CHAPTER 7
How to Manage Multiple Projects in an Independent Portfolio
Now that Patrick has put together a complete schedule for the multiple projects in his portfolio, he has a set of new concerns:
How realistic is this schedule?
How do I make sure that the work is done according to the schedule?
How do I deal with management coming up with more special projects than I planned?
How do I communicate the schedule to members of my team and to my own management?
What do I do when a team member see the priorities differently—putting continued effort into a marginal project?
What kind of warning do I get when things go wrong?
Managing a project is different from planning it, and in this chapter you will look at issues of managing your project portfolio once it has been planned and scheduled.
DEFINITIONS
Here are the key terms you will need to understand in this chapter.
Portfolio constraints are the triple constraints of the entire portfolio, as distinct from the constraints of the individual projects within the portfolio.
SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, agreed-upon (or accountable), realistic, and time-specific. Comparing your goals to this acronym is a standard method of deciding whether your goals are properly drawn.
THE ART OF MANAGING MULTIPLE PROJECT PORTFOLIOS IN ORGANIZATIONS
A large part of this book focuses on the art of planning; this is no accident. The Five P’s—prior planning prevents poor performance—is the most important idea you can use to get the job done. Nothing can prevent all problems, but good planning can at least reduce them and put you more in control.
Many of your problems as a manager of multiple projects happen for two reasons: 1) projects take place within organizations, and, 2) projects have customers. Both organizations and customers consist of people. People have different interests, goals, and styles. People do not as a rule check their humanity at the door when they punch the time clock, which means that projects tend to have a political and emotional agenda, as well as a specific technical goal. Although the political aspects of projects may be a source of frustration (and of occasional despair), you must develop strategies and tactics to deal with them.
Project managers need to be management generalists. In addition to the formal work of project management, you will be involved in all the other duties of managers as well: supervision, leadership, office politics, reports, meetings, and so on.
Good planning is at the core of project management success, both for single and multiple projects. It is not the only thing you must worry about. Look at why some projects succeed and others fail.
Why Some Projects Fail…
Lack of project manager authority: “I must be a mushroom. They keep me in the dark, feed me mushroom food, and then they can me.”
Lack of team participation: “If workers were smart, they’d be managers. Why ask them anything? After all, I’m the boss.”
Poor reporting: “Reports are just a lot of useless paperwork and an irrelevant requirement of management. I fill out the form and then forget the form.”
Lack of people skills: “I don’t thank people just for doing a good job. Doing a good job is what they get paid for.”
Unrealistic goals and schedules: “Your mission, should you decide to accept it…if caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge…”
…and Others Succeed
Committed teamwork:
If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games.
Paul “Bear” Bryant
SMART goals with real consensus: Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic, and Time-Specific.
Use of project management tools as a means, not an end: “We have 238 pages of charts and graphs and still do not have a clue!”
YOUR ROLE AS PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGER
Whenever you are in a management role, you have some power, and you also have some limits on that power. When you manage multiple projects, you often have others responsible for the management of the individual projects inside your portfolio. You must delegate some parts of your responsibility and authority to others. As with other elements of managing your project, you should think about the power you have, the power you need, and the power you are willing to give to the individual project managers within your team.
You can use a worksheet to organize your thinking on this important issue; it serves as the exercise that ends this chapter. Growth and improvement are almost always possible. You may find the exercise somewhat depressing when you realize how little real authority you have. Remember that real power in organizations is often more informal than formal, and you can follow strategies of personal development that will yield greater effectiveness and control. Ways by which you can ethically and effectively gain more power to accomplish results include the following.
Personal assertiveness: Strong self-esteem is a project management skill. If you are given what seems to be an impossible project assignment, you have to say something about it. If the information you have is not sufficient, you have to ask for additional information. If you do not have assertiveness and self-esteem, others are likely to walk on you.
Track record of accomplishment: “Nothing succeeds like success,” the old saying goes, and this is true of project managers. Each time you achieve your goal and each time you get the job done when others could not, you gain power and influence proportional to the respect your accomplishment earned. The best of all political skills is earning a reputation for outstanding work.
Knowledge and insight: When you earn a reputation for knowing what you are talking about, you gain power and influence. Commit yourself to learning more about your field, organization, customers, and projects.
Relationships: Some people say, “It is not what you know, it is who you know.” Actually, it is both what you know and who you know. The ability to build good
professional relationships with people above you, below you, and at the same level in the organization and throughout your industry is an important skill that yields influence and power.
Initiative: Take the initiative on the projects in your portfolio: make decisions; take intelligent risks. Initiative is one of the ingredients of good management everywhere.
