Author: Professor of Project Management

Building Blocks Of A Successful Project Part 3 – Executive Commitment

Professor of Project Management Project Initiation
Initiation

If your company actively manages its Project Portfolio, then this building block should already be in place. However, many companies begin new projects without any consideration of the impacts to projects already in progress or in the “pending” queue. This is the single biggest root cause of the Project Manager’s #1 headache: resource contention.

Before projects can begin, you should have satisfactory answers to the following questions:

  1. Are any existing projects competing for the same resources?
  2. If so, do these resources have the availability required for the new project?
  3. Where does this new project rank in the corporate priority?
  4. Is there a process in place to prevent the next new project from interfering with this one?

The answers to the above will tell you if you have Executive commitment for your project. Without it you will every day be at risk of losing key resources and jeopardizing your schedule.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Building Blocks Of A Successful Project Part 2 – Business Objectives

Professor of Project Management Project Initiation ,
Initiation

There are  certain fundamentals that need to be in place to increase the probability of project success. The second of these is to have well-defined Business Objectives. These should be established as part of the original Business Case for the project. It is surprising how many times I have seen these absent from an initiative.

Business Objectives are the “CEO’s view” of the project. For example, they should make or save money, take advantage of opportunity, respond to new law and regulations, or increase competitive advantage. They should be specific and measurable (including when, how, and by whom the objectives will be measured) to avoid what I call “Mom and apple pie” objectives like “We will be more efficient”. Really? Exactly how efficient? Will we be able to cut costs or deploy those efficiency savings to revenue opportunities?

I will go into more detail on this topic when I address the Project Charter. Suffice to say for now that the main reason for having solid Business Objectives as a building block for project success is that it guides all decision making on a project. Whether you realize it or not, all of the project team members are decision makers, typically making many micro-decisions every day. The Business Objectives act as the beacon of light for these decisions. Any decision that will reduce or modify the impact of the Business Objectives must be escalated to the Project Sponsor.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Building Blocks Of A Successful Project Part 1 – Business Sponsorship

Professor of Project Management Project Initiation
Initiation

The “Building Blocks” series of posts will help you identify key prerequisites that must be in place before you begin your project. Whether you are the Project Manager from the start of the project, or taking over someone else’s already started project, make sure these Critical Success Factors are in place.

There are certain fundamentals that need to be in place to increase the probability of project success. The first of these is to have an active and committed Business Sponsor. The Business Sponsor is the person (or persons) who initiated the project and authored the Business Case. The primary roles of the Business Sponsor are to provide funding, help clear obstacles to success, provide resources and make key decisions.

It is surprising how many projects (IT projects especially) proceed without this key building block. The thinking is that the merit of the project itself will drive it to successful conclusion. This is a huge mistake. Projects like this will typically encounter a lack of cooperation from the business units as their priorities do not match the priorities of those driving the project. It is OK for IT to get the ball rolling, but before the project is officially approved, the Business Sponsor must be identified and take ownership.

The Business Sponsor will play a key role in your Organizational Change Management Plan. Their responsibilities will include:

  • Being the “Face” of the project communicating directly with employees and management
  • Participating actively and visibly throughout the project
  • Building a coalition of sponsorship and manage resistance – identify other Executives who will Champion the change

Work From Home Should Be The New Normal

Professor of Project Management General

The Post-COVID mindset of “The coast is clear, let’s all come back to the office” has its roots in one of the challenges all Project Managers face: “We’ve always done it that way” syndrome. Not enough employers have challenged this conventional wisdom. The COVID lockdown has shown us there is a better way.

Current economic conditions make it imperative that employees push back against this thinking. Record high gas prices mean asking your employees to essentially take a pay cut to commute to work. Record high real estate prices and rising mortgage rates mean that a promising new hire cannot accept your position because relocating is a prohibitively expensive option. Mandating coming into the office means only drawing from a talent pool that live within a reasonable distance. Hiring good people is the most important function of a successful organization. Why would any forward thinking company live with this limitation?

