responsible for configuring the hardware security module to provide the encryption solution, but he was having trouble. “I can’t figure this out,” he thought, “but I doubt those idiots on the testing team will realize it’s not fully operational until after I start my new job.” Tom did not tell anyone he was struggling, and no one asked how he was doing, not even the project manager. Tom did not mention the problem or his plans to resign.
Independently, the team members created many artifacts, but unlike bees, together they produced nothing useful. The project sponsor reluctantly told the steering committee the project was on track and that the setbacks were minor. He sensed the project manager’s fear, but he did not know how to address it. He did not realize the high level of discord among the project team members—discord that was not registered in the risk log and that impeded their efforts to deliver a secure, high-quality solution.
Project managers frequently face this type of chaos. Situations like this require not only adherence to project management best practices, but also leadership to standardize, educate, promote, and enforce best practices. A project leader is responsible for bringing order to chaos, leading the introduction of structure, and adhering to structure. A successful project leader observes and evaluates chaotic situations; develops a vision of harmony, cooperation, and project achievement; and then sets out on a mission to influence and lead people out of the chaos and into effective performance. Project management standards such as the Project Management Institute (PMI®)’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®), the American Academy of Project Management project management standards, and the standard that supports CompTIA’s Project+ certification are all excellent sources of structure for IT projects, but leadership is required for these standards to be effective within organizations. Leadership is required to confront and address stakeholder and team member resistance, negative attitudes, and hidden agendas.
7.1 CompTIA Project+ Project Domains
The CompTIA Project+ exam is designed to certify project managers and team members on the skills required to perform in every phase of the IT project management life cycle. I earned my CompTIA Project+ cert in 2002 before I obtained the PMI®’s Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification in 2004. I was attracted to Project+ because it had an IT focus in addition to its business focus, and because I found it to be a stepping stone to the PMP®. In this chapter, we will explore how to integrate leadership into the CompTIA Project+ management methodology for IT systems.
Figure 7-1 provides an overview of CompTIA Project+ concepts using a project management life cycle model.
CompTIA Project+ promotes the five project management domains that are very similar to the PMBOK®’s process groups: Initiation/Pre-Project Setup, Planning, Execution and Delivery, Change Control and Communications, and Closing.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these process domains.
7.1.1 Initiation/Pre-Project Setup
The project is defined and authorized during this initial phase. Projects produce unique products or services and are temporary, with a defined start and end date. During initiation, stakeholders are identified, the project manager is assigned, and the organization commits resources to the project—resources that include personnel, equipment, supplies, and facilities. The project sponsor works with the project management team to develop the business case, feasibility studies, assumptions analysis, stakeholder analysis, and other artifacts to document project requirements and customer expectations. This analysis is an effort to justify the investment the organization must make to execute the project and produce the required outcome (Heldman and Heldman, 2010).
Figure 7-1 CompTIA Project+ domain descriptions. [Source: Heldman, K. and Heldman, W. (2010). CompTIA Project+ Study Guide. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing. See Disclaimer page xix.]
The goal of the Initiation/Pre-Project Setup phase is to establish the project’s foundation and direction and to give the project manager the authority required to lead the project effort. The project manager produces the Project Charter. This charter is submitted to the organization—either the program under which the project falls or another governing body within the organization—for approval (Heldman and Heldman, 2010).
Once the organization approves the Project Charter, project planning formally commences. The IT project manager works with team members and coordinates with stakeholders to thoroughly plan the project. Planning involves developing an approach to manage project scope, cost, schedule, quality, communications, risk, human resources and staffing, procurement, stakeholder engagement. Planning begins in this phase but occurs throughout the project. The project manager’s task is to anticipate changes in scope, schedule, budget, and resources and then to control these changes in a manner that enables the project to be delivered on time, within budget, and at an acceptable level of quality and customer satisfaction (Heldman and Heldman, 2010).
