A smart Project Update meeting technique

I was once involved in a project where the project manager did something that struck me as unusual at first, but which I came to find was quite an effective technique.

At the very start of every meeting he asked “How are things going? Do you have any feedback to give on the project?”

In the early meetings the response from the stakeholders was usually a polite “Everything seems to be going well” kind of comment, which our PM recorded in the minutes. Over the course of the project though, the feedback became richer and more beneficial, often praising the efforts of particular team members.

The value of this is significant.

• Firstly, it opens the communication channels and lets all stakeholders know that their feedback is invited and valued.
• Secondly, it establishes a positive atmosphere in the early stages of the project, and gives excellent opportunity for people to provide positive feedback on team members.
• Thirdly, it allows the PM to keep a close eye on the sentiment of the project – especially if he is not on site every day to observe it for himself.

This is an excellent project management device that is really easy to implement – start asking for feedback in every project meeting and see it work for you.

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Don’t stress – Just focus on the facts

As a project manager, one of the most difficult balances to maintain is your emotional buy-in to a project. Many project managers become so involved that they end up stressed and burned out.

Sure, to motivate your team, you need to care about the project and want it to be successful.

But the real opportunity to reduce stress is when you’re presenting information to stakeholders so they can make decisions. They’re relying on you to present them with all the facts, good or bad, and have done some analysis so it’s relatively straightforward for them to decide on a course of action – what’s not needed is your emotional involvement in their decision. It’s your job to manage the project, and theirs to steer it.

For example, you might have to inform the project executive that a project is behind schedule. You’ve done everything you could to minimise delays, you’ve informed them in a timely manner and you’ve provided them with fact-based estimates and possible mitigations to support their decisions. You’ve done all you can – stressing about the situation won’t change the facts, and it may reduce your ability to deliver the best possible outcome after the executive makes their decision.

Don’t shoot the messenger

And the better you get at analysing and communicating facts, the better your reputation will become. You will become a facilitator of good and timely decision making – what more could your employer and customers ask for?

So save your emotion for motivating your team, and focus on the facts when it comes to communicating with your project stakeholders and customers.

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Business Cases: Official vs Personal

We all know the rules about business cases:

• A project should not be initiated unless the appropriate stakeholders accept the business case;
• The outcomes of the business case form part of the success criteria for the project, and;
• The project manager is responsible for achieving those outcomes.

The project manager periodically checks that the project is delivering a solution that satisfies the business case and, if it’s not, puts it back on course.

From time to time, the project manager also confirms that the reasons for the business case are still valid. If they aren’t, the project is cancelled so the people involved can move onto work that serves the business.

A project can have a couple of different business cases. It will always have the official business case, created by the business to fulfill their goals. It can also have a vendor’s business case – this is created in response to their customer’s business case and incorporates both the customer’s and the vendor’s reasons for being involved in the project.

But there’s another business case that usually doesn’t get the attention it deserves – your own.

Your personal business case consists of the reasons why you’re involved in the project, such as monetary reward, reputation, job security and/or the intellectual challenge. But like any other business case, if you’re not really clear about your goals up front, and don’t review your progress towards them regularly, you run the real risk of putting in a lot of time and effort to find you haven’t met them in the end.

As for any other business case, your personal business case serves two purposes:

1. It gives you the ‘it’s just not worth it –I’m outta here’ criteria, and, more importantly;
2. It drives you forward – when you’re in the heat of battle, it reminds you why you’re working so hard and putting yourself under pressure.

So know your personal business case before the project starts – be very clear about the reasons you’re involved in the project, and define your exit criteria now, before the going gets tough. Then, with regular reviews, you’ll be able to keep focused on what’s important, stay motivated through those tough times and achieve your goals.

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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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How to take action – the key to productivity

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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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.

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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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