Credit: http://500motivators.com/motivate/me/motivation-its-not-that-im-lazy-i-just-dont-care/

AMP = Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.

Now this is a power-packed acronym! These three words power the engine within us that takes us to greater heights, and help us achieve self-actualization in the personal and professional environment.

Located at the peak of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy, self-actualization is described in the following way:
“What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization…It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”

 
Why is this stuff important?

• Supporting innovation and experimentation without punishment is crucial to personal and professional success. An environment that supports ‘test-drives’ allows people to close in on what seems an impossible task.
• A ‘purpose-driven’ (not solely money-driven) approach makes what we do meaningful. An overload of seemingly monotonous work that isn’t engaging anymore is a productivity killer. Opportunities that allow one to explore and master new areas puts a spring back in a one’s step.
• The journey is, quite often, more significant than the destination. Experience and personal achievement are, without a doubt, the more distinguishing and memorable aspects of our lives.

During a class I was in earlier this year, the instructor played an RSAnimate video adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA to drive home a point. The video reinforces what really motivates us. If you haven’t come across this video yet, I recommend you watch it here. If you’ve watched it before, well, watch it again to remind yourself what it’s all about.

This week, my blogs are going to dissect AMP and take a look at why so many of us do things, not for money, but for the sheer joy of fulfillment and learning. AMP is a powerful influence over human lives that often goes unrecognized and under-appreciated.
 

- what would it take to differentiate yourself and your project from others? What would the value be?

To most project managers and professionals my guess is that the word ‘brand’ evokes a certain sense of ‘marketing non-sense’ and ‘showman-ship’. Why would a project or even worse a project leader need a ‘brand’?

As it turns out, the project management world has an opportunity to learn from our product and brand management colleagues. The value and equity we can derive from ‘marketing’ our project using a brand can help set it apart from others and help get our project prioritized and noticed.

MIT Sloan’s – Management Review recently put some focus on this in an article titled “Why Every Project Needs a Brand (and how to get one). In reference to the project brand they wrote, “Broadly speaking, a brand can be defined as a unique value proposition expressed in a relevant and differentiated way such that it creates preference and loyalty among key audiences. So why is project branding important? Because your project can suffer in the absence of a compelling brand.[i] “

(source: .http://theclosetentrepreneur.com)

So, what are those key pieces of information that project leaders can learn to leverage so your suffer in the absence of a compelling brand? Here are a few to start with, if you have others that you would like to share, feel free.

Project Naming: this is the brand management process of deciding what a product will be called. A project manager can think of her project as a product, considering the stakeholders and the project members. Naming a project or product is a critical part of the branding process, it will help everyone involved to identify with the vision of the project and to be consciously reminded of the future outcome and benefit of the project When naming a project you must take into account the many uses of your name in documents and dialogue and ensure that it is a name that helps people to ‘get it’ easily.

The process of naming your project should be done deliberately and by involving your team members, ensuring that it is something they will be energized and inspired by.

Some key steps include specifying the objectives of the branding, developing the project name itself, evaluating names submitted by the team, and choosing a final name.

When brainstorming about a project name, the following ideas might be useful:

• it strategically distinguishes the project from other projects by conveying its unique positioning
• it holds appeal for target audience
• it implies the project’s future benefits and outcome
• it helps to motivate team members to work on the project and helps executives to promote it.

Selling a vision: Just as brands help those who market products or companies convey the purpose and value to their target audience, so can a project manager help convey the vision of their project through a brand.  In most cases your project is competing for attention and funding with many other projects and you with many other project managers. Developing a brand for your project and maybe even for yourself can help you set yourself apart and help you convey your vision, benefits and value or your project. To help you get started, spend some time thinking about statements in the following four areas that help you convey the project:

1. Unique value proposition – what is the unique value your project is bringing to the table
2. Unique selling proposition – your elevator pitch
3. Slogan or Mantra – what is going to make it easy for people to know what you are working on
4. Positioning statements – targeted towards different people you may encounter

(Source: http://craigpearce.info)

Brand Equity: in essence the value you get from employing a brand for yourself and/or your project versus those who do not spend the time doing so.  Thinking about the brand equity you may be building through your efforts can help determine if the time and investment is worthwhile compared to your peers and competing projects.

According to Wikipedia, Brand Equity is “the marketing effects and outcomes that accrue to a product with its brand name compared with those that would accrue if the same product did not have the brand name. Fact of the well-known brand name is that, the company can sometimes charge premium prices from the consumer.”[ii]

How might this translate into a project management setting? If the process of branding is done correctly for your project, it might mean that when funding decisions are made by your executive team, you would see additional benefits by the “awareness” of your project and garner opportunities to showcase your project and its benefits/outcomes/value in forums not otherwise open to you.

[i] http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2011-summer/52416/why-every-project-needs-a-brand-and-how-to-create-one/

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_equity

- a set of familiar tools seen through the eyes of a product manager

- By Sridhar Karnam (www.linkedin.com/in/sridharkarnam)

Tools that product management use that might be interesting for project managers to use:

In continuation to our last week’s discussion about lessons that project management can learn from product management, let us examine some of the tools that product management uses that could assist in project management:

Weekly newsletter: The communication within the team and between team is critical for product management. At a simplest form product management uses email, wiki, idea management, and requirement management tools. Project management could use simple tools such as weekly newsletter to communicate the status update with the entire team, with the management, and also between other project teams to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Program manager is typically responsible to bring every project on the same page at high level. However, a weekly email update in the form of newsletter can give the details and granularity that everyone needs to know about the project. Smaller team could use a simple corporate email with consistent template or format to communicate with the ecosystem. A larger team could use free web 2.0 tools such as mailchimp.com to communicate.

Knowledge tools: The product management is responsible to build and manage the inventory of product knowledge. Typical tools used are MS Sharepoint, FTP servers, Dropbox.com, salesforce.com, or fancy knowledge base tools. At a simplest form use a Dropbox.com tool create a consistent folders. Every user gets an instant notification as soon as a new version/ doc is checked-in. Every member of the team has the same version of the document irrespective of the number of revisions that it has gone through. Collateral that Product Manager uses to communicate about the product to senior management and field during the initial stages are relevant for the product development team. The one-pager executive summary of the product is a great example apart from MRD, PRD, SRS, etc. to be shared in this folder.

