Project managers don’t deliver projects!
Project managers don’t deliver projects!
People are projects. People, primarily those in the project team, deliver the project. The Project Manager steers them, but without the people the project does not reach it’s destination!
Project Managers lead, manage, direct, and protect the network of people tasked to deliver individual elements of the project.
Whatever the drivers for the project, it is through people that the project is delivered. Through relationships that Project Manager develops and ensuring that these are effectively managed. Deflecting interference, those external influences that may stop the individuals from delivering.
Project Managers coordinate and drive the individuals’ efforts and outputs. Get them working effectively, together. The primary role of the Project Manager is to manage the network of complex relationships among the stakeholder community, whether the core project team, the extended team or with external stakeholders.
How the Project Manager does this is key. It might be a simplistic perspective but “Projects are People”, without people a project is just something that exists on paper or in someone’s head.
The converse is also true, “People are Projects”. The Project Manager spends the majority of his/her project time focused on developing and managing relationships to ensure outcomes are achieved.
Some people become projects in their own right. I have had to deal with countless “difficult customers” who consume increasing amounts of my project time. Ignoring them would have been perilous, to say the least.
Impossible Projects
Yesterday, we discussed that some projects carry such great risks that they should not start! But they do.
So you’ve been nominated as project manager to deliver this impossible project.
You need to consider your next move very carefully. Do you accept or not? Do you have any choice?
You know the situation, you’ve just heard your new boss inform you “I’m sorry, we just have to do it and you are the only PM available”, or “I know, it’s an aggressive deadline, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to deliver it on time”, or “Do I have to remind you that saying no is not an option” or maybe some other phrase with similar intention.
Alternatively, you might be excited by the thought of succeeding where others would fail. You may want to make your mark on the organisation, show everyone what you are made of, that you have what it takes succeeds.
Whether you embrace the situation or live with a probable disaster, you need to take charge.
Start working with the stakeholders, get to know them, their expectations, how they are going to interact with you, the team and each other. Get a feel for any flexibility they have, if you want a chance to deliver successfully you are going to need it.
Aim to discover what the project will deliver; when it must be delivered; what resources are available (staff, technology, budget, etc.). Don’t forget to factor in the quality and governance elements that have a bearing on the deliverables. Get a ballpark estimate for these four elements and start planning.
Look at what-if scenarios. Get creative, and think outside the box. Aim to come up with options that might be acceptable to your stakeholders.
Typically stakeholders want the project to be a success, to deliver what they need.
Forcing delivery of a project that’s expected to fail is not good business sense. Your stakeholders may well be persuaded to see the benefit of tweaking the elements of the project, shaping it into something that will realistically deliver. Negotiate compromises and agreement between your stakeholders and you’ll stand a good chance in delivering this project.
Good luck.
Projects are Risky! New Endeavours, Not Business as Usual
Some projects carry such great risks that they should not start! But they do. They start because there is a chance of a high Return on Investment (ROI) to the organisation. We have all heard of the “Risk vs Reward”!
After all projects, in the classic definition, are new endeavours, they are not Business as Usual (BAU) activities, inherently the risks are greater with something that has not been done before. BAU have the capability of defining and refining repeatable processes, these techniques help keep risk low. Projects can exploit methods and processes too, but what are being delivered is new, untested outcomes with all the risk and opportunities associated.
Why on earth would a Project Manager take on such a burden, knowing that risk of failure was so high. Some Project Managers don’t realise this a at the outset, either through ignorance or disinformation. Others get told to “just do it” or face the consequences. Others are happy to embrace the unknown, deliver the undeliverable, hopefully gain some kudos in the process.
Project failure is a risk, it will never disappear when dealing with new endeavours. Success rates will increase as Project Managers and organisations learn to adapt and improve processes, but only to a limited extent.
Inherently projects are not BAU, they venture into and attempt to conquer new territory.
As explorers through ought history have experienced, for those few that succeed there are countless that don’t.
Kickstarting a Project
It is often believed that starting a programme or project is the most difficult task for the manager tasked with delivering the endeavour. This is especially pertinent when the project planner is a novice.
The Project Charter may authorise the project, enable a project manager to be assigned and is often recognised as the official kick-off of the project. But there is an essential step that must be performed before jumping in to deliver the newly authorised project. The project start-up meeting.
Irrespective of where your customer is based, whether in a nearby office or the other side of the world, every project based initiative needs a start-up meeting, often called a project kick-off, strategy session, planning session (every organisation has their own specific term for what is the same activity).
The impetus for this meeting is to ensure the project sets off “on the right foot”. With a well planned, effectively managed and productive session the customer and project manager can be reassured that the project is getting the best possible start.
The session is as much about understanding and setting expectations of all concerned with the project. Often these won’t be fully realised during the session, but these will highlight gaps and differences which have to be addressed during the early days of the project.
During the elaboration of the expectations there will be opportunities to clarify high level requirements, identify risks, spot interdependencies with other projects (especially when the project is part of a programme), etc.
The main goal of the session is to agree what needs to be done, by whom (project team and extended project team), when (timescales), what likely challenges will be faced, and taking all this into consideration a high level plan.
I’ve seen projects take as much as five business days to conduct these sessions. You can imagine how drained the participants were by the end!
I’ve worked for a few forward thinking organisations who have recognised the challenges that PM’s face in delivering an effective project kick-off and how beneficial it would be to speed up the process and expedite all these activities. Subsequently I have had to design, develop and facilitate project kick-start workshops.
These half to one day kick-start workshops have got ALL the participants in a room to run through a meticulously planned process, the output of which was initial documentation and high-level plan, agreed by customer, stakeholders and project team. Sufficient for the project team to work effectively straight from the kick-off.
In a soon to be published post, I will elaborate on what is needed to make the kick-start work and what must be undertaken in the days, weeks following kick-off of the project.
Deliver Desired Outcomes with Expectation Management
Current research has found that 70% of change initiatives, especially technology enabled projects, are deemed unsuccessful.
The primary reason for such disappointment is a failure to define success criteria at the start of projects. Without determining success criteria any future improvement from a change initiative is purely subjective and each stakeholder will have their own view of success.
Based on the same research only 30% of projects are deemed a success, of these, approximately half of the projects had the project objectives altered during the lifecycle of the project. Often this change is due to expectations, either perceived or actual, of the stakeholders changing during the lifecycle. An immense challenge if you are the programme manager and project manager.
I have found that a necessary practice to utilise is expectation management. By communicating effectively with key stakeholders at the outset of the project one can refine and establish their expectations.
Expectation management is a form of truthful disclosure, a method where all stakeholders get to define and understand realistic, and ideally specific, outcomes at the outset. Importantly these are documented and agreed by all.
By performing this, sometimes exhaustive, task the framework of expectations is established. Often what is captured is the psychological expectations of the stakeholders, these are the ones that often fail to be satisfied in those projects that were “deemed” a success.
Without managing their expectations the project will frequently underperform in the stakeholders perceptions, even with the same outcomes. Applying expectation management is a highly recommended technique, it can be very useful and provide benefits throughout the project lifecycle.
A useful technique I have employed in expectation management is establishing a Baseline Assessment. More on this later.
