Do you Keep talking – or are you explaining…

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen” – Stephen Hawking

There was a time when some thought that developers worked best in darkened rooms. When the ideal solution was a conveyor-belt software factory with programmers lined up as though they were in a mass-assembly plant. When massive specifications were required to be drafted and reviewed before a line of code was written…

Do you remember those days? They weren’t so long ago, and some may still cling to the “software factory” ideal. But techniques and thinking such as Agile has proven that in order to fully understand what the customer wants and also to react to change, developers need to be involved in regular communication and able to describe and interpret complex requirements along with any underlying dependencies and impacts.

So what does this mean for developers looking to impress at interview and software companies looking to recruit? Well, an obvious key skill is communication, the ability to work in a team should be forefront in an interviewer’s mind, after all an interview is an ideal face-to-face setting to test verbal communication.

An interviewer is looking for examples to provide confidence that this person can work in their team. So make sure that you have several examples of dealing with critical issues – be they key features or problems, ideally have several such examples well rehearsed so that you can recall them as the situation requires during interview. As you deliver these examples make sure that you clearly explain -

i) The background to the key feature or problem
ii) The options available and any constraints (for example – time/deadline)
iii) The communication that took place to assess and evaluate these options – and ideally indicate the roles that were involved during the conferring and decision making
iv) How the decided option was planned and implemented
v) How the decided option was shown to be satisfactory (what were the acceptance criteria)

And, yes, make sure that you include any technical information that is necessary (of course!)

But the key point is – that you are not just a cog in a wheel, you are a communicating, capable individual who can work in a team but also can take ownership and drive things as necessary. Remember that it’s not just your technical ability that an interviewer is looking for and it really does pay to do the necessary preparation so that these examples are easy to recall whilst keeping your delivery as natural as possible.

If you don’t have much technical experience to draw on then explain this to the interviewer but do still try to demonstrate your communication ability by drawing on experiences in your life when you have been confronted by a situation by following the above steps. We have all faced circumstances where there is a distinct need for a solution, where we have evaluated the available options and then implemented the one that seemed to have the best chance of success.

There is a bit of Project Manager in all of us – otherwise we probably would have never invented the wheel…

Innovative Project Managers needed

A good Project manager is not normally a dreamer or spontaneous. A Project managers must be practical, structured and systematic but at the same time they should be open to innovation.

Clearly they need to be structured and systematic to be successful at establishing strong plans and managing a project to implementation. A project manager must have a structured approach, to understand what step goes before another.

A structured, systematic approach is normally linear; it may be multiple paths performed simultaneously, but each individual path is still linear. Unfortunately, the innovative skills may not come as naturally to many project managers.

The act of innovating is defined as “the introduction of new things or methods.” In IT, we know that there is always a better way; the same can be said for how we manage a project. There are aspects of a company’s culture, personalities of key stakeholders, constraints, and limitations that call for a project manager to innovate.

You should view the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standards as important guidelines but it is not an exact set of rules on how to manage every detail of the project. You should always be challenging yourself to come up with a new, more efficient way of doing things. Innovative project managers are questioning, they set aside “thinking time” to look at the challenge from multiple angles and truly challenge how they have always done things.

I’ve seen so many project managers repeatedly use what went well during the last project. It can makes life appear simple because the outcome is predictable but over time, you might find yourself going with a solution because you’re familiar with it and not necessarily because it’s the best one for the job.

The challenge for project managers is twofold:
Whenever you get that uncertain feeling that occurs when facing a new challenge, and you’re tempted to take one of your “comfortable” tools out of the toolbox, stop and take some time to think and innovate. Instead of repeating what's familiar to you, come up with the best tool for the job.

When faced with a familiar challenge that you have the perfect tools to address, stop, take some think time, and look at the challenge from different angles. Now that you have used this tool successfully for so long, is there a way you can improve it, upgrade it, or replace it with the smarter, better model?

Establishing thinking time takes discipline. I don’t know any successful project manager who isn’t driving projects as hard as they can, dealing with crisis every day. Taking time to think, when time is at a premium has the best results; this thinking time is akin to the planning phase of a project.

When the stakeholder want immediate action, the older wiser project manager will understand that the more time spent in the thinking, planning phase leads to more successful project outcomes.

Project Management Adds Real Value and Cost Savings to Organisations

Project management is certainly not overhead. Project management, if implemented and performed in a structured and professional manner, adds real value by reducing waste, controlling costs and improving performance.