Product Life Cycles
Planning occurs not only for the project management life cycle, but also for the product life cycle. A life cycle is the series of stages through which a system passes (Walden et al., 2015). While the project management life cycle includes the Initiation/Pre-Project Setup, Planning, Execution and Delivery, Change Control and Communications, and Closure domains, the product life cycle for IT products include phases such as Requirements Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Testing. The project management life cycle includes management and control activities for meeting schedule, performance, and cost requirements. The product life cycle includes stages for manufacturing articles (software and systems) for customers. The product life cycle is executed within the project management life cycle.
Information technologies are developed using a systems development life cycle. Life cycles for product development in use in industry include the Waterfall, Iterative, Incremental, and Agile models. Table 7-1 provides a description of these models.
Table 7-1 Product Development Life Cycles
Model | Description |
Waterfall | Uses well-defined, linear stages for systems development that include requirements analysis, design and detailed design, code and implementation, integration, and testing (Schwalbe, 2000) |
Iterative/Spiral | A refinement of the Waterfall model in which software is developed using an Iterative or Spiral approach instead of a linear approach, including determining objectives, alternatives, constraints; evaluating alternatives; identifying and resolving risks; systems development, verification, and planning for the next phase (Vohra and Singh, 2013) |
Incremental | Progressive development of operational software, with each release providing added capabilities (Schwalbe, 2000) |
Agile | An iterative and change-driven software development approach that combines the activities of analysis, design, implementation, and testing, delivering small, progressive releases throughout the software development process (Vohra and Singh, 2013) |
IT project leaders need to be well versed in the systems development model their projects use to develop IT products and deliver IT solutions. Failure to properly implement a systems development model can have grave consequences. In the US, the massive Office of Personnel Management (OPM) security breach in the spring of 2015 provides a fitting example. Hackers stole the personal security data of over 21.5 million government employees, costing the OPM $133 million to protect the victims from identity theft (Fingas, 2015).
After investigating, the Inspector General (IG) suggested that the agency should follow industry best practices for systems development. The OPM rejected the IG’s suggestion, proclaiming that the agency followed the OPM Systems Development Life Cycle. The IG was neither convinced nor impressed. “The practices are applicable to any organization, private or public sector, involved in project management activities,” the IG said. “At any rate, based on documentation we have reviewed, we have determined that OPM is not in compliance with either best practices or its own policy” (Ogrysko, 2015).
7.1.3 Project Execution and Delivery
Once the organization approves the project plan, typically at a phase gate review, project execution and delivery begins. During this phase, IT project leaders build their teams, beginning the process of interacting with them and directing team activities. Project leaders are responsible for organizing and leading a project kickoff meeting, during which they set the expectations and tone of the project, providing detailed information concerning the scope, schedule, quality requirements, budget, risks, and other Project Management Plan elements. This important meeting provides an opportunity for team members and stakeholders to ask questions and receive clarification concerning project requirements, stakeholder expectations, and roles and responsibilities. As team members progress in project execution, project leaders provide oversight and decision support, coordinate with team members and the organizational governance body, and take actions to ensure that the project performs in a manner that will produce the required deliverables on time, within budget, at acceptable quality levels, and in compliance with organizational standards and delivery processes. Project leaders and their team members provide stakeholders with the agreed-upon project performance reports, ensure that they are informed on the status of the project, and monitor compliance with established standards and performance metrics (Heldman and Heldman, 2010).
7.1.4 Change Control and Communications
Project leaders understand that change is inevitable on a project. They are responsible for implementing processes to keep changes to scope, schedule, costs, and quality under control in order to ensure that the project produces the deliverables that the stakeholders expect and require. The Change Control and Communications domain has an iterative relationship with the Project Execution and Delivery domain described above. This domain includes the performance of qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, quality control activities, and the management of change requests for work performed during execution and delivery. The project team communicates with stakeholders in accordance with the communications plan, which includes meetings, reports, presentations, and briefings that are provided to the specified stakeholders in the expected format at the expected time (Heldman and Heldman, 2010).
