STEP ONE

Decide If You Have a Real Project to Manage

OVERVIEW

Differences Among Projects, Tasks, and Processes

Benefits of Project Management

Project Management Roles

A Model for Project Management

 

In the mid-1990s, companies were beginning to create e-commerce sites. As the owner of a small business, I felt that we would need an e-commerce site as well. Whenever I have an idea of something I'd like to do, I throw it in my task list to make sure I don't forget it. I always put a reminder date on it, so that it pops up in a couple of weeks when I'll (supposedly) have more time to deal with it. “Build e-commerce site” continued to pop up every two weeks for a couple of months. My response was to add a couple of weeks to the date and push it out again.

Think about what putting something on your task list means. When I added that item, I thought that someday I'd find myself with an hour of uninterrupted time and I'd just knock out an e-commerce site. In those terms, that's ridiculous. Building such a website was pretty time consuming and complex, and it certainly couldn't be checked off in an hour or so. The real reason that task resisted completion was that I never took the time to break it into the steps necessary to complete it.

In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey (2004) illustrated the difference between strategic (important and non-urgent) and tactical (important and urgent) activities (figure 1.1). He explained that the more discipline we have to complete strategic activities, the less firefighting we do, thereby reducing the number of tactical activities that interrupt us daily. Many of the important activities lurking on your to-do list actually are strategic projects. As the tactical, easily checked-off tasks monopolize our time, we get more and more behind.

As I write this, I'm reminded of a task on my list that I've pushed off continually for a couple of years now: join a few speakers' bureaus. I have delegated some of the first steps but never have taken the time to really manage this as a project. This is the year!

Projects vs. Tasks

In today's chaotic business climate, multitasking is the norm. Jobs have been trimmed and companies are doing more with less. The roles and responsibilities have to evolve to deal with the chaos; they cannot be defined clearly enough before there is a need to adapt again. People are juggling multiple projects and often acting as both project manager and team. More frequently, people are feeling completely overwhelmed by the amount of work always waiting for them.

FIGURE 1.1

Strategic and Tactical Tasks

 

Source: Based on Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Free Press, 2004).

David Allen, a noted author and consultant, does a great job in his articles and books describing the difference between a task and a project. He says, “Most people are inefficient because they don't force themselves to decide what things mean and what they are actually going to do about them when they first show up. So they are constantly rethinking the same things over and over and not making any progress in doing so—only adding to their stress” (http://www.davidco.com/faq.php?detail=32&category=5#question32).

In truth, most people are responsible for more projects than they are even aware of. Think of some of the tasks that are currently on your to-do list. Chances are, if there is an undone item that has been on the list for a while, it's really a project, not a task. Worksheet 1.1 offers a set of questions to help you decide if an activity is a task or a project.

Treating a project as a task prevents you from clearly defining the multiple steps and time commitment necessary to complete it. That creates the following problems:

  You avoid the task because you really haven't figured out how to do it.

  You do small bits of the task but never get the momentum to see it all the way through.

  Your to-do list stays jammed with stuff you never get to, adding to your stress and making your list almost impossible to use.

  Every new task you get adds to your feeling that you've lost control.

Many people are struggling to balance a task list that's really a project list. Take a minute and see if you can tell the difference. Which of these are projects and which are tasks?

making cookies   writing a status report   coding a webpage   drawing a blueprint

cooking Thanksgiving dinner   preparing a status meeting   creating a website   developing a new product.

WORKSHEET 1.1

Is It a Task or a Project?

Instructions: Answer the following questions for each activity. Then consult the scoring section to learn if your activity is a task or a project.

1.  Can you complete the activity in one sitting?	Yes   No
2.  Can you do the activity without anyone else's help?	Yes   No
3.  Can you complete the activity in less than four hours?	Yes   No
4.  Has the activity been on your to-do list for less than a month?	Yes   No
5.  Can you clearly define the measurements you will use to determine that the task is done?	Yes   No

Scoring

  If you answered “yes” to the majority of the questions, your activity is a task.

  If you answered “no” to three or more of the questions, treat your activity like a project. Follow Steps 1 through 10 to get it done.

 

 

Clearly, the tasks are on the left and the projects are on the right. But there also are many things we do that sit squarely in between—and that's where we often lose our way.

What Is a Project?