Good portfolio management will reduce waste by weeding out projects that should never be started. Often we start these projects and later cancel them after wasting effort and money.

Practicing good project management in the area of initiation, planning and execution will greatly increase the success rate and performance of your project execution. Resources will be better utilised and the team will be more communicative, motivated and organised.

This will reduce duplication of effort, control costs and ensure that risks, issues and dependencies are dealt with in an optimal and effective manner, maximising effort and minimising waste.

Performing proper project closure, and learning good lessons from our past successes (and occasional mistakes), will improve the performance and effectiveness of future projects.

Finally we need to monitor, review and control our projects. We learn in six sigma that you do not improve what you do not measure.

Taking metrics during each phase of your product development process is key to learning and improving your future performance. You can start taking these measurements at any time.

As you improve your implementation of project management you will also see an improvement in the performance of your projects. These project improvements will provide a 'gearing' effect and the same amount of effort as before, will create a greater momentum and more energy in the implementation of your projects. Simply by the introduction of good, strong project management methods.

With due regard for the creation of real value from dilligent effort, the Project Manager's mantra follows Vaughan's Equation: VO > EI (Value Out is greater than Effort In) You will find that strong project management follows this equation, very closely and will always be well worth your time and effort to implement.

Project management is certainly not overhead. I hesitate even to include the word in the same sentence to avoid establishing a subconscious association.

Project management, if implemented and performed, by a professional, in a structured and professional manner, adds real value by reducing waste, controlling costs and improving performance.

Project management provides better ROI, lower TCO and better TQC.

Your Leaders are in Chains: Let loose the Hounds!

Have you got the measure of your Senior staff? Well, why are you not giving your senior people the opportunity to lead and to deliver better value on their projects. Playing safe is not the same as scoring points!

Currently, modern business-driven organisations have wrapped within them (and without them), an extensive, complex and multi-layered IT Infrastructure that is expected to take-on a more defensive exo-skeletal role than it's intended 'growth enablement' and 'capability enhancement' role, for which it is greatly suited.

The energy lost in defending and maintaining the status quo, could be better spent on more effective expansion and stronger growth.

It would appear that most organisations are favouring the 'wait and see' strategy and find themselves burning precious fuel and time simply hovering above the ground instead of plotting a new course and moving ahead, albeit at a 'steady as she goes, Captain' pace.

So it's no wonder that there is some confusion of the role of the 'gung-ho!' multi-functional, assertive Project Managers and Business Analysts in this stabilising environment that 'maintains the status quo' at all costs.

PMs and BAs alike are confused about the skills and efforts required in these circumstances and are therefore equally unsure about what value they can deliver, while confined to their seemingly passive roles.

"I think our wagons have been formed into a defensive circle for so long, we have forgotten which way is forward!"

Senior people, in particular have become very frustrated and feel restricted in their implementation of new ideas and innovative projects. They know they can deliver more: more value to the clients and more value to the organisation. Certainly more value than the situation allows and they know this because they have already proved it in the past.

There is a very real risk that career advancement paths will quickly stall, especially for senior people. Once you have learned the basic skills of project management and business analysis and have had a number of opportunities to try, fail and put it into practice successfully, what next?

The Clock is Ticking!
Unfortunately from here, it can be a downward spiral. As time flies by, more and more Senior people are moved into low level positions, where they stagnate and then they don’t have the opportunity to show what they can really do. Everybody looses. Experienced PMs and BAs are marginalised, morale suffers, projects suffer, and the company don’t get the results they want from their efforts.

One option being considered, is to come up with new titles for senior people in the PM and BA roles to differentiate them from the crowd and to accentuate the increased value that they can deliver but I fear that this is just another example of 'name magic' and the acquisition of status and respect without undergoing the arduous task of earning it.

Risks or Benefits of Letting Senior People lead
Project success rates will increase if you have Senior people running your projects. People who are abley assisted by Business System Designers who can synthesise or simulate as well as analyse and calculate, to create effective system designs and applications that users like.

When Senior Project Managers have the assertive authority and sound experience to address and resolve problems and issues as they arise, with timely and focussed solutions, then ICT and development projects stay on track and deliverables will meet company expectations.

Let’s untie our Senior project managers and business analysts and see what happens. Take the brakes off! Loosen their shackles and give them more P&L responsibility. Plot a course for your next challenge and into the future growth of your organisation.

Leveraging the talents of senior people in project management and business analysis roles is going to make a huge improvement in project success rates and will take your organisation out of a hovering status quo, with an ICT exo-skeleton and into an assertive forward-thinking leadership, that is capable of creating and managing growth, innovation and business capability. Chocks away and full steam ahead!