At the end of the Project Execution and Delivery and Change Control and Communications phases, the stakeholders requiring the project deliverables—which may be internal customers or external clients or organizations—decide if the project’s outputs are acceptable. After project acceptance, the IT project leader is responsible for closing the project. The IT project leader documents the final status of the project and performs a post-project review. If the project is canceled without acceptance, the IT project leader performs a post-mortem review to analyze and document the cause. Whether the project completed successfully or was cancelled prior to completion, the IT project leader is responsible for coordinating lessons learned sessions and documenting lessons learned to enable the organization to capture knowledge gained through the project experience and to facilitate continuous process improvement. The IT project leader leads the process to close contracts associated with the project and to release personnel, facilities, funding, and material resources to the organization. This release may include transitioning resources and information to operational groups or to other projects or programs. The project leader performs a final performance appraisal of personnel resources and produces a final project closure report (Heldman and Heldman, 2010).
The CompTIA Project+ project management life cycle is sound and proven. It is based on best practices that can produce successful projects when followed correctly. However, the processes and practices are implemented by people—IT people with a tendency to be less conscientious concerning following processes and procedures. As discussed earlier, researchers have found that failure of IT projects is generally the result of neglect of the behavioral and social factors—influenced by management, the organization, and culture—rather than the technology itself (Th ite, 1999).
This propensity of IT geeks to behave in a less-than-conscientious manner introduces challenging human factors and presents a risk to IT projects and a threat to the delivery of quality project outcomes. For example, several systems administrators that were on my teams vehemently resisted documenting procedures for critical tasks, such as performing system backups and restores. Some resisted providing training for other team members. Their attitude was, “Since I figured this out on my own, so should they”—a selfish, less-than-conscientious attitude that could put projects at risk. Strong leadership is necessary to positively influence the human factors and mitigate these risks. The quality of the IT project leader’s performance needs to be assessed throughout the project, with corrective action taken as necessary to ensure that his or her leadership produces the required team performance results.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the IT project leader needs to be mindful of his or her team members’ mental states throughout the project management life cycle, communicating with emotional intelligence in order to gain an understanding of their values, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations to enable the IT geek leader to tailor interactions with team members and stakeholders accordingly. Introverted IT geek project leaders need to be mindful of how this propensity can impede their ability to communicate effectively and how it can create psychological noise that distorts their messages. Detail-minded IT geek leaders need to be especially self-aware. They need to understand that, as leaders, they should work hard to see the big picture, crafting a vision for their projects and programs, and communicating this vision in order to motivate their team members and to inform and inspire project stakeholders.
The self-leadership techniques presented in Chapter 4 can help IT geek leaders add the leadership tools to their mental tool boxes that can enable them to be visionary, communicative, and inspiring. Using positive self-talk helps IT geek leaders believe in their own leadership ability. IT geek leaders can teach themselves to monitor their own behavior, mindfully making adjustments in their communications and actions that set positive examples for their team members. IT geek leaders who take the time and effort to understand themselves, their own personal styles—as presented in Chapter 6—and the personal styles of their teammates are better equipped to make the proper behavioral adjustments. The IT geek leaders’ awareness of self and awareness of others enables versatility—the ability to interact effectively with people, making efforts to tolerate people with styles that are different from their own. This enhanced awareness and versatile behavior builds credibility with others, distinguishing IT geek leaders from their peers, enabling them to stand out as leaders.
Organizations supporting IT projects need to provide IT geek leaders the support required to overcome the tendencies that can hinder their ability to effectively lead their projects and that can thwart their ability to produce intended project outcomes. Industry standards such as ISO/IEC 20000 provide principles that can be tailored to develop a structure and environment for planning, monitoring, and assessing IT project leadership.
The ISO/IEC 20000 Service Management Standard is the internationally recognized standard in IT service management. It was first published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2005 and revised in 2011. The standard addresses the need to audit the skills and abilities of IT personnel performing in their respective roles. ISO/IEC 20000 specifies that all people who have a management role have the correct skills to deliver effective results (Kunas, 2012). Figure 7-2 represents ISO/IEC 20000 guidance for assessing personnel skills and abilities.
These skills include leadership skills. The required leadership skills need to be identified and training provided. The application of these skills needs to be monitored, assessed, and continually improved in pursuit of leadership excellence. Leadership needs the same level of focus as risk management, quality management, change management, communications management, and other critical project management processes.