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is an internationally recognized standard setting forth the fundamental processes and best practices of project management. It describes a project in this way:

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to achieve a particular aim and to which project management can be applied, regardless of the project's size, budget, or timeline. (www.pmi.org)

Let's look more closely at the critical points in that definition:

  temporary endeavor: a project does not go on forever

  achieve a particular aim: a project must have a goal for completion

  size, budget, timeline: a project demands that you manage the need that's driving the project—money, people, and deadlines.

Here are the critical differences between a project and other work that you do:

  A project has a definable beginning and a definable end.

  A project has cost, time, and quality goals for completion.

  A project requires the use of part-time resources that you may or may not have direct authority to use.

People often confuse a project and a process. The key difference between them is this: a project begins and ends; a process continues without a definable conclusion. Both comprise tasks, but the tasks of a process are repeatable—in other words, you follow roughly the same tasks every time you do the process. For example, when a project team develops a new suite of software to track customer contacts, they are working on a project—it starts and then ends when the software is installed. When the sales staff uses that software to manage its client base, they are using a process.

At the start of this step, you read about differentiating between a task and a project. Now let's see if you grasp the differences between a project and a process. Put a checkmark beside the activities that are not projects:

1.  Creating processes to ensure business compliance

2.  Following processes to ensure business compliance

3.  Planning and holding a company sales retreat

4.  Following the project management standards

5.  Devising a new training course

6.  Teaching a new training course

Activities 2, 4, and 6 are not projects because they don't end—you do them over and over again. They're processes used to deal with things in a routine way—it's ongoing work.

When a new project is started, you follow a project management process to see that all the steps needed to complete the project successfully happen, including tasks to plan, organize, and control. In Step 5 you'll learn how to identify the various activities that a project requires.

Each project is unique. Each project has a set of tasks necessary to complete it successfully. Some of these tasks will be things that you do for all projects, including the 10 steps in this book. Some of these tasks will be specific to one project you're managing. For example, a project to design a new website will include many tasks that aren't included in a project to build an office building. A project intended to be done quickly will take shortcuts that a project intended to produce a high-quality end product will not. The basic 10 steps of this book, however, will be applicable to all of your projects.

Benefits of Project Management

A defined process for managing a project, like the 10 steps described in this book, increases

  repeatability of project success

  scalability of project work

  ability to manage complexity

  ability to react agilely to business change

  your clear focus on business results.

The trick is to follow a process that gives you enough structure to jump-start your project plan without adding too much overhead and expense. Companies new to the project perspective usually start with everyone doing his or her own thing with his or her project (also known as anarchy). Eventually, that approach breaks under the cost of redundant work across disconnected projects that can't communicate with each other.

As their projects get more stressful, novice project managers often waste time by

  filling out forms they don't understand

  hiding from or ignoring the customer's perspective

  blindly following the tasks of the project without adapting to the changes the project has experienced

  delivering late, poor-quality, or over-budget work.

Next, companies usually overcorrect with a strict, document-intense approach to project management. They add such extensive structure that project teams find themselves doing the project management deliverables and never getting to the actual project work. For example, if you spend all your time documenting the scope of the project, the risk mitigation plan, and the communications plan but never actually start building anything, you're not focusing on the right things. When a project management approach is too complex, people lose track of the difference between doing project management to help streamline a successful project and doing project management because the boss said so.

The best place to be is in the middle of these two extremes—a comfortable and productive middle ground between hands-off and hands-tied. When done correctly, project management encourages more thinking up front to ensure more success at implementation. Nothing is done by a good project manager just because it's “supposed to be.” Every step in a good project management approach has a clear purpose. This kind of approach encourages

  less rework

  better quality

  less cost to the business

  less chaos

  fewer heroics.

A good project management process, with flexibility and structure, ensures that your project will

  increase the bottom line by keeping the decision-making focus on the customer and building customer loyalty through project completion that is on time and within budget

  avoid costs by estimating rework through consistent management of deliverables and streamlining project success through lessons learned and evolving processes

  improve service by rapidly escalating and resolving issues and driving cross-organizational accountability.