(source: http://www.knowledgejump.com)

Empowering tools: Product management uses many webinars to discuss and debate the research and diligence reports. Project teams could make use of such tools to conduct a 30-min project team refresh meetings to discuss about case studies, coding best practices, efficiency improvements, re-usability of code, and so on. Product management uses simple tools such as Google Alerts to capture information about competition and market. Use corporate collaboration tools such as webex, go-to-meeting, or even Google+ to empower your team with the latest and greatest in the domain, technology, or process.

Decision tools: Product management usually run multiple what if scenarios for the features, functionalities, revenue, volume, or users. This helps them take quick decision in the meetings. With emphasis on making decisions in every meeting these days, it is important that the project management uses its existing tools and run what if scenarios by modifying activities, resources, bugs, or release dates. This makes the project management to respond quickly during the meetings and in hall-way discussions to speak about the impact of changes rather than calculating them after the decision has been made.

Change management tools: The project management gets input from many people through support escalations, business escalations, management requests, and of course market changes. Product management uses simple tools to modify product backlogs and directs changes to the project management. As we know that execution is more challenging than idea generation, proper use of tools are required for project management to manage changes in requirements, schedule, or resources. Capturing the information from above tools of different teams may help the project management team to re-use or learn about the changes quickly and be agile. The bulky ERP tools that we mostly use which goes through approval from who’s who in the group may not be very effective. Combination of knowledge base, current version of the documents, and decision tools will help through navigate the changes rather than avoiding it.

(Source: http://www.ideachampions.com)

Prioritization tools: The project management team has people management, resource management, code management, technology management, and many other challenges to manage. With constantly changing business requirements, it could get overwhelming to manage changes. Using some of the prioritization methods could be helpful to manage these changes. There are many tools that product management use based on the prioritization methods used. As a first step, the project management shall get away from a To-Do list format to prioritization way of thinking, and use any of the tools that is available in the system.

The tools are only tools, and it’s the skill and attitude that would drive the business. A tool is very critical to cut a huge log of wood. The tools has to be sharp and right. At the same time, a great club in Golf will not help you achieve great results. So a combination of right attitude and a tool will help project management move away from a tactical to-do list teams to strategic teams with vision.

(Source: http://www.realministry.org)

- what happens when a Project Manager and a Product Manager start comparing notes

Preamble – a short while ago I sat down with a friend of mine, Sridhar Karnam, a product manager and talked about how project management and product management have so much to learn from each other. To the general public the two seems oddly indistinct and to the untrained eye you could suppose that by virtue of names the two are very similar. As we all know it turns out that the level of distinction between the two areas depends greatly on the industry and the company.

We decided to post a few blog entries on the area of Project and Product Management. I hope you find them interesting, thought-provoking and helpful.  Feel free to drop us a line in the comment area with your observations and learnings.

Gustav

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What can Project Management learn from Product Management?
- By Sridhar Karnam (www.linkedin.com/in/sridharkarnam)

In the last 5 years or so, we have realized that comparing these two roles is like comparing Apples and Oranges. Not many companies now overlap these roles. These roles over the time have evolved from being janitors of products and projects to management of them. Product management has learned a lot from project management. Let us examine what project management can learn from product management?

(Source: http://www.aipmm.com)

Leading by engagement: product managers are natural leaders. They lead the team by engaging the team with the product vision. Even though none of the cross-functional team members report to Product Managers, there is a mutual respect and trust between, and the team follows the path shown by product managers. Project managers can learn to engage deeper with the project beyond delivery and not just through reporting structure.

Product knowledge: product owners have the complete sense of product through its life cycle, and hence are able to prioritize tasks for the project. Project managers are bound by resource and time constraints, and may not appreciate the big picture. In high-stress environment, project managers tend to razor focus on their project plan, sometimes without the knowledge on product as they could be delivering a small piece of a large product. A quick review of MRD, PRD, specs, and attending a sample sales training of the product could bring in a drastic change in project management approach.

Empowering: Product managers show humility through research, diligence, history of making right choices, and fixing products. Exhibiting power and managing people are not something that product managers crave. Project managers can empower the team with similar knowledge about the coding practices, software methodologies, technology, or platform.

Quick decisions and being prepared: Product managers often make prioritization decisions during meetings, as they well prepared through diligence and customer insights. Similarly project managers can be in sync with their management to be prepared to make quick decisions by running possible scenarios in advance.

Open communication: Product managers communicate their thought process and not decisions. The only way for them to influence the team is to show the logic in their thinking based on the diligence, and data they have collected. This helps the team make the decision that the product manager initiated. Project manager shall communicate on the overall status of project with both the upper management and the project team. Project manager should also use the scrum meetings to communicate on daily status, update from management, and any changes on decision to win the trust of project team.

All-Agile: Product managers keep their plans agile. The product backlog gets updated regularly based on the change of trends, management decisions, strategic partnerships, and competition. Project managers on the other hand are constrained with resources and deadlines with almost no bandwidth for last minute changes. However, project managers could learn from product managers on being agile through the project and being responsive to important and major changes in the project. Half the difficulty in change management is in the mind anyways.

Collaborative: Product managers over a period of time learn to collaborate better. It takes a lot of effort and commitment to get collaborative. The product managers who master collaboration end up creating great products and services generating huge profits for the products. Project managers are so focused in their team and deadlines that they could make effort to collaborate with other project leaders and create ideas and processes for better project management.

Prioritization: Product managers get hundreds of requirements from sales, customers, management, and support. With the help of backlog, they prioritize the product requirements and communicate their roadmap to make sure that the requirement gathering channel is always kept open. Project managers also need to set priorities for the project team. By using some of the new methods such as project back-log to break the tasks into smaller goals and then helping the team to prioritize regularly could help in smooth project management.

We all know the saying Time flies when you’re having fun.  Are you helping your team’s time fly?  No matter how serious your project may be, it is still necessary to bring some levity to the situation.  Allowing the team to take a ‘life or death’ view of the project can be detrimental to the well-being of the team, and ultimately the project.  As the leader of the project team, it is your responsibility to make sure that your team can have a little bit of fun while they spend the majority of their time working with you.  As the Project Manager, it is sometimes necessary to put on your Jester Hat, while still maintaining the level of professionalism that is required.

via Flickr by E. E. Piphanies

Positive Word Choices: One of the best ways I’ve learned to help my team maintain a positive outlook is to constantly use positive words, regardless of the situation.  During one of my projects, the company was in bankruptcy, and many people were leaving the company.  This made it extremely difficult to work on the project, because we’d lose Subject Matter Experts, Testers, and Technicians so often, it sometimes felt like it happened every day.  Whenever I would get news that someone else had left, I’d respond with a single word – Fabulous. My tone of voice was not a happy or excited one, but I chose to use a positive word in the face of a negative situation.  At first, my team had a hard time understanding what I was doing, but took it as one of my (many) quirks.