Figure 7-2 ISO/IEC 20000 Resource Management. [Data derived from Kunas, M. (2013). Implementing Service Quality Based on ISO/IEC 20000. Ashland, OH: ITGP.]
In the case of quality management, ISO/IEC 20000 provides standards for delivering quality IT services. Quality planning specifies the quality standards that are important to a project. The organization develops quality standards and determines how they are to be applied within projects. Quality assurance deals with evaluating overall performance throughout the project management life cycle. Quality control activities monitor project results to determine compliance with prescribed standards and identifies ways to improve quality (Schwalbe, 2000).
Quality assessments can be both quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative assessments refer to performance metrics that can be measured and can be expressed in numbers. Examples of quantitative measurements include network response time and mean time between failure. Qualitative measures are subjective and are expressed in words. These measurements include stakeholders’ opinions, beliefs, feelings, and attitudes about the entity or subject matter being measured. Qualitative measurements are taken using surveys, interviews, observation, and document content analysis (Westcott, 2006).
Quality assessments are useful not only for measurement of project deliverables, but also for assessing and evaluating leadership performance. IT project leaders require a qualitative review, which is subjective in nature. It measures the senior leader’s impressions of the IT project leader’s consistency and adherence to leadership standards established within the organization, or if absent from the organization, established within the project.
Figure 7-3 shows the CompTIA Project+ domains with integrated leadership assessments and control mechanisms.
This new integrated leadership assessment and control strategy ensures that not only schedule, budget, and quality performance metrics are reviewed, but also leadership performance metrics. Consistent with ISO/IEC 20000, it enables definition of leadership roles, responsibilities, and skill requirements; review of leadership competence and training needs; and promotion of the awareness, relevance, and importance of meeting leadership targets.
During the Initiation/Pre-Project Setup phase, the organization’s leadership defines the leadership standards for the IT project leader and references those standards in the Project Charter. The project sponsor briefs the IT project leader on the standards during the project initiation gate review, stressing the importance of adhering to the standards throughout the project management life cycle, setting expectations for the IT project leader’s performance. The standards need to include expectations for the IT project leader to establish a project vision, to follow project management standards, to build and maintain relationships, to communicate effectively—delivering bad news early—and to adhere to the leadership principles provided in Chapter 2.
Next, during the Project Planning phase, IT project leaders develop the Project Management Plan for the project. This plan needs to include a Leadership Integration Plan that explains the project leader’s approach to adhering to the leadership standards, the qualitative performance metrics used to assess leadership performance, and the schedule for these assessments. The assessment includes a leadership self-assessment, as presented at the end of Chapter 2. The IT project leaders coordinate with the project sponsor to develop an approach to a leadership audit and include this approach in the Leadership Integration Plan. IT project leaders and project sponsors should assess the leadership training needs for the IT project leader and team leads, making preparations to provide the required training.
Finally, because effective followership is required for effective leadership, IT project managers develop a Team Charter, as discussed in Chapter 5, which is closely aligned with the staffing management plan, describing the roles, responsibilities, and processes for team member participation on the project. The Leadership Integration Plan should reference the staffing management plan’s approach to rewarding excellent performers, coaching challenged performers, and disciplining non-performers. The Leadership Integration Plan integrates the staffing management plan, the Team Charter, and qualitative quality management processes across the project management life cycle. The organization’s governance body approves the Leadership Integration Plan as a component of the Project Management Plan at the end of the Project Planning phase.
Figure 7-3 CompTIA Project+ domains with integrated leadership assessment and control mechanisms. [Source: Heldman, K. and Heldman, W. (2010). CompTIA Project+ Study Guide. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing. See Disclaimer page xix.]
During the next phase, Project Execution and Delivery, IT project leaders present the Team Charter to the team during the kickoff meeting. Each member of the team signs the charter and receives a copy. IT project leaders enter into dialogue with each of their team members, using emotionally intelligent communications to ensure that each team member understands performance expectations. IT project leaders monitor the performance of their team members to ensure that they are in compliance with the Team Charter. They take corrective action for non-compliance with performance requirements and they reward, coach, and discipline team members as required. It is important that IT project leaders establish relationships with each team member in order to learn what motivates him or her, and then find ways to nurture this motivation.
