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Project Management Office – why do I need one?

Monday, February 1st, 2010

This is a topic close to my heart.  I think it’s because I know that PMO can mean so many things to an organization and the first step is getting the answer to the question posed by the title of this posting.

Most organizations that have a history of project management find themselves all over the success range from Fabulous Success to Spectacular Failure. This variety of outcomes is often the trigger for the executive to start on the PMO path.

In my experience, the reasons to implement a PMO are, in no particular order;

  1. improve and standardize project performance
  2. provide enterprise wide reporting
  3. create a common reporting structure
  4. portfolio management
  5. centre of excellence in project management and related disciplines
  6. a combination of any of the above.
  7. all of the above

Many organizations also cycle between – absolutely need a PMO to why do we need to pay the overhead of a PMO?

I’ve created and collaborated in creating two PMOs and my experience is that a successful PMO starts with the executive backing aligned with the top reasons for creating a PMO.

Just like any project, you need a champion/sponsor, and a clear understanding of what you are going to deliver.  You run the creation and implementation as a project. Develop a clear understanding of the outcomes, create phased milestones, measurements of success (both for the project and the operation of the PMO) and report on the status during the initial period.

The key is that implementation is not the end. When the PMO is running and showing success, the whole reason for the PMO needs to be revisited and refocussed. A PMO is not a product that gets delivered, it’s an operational part of any organization and it evolves.

If the first priority is to create a centre of excellence for project managers, you will likely find that the PMO will evolve towards portfolio management because the executive see more possibilities as the PMs become more professional.

If the priority starts as portfolio management, then it will likely evolve towards a centre of excellence very quickly as it becomes clear that more projects can be done if PMs are supported and developed.

Whatever the starting point, if you are managing/directing a PMO, you need to remember it evolves. Keeping your PMO alive is a process of constant selling of the current and possible value of a PMO.

Have fun this week.

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Project Management Tools

Monday, January 18th, 2010

How do you evaluate project management tools? How many of the tools you find as a PM manage to fulfill all of your needs.

Let’s start with what those needs might be.

Are you looking for a tool that can express your project schedule in a way that you can understand and manage, or do you need to communicate the critical path to people who aren’t trained to read a Gantt chart?

Are you trying  to communicate the impacts of issues, or the challenges faced by your resource shortages? Do you want to be able to share status at the press of a button?

Until I can find my holy grail of project management tools, I keep trying the new toys.

When playing with the new toys, I think it’s important to remember that a project management tool won’t make you a successful project manager, the tool makes your job easier, it doesn’t do your job.

One old tried and true tool – Microsoft Project I learned how to use Project at the very beginning of my career. When you get comfortable with it, it’s a great tool for keeping track of tasks, resources, and budget. The upside is that Microsoft does continually upgrade and does as far as I can tell, each upgrade has been an improvement from the perspective of the project manager. The downside is that it has very defined expectations of how you will use it. Project doesn’t like it when you want to schedule the project by dates rather than dependencies and the default settings don’t like it when you add or subtract resources. I always feel like Project is keeping me on the straight and narrow when it comes to methodology.

One I recently checked out, and for the purpose of disclosure,  have joined their team of facilitators is Easy Projects. This tool is set up to allow the PM to do the usual things – set up activities, link dependencies, assign resources and set status. I also allows you to assign roles to the people on your project and give them permissions. You can set up notifications when someone adds, alters or deletes tasks. And, it has three types of activity, task, issue or request. This allows you to easily track client additions to the project and see the impact of issue resolution on your schedule. And, it has a dashboard function that works with multiple projects – getting close to status reporting by pressing a button.

Another tool that I haven’t tried but have heard a lot of good things about is Open Project. I’d love to hear about your actual experiences with this tool. From what I see online, it seems very much like Microsoft Project – except it’s free.

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Is a list of tasks enough of a plan?

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

When projects struggle with planning sometimes the teams create lists of tasks. To add detail, the lists contain names of people, they estimate how many days are needed for each task, and even list beginning and end dates. So what’s the problem?

If the project is simple and requires a small team of knowledgeable experts, this will probably be enough. I’m a supporter of doing the right amount of  planning rather than completing all the steps and forms.