Over the months of the project, the word “Fabulous” became the team’s motto.  People would count how many times the word ‘fabulous’ was spoken during Status Meetings, and people started to respond to negative situations with the word Fabulous almost instinctively.  Did it look like we weren’t going to finish the requirements on time?  Fabulous.  What do we need to do to make it happen?  Do we need to schedule another all-day workshop in a location that is only convenient for half of the team?  Fabulous.  Let’s pick a day that we think will have less traffic.  Did we just encounter some necessary scope creep?  Fabulous.  Let’s figure out how to work it in.

The word itself has very little to do with anything, but having a ‘fun word’ to use during a not-so-fun situation helped the team to rally around and tackle each situation as it came up.  Sometimes, when tensions were high, someone would simply shout the word “FABULOUS” and get a calming giggle from the rest of the team.  I was told later that I was heartily mocked for my pervasive use of the word, but that it really did help the team.  While others may have been insulted at being the target of such mockery, I was happy to put on my Jester Hat and allow the team to have a little fun.  I think it’s fabulous.

 

Bringing Fun into Meetings:  I have found very few people who enjoy meetings.  In fact, I found a quote by Thomas Sowell that demonstrates the general view of meetings quite perfectly:  People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.  However, I think that meetings haven’ t been given a chance to prove what they can be.  The problem is not with meetings themselves, but with the people that attend them.  If someone decides that they hate meetings, every meeting that they attend will be an arduous process that almost never ends well.  If that person is conducting the meeting, then it is almost guaranteed that none of the attendees are going to enjoy the process.  These are meetings that rarely accomplish anything, because many of the required attendees don’t go to the meeting.

via Flickr by MNicoleM

So how can you turn that around and run meetings that people want to attend?  Simple – make it fun!  Bring a sense of humor and levity to the meeting.  When people call in, greet them with a cheer!  Start every Status Meeting by acknowledging accomplishments from the week before.  Recognition of a job well done is great for morale, and puts a positive spin on the rest of your meeting.  Also, maintaining order in meetings and not allowing side-conversations to take up too much time is an important part of keeping your meeting attendees engaged in the meeting.  I’ve heard a number of codewords that are used by project teams to point out that the conversation has gotten off track, but I’ve got two favorites that are very funny while still getting to the point:

1. E.L.M.O – (Enough, Let’s Move On)
2. Shiny ball (I think we all know how easy it is to get distracted by shiny things rolling around)

When you ensure that your meetings stay on track, you are showing the attendees that you respect everyone’s time by not allowing the meeting to go long regarding subjects that don’t necessarily affect everyone in the meeting.  When you do so with a sense of humor and levity, you are not overpowering the people who got sidetracked – simply guiding them back to the predetermined path, otherwise known as the meeting agenda.

 

Generally, projects have a reputation of being overly stressful and almost always ending in a ‘Death March’.  Don’t allow your team to fall into that trap.  Put on your Jester Hat and do everything you can to keep the project team amused with what they are doing.  By helping your team maintain a reasonable balance between amusement and stress, you can improve morale and productivity at the very least.  You may even keep some stress-related health issues away from your valued team-members by allowing them to laugh every once in a while.  Remember, a happy project team is a Fabulous project team!

When you’re managing projects, things will go wrong both inside and outside of your project.  Many of the things that go wrong will be wholly and completely out of your control, but can have a massive affect on your project.  You will need to find a way to support your team while they work through whatever issues they may be dealing with; such as Stress, Family Issues, and Medical Issues.  How can you work with your team to resolve their personal issues without crossing the line between Business and Personal?

via Flickr by CWA Union

Stress:  Everyone deals with stress differently.  Some people put so much of themselves into the project that they don’t know when to stop.  These are the ones who work day and night, even through weekends.  With people that work themselves like this, the risk of burnout is very high – and you need to help them prevent it.  Don’t get me wrong – long hours and working on weekends may be necessary as you get closer to deadlines, but those are meant to be sprints, not marathons.  No person can be expected to work the ‘Death March’ for the entirety of a project.  Working that hard for that long can cause members of your team to quit out of sheer exhaustion at best, and could cause severe health issues at worst.  Work with your team member to find out why they are working themselves so hard.  Do they think that their job is in danger if they don’t put 190% into their job?  You will need to ensure that they are not killing themselves for the sake of the project.  They need to know that they have a place on your project team for a long time, and that they do not need to burn themselves out to prove it.  You and your team need them for the long haul!

On the other side of the spectrum, there are some team members who get so overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the project that they freeze up and can’t figure out where to start.  These team members tend to gravitate towards the insignificant, easy to complete tasks, rather than the important tasks that may be too complicated.  They may get wrapped up in the minutiae of documentation, rather than the actual content.  It is your job to help these team members break down the tasks in front of them into reasonably-sized chunks.  If they can’t see past the enormity of a certain assignment, help them break it down further and further until they know exactly what to start with, and when they need to have it completed.  By guiding these team members through what needs to be done, you will help their career growth, their team members, and your project.

 

Family Issues:  Let’s face it – life happens; and there is never a good time for it to happen.  Marriages, Birthdays, Anniversaries, Divorces and Deaths can’t always wait for after Go-Live.  The necessity of work/life balance can’t be denied when it comes to productivity.  If someone on your team is distracted by their family issues, they cannot be expected to fully focus on their project tasks.  Take the time to sit down with your team members to make sure that they don’t have anything in their lives that could be affecting their work.  An unfortunate truth is that there are people who feel guilty for having a life outside of the project.   Your job is to allow them to be happy with good news in their lives, and take care of the things that are less-than-happy news.  Work with them to give them the time that they need without putting an undue burden on the rest of the project team.

 

Medical Issues: Regardless of the stress-related health issues that can come up, things that are impossible to predict or prevent can happen without warning.  Someone’s appendix could burst, they could have a heart attack, or even get hit by a bus!  As the Project Manager, everyone will be looking to you to ensure that the patient can recuperate, and the team won’t need to put in too much overtime to compensate.  Preventive action is the only remedy for this.  Make sure that no one person on your team has a monopoly of knowledge.  Ensure that all requirements, changes, tweaks, and updates are fully documented and can be accessed by everyone on the team.  Software development should be using some sort of version control so that if someone doesn’t come in one day, another person can pick up where they left off.  Ensuring that your team knows that they can be gone for a while, and will still have a job to come back to, is great for the health of your project, and your team.

