Project style: Yellow is the new grey

In a thought-provoking post on Ron Rosenhead’s Project Management blog recently, Ron talks about how ‘grey areas’ are areas of risk in a project.

These are areas where details are not well defined, information is incomplete or where no-one is taking responsibility, etc. Warning lights should flash where there are areas like this in a project – ambiguity makes bad things happen.

So should these be grey areas? Grey fades into the background and this is the last thing you want to happen to these risky areas – they should be called yellow areas. Being yellow, they’ll stand out and won’t drop off your radar.

So when you find a grey area, see it as yellow and you’ll deal with it before it starts causing you trouble.

Ron’s blog article is here.

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Doing a lot but not getting ahead?

Greg has a lot to do.

He begins each day with a huge task list, determined to complete as many things as he can. He gets through a lot but at the end of each day there are always a few tasks that don’t get done, usually the ones that take a little longer – so they’re moved onto the next day and become a little more urgent.

Greg is playing the volume game; he’s judging his performance by how many tasks he can do. While he feels like he’s getting a lot done, he’s constantly stressed out by the high number of urgent tasks that interrupt his day.

If Greg approached his task list in a different way, he’d find that while initially he might not get as many tasks done, he’d end up with a smaller number of urgent tasks, more time and less stress.

So how do you approach your tasks differently? Try to identify tasks that have specific benefits – these are the important ones:

•    Identify if a task is something that will save you time in the future. An example is taking the time to work out proper estimates for a project – if you estimate poorly, the impact on your time in the future will be much greater than the time you spend estimating.

•    Identify if a task will increase your understanding of a project – this will help you avoid a crisis in the future, which is always time-consuming. For example, forming a deep understanding of a new project today may result in a question which, if asked now, will allow you to decide a course of action that will avoid a problem in the future.

•    Identify if a task is directly related to generating income, either for your company or for yourself.

•    Identify if a task builds a relationship with a customer – relationships lead to business.

•    Identify if a task builds a personal relationship – personal relationships improve the quality of your life.

•    Identify if the task improves your ability to enjoy life – tasks involving health, personal financial security and stress reduction.

You’ll find the number of important tasks is quite small and on most days, you’ll have time for other tasks. And if you make sure you get the important things done, you’ll have less urgent tasks, you’ll be more in control and ultimately you’ll be more successful.

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What you need to get productive right now

I meet a lot of people who are overworked, stressed out and generally feeling like everything is piling up on top of them. Many of these people work in IT, and for them I think that’s part of the problem.

The peculiar thing about tech-savvy people is that they tend to look for technological solutions to their productivity issues. They look for productivity software, mobile applications, collaboration tools and the like, but usually don’t get long term value from these gadgets. There is an initial flush of productivity when these tools are first adopted, but within a few weeks they’re back to where they were: stressed and overloaded. And their technological solution is languishing on the hard drive, half full of weeks-old actions and tasks. The ’solution’ has just added to their workload.

Solve the issue

If you’re trying to get productive, there are really only 2 things that you need:

1. CLARITY and
2. FOCUS

Clarity

CLARITY is being specific about what the task is that needs to be done next. Define it, quantify it, and describe precisely what you’re going to do about it.

Focus

FOCUS is a decision to get that task done, forsaking all distractions till it’s finished. The phone rings – ignore it and get on with it. An email arrives – ignore it (or better still, close your email). Every time you decide to stay focused is a victory for you and it makes it easier to stay focused for the next task. And the next, and the next.

Productivity tools can help, but only after you’ve got clarity and focus.

So decide NOW to have clarity and focus, and your productivity will start to build. And as your productivity gains momentum, you’ll find your stress and sense of overwork will fall away – no technology required.

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Best productivity habit of 2008

The best productivity habit I established last year was using my Daily Imperatives list – my focus has increased and I’m getting my must-do items done every day.

Here’s how I use it:

• It’s like a to-do list but I only put things on it that must get done today – anything else goes onto the standard to-do list. After double-checking all the items are must-do, the list I end up with is rarely long so I know I’ll get to the less important items as well during the day.
• For every entry on my list, I describe the action and specify the desired outcome. So instead of writing:

  “Fred re documentation”

  I write:

  “Call Fred: Request completion of design document by Friday”

  Then when I get to the item in a few hours time, I can quickly action it instead of having to remember what it was about Fred and documentation I had to do.

• I number the items in order of importance. Occasionally I only number the first few, but I notice that my days are more effective when I number them all at the start of the day.