The problem is when the project is complex. In one of my past projects, the team struggled with the concept of planning. I proposed the process of pulling together a team to plan and spend a day or two for the whole process. At the end we’d have a list of sequenced activities with clear milestones and a resource estimate.

Thinking it would be easier, the team leads sat down and started listing tasks and names. In their defense this was a project that required specific expertise and having the experts do the wbs would be a good approach.

Top three problems with the approach.

No milestones, no deliverables. The list of tasks didn’t lead to a clear deliverable that could be tracked. The team lead was never confident that the tasks listed were complete.

No understanding of overall resource usage. While we knew that Joe had to work a total of 12 days between start and end dates, it was difficult to align the start and end dates of each activity to make sure that the 12 days wasn’t actually over a 3 day period.

No clear reporting ability. When it came to reporting to the steering committee we had to manually pull the information and come to a consensus about status each time.

As a bonus problem – time! Originally I estimated a couple of days for the whole project activities list. It took a week for one part of it.

It’s one of those things that I think we as PMs struggle with all the time. What ideas do you have for selling the client on the process?

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Dirty little project management secret

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Project Managers sometime fly by the seat of their pants. Okay, now it’s out in the open.

Some PMs do this all the time. They like the rollercoaster ride, they love the heroics and they see creativity in the pressures of the deadlines and drama.

This approach can be successful depending on the culture of the organization, and the complexity of the projects. Low complexity projects can be successful with a pantser approach; high complexity projects can’t always (I’d say more like can’t ever) be successful this way.

So let’s think about a big complex project and how pantsing can work, or not work.

Can work – in unforeseen risks and issue resolution. You can find creativity in groups when you start with “so what might we do” rather than “what are the main strategies we can apply to this issue?”

Can’t work – if it’s your main risk strategy. You will have risks that you identify and can’t think of a strategy – the strategy becomes, we will try to figure it out if it happens. If all your risks have this strategy you are going to burn people out and destroy your credibility.

Can work – when you are trying to create a new and innovative product or service. When gathering requirements for your product, you can engage the stakeholders in free form sessions of what might be possible.

Can’t work – when your project has complex regulatory requirements. You need to have controls and a clear direction to meet all the requirements. You can’t figure them out as you go along.

Can work – when you are trying to find a way to recognize and reward people. It’s fine to figure out fun things to do at milestones. It can bring the team together to create an on the spot celebration.

Can’t work – in resolving conflicts within the team. You need to have a consistent and clear approach to managing conflict. It creates trust within the team if they know how things will be dealt with.

Tell us about your thoughts on planning v spontaneity.

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Does it matter what project methodology you use?

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Let’s start with the premise that you do need a methodology, a way to get from “what we want to do” to “we accomplished what we wanted to do.”

The choice of methodology is growing; we have PMI, and Prince2, as underlying approaches. We have waterfall, agile, and now Project Management 2.0. Glen Alleman has a great discussion on PM 2.0 on his Herding Cats blog.

Really methodology is the process of moving from start to finish in a project. The right methodology helps you to communicate where you are in your project, what is coming, what needs to be dealt with, and what is going really well. Using a consistent methodology within your organization allows you to measure your success against other projects, and apply improvement processes to become more efficient at project delivery.

I think it does matter what methodology you use, based on the project you are undertaking. I’m not sure that statement will be controversial.

What I see happening is that methodologies are chosen by bright shininess, not by appropriateness.

So, I think it does matter what methodology you use, even if it’s your own methodology. If you’ve been a PM for any time, you’ll have figured out your style and that adds the flavour to the methodology. If you’ve been one for a long time, you will have been doing agile before the name was applied to the methodology. After all, an agile project can’t be done through waterfall without lots of iterations of the planning process.

Someone out there is using the next best shiny methodology, they’ve created it to fill a gap in a project that is left by the current methodologies. We’ll all be discussing the new shiny one next year, or the year after, forever – well maybe not forever.

The key to success is that you choose – or make up – the methodology that works for your project.

In my experience, there are two kinds of project.

Type A = First we do A, then we do B, then we do C = commonly known as waterfall

Type B = first we figure out A, then we do A, then we figure out B and then we do B, then we figure out C and then we do C = commonly known as agile.