People skills: The ability to work and play well with others, which you remember so well from your childhood report cards, is still an important element in adulthood, especially as project managers.
Communications skills: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Communication is part of all these power issues. The art of communication involves the ability to articulate your goals and desires, put them across in persuasive and positive language, and get your message understood. You must be understood before you can be accepted or have others to agree with you.
Understanding: What is the real goal of the project? Who are the key players, and what do they want? The ability to put yourself in others’ shoes and understand the reasons for the project, the goals and missions of the organization in which you work, the limitations and concerns faced by your managers and your team members, and the motivations of others—these are powerful tools to improve your effectiveness.
THE TRIPLE CONSTRAINTS IN A MULTIPLE PROJECT ENVIRONMENT
Review the triple constraints, which are part of every project: time, budget, and performance criteria. You noted that the constraints are then ranked in a special order: 1) driver, 2) middle constraint, and, 3) weak constraint.
The driver is the constraint so overwhelmingly important that if you fail to meet it, the project is a failure, no matter how well you meet the remaining constraints. If Noah’s ark is not ready when the rain comes, explaining that Noah got the lumber at a bargain price is not likely to be counted as an excuse.
The weak constraint has the most flexibility, and this flexibility provides a tool to help you meet the driver.
Because of our basic concepts that project = task and portfolio = project, you need to realize that the triple constraints apply at all levels of the project environment. There are triple constraints for the portfolio, for each project inside the portfolio, and for each task inside each project. There can be conflicts among the constraint levels, and they can be the source of some of your management problems.
Your first goal has to be to define the triple constraints at each level. In Patrick’s case, he needs to make sure that he understands the primary mission of his department. Does the organization primarily want him to make money, and secondarily publish high-quality technical information? Does the organization primarily want him to make money, and secondarily offer a long list of publications? Does the organization primarily want him to be a publisher of high-quality technical information, and secondarily to make money?
Each scenario will, of course, change how Patrick should manage his portfolio, decide which projects to put in it, and measure how well he is doing. If Patrick does not determine his real purpose, based on the organization’s overall goals, he can inadvertently lead his team into disaster—while believing he is doing the right thing.
RESOLVING CONFLICTS BETWEEN PROJECT DRIVERS AND PORTFOLIO DRIVERS
Difference between project and portfolio drivers. If a project and a task are the same, a portfolio and a project are also the same. But the driver of the portfolio is not automatically identical to the driver of the individual projects within the portfolio.
That seems impossible, but look further. On a project/task level, you might have a project with time as the driver. That would imply that time is the driver for each task in the project. What if a task is noncritical? If it has slack, then time is not the most restrictive constraint. Therefore, the driver of that task is different from the driver of the project.
The same thing can be true of your portfolio. You must develop the portfolio’s triple constraints and analyze their ranking to determine driver/middle/weak constraint order. This allows you to prioritize the individual projects within the portfolio and make the right strategic decisions, such as how to allocate resources across your projects, in order to optimize the driver.
Conflicts between project manager goals and portfolio manager goals. One problem that may arise, as a result of these different drivers, is that one of your project managers may see her goals differently. At the portfolio level, the project may be a low priority, low payoff issue that should be handled quickly. The project manager may feel, however, that the project is her baby.
Because the individual project manager tends to see the work in terms of her own project, she may put more time, energy, and resources than warranted into the project goal. You may find the project manager fighting for additional resources, arguing for greater priority, or pushing for more time than you believe is appropriate.
First, you are responsible for overall priority, and you sometimes need to make decisions that are right for the portfolio but wrong for the project. You might find yourself faced with having to say something like:
I know you want to make this the best book you ever published, but I do not think you will sell more than five hundred copies. Because some of our other books might sell fifty thousand copies, they are more important. I need you to finish this book quickly and not put any more resources into it, because you will not get the payoff from the investment. I want the “best book we ever published” to be one that will sell well and have a larger audience.
Expect the project manager to react emotionally to this. You all want to do quality work and have that work recognized. To be told our project has a low priority—even if that is the absolute truth—can be upsetting. As the portfolio manager, your reaction might be, “Gee, that is tough—now get back to work”; but you cannot afford to ignore the project manager’s feelings in this situation.
First, you need the team member to keep a positive attitude so that she can be effective on the next project. Second, you need the team member to learn to better understand overall goals; that is unlikely if the team member is angry. Third, you need the team member to decide properly how to finish—or abandon—the current project.
Allow team members in this situation to express their negative emotions—to vent a little bit. Lead them through the process of figuring the next steps to take, and allow them a little time to mourn what their project might have been.
Deciding when to kill a project. Along with the decision to lower a project’s priority comes the decision to kill a project completely. Recall the juggling act in Chapter 1 where all the spinning plates had the same value. In our multiple-project environment, this is not necessarily true.