 

Managing the unexpected things that come up in “real life” is one of the more difficult aspects of Project Management.  Reaching the level of rapport with each and every person on your project team so that they can trust you enough to help them manage their work/life balance is very difficult, but necessary.  Your team is depending on you to make sure that they each can be given the time to handle whatever Life brings them, but that they are still a valued and integral part of the team that will be missed while they are gone.  Don’t let them down.

As a Project Manager, it is going to be necessary to pave the way through obstacles that come up as the project progresses.  Some say that this is the main responsibility of a Project Manager, and I tend to agree.  It is up to the Project Manager to ensure that obstacles are dealt with and mitigated before they affect the project team and the project itself.  Generally, there are three different kinds of obstacles that projects face: Technical, Political, and Emotional.  Today, we will discuss how to avoid and manage them.

via Flickr by hyperion327

Technical Obstacles – The best way to describe technical obstacles is through a Star Trek reference – Scotty from Star Trek was the technician that was always faced with the impossible technical issue that would either seal the fate of the Enterprise, or save the day.  Every issue was absolutely impossible to resolve, and yet every episode ended with the team alive and well, revering Scotty as the hero.  Television has given non-technical people a false sense of what technology can do.  With as many advances that we’ve seen in technology over the past few decades, we cannot simply wish and therefore receive.  However, it seems that many projects start with an idea of how to make things better through technology – and the technology team is rarely consulted.  By the time the Technology department is included in the planning discussions, the decisions have already been made, and the technology team is forced to either say no to the project (causing fear of political repercussions or unemployment), or come up with a sub-optimal solution that nobody is happy with.

This scenario is easy to avoid by simply involving the technology team as soon as the words “computer”, “software”, “server”, “website”, “internet”, and/or “the cloud” are uttered.  Technology groups have people with specific expertise in these areas, and should be consulted before any requirements are discussed and documented.  In fact, some technology teams have specific roles for documenting technical project requirements.  It seems prudent to utilize those resources if they are available to you.  By including the experts early, you can avoid many of the pitfalls and obstacles that many technology projects face on a regular basis.

On the other hand, if you are given a project that has already completed the Requirements Document, and does not have Technical buy-in – not all is lost.  Much of the time, technicians are able to give customers what they *need* if not what they are *asking for*.  If you can distill the requirements to what the end-users will be trying to accomplish, you will be able to take that to the technology team and ask them to come up with a solution that may be able to fit the need.  You’ll have to communicate openly with all sides of the project groups to make sure that everyone is in agreement on how to move forward before updating the Requirements Document.  Concessions may need to be made on many sides, and the project may take longer and/or cost more than initially estimated – but the important thing to consider is that in the end, you’ll have a technically sound solution when you finish the project.

 

via Flickr by Rickydavid

Political Obstacles – No matter where you go, or what you do – you’ll run into office politics.  Decisions will be made seemingly with no regard for sanity; and at some point, you’ll be stuck with a project that on the outside has full executive support, but in reality, seems to be without any support at best, or outright sabotage at worst.  In order to deal with the lack of buy-in, it is necessary to determine why your project lacks the support it needs.  What aspects of your projects affect other departments negatively?  Will it cause layoffs?  Will it enable another department to take over a system previously owned by a different group?  People rarely get in the way of projects for no reason.  As a Project Manager, you will need to determine the motivation behind the obstacles you’re facing.  Once you know the motivation, you can work towards resolving the conflict.

The main thing to do is communicate.  Make sure that people know what you are trying to accomplish, and why.  When you talk about your project goals, some people will let you know their concerns up front.  If you listen to those concerns, you may find something that you missed, or you may figure out why you’ve lost some buy-in, and you can act on that knowledge.  Just make sure that you give every concern the time it deserves.  You’ll find that you face less opposition when you listen to people’s concerns.

 

via Flickr by mitopencourseware

Emotional Obstacles - Projects are stressful.  The different people within your team will deal with stress in a different way.  There will be times when those coping mechanisms will conflict.  Tempers will flare, and emotions will run high.  It is part of your job to make sure that emotional peace can reign supreme.  You’ll need to manage conflicts within your team, either by arbitrating differences or separating people onto separate tasks.  Each situation will be different and you’ll need to respond to each one on a case by case basis.

 

No project goes perfectly.  Things get in the way of every project that has ever been managed.  It is up to you as the Project Manager to make sure that the obstacles that come up do not force the project to fail.  Communication will be the most important part of mitigating those obstacles.  Your team will be counting on you for that.

Last time, we talked about how it is important to wear many hats as a Project Manager.  Today, we’re going to talk about the Leadership Hat.

Think about a person that you would follow regardless of where they were going.  What makes them a leader worth following?  Without pulling up a dictionary or wikipedia article on the word ‘leader’, I can tell you that a leader is someone that is followed.  In terms of the business world, a leader doesn’t necessarily make decisions, and a leader doesn’t necessarily have the highest ranking title.  A true leader is someone that has earned the trust and respect of their team; and as a result, that team will follow that person in whatever direction they take.   In my view, good leaders:

via Flickr by Jonas Hansel

Speak honestly about what’s going on.  There are few things worse than a leader that sugar coats the facts.  When things are going well, it’s easy to praise and share accomplishments.  When obstacles come up, it’s much more difficult to speak up.  As a leader, it is important to make sure that your team is aware of what’s going on; what to expect; and what your plan is to get to better days ahead.  If a leader does not acknowledge any issues, they will lose the confidence of the team – and find that they are a follower-less leader.

Respect the team.  Project Managers can find themselves leading people in every level of the management hierarchy.  From entry-level interns to executives, a Project Manager must learn the roles and responsibilities of everyone on their team.  Each and every role  is important, and the Project Manager should treat every team member as such.  Remember, every person has unique skills and talents, and one of a leader’s most important roles is to help cultivate those skills.   Moreover, a leader respects the knowledge of their team members.  When a question is asked in a meeting, a leader should allow the appropriate person to share their expertise, rather than attempting to speak to something that is not their specialty.  If a leader doesn’t allow people to share their knowledge, experience, and expertise; they show that they do not have much faith in them, and may lose the respect of their team in turn.