Effective ITIL project leadership: Plan-Do-Check-Act

Effective ITIL project leadership: Plan-Do-Check-Act

The first step in the Plan-Do-Check-Act process is to have an executive address ITIL stakeholders at all project kick-off meetings.

This falls under the "Plan" and "Do" activities and also shows the team that the ITIL program has leadership support.

If a CIO or senior executive doesn't attend the kick-off meeting, project support is questioned and that immediately weakens the team and the leader's ability to direct the program.

Following the kick-off meeting, leaders execute the "Do" portion of the cycle by simply following the same process as the rest of their team.

When you talk about "Plan-Do-Check-Act" in ITIL, the "Do" really means that leaders must set the example and establish a culture where the senior executives follow the process like any other employee.

One CIO I have worked with took this a step further and communicated to the entire company how he followed the process. He did this after receiving an irate call from a senior executive who claimed the service desk was not giving him the priority he deserved.

After sharing the process and his own service desk requests with the executive, the CIO pinned the list on every local notice board and in the service desk operations room to give the technicians a tool for response when they were getting pressure to increase the priority of certain tickets.

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Play the Right Person in the Right Position; No strikers in goal!

Aye! Aye! Sir! The face of Experience but not the Voice.

One of the most common mistakes that I see in organisations is that they promote or recruit great technical experts to be poor project managers and excellent sales representatives to be ineffective commercial or business managers.

I am not a big fan of the highly commercialised football business, but the strategy mentioned here is the same as taking your best goal scorer off the field and puting him in as the club manager. The skills needed to perform one job function are rarely suitable to perform the other.

Someone who is a highly accomplished technical expert in the organisation is not the same person to lead, control and focus the efforts of others.

I am not saying that this person is not capable of being re-trained into a new role but has the appropriate assessments and interviews taken place to ascertain, not only elligibility but motivation and focused commitment.

You originally hired them or trained them to perform a very specific task or fullfil a series of objectives. They have consistently delivered high quality results and have bailed the organisation out of many problems. Everyone knows that they can rely on this person.

Suddenly and after due thought, the organisation decides to implement strict project management methodologies to support the company's forecasted growth. They decide to use this chosen technical expert to lead a major implementation.

It makes sense, doesn't it? This is the person that always delivers and therefore they must be the best candidate. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily the correct criteria and so often this person quickly falls into difficulties and ends up on their face. The real victim can be the organisation and it's new found belief that project management doesn’t work for them.

At the core of this issue is not the person chosen to be the project manager, it is the organisation that put them into an untenable position. Although the chosen person is very focussed and motivated by their technnical expertise, they were not truly suitable to organise the resources and coordinate the project.

The majority of technical gurus, would prefer to get their hands on the toys and start fixing the problems themselves. They are used to working in chaotic situation and they are happy to live in that environment. Therefore, they do not always see the true value of running a well controlled project in an organised and structured way.

A second issue that I have seen is with the governance controls inside organisations. These are intended to be established to support project management in an organisation. Often these organisations are stuffed to the roof tops, with theoretical and process people that have never successfully run a project themselves.

So often, processes and policies are developed for the rest of the organisation, that are far removed from the reality of everyday projects. What is developed is something theoretically sound, state-of-the-art approved and slick but, unfortunately, it does not meet the organisation's cultural requirements. "Looks great Bob! but we can't use it!"

At this point one of two things can occur.
1) Stakeholders and senior management sponsors will continue to insist that the PMs, running the projects, use these processes and policies, or else! The risk here is that the projects will all bog down and start to fail, despite the determination of all concerned.

2) In the absence of a strong directive from above, the more experienced PMs will simply ignore the processes and policies and fall back into their own tried and tested 'ways' to run the projects. This can also spell disaster for the organisation and by association, project management methodologies.

Another common issue I have seen, is that most organisation think they can perform project management cheaply, using more junior level people. They hire people that have less than five years experience and they call them Project Managers. They tell these people to take control and drive the projects towards implementation.

Without real, hard-won, experience about how to deal with and communicate positively with senior level functional and business managers, these poor people will very quickly lose their authority. They will be stripped of their implied status and will simply become the subordinates, and compliant 'yes-sirs', to the functional and business managers involved.

The functional and business managers have now gained control of your critical projects and the project managers becomes the note-takers, expeditors and coordinators. The project is now moving in another direction and with prioritised goals that were never required or intended. Again the organisation sees project management as the failure.