Use the priority management system in Section 2 of this book to rank the individual projects in your portfolio. How does each project contribute to meeting the portfolio goals? The process of prioritizing may get you to drop some projects from the schedule even before they start.
You may put some marginal projects in your schedule because you have the resources available. If things go wrong, or if other projects that have a higher priority are added to your schedule, you may need to drop some of the marginal projects. This can lead to the emotional issues just described.
You may also find it frustrating to kill a marginal project after time, effort, and resources have been invested in it. Ask yourself if it is possible to salvage the work; maybe the project can be put on indefinite hold rather than killed outright; maybe some of the work can be reused in other projects. If you have a project manager who is frustrated and hurt by the project’s demise, ask him to think of ways to salvage the work. He may have some viable ideas.
TECHNIQUES FOR MANAGING PRIORITIES AND WORKFLOW
Part of achieving success in a multiple project environment is designing your own personal control systems. Following are ideas that others have used successfully.
Build your own control systems. Use color-coding for project status reports. Try colored stick-on dots, tinted papers, red dots for priority issues, and other tricks. Put your project-tracking information in your personal organizer, and calendar your tasks. Use separate clipboards for each project. Keep a project journal/work diary.
Organize yourself. Clean your desk at the end of each day. Write a weekly to-do list. Do a Monday morning update. Build quiet/think time into your work schedule. Buy tools to manage the paper on your desk, and learn to use them.
Set and maintain good priorities. Learn to distinguish between importance and urgency. Rank your assignments by 1) which generates the most profit for the organization, 2) which yields greatest payoff for your time, and, 3) letting your management decide when neither 1 nor 2 is compelling.
Speak up. Learn to say no when you are overloaded or cannot afford to be distracted. When something happens that may jeopardize the project, let the affected people know early. Negotiate. Be assertive.
EXERCISE
My Current Authority Issues
Take the time to write your answers to each question fully, using extra paper if needed. It is important to write your ideas, for you will see them more clearly and be able to use them more effectively. You need to face these issues honestly. As you identify areas of difficulty and concern, you can determine strategies to facilitate growth and improvement.
- How would your boss define your current official role in managing your project portfolio? Is your authority in writing (part of your job description or by formal memo) or informal?
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- What do you need in resources to accomplish your portfolio goals? What resources do you have? If there is a gap, what strategy should you follow?
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- What authority (if any) do you have to make or approve purchases, negotiate and approve contracts, or make other decisions that bind your organization legally or financially?
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- Do you select your own team members? Are they selected for you? Or is there a hybrid selection process?
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- Does each key member of your project team report to you in a formal sense? If not, what level of authority do you possess (ability to fire, reprimand, dismiss from team, and so on)? Do any members of your project team outrank you in the normal office hierarchy?
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- Who is responsible for creation of the plan, approval of changes to the plan, maintenance of the plan, and the making of work assignments from the plan? If not you, where do you fit in?
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- Do you have direct access to the ultimate customer(s) or client(s) for the projects in your portfolio, or do you have to go through intervening management (internal or external)? Are you accepted by the customer as a technical authority? Do you regularly attend top-level meetings impacting the project?
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- At what point do you have to gain the approval of others higher in the organization to make portfolio-related decisions? Do you have enough respect and acceptance from higher authority for your recommendations to be seriously considered and usually accepted?
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- List the key organizational players with concern for the projects in your portfolio. Are there people in power positions who have agendas (hidden or clear) that affect the project outcome, resources, priority, or methodology? If so, who and what are they?
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- What is the relative priority of the projects in your portfolio compared to other projects and portfolios within the organization? How do other organizational priorities affect your project portfolio?
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EXERCISE
My Delegated Needs and Goals
- How would I rate the current skill and ability level of the project managers on my team? Are they adequate for the job that is expected of them? If not, what steps can I take to develop the skills and abilities I need?
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- What authority do my project managers need to accomplish their projects in a timely and effective manner? What types of decisions should they make on their own without the need to consult with me? What types of decisions should they make but check with me first? What types of decisions should they bring to me and let me decide?
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- What personal or political goals or agendas do my project managers and key team members have? Do any of them conflict with my goals or agenda? If so, what should I do to deal with these conflicts?
- How good is the current communication between the individual project managers on my team and me? Are we able to identify and resolve conflicts, deal with any personality issues, and reach consensus on project goals, deadlines, and budgets? If there are problems, what strategies can I follow to overcome them?
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- How would I rate my personal skill in delegating and empowering team members to do the work? If my delegating skills and confidence levels are not up to my needs, what will I do to improve my skills in delegating and empowering?
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