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Industry Norms—Should You Conform?

In this chapter, you learn why it’s worthwhile to gain a rudimentary understanding of project management before enrolling in a tech-savvy program or course of study bolstered by software and prevailing project management terminology.

Quiz Question

Besides being regarded as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, what do these sites have in common: the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, in what is now Iraq; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Turkey; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, in what is now Bodrum, Turkey; the Colossus of Rhodes in Greece; and the Lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt? And what do the following sites have in common with the New Seven Wonders of the World: the Great Wall of China; Petra, an archaeological city in southern Jordan; the Colosseum in Rome, Italy; Chichen Itza in the Yucatán of Mexico; Machu Picchu in the Cuzco region of Peru; the Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India; and the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?

Further, what do these have in common: the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; the Suez Canal; the Panama Canal; the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey; Teotihuacan in the Basin of Mexico; the Empire State Building in New York City; the Eiffel Tower in Paris; the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, China; El Mirador in Guatemala; the Tower of London; and many other notable places around the world?

The answer, in a nutshell, is that they are major architectural, landscaping, engineering, or construction feats that were conceived, built, and perfected without the aid of a computer, software, or any of the technological tools that are commonly associated with project management.

The same can be said of the Great Canadian Railway, the Patagonia Highway in South America, the U.S. Interstate Highway System, the Trans-Siberian Highway, the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the Itaipu Dam bordering Brazil and Paraguay, the Hoover Dam in Arizona, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Great Siege Tunnels of Gibraltar, the first passenger ocean liners, all aircraft prior to World War II, early steel mills, and on and on.

To say it another way, long before project management software and spreadsheets—and, regarding the “14 Wonders” named above, long before anyone knew about electricity, let alone cyberspace—ambitious civilizations around the globe, spurred on by pioneering builders, devised and constructed some of the most enduring, iconic sites and destinations in the world.

These massive projects involved conception (that is, the genesis of the idea), designing, planning, and material and labor considerations, all of which are part of today’s computer-aided world that obviously none of the builders and designers of these projects had at their disposal. As such, not all projects proceeded with the efficiency that today’s projects can muster. There were costly delays, high accident and mortality rates, and sometimes gargantuan setbacks. Despite it all, the march of civilization and the proliferation of monumental feats continued unabated.

Modern Origins

The modern-day discipline of project management, to various degrees, sprang from the U.S. military and then spread to industry. To this day, because of the nature of the military, many project management protocols are a bit more bureaucratic in nature than strictly necessary.

This added layer of bureaucracy is burdensome when undertaking a small project. In addition, the certification process of many certifying bodies in the field of project management sometimes overcomplicates issues. Basic knowledge and skills that a person needs to adroitly manage a project are diluted by complex, esoteric, largely unneeded terms and concepts that some project managers might not have to use at all. It’s almost as if a person were to buy a new car, loaded with benefits and features, amazing technology and gadgets, and doesn’t partake of most of them.

Features Unknown and Rarely Used—Consider the gal who buys the swankiest high-prestige car available. For the duration of her ownership, she drives around town partaking of only a fraction of the car’s capabilities. This is all fine, if she’s otherwise satisfied, which is usually the case. How much less could this woman pay to own a car only with the features and capabilities she’d regularly use?

The project management certifying bodies include complexity in their courses, guidebooks, and resources. Does this enhance the mystique of their brand and overall services? Those who control the terminology that the industry adopts as crucial create an exclusivity for themselves.

Ensnarled by Jargon?

Business literature of the last 100 years essentially repeats many of the same concepts, but continues to coin new terms and fresh phrases to describe such concepts. Why take timeless concepts in project management and put a new spin on them?

What’s What among the Gatekeepers—As you read about the terms and items that follow, stay focused on the underlying concepts that they encompass. For example, Agile is both a way of thinking and a general approach to management that emphasizes the value of human communication, especially in an environment that constantly changes. It’s important to stay flexible on the path to presenting workable, proven results.

Also, recognize that thought-leaders as well as organizations experience various stages of enchantment with terminology and tools. Viewed from a longer-term perspective, even if the Harvard Business Review and other top business publications are touting “agile this” and “agile that,” over time, the term will fall out of vogue. Everything does, eventually. Here are a few contemporary terms and items you’ll likely encounter in the world of project management:

PMI professional certification: “Developed by practitioners for practitioners, our certifications are based on rigorous standards and ongoing research to meet the real-world needs of organizations. With a PMI certification behind your name, you can work in virtually any industry, anywhere in the world, and with any project management methodology. Wherever you are in your career, we have a certification for you.”