During the Change Control and Communications phase, the IT project leader performs a leadership self-assessment, and the project sponsor performs his or her leadership assessment. The IT project leader and the project sponsor should meet to discuss the results of the assessments to determine if any corrective actions to the IT project leader’s approach are required. This gives IT project leaders the feedback they need to improve their leadership effectiveness.
At the senior leader’s discretion, the organization provides resources to perform a leadership audit. The audit includes an evaluation of IT project leader performance with respect to the Leadership Integration Plan and team performance with respect to the Team Charter.
These assessments and audits should take place whenever the organization or the project sponsor feels they are necessary, not just as scheduled in the Leadership Integration Plan. These assessments do not replace annual performance reviews, but instead the results of the assessments should feed the annual performance reviews. There should be several performance assessments and audits conducted throughout the year, not just one evaluation at performance appraisal time.
Finally, during the Project Closure phase, IT project leaders should perform the final performance appraisals for their team members, providing needed feedback that can help them improve their performance. They should also document lessons learned about their own leadership effectiveness and the effectiveness of the Leadership Integration Plan. Project sponsors and IT project leaders should discuss the lessons learned and develop a plan for the IT project leaders to make leadership improvements prior to the commencement of their next projects.
If the organization has not established leadership standards, project leaders should establish their own and perform their own leadership self-assessments and continuous improvements. This is the honorable and responsible course of action and is the mark of an ambitious and exceptional project leader. As discussed in the Chapter 5, Followership, good followers create and adhere to their own high standards. This principle also applies to the IT project leader serving in the role of follower in a larger program or organization.
7.2.1 Best Practice: US Air Force Airman Comprehensive Assessment (ACA)
The US Air Force integrates leadership assessments and feedback into their evaluation process for officers and enlisted personnel in every discipline. The leadership integration principles presented in this chapter for IT project leaders is consistent with those of the US Air Force:
• The USAF defines standards for leadership and trains members on those standards.
• The USAF established a mandatory process, the Airman Comprehensive Assessment (ACA), designed to provide periodic performance feedback on leadership, primary duties, followership, and training for officers and enlisted personnel.
• The ACA feedback sessions must take place within 60 days of initial supervision, at the midterm of the performance review period, and within 60 days of the annual performance review.
• Team members can request ACA feedback from their supervisors.
• The USAF encourages supervisors to perform ACAs face to face with their team members in order to facilitate dialogue and open communications, encouraging supervisors to get to know their Airmen (US Air Force, 2013).
After serving 21 years in the US Air Force, with experience as an enlisted member, an officer, an active duty member, and a reservist, I have intimate knowledge of the US Air Force’s ability to build leaders in every discipline, including information technology. In the civilian world, as a consultant, I have had the honor of providing services to the US Air Force, gaining yet another perspective on their operational and leadership practices. Integrating leadership assessment and monitoring into current IT industry project management practices, in the same spirit as that applied in the US Air Force, can improve IT project leader performance across the industry.
In conclusion, a project leader uses standards to introduce and maintain structure in IT projects, providing the organization with communications necessary to prevent chaos and facilitate successful delivery of IT solutions. Industry standards such as CompTIA Project+ are excellent structural frameworks when properly implemented. Leadership is required to overcome the organizational and human factor challenges faced when implementing these standards.
The CompTIA Project+ project management life cycle consists of the Initiation/Pre-Project, Project Planning, Project Execution and Delivery, Change Control and Communication, and Project Closure domains. Gate reviews between these domains provide stakeholders the opportunity to approve project artifacts and deliverables, such as the Project Charter and the Project Management Plan, and to provide authorization for the project to proceed from one domain to the next.
IT projects produce IT products using a product life cycle. The purpose of the product, or systems development, life cycle is to organize the stages a product passes through from conception to implementation. Examples of systems development life cycles include the Waterfall, Spiral, Incremental, and Agile Models. There is an iterative relationship between the project management life cycle and the product life cycle. IT leaders need to understand not only the project management life cycle, but also the product life cycles required to successfully execute their projects.