  I then start at 1 and only move on to 2 when 1 is finished. If I’m blocked on 1, say if I’m waiting for someone to call me back, the worksheet has space to jot down notes like ‘Fred will call back by 3pm’. Then I can easily pick up where I left a blocked task off.

  And if I’m interrupted, I don’t waste time after each interruption deciding what I’ll work on next because it’s on the list.

• There’s a place at the top of the worksheet where I enter important leading indicator tasks that I want to do every day. I also put important administrative tasks here too – those things that work best when they’re updated a little each day.

Once I’ve completed the Daily Imperatives, I move on to my regular to-do list.

The productivity gains from the Daily Imperatives list come from 3 main areas:

1. It’s easy to see the important tasks, and to make sure they get done before the more trivial items.
2. Because I have a clear sequenced plan for the day, interruptions are easier to absorb and I don’t waste time re-prioritising.
3. My stress is removed. I work through the list of imperatives, happy in the fact that I’m getting the most important things done first.

A note about ‘urgent’ tasks – if a task is urgent, it’s usually the result of an important task that wasn’t done early enough. Have a quick review of urgent tasks so you can avoid the same situation in the future, and don’t push important tasks to the bottom of the list in favour of them otherwise you’ll end up with yet more urgent tasks.

You can download my daily imperatives worksheet for free here, or by clicking on the image up there at the top of the post.

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Standish Chaos Report 2009: Are projects failing or are Project Managers failing?

Various project management research reports are reporting declining project success rates.

From the Standish Chaos Report:

• 32% of all projects succeed
• 44% of all projects were challenged
• 24% of all projects failed

But these statistics don’t give an accurate view of how successful the project managers themselves were – the percentages aren’t spread evenly across all project managers.

As with any group of people engaged in an activity, there’s a bell curve of ability – a small number of project managers are very good at driving projects to success, a large number are just average at it and another small group are very unsuccessful.

So for the projects above, most of the 32% that succeeded would have been driven by the very good project managers, most of the challenged projects would have belonged to the average PMs, and the very unsuccessful PMs would have run a disproportionate number of the 24% that failed.

Sure there are external factors, but all projects have them and 32% of those were successful. A good project manager works with the external factors to bring them into their sphere of influence where they can deal with the factors and prevent them crashing the project.

So which group do you want to be in? And if you’re not there yet, what are you doing to get there?

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Saved by the Bell Curve?

For any activity – golf, business, financial management, karate, poker, art, work, music etc – there’s a small number of people doing it who are not good at it at all, a large number of people who are average at it and a small number of people who are extremely good at it.

Plot this on a graph and it creates a bell shape – the large bulge in the middle is the people who are average at the activity. While people can and do move from not very good to average, very few move from average to extremely good.

So how do you move to extremely good?

First identify what the average people are doing to achieve their mediocrity. This is what it takes to be average, and you can avoid it or stop doing it.

Then identify what the successful people are doing and start doing that. And watch your success grow.

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Standish Group Chaos Report finds increasing project failure

This report was brought to my attention by Ron Rosenhead’s Project Management blog, and I stumped up the US$99 to buy it. The actual report is 4 pages long, but you get a free (hardcover) book with the purchase so that softens the blow a little.

The part of the report that I found most interesting was Standish’s thoughts about the causes of increased project failures. They acknowledge that some project failures may be due to the economy, however primarily they attribute the main causes to be lack of execution and focus and an increase in process, tools and red tape. Process isn’t helping, it’s hindering!

Clearly articulating the BIG RISK, Standish highlights that this current process mentality is a downward spiral; project success rates are low, so we put in more controls. This means less time managing projects and more red tape, which in turn leads to even lower success rates… You get the picture.

It’s not about the methodology

Our project management organisations are losing their perspective on what’s important. It’s not about the process or the methodology; project success is achieved when smart, capable project managers are allowed to focus and spend time on what’s important to get their projects delivered.

The Report provides Standish’s 10 Laws of Chaos and the 10 Chaos Success Factors, which are revised based on their survey data.

Tellingly, Formal Methodology has been replaced by Execution this year.

Get the Standish Chaos Report

Conquer the dark sides of perfectionism

There’s a dark side?

Being a perfectionist is good, isn’t it? It means you do something right, first time and every time and it’s something a lot of people aspire to. Well, actually perfection is a highly overrated goal which can disrupt your working life and kill your dreams.