To have a successful project management environment you need to hire the right people. Just as you do not hire a goalscorer to manage a team, nor should you hire a technical expert to lead your project management effort. Find a seasoned, well weathered business management professional with the right experience and commitment to lead the organisation.

In conclusion, if you want to succeed, with the development and implementation of project management within your organisation, you must not skimp or stray from the path. You must hire a seasoned project manager with the correct skills and true experience to perform their duties and sometimes that means saying 'No sir!', with all due respect.

Project failures and Change Management strategy

Tight budgets have upped the ante in what IT projects organisations choose to pursue this year, and in some cases the executive involvement in those projects has substantially increased as a result, consultants and practitioners say.

Yet the executive contribution to project and portfolio management (PPM) at large enterprises is more often about communication and change management strategy than other parts of the process.

Project Portfolio Management
Executives are involved with managing the project portfolio or adjusting priorities among projects at less than 20% of organisations with more than 1,000 employees. Rather, those duties are most often performed by IT directors or governing bodies.

Instead, the executive's role is one of communicating a vision and driving a change management strategy that will result in greater user and organizational acceptance of the projects selected for development.

Lead by Example
There is more riding on the executive's decisions in the project management space than ever before. The executive can't just delegate project management responsiveness to the staff because he must lead by example.

Organisational Change
Organisational change management is crucial. Before rolling out new PPM solution from anyone consider having a soft launch, configuring resource pools and providing training for resource managers, senior leadership team members and project managers.

Change Management
Change management should be the starting point because the overall project management strategy will succeed or fail based on this.

A change management strategy formally introduces initiatives to everyone affected by them, and should also introduce any new roles or expectations to team members to get everyone on the same page at the same time.

Creating a Change Culture
Creating a culture where everyone understands their roles, responsibilities and expectations from the get-go increases the chances for project success and it reduces surprises.

Indeed, surprises are one reason for project failures, which persist despite governance and tools like PPM software to keep projects on track. It regularly comes down to the fact that the business didn't realise the impact the change was going to have, and therefore didn't plan for it.

Project Success rates
Research on project success rates found that 24% of projects are cancelled part-way through or delivered and not used. Surveys showed that just 11% of large organisations complete all projects in their development queue; the majority (54%) report an abandonment rate of 1% to 10%. The final third don't even finish 11% to 50% of their projects!

Consolidation
Consolidation can go smoothly if you lay out an extensive workflow for change management prior to or during the implementation process. Pay special attention to the rigorous standardisation that needs to take place while developing a realistic timeline.

Small Changes
Start out by changing small things; changes grow in complexity as the organisation works toward its goals. Remember, you need to be able to crawl before you can run. Whenever you are changing business culture you first need to plan out the procedure for it, or else the tools will just sit there, unused and unwanted.

Starting point
Change management should be the starting point because the overall project management strategy will succeed or fail based on this but too much process can also be a problem, resulting in a slow death "by a thousand cuts".

Approval Points
Before the recent economic crisis, there were two or three approval points to get a project going. Now it feels like the number of stringent checkpoints has increased, leaving new, creative projects to die on the vine before they even have a chance.

Tight Budgets
Tighter budgets have led many organisations to add tight checkpoints for proposals, aimed at weeding out unnecessary or unrealistic projects before they even start. Although these processes can prevent wasting time and money on projects that don't provide a lot of value, they also stifle innovation and discourage new ideas. Finding the middle ground can be difficult.

If there are too many approval points, people get frustrated and throw up their hands in premature defeat but if there is not enough, the engagement can fizzle out.

A Vision
Developing a vision that meets business objectives and the needs of stakeholders can be the first step in finding that happy medium. Start basic, envisioning a plan that doesn't necessarily require a lot of tools and processes but has better stakeholder alignment and overall clarity into what the business problem is that you are trying to solve.

Balance in all things
Strike a balance by staying open to the potential for project adjustments along the way while also following Lean Six Sigma methodologies and ITIL best practices. You can run Lean Six Sigma in parallel to the business processes of the project and you can streamline every project to fit into this overall strategy.

Keeping costs down
At the end of the day, executives are trying desperately to keep operational costs and spending under control while still making progress on IT strategies. They need very honest and accurate information on the projects rolling up to them. It's very important not just for managing IT but also for engaging the stakeholders and the entire business leadership team. It is one of the IT executive's most important responsibilities.

Tools are not the answer
You can have the most expensive and beautiful project management tool out there, but without the support of the management and your project team, it just won't happen.