Project management is a challenging discipline, and IT projects are especially challenging. Researchers have found that while technology is complex, IT projects more often fail because of neglect of behavioral and social factors, and that IT personnel are generally not diligent about following processes and procedures (Thite, 1999). Leadership is required to address these human factors in order to ensure that project management standards are implemented effectively and that projects produce the outcomes stakeholders expect.
Leadership needs to be integrated into the IT project management life cycle in order to address the human factor challenges facing IT projects. The Leadership Integration Plan defines leadership standards, documents leadership performance metrics and the Team Charter, guides leadership execution, specifies leadership self-assessments and audits, and prescribes documentation of leadership lessons learned. The Leadership Integration Plan enables organizations to define, monitor, and assess leadership execution using processes similar to those of quality management.
The development of project manager leadership competencies is a recognized industry challenge (American Academy of Project Management, 2006). As an example, in July of 2015, the “Ashley Madison hack” scored world-wide headlines when hackers accessed sensitive customer credit card and sexual interest information stored in an unencrypted text file on an inadequately protected server. The Ashley Madison hack not only prevented AshleyMadison.com—a scandalous company with a business model based on adultery enablement—from going public, it also demonstrated what happens when geeks within a company fail to lead, regardless of the company’s moral standards. The geeks in that company not only needed to think tactically, taking actions to keep the servers up and running, but they also needed to think strategically, taking leadership actions to ensure that a single mistake would not be fatal for the business (Paciullo, 2015). Management acumen is needed to establish project management and IT systems best practices in an organization, but leadership is required in order for those practices to be implemented effectively. Effective implementation requires vision, drive, motivation, communications, and accountability.
It has been said that “what gets measured, gets done.” If IT leadership is not measured, it may not be effective. But if organizations integrate leadership planning, monitoring, and assessment into the IT project management life cycle, IT leadership can get done.
7.4 Leadership Integration Plan Template
The Leadership Integration Plan Template below can help the IT project leader inject leadership monitoring and assessments into the IT project management life cycle. Senior leaders and organizational governance boards can use this template to hold IT project leaders accountable for planning and implementing leadership initiatives within their projects.
Leadership Integration Plan Template
Section | Description |
Leadership Policy | • State the leadership policy of the organization. If the organization does not have a leadership policy, establish one for your project or program. • Example: All project managers and team leads will make every effort to practice transformational leadership (see Chapter 2). |
Leadership Standard | • Briefly describe the leadership standard mandated in the leadership policy. • Example: The transformational leadership model requires the leader to identify the needed change, create a vision to guide the team and the organization through the change with inspiration, and execute the change with the commitment of members of the group (see Chapter 2). |
Team Charter | • Develop a Team Charter as described in Chapter 5. • Include the Charter as a section in this plan or create a separate Team Charter document and reference it in this plan. |
Leadership Training | • Identify leadership training requirements for the IT project leader and the team leads. • Determine what training will be provided, who will receive the training, when the training will take place, and the cost of the training. • Include the training schedule and costs in the project schedule and budget. |
Leadership Assessments | • Leadership Self-Assessments: Develop a Leadership Self-Assessment tool that assesses compliance with this plan (see Chapter 2). This activity should also include an assessment of the team’s compliance with the Team Charter. Schedule time for leadership self-assessments in the project schedule. • Senior Leadership Assessment: Coordinate with senior leadership to develop an assessment process. This activity includes an assessment of both the IT project leader’s compliance with this plan and the team’s compliance with the Team Charter. Document the process in this plan. Schedule time for senior leadership assessments in the project schedule. • Leadership Audits: If required and supported by senior management, develop and describe a process for a thirdparty entity to perform a leadership audit. |
Leadership Lessons Learned | • Describe the process for developing, reviewing, communicating, implementing, and archiving leadership lessons learned for the IT project leader, team leaders, and team members. |
Leadership Performance Improvement Plan | • Describe the process for developing, reviewing, communicating, and implementing a leadership performance improvement plan in accordance with the lessons learned analysis. |