Roles of Project Management

Think about actors in a drama. Playing a role means inhabiting a part. There are specific behaviors, characteristics, and boundaries for each role. Likewise, in a project, there are specific roles to be taken and it's important that everyone knows what she or he is responsible for producing or overseeing. Depending on the size and complexity of the project, one person may play one or several roles. In very large projects, one role may be played by several people. The only exception is the role of project manager. Research clearly shows that there should be only one project manager.

At this point, you've started to think about those tasks on your to-do list that probably are projects. Now you're an unintended project manager with a list of projects rather than a task list, so what does that change? One of the most important changes is how you view yourself. Thinking of yourself as a manager of projects is different from thinking of yourself as a manager of tasks. In reality, you probably juggle both roles daily.

What does a project manager do? His or her primary responsibilities are to plan, organize, and control a project to its successful completion. To do this, the project manager

  figures out what work needs to be done

  finds and allocates the right resources to the right work

  manages the communication among all the people involved

  adjusts the plan when the project requirements change.

The project manager's role includes managing the team. This requires leadership skills, including setting the team vision, assigning the best people to the tasks, coaching, and resolving conflict.

Although the role of project manager is a critical one, it sometimes can be misinterpreted as the most important role. The project manager may forget that he or she doesn't own the project. The business, represented by an executive funding the work, is the project's owner. The project manager is the steward of the project, essentially watching and guiding it.

Chances are you have become a project manager because you've been successful at the work you do. Many organizations promote to project managers those people who have shown great success getting tasks done. It's most likely that some of the projects you manage will require you to act as project manager and the entire project team. When this happens, you'll be tempted to neglect the strategic aspect of the project manager's role and immerse yourself in the “doing” role of the project team. Resist that urge because both roles are vital to the success of any project. In Step 4 you'll learn how much time to spend on project management activities by identifying and using the risk of a project to anticipate the amount of time demanded.

POINTER

I like to describe this in a way that's more relevant to my life: The project manager is the nanny, and the project (aka, the kids) belongs to the business (the parents). This differentiation matters because there is a big difference between the decisions a nanny makes regarding the children and the decisions that parents make for their children. In just the same way, important decisions about the business benefit of a project always should be made by the business, not the project manager. There will be more discussion on this later in the book, but you should know that it's very common for the project manager to feel pressure to make these decisions without the necessary information.

The person (or people) who represents the business and writes the checks for the project is called the project sponsor. She or he

  establishes the business case

  approves project adjustments

  works with the project manager to resolve conflicts between parts of the business.

The project sponsor has requested the work so he clearly can define the business case for the investment. You may have a project on your list that you're funding yourself, but in most cases the project sponsor is a senior leader in your organization. It's possible to play the role of project sponsor and project manager, but that happens mostly in smaller organizations.

The sponsor owns the project—it's her vision, her request, and her money. As the manager, you'll handle the project, but it's not your project. This is a critical point. Many managers lose their way because they start to think that the project belongs to them. They make choices that should be made by the sponsor. They begin to avoid communication with the sponsor—in fact, they believe the sponsor is a barrier to their ability to do the project well. If any of that occurs, the project will struggle. It's very important for the manager to understand and accept the supporting nature of his or her role.

The project sponsor is an extremely important player, and if you don't know who it is, stop the project until you find out. At that point you may make the unhappy and disruptive discovery that no one has figured out who the sponsor is. Realistically, it may not be within your authority or ability to solve this problem, but it is certainly a serious risk factor that you must take to the people who can solve the problem—an effort we know in business as “escalating.”

Sponsors tend to come from the executive ranks. The sponsor's rank in the organization ensures that he or she will be very busy and difficult to approach, but as project manager you need a strong relationship with the sponsor from the beginning. Many sponsors don't know what it means to be a sponsor so the manager has to help them understand the criticality of their role. Tool 1.1 shows tasks that the project manager can use to engage and keep the sponsor involved.

The other people who have vested interests in the project are called the stakeholders. These are people who, for one reason or another, care what happens to the project. They may supply some project resources or they may receive output from the project. For example, the billing staff in a doctor's office must be involved in rolling out HIPAA compliance. They may not be part of the project team designing the roll-out processes, but they have a vested interest.