The corporate culture that includes the unwritten rules “we can’t trust you to work unless we can see you” and “we require you to regularly spend lots of unpaid extra hours here in the office” must transition to “we hire good people and mutually set goals and deliverable deadlines and trust you to do your job well”.

Many now have seen the work-life balance advantages of working from home. Not to mention the obscene amount of wasted hours spent commuting. If your commute is 45 minutes a day (which many Americans think is “reasonable”) that is 1.5 hours round trip or 7.5 hours per week! You are putting in almost an extra day of work each week just commuting. We put up with this only because there wasn’t a better option prior to ubiquitous high speed internet access.

Your employees will become increasingly unhappy with a come into the office mandate and will seek employment that make coming into the office optional. Forward thinking companies will be more than happy to draw the top talent away from those stuck in the past. These are the enterprises that will be most successful in the future.

Labor has unprecedented power now. You should consider using it.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Decision Making Process Part 6 – Summary

Professor of Project Management General

In the preceding series of posts, I presented a process I use for making key decisions. Now I will present a brief summary of those posts.

  • We struggle with some decisions because…
    • There are too many choices
    • The apparent choices are all bad
    • The apparent choices seem all equally good
    • Loss Aversion – we fear risking something we have for something we want
    • Fear of being wrong
    • Fear of being criticized
  • Poor decision making process results in…
    • Regret
    • Unintended consequences
  • Good decision making process will…
    • Eliminate decision paralysis
    • Reduce stress
    • Keep you moving forward
    • Eliminate regret
    • Look at decisions as a “portfolio” instead of isolated events
  • The process in 8 steps…
    • Begin with the end in mind – know your desired outcomes and how you will measure success
    • Analyze your alternatives – there may be more than you think!
    • Identify and mitigate risks
    • Distance yourself from short-term emotion
    • Create contingency plans
    • Make the decision
    • Evaluate the outcomes
    • Evaluate the process

Try using the process on your next key decision. Tweak it as needed for your specific circumstances. Leave some comments on this post as to what worked and what didn’t.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Decision Making Process Part 5i – Evaluate The Process

Professor of Project Management Uncategorized

For the eighth and  final step in the decision making process you will evaluate the process itself. You do this in the spirit of continuous process improvement. This will improve your future decision making process and outcomes.

Here are some questions to ask yourself regarding your process:

  • For good outcomes:
    • What process steps were the most useful?
    • What could you have done to make the good outcomes even better?
  • For negative outcomes:
    • Did the process fail or was it circumstances beyond your control?
    • Did you skip steps?
    • Were there some steps you did not give sufficient time and energy?
    • Did you anticipate and plan for this negative outcome? If not, what would you have done different?

The next post will be the final post in the Decision Making series and I will summarize and give you some additional thoughts on the topic.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Decision Making Process Part 5h – Evaluate The Outcomes

Professor of Project Management General

At an appropriate point in time after you have made the decision, you should evaluate the outcomes as part of a program of continuous improvement in the decision making process. Here are the steps to take:

  • Revisit the “measures of success” you defined in the first step in the process. In that step, you determined what success would look like and how you would measure success. This is the time to take those measurements.
  • Evaluate the “degree of success” for each measure. Not all of your success criteria will be a binary “yes or no”. Often you will have achieved some measure of success but perhaps not all you targeted. This is a key input to the next step.
  • Determine if additional activity, time or resources will increase your degree of success. This is a key decision point. You don’t want to “throw good money and time after bad” hoping to succeed. You will need to decide if the calculated risk of continuing to invest more in the decision is worth it to you. Employ the same decision making methodology for this as used in the original decision.

In the next post I will present the final step in the 8 step process, where you evaluate the process itself to help you improve your future decisions.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Decision Making Process Part 5g – Make The Decision

Professor of Project Management General

At this point you have created a vision of the end result, analyzed your alternatives, identified and mitigated your risks, made contingency plans and distanced yourself from short-term emotions. You should also understand the constraints that limit your choices (e.g. “I can’t move from my current home”).