New and improved methodologies must help to make type A and B more efficient, more effective and more easily understood.

Let me know what you think.

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Communication – why is it so hard?

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

I’ve been looking around at blogs for inspiration for today’s post. It seems like communication is a popular topic for bloggers. It is a complex topic with plenty of aspects for thousands of blog posts, even though it sounds simple. How hard is it to be clear, paraphrase for clarity, follow up, listen… and all the other tips people have out there.

Well, the answer is, it’s hard because everyone has buttons that set them off, some people know how to control their own buttons, some people don’t know what their buttons are so they always seem to be going off on an unexpected direction. It’s hard because we don’t communicate in a vacuum; the pm’s voice is only one of many the person is listening to at any given time. And, it’s hard because the project priorities are not the only priorities the person has, often work priorities get drowned out in personal priorities.

Yes, so it’s hard, but you can’t give up. You are a PM; if something isn’t hard, it’s not worth doing. You are super leader, problem solver, communicator, change manager, and there is no kryptonite excuse.

Communication never gets easy. If you think you’ve figured out the team, or the person, you are living in an old paradigm. The expression, the only constant is change, applies to people too. As soon as you find success in working with a team, something will change; you need to keep your spidey senses pinging the environment and adjusting your style to accommodate the needs of your team.

How do you do this? Well, the steps are pretty simple. You need to be clear in your communications, you need to paraphrase, or ask them to paraphrase to ensure common understanding, and you need to follow up.  The caveat to this – aka the first complication – is that you need to do it without coming across as a micro manager.

Complication #2 – you have to understand your own emotional triggers and control them. Just because you’ve told this person four times how to present the status of their work package, doesn’t mean you can snap at them on the fifth time. Their functional manager may have asked for different information and confused the issue.

Complication #3 – rumors can confuse the message. The worse situation is when you need to have the team pull together to meet a deadline and the rumor mill is buzzing with information about your project being cancelled. You can’t control the rumor mill; you can be clear and constant about the truth, as you know it.

Complication #4 – things change. You may have just informed your team about a key decision that impacts the budget, scope or resources on your project, only to have your sponsor tell you the decision has been reversed, deferred, or otherwise changed. Now you will have to re-communicate to the team.  Which is a nice lead into…

Complication # 5 – people don’t trust that the message won’t change. This lack of credibility can cripple a communication plan. You need to figure out how to deliver messages that change or seem to conflict with credibility and confidence. It may sound impossible, but functional managers do it all the time. This is where your ability to be confident and honest in communicating is put to the test.

Here are some links to article on communication.

Communication styles

Communication Styles at Work

Effective Communication

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Are you getting the truth?

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

A project manager needs to hear the truth from the team and the sponsor. In a project that is making significant changes in an organization, the PM can only be successful if they get the truth. It’s not a case of “you can’t handle the truth” but more of a case of “you can handle anything as long as you get the truth.”

Let’s look at this from the team, then the stakeholders, and finally the sponsor.

The project manager is responsible to ensure the project team has the information they need to successfully deliver on the project objectives. The other side of that coin is that the project team needs to make sure the PM knows everything they need to know to successfully manage the budget, schedule and scope of the project.

What happens when the team starts cranking the sunshine pump? Let’s say there’s a deadline coming up and it’s a key decision point. The PM follows up on the progress half way through the work package. The team states everything is on track, they’ll make the deadline. Well, great news! Except, the team knows that they might be on time but the next task needs to be completed by a person who isn’t dedicated to the project and is known for being late with deliverables.

As the PM, you need to know what issues are coming up so you can handle them. As the team, they may not want to get the other person in trouble, or may have spoken up in the past and been ignored. Your job is to dig a bit deeper. You don’t ask how the team is doing and leave it at that; it’s too easy for them to dodge the hard message. What you do is ask the next question, too; do you see anything coming up that might change the status of the deliverable? Or, you can try to challenge them by asking what could we do to come in early?

The trick is to ask more questions until you are sure there’s nothing hidden, without interrogating your team.  Don’t worry; over time you can build a level of trust with your team that will reduce their need to protect you from the truth.