TOOL 1.1

Tasks for Engaging and Maintaining Sponsorship

  Review the project business benefit

  Review the project goals

  Ask for and schedule in advance regular meetings with the sponsor to ensure the project is on track, according to the current business priorities

  Create a list of expectations with the sponsor to clarify both roles

  Clarify how handoffs between the manager and sponsor will occur

  Clarify when and how project issues will be brought to the sponsor

  Clarify how you hope the sponsor will communicate the status of the project to peers and to the company leadership

  Determine how the project sponsor will judge the completion of the project

  Determine how the sponsor will participate in the post-project review.

 

By definition, the project sponsor is a stakeholder. So are the members of the project team and the manager. It's important to have a clear understanding of who the stakeholders are and to communicate with them regularly throughout the project.

You'll learn more about the project sponsor and stakeholders in Step 2, and you'll learn to clarify the project scope with them in Step 3. In addition, you'll learn how to determine the risk of the project based on the number of stakeholders and their priorities in Step 4—and that will help you build contingency plans before the project begins. In Step 8 you'll learn to negotiate and manage the conflict that naturally occurs among stakeholders during a project.

TOOL 1.2

Potential Project Team Roles

The project team comprises the people who are actively involved in the project tasks. Sometimes it's difficult to determine whether a person is external to the project team or part of it, and it's the project manager's responsibility to decide this by the amount of time the person spends on project activities. Tool 1.2 lists some of the roles that may exist on a project team.

Another key role on the project team is that of project administrator. In larger projects it's helpful to have a person who keeps track of all the project documentation, coordinates meetings, and monitors project task completion. This person reports to the project manager.

POINTER

The heart of the project team is the group of individuals who do the work the project produces. They may be computer programmers, business analysts, training developers, or some other skilled practitioners. They too may forget that the part of the project they're working on ultimately belongs to the sponsor—an understanding that the project manager must carefully encourage. In Step 5, you'll learn to build collaboration between the team members and the stakeholders. In Step 6, you'll assign project team members to tasks as you to build a project schedule.

The project manager's role includes managing the team. This requires leadership skills, including setting the team vision, assigning the best people to the tasks, coaching, and resolving conflict.

A Model for Project Management: Dare to Properly Manage Resources

Figure 1.2 shows the Dare to Properly Manage Resources Model that you first read about in the introduction to this book. The first letter of each word in the name—DPMR—will help you remember the four main phases of project management that will be discussed in the 10 steps. Those phases are define, plan, manage, and review.

By definition, a project has a beginning and end, as shown in the figure. In between those poles, four significant things should occur:

1.  Define: This phase explores why the project is being done—that is, why is money being invested in this project instead of something else? What is the business case? The way in which the project is done (set out in the project plan) depends on why it is being done.

2.  Plan: The planning phase establishes how the project will be done to meet the business goals defined in the first phase. The outcome of the planning activities, the project plan, specifies the tasks to be done and the people assigned to each task. Essentially it is the project schedule.

3.  Manage: In this phase the project plan is carried out, and the word to remember is adapt. This is a little confusing, because a lot of work has to be done defining and planning before the project plan can start. During this phase, the project manager may find that the business case from the defining phase or the project plan from the planning phase is no longer adequate. As the project progresses, unexpected glitches will test the manager's mettle. The arrows in figure 1.2 show you how Manage frequently tosses the project manager back into Define and Plan when it's done correctly.

4.  Review: When the project is finished, it's not over. In this last phase of project management you learn from the project so that the next project goes even better. Although this phase often is skipped, it's a critical activity.

FIGURE 1.2

Schematic of the Dare to Properly Manage Resources Model

Note: If you'd like a free version of this model to teach to students working on projects in kindergarten through 12th grade, please contact us at [email protected] or www.russellmartin.com.

You'll learn more about the four phases of this project management model throughout the rest of the 10 steps.

Step 1 Checklist

  Determine which tasks on your to-do list are projects and treat them as such.

  Clarify the roles on your project team, including project manager, sponsor, and other stakeholders. Identify the people who will serve on your team.

  Help the project sponsor understand the role he or she will play on the project and how much time to reserve.

  Use the Dare Model as a checklist to ensure more thinking at the start of project and create more success at the end.

The Next Step

You have taken the first step—deciding if the activity you have at hand is a project. You've learned the basics of project management and clarified the roles. At this point, you're ready to move to Step 2, where you'll learn to clarify the business reason for the project—to prove your project is worth the time and effort that will be spent on it. That step is a critical prerequisite for creating your project plan.