The Agile Practice Guide was created in partnership with Agile Alliance® and offers tools, guidelines, and a compilation of agile approaches to project management. It is designed to steer “traditional” project managers to a more-agile approach. As described in the product literature, the book includes the following sections:

◾  An Introduction to Agile—describes the Agile Manifesto mindset, values, and principles and describes the concepts of definable and high-uncertainty work as well as the correlation between lean, the Kanban Method, and agile approaches.

◾  Life Cycle Selection—introduces life cycle varieties discussed in the Guide, and explains tailoring guidelines, suitability filters, and combinations of approaches.

◾  Creating an Agile Environment—focuses on factors to contemplate, such as team composition and servant leadership, when establishing an agile environment.

◾  Delivering in an Agile Environment—explains how to organize a team and then implement common practices for regularly delivering value. It explains empirical measurements that the team can apply as well as options for reporting project status.

◾  Organizational Considerations for Project Agility—examines key organizational factors such as culture, business practices, readiness, and the role of a project management office in pursuit of adopting agile practices.

Tinderbox, version 7, is described by the vendor as an expressive, “invaluable tool for capturing and visualizing your ideas.” Illustrative, flexible maps enable you to quickly clarify any tangled links you might have. “Natural language processing extracts names, places, and organizations” to help users accomplish more. Improved maps, charts, and flagged terms help users to visualize even intricate “qualitative coding projects.”

Scrum essentially is a widely used Agile method for managing a project, primarily software development. While Agile software development using scrum might be perceived as a methodology, it actually is a lightweight framework for process management. A “process framework” is a definitive set of practices that must be incorporated for a process to be consistent with the framework.

The Agile Attitude

Understanding Agile takes a bit of, well … agility. It is both an approach to management and a way of thinking. What it is not: a list of instructions, a guidebook, or some type of certification. Moreover, viewing Agile as some type of template by which to manage is actually contrary to what Agile is all about.

The Project Management Institute contends that more than 70% of organizations have instituted some type of Agile approach, while more than 25% of manufacturing firms employ Agile exclusively. PMI research suggests that Agile-based projects are nearly 30% more successful than traditional projects.

Agile values doing work in pieces, also known as sprints. These pieces eventually add up to desired results. Agile managers learn from what they have accomplished. The focus of Agile is to produce workable, demonstrable results. To further emphasize, managers who adhere to Agile approaches do their best on the piecework that eventually adds up to a finished product, service, or deliverable. The goal is not to hit a home run on the first swing, but instead to hit single after single to advance runners or, in this case, progress.

Ever Changing

Agile project management is ever-changing. Project managers will define it in different ways, and that could be confusing. A simple way to understand Agile project management is to recognize that it focuses on human communication, being flexible in the face of changing situations, and delivering workable solutions.

A key Agile principle holds that “the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within the development team is face-to-face conversation.”

Many popular project management software packages are designed with Agile in mind. (See Chapter 11, “Choosing Project Management Software.”) “As applied to project management, agile focuses on effectiveness of communications rather than endless meetings, e-mail correspondence, or reams of documentation.” With that in mind, if you can successfully communicate with somebody in 10 to 15 seconds of conversation, instead of an e-mail, by all means proceed.

The accent on face-to-face communications over e-communications gives rise to what is known as the daily scrum, which is part and parcel of an Agile approach. In essence, a scrum is a communication tool within an Agile framework. As one manager put it, “Scrum is a method for organizing tasks to promote agility.”

A scrum can be a 10-minute meeting in which a group stands, not sits, and collectively makes a team plan as well as individual plans for the day. Why is the term scrum employed instead of “a 10-minute standup meeting”?

Scrum is borrowed from rugby, where the players huddle quickly and plan for the next play. In football it’s called a huddle. In baseball, the infielders meet at the pitcher’s mound to discuss the next play. Basketball doesn’t have such a term: Teammates will meet anywhere on the court as needed, generally for a few seconds. Scrum, as used in project management, and as applied by Agile and Tinderbox authors, conveys a sense of exclusivity.

Your Bottom Line

Whether it’s Agile, team building, customer service, or what-have-you, what are their underlying concepts, and what makes their tenets viable now and for the future? You want to always seek both the short- and the long-term utility of a management methodology, a tool, a system, or even a set of beliefs.

In project management, when you sweep away the contemporary hubbub, an underlying structure prevails. The need to establish order, to marshal adequate resources, to carefully schedule activities and events, all remain vital in any era. That’s why this book emphasizes the underlying fundamentals of project management, while acknowledging that today’s terminology and tools provide the contemporary template and operating systems by which we do proceed.

When you stay open-minded to the available new terminology and tools, you’ll tend to learn new things and gain perspectives that you might not otherwise encounter. So, you’ll want to understand the industry jargon, but not be ensnarled by it, as if a particular term were mandatory and so vital that you can’t successfully manage a project without it.