Are compassionate regarding the well being of their team.  It is difficult to follow someone that clearly does not give any credence to the well being of their team.  Why would you follow someone that didn’t have your interests in mind?  Project Managers have to balance both the customers as well as their own teams to make sure that the customers are getting what they want, and the team is getting what they need.  Leaders must know how walk the fine line between taking too much out of their team to make the customers happy; and losing customers for the sake of the well-being of the team.  It can seem impossible to come to an equilibrium, and the best leaders are the ones who can do it almost seamlessly.

Have a vision, direction, or idea of where to go and/or what to do.  At the beginning of a project, when the Charter is drafted, and the Plan is falling into place, it is easy to follow almost anyone.  The true test is when things start to go wrong, obstacles take over, and success is nowhere in sight.  When this happens, people look to their leader for what to do next.  Many times, the leader can be just as lost as everyone else, but needs to project a sense of confidence that people can lean on in order to keep moving forward.    Simply being the person to say ‘we’ll get past this’ can be the difference between a true leader, and a person who is stuck with nowhere to go as their project spirals out of control.

Solve problems quickly and decisively.    As projects move forward, it can be very easy to get stuck in ‘paralysis of analysis’ when faced with an issue.  With as many variables that can touch a project, it is impossible to always make the right decision; and your decisions can affect the outcome of the project.  However, *not* making a decision can turn out to be just as detrimental.  One of the best quotes I’ve heard is Every decision you make is wrong.  What is important is that you make the decision quickly, and adapt as necessary.  Leaders need to know the difference between decisions that require weeks to think through, and decisions that must be made quickly and decisively.

Stand up for their team.  Nobody is perfect.  People make mistakes.  There will come a time when someone on your team makes a mistake that becomes widely known.  Good leaders don’t allow a single mistake to ruin a person’s career – they ‘stand in front of the bus’, take the beating for the mistake, and work on a solution as required.  Later, they will work with the person that made the mistake to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.  When your team knows that you will defend them, they tend to work harder to not make your defense necessary.

Know when to lead, as well as when to follow.  Yes, leaders must also be followers sometimes.  Leaders take direction from people just like everyone else.  When following a particular direction isn’t easy for the majority of people on a team, the leader of that team needs to know when to stand up, get in line, and keep the team going.  Insisting on being the person in charge, no matter what, can turn out to be detrimental to the overall success of a project.  Being a dynamic leader that knows when to lead, as well as when to follow may turn out to be the difference between project success and failure.

Leadership is difficult, and it is not something that can be forced.  Some people are natural leaders that make it look easy.  Others need to practice, learn from their mistakes, and keep moving forward.  If you are going to take on the mantle of Project Manager, you need to be prepared to be a Leader, and continue to help yourself and your team grow as you go.

 

As a Project Manager, how many times have you had this conversation?

Person: “So what are you doing these days?”

You: “I’m a Project Manager.”

Person: “Oh, cool!”

You: “Yes, I really enjoy it.”

Person:  “So… what do you do?”

Project Management is a very difficult line of work to describe in terms that every person can understand.  My husband, an IT Director for a non-profit,  can distill what he does into four words: I work with computers.  That explanation doesn’t cover exactly what he does, but it is enough to get an understanding nod and allow the conversation to move on to other things.  Project Managers don’t have the luxury of distilling their work like that. I manage projects doesn’t really clarify anything, and it breaks the rule of definitions by using the same words to define the word or phrase in question.  What does it mean to manage?  Do people report to you?  (not always) What is a Project?  (something with a beginning and end)   Suddenly, you find yourself explaining the definition of a project, and the complexities of a Project Management Plan, and the person you’re talking to is no closer to understanding what your career is.  The quickest answer I can usually come up with is “I get all of the work done on projects without doing any of the actual work”, which is the best description I have of what I do.

 

via Flickr by Aaron Webb

Saying that your job is to not do any work may seem a bit odd, but bare with me for a moment.  Think about a Construction Project Manager.  Do they actually build anything?  Do they install any electrical or plumbing?  Most likely not.  Project Managers are there to make sure that the Carpenters, Electricians, Plumbers, Painters, Stone Masons, etc. all know what they are supposed to be working on, and when they need to be finished so that the next set of people can come in and do their magic.  If something happens and someone is slipping on a deadline, it’s the Project Manager’s job to make sure that the overall schedule can still be met by juggling the rest of the tasks (and the people that do them) in a new and interesting way so that the project can be completed on time.  With Technology Project Management, Project Managers aren’t usually the Developers, QA Testers, Infrastructure Engineers, or Technicians.  They manage the tasks and resources very similarly – by making sure that the Developers know when they need to be ready with a specific set of code so that the QA Team can get started, and so on and so forth.  When I am at my busiest,   I feel like a Plate Spinner – keeping a dozen plates in the air at any given time.  If I let one drop, the rest will somehow follow suit.  As a Project Manager, it’s important to know which plates to pick up, and how to keep them spinning until the project is complete.

Early in my Project Management career, I was often given the projects that were so far beyond recognition that there were few people that could imagine the project ever being completed, or if they even knew what it was about anymore.  In retrospect, I think I was given these challenging projects because I had  view of Project Management that always enabled me to get things back on track to completion.  In my view, Project Managers need to wear a number of ‘hats’ to be successful:

• Leader Hat- In order to successfully manage projects, people need to follow you.
• Paver Hat – If you want a project to be successful, you need to get obstacles out of your team’s way, and make sure that they have a path to follow.
• Supporter Hat – As projects move forward, motivation and morale can dwindle.  It’s important for a Project Manager to be able to support their team through the rough patches.
• Jester Hat – Things are always easier when you’re having fun.  As the Project Manager, it is up to you to make sure that your team is having as good a time as possible.

Over the next few days,  we’ll dive deeper into what to do with each Project Management hat, when to wear them, and how to make sure that your team can count on you to lead them to a successful project completion.  Once you have an understanding of each hat, you should be able to improve your team’s morale,  efficiency, and dedication to your projects.  When you can successfully use these hats, Executive Sponsorship can be much easier to manage, projects tend to run much more smoothly, and you may find yourself being able to choose the next project that you work on, rather than having one arbitrarily assigned to you.

 

Last post we discovered how Green and Blue personalities add to the value of a team. In this post we will take a look at the last two types: Red and Yellow. These two colors round out a truly high performance team as long as the team leader is able to understand their needs and communication preferences.