It is now time to make the decision. You will compare all of your alternatives, with an understanding of the range of outcomes and risks, and make and commit to a decision with confidence. There will be no need to look back with regret, no matter the result, because your process was sound and you made the best call based on the information available to you.

At this point you should prepare a timeline of major milestones. These are significant points in time where something (good or otherwise) should have happened by then and you will use those milestones as opportunities to evaluate your decision and make course corrections if necessary.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Decision Making Process Part 5f – Make Contingency Plans

Professor of Project Management General

Once you have identified your most important risks the next step is to make sure you have at least one contingency plan (aka “Plan B”) for every risk. These are alternate plans you will use in case the risk occurs despite your efforts to mitigate. For example, if you are buying a new home and expect to close on a certain date, you should have contingency plans for living arrangements and storage in case the date moves out.

Here are a few ideas to help you identify the kinds of contingency plans you may need:

  • Conduct a “pre-mortem” – This is a look into the future where you ask yourself “My decision failed – what were the causes?” Was it lack of time, money, or support? Were you being too ambitious?
  • Conduct a “pre-parade” – Ask yourself “My decision was wildly successful – what were the reasons?” Brainstorming the answers to this question will help you avoid problems and identify ways to ensure success.
  • Set a milestone – This is a point in time where you will evaluate your efforts and decide to carry on, make a course correction, or stop altogether. This will prevent you from falling into the “sunk cost” trap (Where you continue with a bad investment in time or money simply because you already have invested so much).
  • Be prepared for unexpected success – Your endeavor may be more successful sooner than you anticipated. This might mean more of your time and money to keep up. Be prepared in advance to react quickly.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

Decision Making Process Part 5e – Distance Yourself From Short-Term Emotion

Professor of Project Management General

We are all human and emotions can play a part in any decisions we make. However, emotions can sometimes cause us to make decisions against our own best interests. For example, a pro athlete claims his current team made him an “insulting” offer only to find when he reaches free agency that no other team will pay him nearly as much. In this post I will state some techniques that will help you combat this effect.

One technique to use is to first think about potential  “undesired outcomes” of your decision. As an example, think about a time you received a nasty email from a co-worker. Your emotions tell you to lash out and immediately respond in kind. Stop and think: what are the undesired outcomes? You are trading a few seconds of self-satisfaction over your clever response for a damaged relationship and an escalating flame war. Think before acting!

Another technique is to pretend you have made the desired decision. How will you feel about it 10 minutes from now? How about 10 days from now? Ten months from now?

My favorite technique for removing short-term emotion is asking yourself “If this was my best friend confronted with this decision, what would I advise them to do?” This works remarkably well and will help you make cool, logical decisions.

There is also a psychological factor at play in making decisions. It is called “loss aversion”. This is the tendency to feel more pain for losses than joy in gains (many sports fans will tell you that having their team lose always feels worse than the joys of victory). It can prevent you from taking calculated risks that would be in your favor. Be aware when this factor is in play and remove it from the decision making process.

The game show “Deal or No Deal” is a very good way to exercise your own decision making process vs. the on-show contestant. For example, if there were these 3 prizes left: $1, $5, $1 million dollars, and the Banker offered you $200,000, would you take the offer or take your chances and open another case?

You would weigh these two things: (1) the expected payout is about $333,000 (add the 3 prizes and divide by 3); (2) You have only a 33% chance at beating the $200,000 offer. Option 1 is better if you had multiple chances or “do-overs”; Option 2 in this case is a better way to beat the odds if you have only one chance. You would walk away with $200,000 more than when you started, with no regrets even if your case contained the $1 million prize.

In your daily life, take the opportunity to exercise the decision making techniques I have stated above and you will improve your overall outcomes.

My Kindle book, “Project Management For The Real World” is available at

http://www.amazon/com/dp/b089krddvn