When you work for someone else, that can be as simple as not taking work home on the weekend, or taking a two week vacation. When you work for yourself, it gets a bit more complicated. You need to find the opportunities between client needs to refresh yourself.

I’ve found myself thinking lately about all the things I have to do. The problem is  I work better at things I get to do. My blinking alarm was telling me that it was time to take a break. But I still had all these things I had to do.

When I get in this cycle I find it works to look at when I think I can take a break – next week, after a milestone/deadline has passed, whatever works.

Then I plan what I’ll do with my time off and as the day approaches I let people know I am taking a day off.

I find the planning helps me feel like I’m taking a bit of time off because I’m thinking of what I want to do. Not only what I have to do.

I planned my day off for last Thursday and protected the day by letting clients and my business partner know I would not be available. And, it worked.

I not only got Thursday off, but I have been doing more reading and relaxing since Thursday than I’ve done for a couple of months. The added bonus is when I think about the work on my plate, and getting more work, it feels like something I get to do again.

What do you do to fill your buckets?

Happy PMing

Perry

I find this one to be the most interesting challenge, and the one linked tightly to corporate culture.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to go ahead with some of the project while you wait, and other times, delay in decision making is a sign of trouble brewing.

Sometimes the corporate culture is ‘just do it’ and sometimes it’s about careful analysis before acting – and usually somewhere in between the two extremes. If your organization leans towards the ‘just do it’, you need to get an idea of the direction and then go forward. If your organization leans towards the analysis scenario, you need to get documented agreement to go forward before the decision is complete.

How does the PM know which scenario is true for their project?

History will help, what has happened in previous projects when decisions are delayed? Your sponsor will give direction to help determine what to do. And the way the team reacts is also a good indicator.

If you determine you can go ahead while waiting for the final decision, there are some ways to ensure you are doing the right thing. First, your sponsor needs to be on board with what you are doing. And second, develop a way to document both the reasons for going ahead and the implications.

How do you determine what to do? That’s probably the easiest part. Look at activities that need to be done regardless of the decision. Can you start drafting risk plans, communication plans, or resource plans.

Can you develop marketing plans? Will the decision have an impact on the way you’ll market the product?

Can you analyze some potential solutions?

The overall question in this circumstance is depended on the decision you are waiting for. If the decision could determine whether the project goes forward or not, or is a fundamental decision about the product features, you probably don’t want to use resources of any kind because the risk of wasting resources is high.

If the decision is a refinement of the features, or a buy/lease decision, there are a lot of activities that can be done to move the project forward while you wait.

Happy PMing

Perry

I would say, it can be both. An inexperienced PM can get lucky, and experience PM can be using their knowledge and wisdom to work the methodology without having to openly use all the tools. The challenge is, it’s not always about experience.

How do you know which one you are dealing with?

A lucky PM will eventually run out of luck. At best, when things go off track after the luck runs out, the lucky PM will be scrambling to figure out how to show what happened and figure out what the team will do. At worst, the lucky PM will struggle to figure out who to blame.

For sponsors and clients, you can ask a few questions along the way. A lucky PM will not be able to easily answer specific questions that start with what, when, and how. “How is it going?” is too easy to answer with “great!”, but “What are the current issues (there are always some issues)” is harder to answer if you don’t have a handle on the project.

A ‘good’ PM will have their finger on the project, they will produce the documentation you need but they will be able to answer the hard questions. Or, will be comfortable with saying they will need to check.

The challenges is it’s not about experience all the time. You can find highly experienced PMs who work by the methodology, they run successful projects, they can tell you exactly where in the Project Management Life Cycle the project is. You can also find inexperienced PMs who will successfully manage teams through challenging projects without referencing any methodology.

Why does this matter? PMs will bring to the project what they have: experience, people skills, communication skills, any combination of these. By understanding where your PM fits on the scale of lucky to good, you can understand how work with them.

For an internal PM, you know how to develop their skills. For a contractor or consulting PM, you can work with these concepts to hire the right type of PM for your project.

Have a great project week.

Perry

Asking questions is a skill. For a consultant, PM or a business analyst, it’s a critical skill. It’s about asking the right questions in the right way.

What are the right questions? That depends on your objective. Who, what, when, why, how are a good place to start. Thinking about your end goal will help determine what information you need.

• What are we trying to do?
• When do you need to have it done?
• Who will be doing the work, who will be affected by the outcomes?
• Why are you trying to achieve this?
• How have you done this in the past, how can we get started…?

These are all excellent questions. When the questions are framed this way the gap is context. When you start to form your questions, think about the people you will be asking, is there ambiguity in the context? Will you need to explain the background? Can your answer come in a yes/no format – this is not what you are aiming for most of the time.

Let’s look at an example.

Question:

Do you have a PMO?

Answer:

Yes or no.

This can be misleading when you go to implement a solution.

If you realize there’s more information, you might ask what does the PMO do? If you go down this route, you’ll get the information you need, eventually, but you are setting up more of an interrogation than an interview.

A new approach:

Question:

Often an organization has formal or informal project support, methodology, training and prioritization. How is this handled in your company?

Answer:

Depending on your client, you’ll get a different answer – what you will get, though is a conversation rather than an answer. The conversation will lead to a richer understanding of what, why, how, who, when.

If you think about the bigger picture of the information you need, you’ll start to form more open and encompassing questions and the result will be a better understanding of your client.

Do you have any success stories, or horror stories?

Well, we know the answer to that is at least two sided. First, they need the skills and then they need time. Department managers learn to put out fires and ‘deal’ with problems. They don’t achieve success by keeping their boss informed of problems and challenges and they don’t necessarily provide periodic status reporting. And, they have day jobs. They can’t set aside their day job to do a project.

The reality right now is that operations and projects are getting mixed together. Whether that can be successful in the long term is questionable, history doesn’t predict that it will be, but I think in the short term, there’s a way to support businesses through successful project delivery.

Some project managers who go the self employed route set up as contractors. They go in and do a great job managing a project and then they get out.

Others go the route of consultant. They may still go in to do a project, the difference is that while there, a consultant will look for opportunities to improve processes, set up new ways of dealing with projects in the future and leave lessons behind purposefully.

From a perspective of the business, project management contractors fill in shortages of capacity. Too many projects for a short term to complete with internal leadership. As the company grows, some of the contractors will be invited to become permanent employees.

For the business person, a consultant will suggest changes to improve, streamline, and change, the business processes to increase capacity of the internal team. As the company grows, consultants are asked to do more of this work and may temporarily fill a gap in competency.

The world needs both, contractors and consultants, as much as it needs employees. The key to success for the project professional is to know which you are, consultant or contractor. The key to success for the business person is to know what you need.

Have a successful week.