 

Open and Indirect   (Yellow)

• On the surface: Let’s be friends
• Usual Job: Trainer, Teacher
• Type: Dependable, team player
• Voice: Soft and gentle
• Dress: Casual and comfortable
• Weaknesses: Over-sensitive, Follower, Not Goal Oriented
• Dislikes: Push people, Bullies, Conflict
• Keywords: Team, Together, Relationships, Family

  Self-Contained and   Direct (Red)

• On the surface: Get out of my way!
• Usual Job: CEO, Attorney
• Type: Focused, goal oriented
• Voice: Forceful and volume
• Dress: Dress for success
• Weaknesses: Ego, Short-tempered, Impatient, Un-teachable
• Dislikes: Indecision, Chit-chat, Losing control
• Keywords: MONEY, Power, Get to the point, Bottom Line

 

 

In this post we will take the remaining two of the colors we discussed in the first post and go into some depth on their personality types and add the best way to communicate and work with these individuals. These next two colors are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Yellows are Open and Indirect while the Reds are Self-Sufficient and Direct. The differences between the two are just as astounding and the Greens and Blues. Yellows and Reds will round out your team so that the success is almost always guaranteed.

Now let’s take a look at the Yellow personality. Yellows, like Greens make up 35% of the population. They are the nurturers; they are creative and are great on relationships. Yellows are right-brained but they are also logical and analytical. This means they truly operate from both sides of their brain.

Yellow really emphasize working in teams, collaboration and being friends with their co-workers. Their voice is soft and gentle and yet they are the best listeners. Yellows are very dependable to a fault and are very easy to get along with when working in teams.

Yellows are the most patient people and on a project team they will wait their turn to speak after they have listened to all sides of the discussion. Yellows can synthesize the information and let others know the results of the discussion. Yellows are among the most supportive people in any organization.

You can easily spot a Yellow as they seem to know everyone in the company, they network, get to know people and form valuable relationships. They will know everyone from the CEO right down to the person that delivers the mail to their desk. These relationships are high on the list of what is important, plus they are likely to know a great deal about each person including work, leisure and home life. If you want to know anything about a person that responsible for you project, a Yellow likely has already built that relationship and will be able to assist you with an introduction or simply be the one to do the reporting.

The downfall of a Yellow is the fact that they are usually overly sensitive and take almost everything personally. You do not want to criticize a Yellow because it will be taken to heart and they will likely not want to work with or for you again. The best way to work with a Yellow is to coach them not to take things personally but mentoring them and guiding them through various scenarios.

Yellows are generally the cornerstone of any project team and are better at following rather than leading in most circumstances. If they have a passion for what they are doing, they can certainly lead the way.

At the opposite end of the poll lies the Red personality. The Reds are the most volatile personalities as they have no patience and are often do not rely on relationships. Reds make up the final 15% of the population. Like Greens they are left brained so they drive toward logic and analytical thinking. Reds are all about control, in fact there is nothing but control on their mind.

Reds are often the most successful people in the corporate world. They are the best negotiators, have lots of energy, and they are risk takers. Reds have an over abundance of confidence, they take action and they are extremely independent.

Unfortunately on a project team, Reds are going to do what they are going to do and you will not be able to coach them. You just have to know that they do not like losing control. Reds love having decisions made and are not for much small talk. When you are around them, don’t be indecisive as you won’t even be recognized as someone worth knowing.

Reds do have weaknesses and one is their Ego. They are also very domineering, short-tempered, as well as impatient. You will not likely have any success coaching a Red on a project team. As they are very task oriented, you may be able to use their skills to keep everyone on task because they like to make sure everything is completed and the project will add to their list of successes.

Now you have an insight into the Colors of a Project Team. If you take the time to learn the different personality types, you are likely to be more successful with your projects as they tasks you assign will be better tailored to each personality type. I know for me, this has made the difference between gritting my teeth over some of the details and knowing with confidence my projects will flow much easier.

In the first post we discovered how color can be a contributor on how a team functions. The proper mix of colors will make the difference between a functional and non-functional tam. There are many theories around personality types and a derth of information around daily interactions that create a highly functional team.

In this post we will take two of the colors we discussed in the first post and go into some depth on their personality types and add the best way to communicate and work with these individuals. These first two colors are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Greens are Self-Contained and Indirect while the Blues are Open and Direct. The differences between the two are astounding. Each of these types can add great value to any project team as long as they are managed correctly.

 

Open and Direct (Blue)

• On the surface: Love’s FUN
• Usual Job: Sales, Entertainment
• Type: Promoter, Enthusiasm, Convincing, Creative, High Energy
• Dress: Stylish, Flamboyant, Colorful
• Weaknesses: Talk too much, Poor saver, Poor follow up, Unorganized, Exaggerates
• Dislikes: Not having fun, Facts and figures, Being alone
• Keywords: FUN, excitement

  Self-Contained and Indirect (Green)

• On the surface: Let’s get the facts and figures
• Usual Job: Engineer, Accountant
• Type: Organized, Planner, Accurate, Persistent, Follow-Through
• Voice: Soft and Polite
• Dress: Casual and Conservative
• Weaknesses: Over Analytical, Hard to Please, Depressed, Lonely
• Dislikes: Pushy People, No Facts, Being Late
• Keywords: WHY, Graphs, Charts, Research, Exactly, Possibility

 

First let’s talk about Greens. Most of us run the other way when it comes to the Green personality just because they are so focused on facts and figures. When you understand that Greens make up 35% of the population, you will be avoiding a lot of people, besides in the high tech industry that is almost everyone!

Greens want to know everything going into a project almost to a fault. They are excellent at digging into the details simply because they are totally left-brained, logical and analytical. It often takes a Green a long time to make a decision and it will often feel that they are never going to get there or do anything.

Greens will map out the route for the project and they will be very precise at doing so, they never sway from their conviction for the project. They like to do anything that involves logic and reasoning. They are the most organized people on the planet. They are great planners and having a Green on the team will be a great plus when you are paving the way as they are also excellent problem solvers as well.

Greens also are task-persistent and they have amazing follow-through on top of being extremely accurate and they can drive you crazy with the detail. They will over-analyze everything and will tend to be on the pessimistic side. They are always looking for ways something will not work not why it will work.

The best way to work with a Green is to get them to open up and share their feelings about projects or the people around them. The Greens are not “feelings” oriented but once you get them to talk about their feelings, they will work even harder to make a project work.

Greens need some direction and then because of being self-contained, will run with that information and dig right in. Greens can lead projects without too much effort as long as the others on the team are willing to get into great details. If you know this ahead of time, they can lead a group of Greens with ease.