Institutional Pitfalls

As a youth, you probably learned multiplication and division first, by hand. Later, you used calculators. If you started with calculators and didn’t learn the underlying basic math, you are dependent on calculators and computers for life, and in their absence you’re totally stuck, like those who understand little if any math. Similarly, widely touted tools for project management do convey considerable benefits, but first you need to learn the fundamentals of project management, which this book offers.

Agile devotee or not, it’s prudent for you to become familiar with the essence of the approach, and to learn the jargon, if only to be able to hobnob with other project managers within your organization and the profession in general.

Standardization Helps and Hurts

The PMI credential is regarded as the industry standard. Significant numbers of instructors in the field teach to this credential, essentially helping their trainees become adept at passing the exam. That’s fine, since the PMI credential indicates that titleholders adhere to an industrywide ethical code. Also, standardization of instruction can be helpful in some ways.

Standardization can also potentially be stifling in terms of your applying original thinking, creative approaches, and innovative solutions to project management challenges. On smaller projects, an astute manager using spreadsheet software and simple management tools can do equally well, and perhaps more easily.

Whether you’re a beginner or have managed projects for a while, you’ll want to be comfortable in various settings. It is useful for you to ultimately understand the basic principles of scrum, not a topic in this text, but certainly one you will encounter. It’s also wise to eventually become familiar with Tinderbox capabilities for project planning and other approaches deemed vital by PMI. However, these are not the first areas to explore on the path to being an effective project manager.

As discussed in Chapter 1, balance is vital, as is your ability to work with people and communicate effectively. Once you punch those tickets, then understanding the basic tools—including the Gantt chart, flowcharts, and the critical path method (CPM) of project control (topics covered in Chapters 9 and 10)—represents the third leg of the stool to support your efforts.

Underlying Concepts Count

Constructing this book, to reemphasize, required a ground-up approach. In analog fashion, Everyday Project Management first examines the tools that people have successfully relied on for at least the last hundred years, including the aforementioned Gantt chart, the critical path method (CPM), flowcharts, and tree diagrams. It then discusses how they can be applied in the work and life of the everyday project manager.

The difficulty of jumping into project management relying totally on popular software, without understanding the underlying concepts, can be illustrated by the following story.

I had met Annie, the VP of Internet Technology (IT) for a major bank with headquarters on the East Coast. She was receiving a salary of $248,000—an outrageous sum in North Carolina a few years back—plus a matching bonus of $248,000, as well as other perks and bonuses. All told, she annually received more than a half million dollars.

It was Annie’s standard operating procedure to use her GPS every time she got into her car, even to drive only a few blocks to or from her lavish home. She relied on the GPS to such a great degree that she had precious little knowledge of the streets and larger community in which she resided.

For whatever reason, one day, while she was driving us around town, her GPS gave out. Despite repeated attempts, she could not make it function properly, and she kept no maps in the car. Suddenly, she realized she was lost and this highly intelligent, self-confident, and supremely competent person became unglued. Annie was frustrated with the device, but more so with herself. Not being from the area, I was of little help.

When she got a few blocks closer to her house, Annie began to recognize a landmark here and there, and eventually got home. In perspective: This otherwise ultra-effective, highly rewarded, career professional had relied heavily on technology to navigate about town, without learning the basics—the major roads of Charlotte and the streets near her home. As such, in the face of this temporary glitch, she got utterly lost.

How many other motorists today, I wonder, fail to ever look at a map so as to understand the basics of their own geographic environment, gain some knowledge of their own neighborhood and surrounding community, get familiar with the major roads, and be able to navigate a bit around town without relying on their GPS crutch?

Fundamentals Matter

Even a few blocks from her house, Annie was befuddled until she recognized some businesses and houses. The names of streets meant nothing to her. The fact that she had traversed some of these roads at other times was of little help.

The lesson for budding and as well as seasoned project managers is clear: First learn the fundamentals of project management, which will be covered in this book. Then gravitate to the prevailing industry software and enjoy the benefits and features of that software, which will make your job easier.

Without understanding the underlying concepts of project management, if you jump into the fray while relying heavily on project and software, be forewarned: You run only a minuscule risk that the software will somehow fail you. What’s more likely is that you won’t feel fully comfortable in your role as a project manager to the degree that others do, who took the time to learn the basics.

Want Some Fries with Your Order?

If you’ve been in a fast food restaurant, particularly in an airport, as you’re ready to pay for your order, did you know that the cash register keys might not contain numbers? Instead, in many stores, the cash register keys contain pictures of, say, a hamburger, french fries, and a milkshake.