Moving on to stakeholders; you may not get the truth you need from the stakeholders if there is something happening in their functional area that is considered confidential. This can slow down your project, or even put it off track.  How does this look? Often stakeholders will lose interest, or suddenly become more interested in your project. Or, they will question the goals of your project all over again. These behaviours should make your spidey senses tingle. I’ve had mixed success in dealing with this type of ‘untruthiness’. The most effective approach I’ve found is to take the helpful route; ask what you can do to help them deal with their concerns.. Unfortunately, I have sometimes found myself plugging ahead with the project knowing something is about to go sideways but not having anything to hang a risk or issue on.

Finally, your sponsor may not give you the information you need. It seems counter intuitive that your sponsor, the person you are doing the project for, would not provide you with what you need to be successful. Believe me, it happens. In my experience, it is usually politics underlying this behaviour. The only effective way I’ve found to deal with this is to accept that the sponsor has information they can’t share, and keep the project as on track as you can. The politics maybe temporary, or it may be the first steps towards closing your project. The important thing to remember is that it is not within your control. Unless you are given other directions from your sponsor, you have to assume nothing has changed. You are still expected to deliver on your project.

One of the underlying causes of sunshine pumping is simply organizational behaviour. No one wants to seem negative, or finger pointing. No one wants to get someone in trouble. I’m sure you’ve all worked with the team member who consistently gets things wrong, or causes problems on the team. Did anyone try to get the problem resolved, or did they just work around it.

Another cause of, is lack of trust.  People may have been burned in the past when they raised an issue and don’t want to risk the fall out again.

The important tip this week, handle what you can. You are responsible for ensuring the project is successful. You are not responsible for changing the organizational culture of the company – except if that’s what your project is supposed to accomplish.

This site has some good tips on questioning

Here’s another site with tips on questioning

Good luck out in project management world this week.

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What’s the buzz about certification?

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

I’ve seen lots of postings on LinkedIn, and heard lots of arguments around the question of certification. I have to admit, I’m confused by the whole controversy. Certification isn’t a magic bullet, nor is it the political nicety that people seem to think it is. Certification is a choice for the most part. It’s often a must have to get a job, and it’s a validation that you’ve completed a minimum knowledge and experience requirement. Just like an MBA doesn’t mean you’ll be a successful business leader, a PMP doesn’t mean you’ll be a successful PM but it does say something about what you should know.

The experience requirement is interesting; it states a minimum number of hours, but not a success rate. So, you can participate in projects for the required number of hours (3 or 5 years depending on whether or not you have a degree) but never participate in what PMI would suggest is a successful project. The educational requirement is not that onerous, and can be completed by studying for the PMP certification exam.

I have to be honest; I did learn a few things as I prepped for the exam. I learned why some of the processes were needed; I realized why some issues rose again and again – it was because we weren’t doing a great job earlier in the lifecycle.  I also had to memorize things I’ll never use (or have to do manually). I can’t manually estimate duration to save my life – that’s why we have PM software – but, I do understand what the software is supposed to do. I can see where it’s wrong even if I can’t calculate it myself. I have never had to use Earned Value; I memorized it for the exam but I assume I will get a spreadsheet or something to use if I ever need to report Earned Value.

Are people afraid to fail? I did pass the first time (yes, I’m bragging) but I passed mostly on my people management experience. I know 5 other people who sat the exam, only one failed the first time – over thinking the questions is a killer. It’s no harder than any other exam, if you know your stuff, you will pass.

I recommend certification for people who want to be project managers, not just within their current employer, but as a career. When you are looking for a job, or contract, you will meet the criteria to apply. Right now, it’s a buyers market in the job hunting field. That said it’s rarely a sellers market. Why would you want to exclude yourself from eligibility for a job just because you are missing those three letters? As someone who used to hire project managers, I can tell you that I wanted certified applicants because I knew they had the knowledge, and hoped they had the skills. I couldn’t spend my time interviewing people who may have the knowledge and hope they had the skills.

I doubt you’d go to a doctor or a dentist if they didn’t have their certification; or fly in a plane with an unlicensed pilot. But, you have probably experienced a doctor with no bedside manner, a dentist who doesn’t have a gentle touch, and had a bumpy landing in a plane.  Why do you think project managers should be different, it’s a profession and as such has certification.

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