There are many other ways you can work with a Green. Just by knowing how they tick, should give you enough insight to look at those around you and see if they fall into the Green category. Now on the Blues.

Blues are at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to personality types. Blues make up 15% of the population. So between Greens and Blues, you have 50% of the population. You will find blues everywhere, they sell you cars, they sell you the products your company produces, they will sell you anything! Blues operate from the right brain so they are very creative and they are big on relationships.

As far as traits go, you can recognize them as they have loud voices and speak very quickly. They are always excited! Blues will want to take your processes and make improvements. An excellent trait for a project team. A Blue will not only make improvements at the start, they will continuously looking to improve it.

The biggest issue is to keep a Blue focused on one thing at a time. Blues are notorious for spreading themselves too thin and going from project to project and their follow-up ability is next to zero. To manage a Blue you need to help them focus and be organized. They are a real asset as the energy and effort they put into anything will make any project successful.

Blues will dress with style; they are flamboyant and have a lot of facial expressions including hand and body movements. They have a very firm and fast. They are high on having fun with anything they do. To hold a Blue’s interest in a project, there needs to be a fun element!

So now you have an idea on how to deal with Green and Blue personalities. In the next post will be introducing Red and Yellow to complete all of the personality types.

Most of us have worked on a team whether it is for work, leisure or other pursuits. It is inevitable that some personalities tend to take over the group and assert their influence even if it is not warranted. I have seen teams fall apart on the basis that the mix of members has not been ideal. Through the study of human nature, personality types, and communication methods plus the understanding of how individuals function we can often work towards helping even the most dysfunctional team complete its mission in a smoother fashion.

We all know that are direct and indirect people. Even within these types you can add Open and Self-Contained. So what does this all mean when it comes to forming a good project team?

1. A project team needs experts from areas where the project will have an impact (this is a given).
2. From within the experts available a balanced mix of personality types should be selected (this is where the Colors For Success come into play).

Open and Indirect (Yellow)
On the surface: Let’s be friends
Usual Job: Trainer, Teacher
Type: Dependable, team player Open and Direct (Blue)
On the surface: Love’s FUN
Usual Job: Sales, Entertainment
Type: Promoter, enthusiasm Self-Contained and Indirect (Green)
On the surface: Let’s get the facts and figures
Usual Job: Engineer, Accountant
Type: Organized, planner Self-Contained and Direct (Red)
On the surface: Get out of my way!
Usual Job: CEO, Attorney
Type: Focused, goal oriented

We are all a mix of these types with at least one being our dominant type. As you can see, each brings a unique skill to the table and for teams to be highly functional, a balance is ideal.

When choosing a team leader, you need to make a conscious decision on the personality type that will best suit the project. You do not need to simply choose the self-contained and direct type to lead the parade. There are many times when Green is ideal especially when you are looking to a precise outcome for the project. Yellow’s are great for training projects and blues when it comes to some marketing and sales projects.

The biggest reminder is that project management is not in the business of managing projects, it is in the business of leading and mentoring people to be productive and hit deadlines. Project Management is then in the people business. And the team leader is responsible for the people on the project. Without an understanding of the functioning of the personality types, the job of leading a project becomes much more difficult.

Can you imagine having a team leader from the Green category leading a project for soft skills training? It would not be as well managed as having a Yellow leading. Green would do a great precise job but the people part (nurturing and mentoring) would likely be minimized if not totally ignored.

We have just touched this briefly and in the next two posts we will go into depth on the personality types. In addition, there will be tips on how to deal with each type and the approaches you can take to put together a highly productive project team.

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IBM’s Global CEO Survey, entitled Capitalizing on Complexity, provides insights from over 1500 CEOs worldwide.  Inside this survey come some startling observations.  Just a couple of years prior, CEOs complained of an inability to see the change that was coming to their market, creating real difficulties in determining how to respond.  The problem seems to be that CEOs felt that the business world is “substantially more volatile, uncertain and complex.”  CEOs also mentioned that small changes in the way they do business are no longer sufficient to sustain business.  According to the survey, over half the CEOs felt they can’t manage the increased complexity that is yet to come.

So how does one lead in this age of change? CEOs identified Creativity, Integrity and Global Thinking as the top three characteristics this age will need in its leaders.  Let’s take a look at the most important one: creativity.

What does this mean for Project Managers?  It means you’ll have to step out of your shell and embrace new ways of doing business.  Since Project Managers are the point where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, they’ll have to take the lead on creating this new business environment.  Here’s some suggestions on how to do just that.

Most project managers don’t have to worry too much about figuring out when they need to be creative.   Once the quantity of incoming projects slows down, revenue slows down, backlog gets burned and management gets fired up.  Project Managers will be told to get creative to win business.  So, creativity really does count.   There are three major areas to focus your creativity on: innovation, risk and the customer.

Creativity in innovation isn’t like it was when I graduated college.  Companies once focused heavily on creating products internally that gave them a competitive edge.  Unfortunately, the cost of the NRE for such development is deemed too risky, as management doesn’t want to build a product that may miss the mark in meeting the customer’s needs.   So how do we plan for that type of risk?  You include the customer in the development of the product.   Companies aren’t just selling products to customers.  They are developing partnering relationship where they are in constant contact with the customer so every need is understood and addressed.

As the project manager, you must stay connected to the customer and build a strong relationship.  Your job isn’t to just deliver the product or service that is on contract.  Your task now is to anticipate the next need of the customer and provide a solution for it that your company can provide.  For example, some technology companies are growing beyond just selling their products to selling their products at a lower cost so they can then sell a maintenance and support service contract for multiple years, turning a short term monetary gain into a long term cash flow.  The project manager is becoming the sole interface to the customer, requiring experimentation in customer relationship management and communication to build rapport with the customer, but not just any rapport.  You must build a friendship where your customer will present their problems to you to solve rather than sending out a request for proposal to numerous companies, which brings your competition back into the picture.

Finding creative ways to attach yourself to the customer isn’t the only consideration.   These new relationships are designed to keep customers on the books for longer periods of time, meaning you most likely won’t see a huge inrush of new customers.  Existing customers become the lifeline of the company.  Sure, they’ll go out to seek new ones but you can’t risk losing the ones you have.  This means that you can’t take big risks with them.  You still have to create new products and services but you reduce the risk by including the customer in the development.  Some companies are fortunate enough to get the customer to share in the cost, while others only get their technical guidance on things like capability, functionality, durability, versatility, etc.  In either case, you’re creating a new offering and satisfying your customer’s needs but with reduced risk.  This doesn’t imply that you don’t seek new ideas or simply forget innovation.  In fact, it’s just the opposite with the exception that the risks are slightly more balanced because you get more input into the solution from the people who will buy it and you have the opportunity to influence their expectations to something you can easily meet with success.  However, margins are shrinking and spending too much time on analyzing risk is costly.  Project managers will have to analyze, make a decision and take action quickly.