Having cash register keys with pictures can cut down on entry errors. More than that, fast food franchisors often find it difficult to hire competent help. So, they “engineered” around employees’ needing to have simple arithmetic skills. As long as a cashier can press cash register keys with the pictures of what customers order, the proper amount to charge the customer will appear.

If the customer is paying by credit card, as happens in airport settings nearly all the time, then the cashier doesn’t need to have arithmetic skills at all: The system takes care of everything. One can only surmise what happens on a day when the “cashier” has to rely on arithmetic skills to make change because the cash register malfunctions in some way.

Dependency Is Not Pretty

As a project manager, please don’t emulate the person who is overly dependent on tools. You’ll want to be the person who can come in and say, “Here’s how we’ll proceed,” whether or not the technology and gadgets are available. After all, during a storm, all the power can go off in your office. Can you still keep going?

At an executive retreat I witnessed, one of the challenges posed to participants was to complete a task without the customary resources at their command, such as cell phones, tablets, and laptops, as well as people resources. The executives who had overrelied on their administrative assistants back in the work-a-day world found themselves stymied when seeking to tackle the challenge on their own, in the raw.

Only a handful of participants were able to plot a path and follow a plan that led to success in completing the task. The rest were up in arms. They had relied for so long on supporting resources that they regarded such support as a given. Now, even in a supportive environment, tackling a rather minor challenge, they were at a loss as to how to proceed. For sure, the ability to delegate effectively is a skill vital to leaders. Still, this tale makes one wonder about the nature of competence and confidence.

Competence and Confidence

The more competent you are, the greater your confidence can be in the work you perform. Likewise, if you are highly confident, that can help to enhance your competence. In all cases, you need to have knowledge of the underlying essentials within a given discipline. Even in the age of ultrasmart calculators and computers, good engineers still know how to use a slide rule.

The proverbial bottom line: You need to have earned your chops, not rely all the time on software. As discussed previously, the language employed to discuss the fundamentals might change. The fundamentals themselves don’t change, however, especially in relation to smaller projects, the type to which you’ll likely be assigned early in your career will change.

Much is at stake if you’re building a bridge, a nuclear submarine, or some other hard asset. The many “givens” to your situation can’t be altered, such as the length of the bridge, the number of tons of steel required, or the date the client must have the finished product. So, you draw on your basic skills, judgment, and, yes, the available tools of technology. You can’t be changing your mind every other day on a project to construct a new, hard asset, because you’ll run the risk of, say, stockpiling tons of rusty bolts.

Alternatively, if you’re a software engineer or are working on some type of software-related project, you have options. You can traverse different paths, and then abandon them if they don’t pay off. You can consider multiple ways of accomplishing the same task. You can add bells and whistles, or exclude them.

You have flexibility because a deliverable, such as software, exists in a virtual world that allows for contingencies. The day before delivery, you can position a banner on the bottom, instead of the top of the page, simply because you want to. Such changes might not disrupt the project. Some users will like the banner at the bottom. Others might have preferred it to be at the top.

You Call the Shots

At your discretion, you can make a change to the software if an overwhelming number of users prefer the banner to be at the top.

For the reasons above, Agile project management software places emphasis on what it terms user-driven priority queues and customer-needs priority queues.

If you’re repairing a bridge, you have to obtain approval by the big bureaucracy—the group dispensing the $10 million or $20 million to complete the project. You’re going to incur big trouble if you decide to deviate in a major way, midway through the project.

When developing software, say in Silicon Valley, it’s common to scrap one way of doing things for another. At times, a single e-mail from a customer will prompt a firm to turn 180 degrees in what they’re developing. As project manager, you decide. You can rely on technology tools, but when the dust clears, you decide.

Interpersonal and Technological Skills

Equally important to understanding the tools is connecting with the team charged with completing the project. Make no mistake: Interpersonal skills are as critical to the project manager as technological skills.

The project manager reports to others, and has sponsors, constituents, and perhaps well-wishers, all of whom need to be regularly kept informed. The project manager has human resources within the organization—project team members—who could be full-time for the duration of the project, or coming and going. Each project team member needs to have a relationship with the project manager and, likely, with one or more others on the team, as well.

It’s been stated in many texts that it’s easier to take somebody with people skills and teach them the technical fundamentals of project management than it is to take somebody with technical project management skills and teach them the fundamentals of dealing with people, since they don’t already have such capability.

In this book we focus on the underlying technical concepts and the people side of project management. Accept this as a truism: You will not be able to avoid the ever-constant need to work effectively with others. Having interpersonal skills are not optional for the project manager, and indeed will likely be the make-or-break factor in your long-term success.