First, to do something perfectly usually takes a lot of effort. You do it, re-do it, re-re-do it and it’s still not quite right, and you’re way over your deadline. The people relying on you find this frustrating, even if your work is totally flawless – they’re held up by your strive for an ideal when they would have been just as satisfied with an on-time result that gave them what they wanted. They’ll stop getting you to do work for them and you may find yourself moved on.

The solution to this is to know that a ‘perfect’ job is one that exactly meets the expected level of results. If you’re going to be perfect at something, be perfect at finding out what that level is and meeting it, rather than applying your own exacting, and possibly inaccurate, measures.

The real dark side

The second problem with being a perfectionist is that it causes you to delay or, worse still, not start things because you fear you won’t be able to do a perfect job straight away.

As you progress through life, you naturally get better at things, and you grow accustomed to finding success at a decreasing range of activities.

As a child, you put in a huge amount of effort into learning to walk, and most of that time was spent on your backside. Most adults would not put that much effort into learning something, especially if they had such setbacks – they’d say ‘I’m just not good at this – it didn’t work for me the first time, I’ll go back to something I know I can do’.

At work, you may stick to the job you know, even though it’s boring, because you think, quite rightly, that you won’t be perfect in that challenging new job immediately. Or you might put off doing that huge paper because you know you won’t be happy with the first draft – suddenly it’s due and your job’s on the line.

Say you dream of becoming an artist, or a writer, or a tennis ace. But knowing the amount of work that will be needed before you reach a level of average proficiency, you don’t try at all. All that effort, just to become average?

So what’s the answer?

Realise what world champions, and toddlers, already know – no-one’s perfect the first time at something new. Keep working on it and you’ll start to see small, ever-increasing successes that will spur you on and reinforce your efforts – the occasional really good brush-stroke, a pretty great turn of phrase or a better than average tennis serve.

And keep trying – don’t let the dark side of perfectionism prevent you from chasing your dreams.

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Trust: Your 6th sense of project management

Think about the people you manage – do you trust them to deliver? Chances are you know you can rely on most of them, but then there’s one who always misses their deadlines, or needs constant pushing…

For those who don’t deliver so reliably, there are four possible reasons why they’re not performing:

1)    They’re not committed to meeting your expectations.

2)    They don’t know what your expectations are.

3)    They don’t have the skills to deliver.

4)    They’re not motivated.

While it may seem like number one is always the cause, it may be one of the other reasons, and you can control these by exercising your communication skills.

So increasing your trust in them is as much about what you can do as what they can do.

However, you can use decreasing trust as a trigger to check your management approach. When you feel your trust in a colleague’s ability to deliver starting to fall:

1)    Discuss their understanding of your expectations and make sure you’re both working towards the same goal.

2)    Ascertain whether they have the ability to deliver to these expectations – if not, get them skilled up or assign the task to a colleague who does have the appropriate skills.

3)    Discuss their motivations for the task and negotiate if necessary/appropriate.

4)    Ask them to commit to the task.

You’ll create an environment where everyone is clear on what needs to be done, confident they can do it and motivated to do it. This is good for your projects, great for your workload and excellent for team morale.

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Is email ‘efficiency’ making you look bad?

Email is a great way to collect information from a group of people. An email will whip around the team, or bounce between the project and the customer, collecting information as it goes.

You, as the project manager, are often the hub of these communications, directing the flow and prompting the appropriate people to contribute.

Once an email has accumulated the information for a task, have you ever forwarded it as-is to one of your team members as the supporting information? E.g. Hi Bill, the information for Task X is in the attached email…

If so, you may have created a few problems which could easily have been avoided:

• Emails that have gathered details from a number of people can be quite lengthy, so the delegate will spend time finding the details they need to commence work.
• Some of the information may be incorrect, replaced elsewhere in the email during discussions or negotiations. Depending on where they are looking, delegates can accidentally use the wrong information.
• If you are simply forwarding emails, what value are you adding to the process? Your team will certainly ask that question as they sift through long email trails to find the information they need.

It’s not difficult or time-consuming to avoid these issues, both during information gathering and when the task is assigned.

As an email skips from recipient to recipient, periodically:

1. Summarise the information so far, and identify what else is needed.
2. Truncate the trail of information.
3. Send it on its way again.

You’ll make it clear where the information gathering process is up to, clarify what has been gathered and highlight what needs to be contributed.

When you’ve got all the information, create a final, concise summary and provide it to the team member who’ll do the task. They’ll be able to get work straight away, using the right information.

Summarising and truncating emails will improve the efficiency of information collection and task assignments. It will also build your focusing skills and confirm your reputation as a value-adding, get-to-the-point project manager.

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