Lastly, the customer relationship, as previously mentioned is totally different now.  In the past, we could simply build a product and guide the customer to the counter so they could select what they wanted from the menu.  I’ll have a #1…biggie size!  Our objective was getting as many people through the door as possible.  But now, it’s about keeping the same people visiting our store as often as possible.  It’s as if we gone back in time to the old “mom and pop shop” days.  The customer walks in and you know everything about them, including what they need.  Project managers must be able to understand the customer in great detail, ensuring every interaction is memorable and not clogged up with processes that make the easiest tasks overly complicated.  The customer must feel like they are the most important aspect of your business, which shouldn’t be hard to do since they really are.

Project managers are quickly becoming the single point of contact for the customer, no matter where they are.  They call you with any issue and you take care of it, each and every time.  For the customer, every interaction is like reuniting with an old friend and it’s the project manager’s job to make that happen.  Welcome to Project Management in 2012!

 

References

IBM Institute for Business Value. Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study.” May 2010. www.ibm.com/capitalizingoncomplexity

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About one generation ago, management styles focused on the concept of a “happy worker is a good worker.”  Organizations focused on providing employees the amenities they needed to feel valued, in hopes of it leading to higher productivity.  The Hawthorne experiments by Elton Mayo found that changes in the workplace were welcomed and improved morale.  Can you imagine that?  The workday was so boring and monotonous that any little change made workers happier.  That hardly seems to be the situation today.  In an effort to respond to the ever changing needs of the consumer, companies have migrated their operations to within a few feet of the customer so that they can respond to any change almost instantly.

In stark contrast to what project managers faced a generation ago, the challenges today not only include a drastic change in where worked is performed, it also includes a variety of changes in the culture of the employee performing the work.  In comparison to the workplace of the past, everything has changed, forcing project managers to refocus on some very basic skills.  These basic, but critical skills, include an ability to effectively manage tasks, communication, schedule and scope, work progress and environmental variations (Niederman and Tan, 2011).  This approach is required due to the overwhelming large increase of variables within this new operating environment.  A project manager can’t divide their attention enough to address each variable.  Therefore, it’s essential to slightly modify the normal tasks a project manager is accustomed to in order to maintain a high level of efficiency and effectiveness.

Managing project tasks.  While this may seem like common sense to a project manager, several studies have found that collaboration across distance is much more difficult than in a single collocated environment.  Today’s environment is global and requires the use of Virtual Teams.  Virtual team members are often diverse in nationality.  Although such diversity may complicate team dynamics, it can also enhance the overall problem-solving capacity of the group by bringing more vantage points to bear on a particular project.  To boost the performance of these teams, a project manager needs to implement the appropriate mechanisms for boosting both socio-emotional and task-related processes.  In short, the project manager must create an intelligent division of tasks to ensure they are performed efficiently and effectively (i.e. give them the core tasks for their roles).  In a collocated environment, it’s possible to allow team members to expand beyond their expertise because expert advice is usually found within the same walls of the facility.  However, in a virtual team, the needed expertise could be located in another country or time zone, creating a hardship for the individual team member.

Managing Communication.  If you’ve managed program teams around the globe, you already know that distance makes presents a huge challenge for coordination, especially when your team is in multiple time zones.  However, other potential issues can include difficulties in communication, reduced trust, anxiety, loss of group cohesion, self-doubt, over sensitivity to issues and under-performance.   Physical distance decreases closeness and affinity, which then leads to a greater potential for conflict (Virtual Teams, 2009).  Therefore, you must encourage team members to participate fully.  Encourage interaction amongst team members to develop synergy and by using technology that promotes familiarity, such as skype (e.g. voice and video).   Face-to-face is usually the best method so using technology that closely simulates this interaction will reduce most issues you’ll encounter as it is known to build community and connections to the business.

Work process supervision.  Distance has shown to invoke an increased inability to establish a common ground.  Poor communication can lead to a deviation from the scope and schedule if common goals are not communicated and buy-in is not achieved.  This is especially true when your work is performed at a remote location and the customer is often on-site to evaluate work progress.  The customer often communicates the need for certain activities that are not part of your original scope.  Version control, or configuration management, is made more difficult with increased distance usually driven by poor internet access, lack of central configuration system or a slow process for incorporating changes to documentation.  This failure can easily result in delivery of inconsistent products to the customer.  It’s usually a thin line between delivery what the contract states and what the customer really wants, especially if the project was underbid or under-scoped.

Managing environmental variations.  Too often, projects performed in other countries are overrun financially due to local variations, such as holidays, length of the work day and work week, safety requirements, union policies, taxes, tax reporting, etc.  The best approach to dealing with these risks is to negotiate as many of these as possible at the start of the project so that they are incorporated within the budget.  If not, you’ll need to identify them quickly as part of your risk analysis.   Local consultants and even your customer are good sources of information for determining the variations in the work environment.

While this is not an extensive list, it does encompass several key aspects that project managers must focus on when working with dispersed teams.  Project management is constantly being shaped by the ever-changing economy, forcing project managers to learn new ways of dealing with new people, cultures, technologies, business processes and issues.  Staying ahead of the change is most likely the Project Manager’s biggest challenge.

 

References

Niederman, F.  and Tan, F. Managing Global IT Teams: Considering Cultural Dynamics.  Communications of the ACM, 54, 2 (April 2011), 24-27.

“How to Manage Virtual Teams”, by Frank Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst, MIT Sloan Management Review, July 2009.

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Program managers, used synonymously with Project Managers here, are often the most consistent face of the organization to the customer base.  Program managers (PM) deal with customers on a daily basis.  PMs are forced to interact with them constantly to resolve issues, communicate progress, sell new products and services and build a healthy long-term relationship with the customer’s organization.  The challenge for PMs is in creating, measuring and maintaining these relationships.

Ideally, PMs want secure customers.   Secure customers are typically those consumers with high levels of satisfaction, trust, commitment, and repurchase intentions.  You can gauge secure consumers by assessing relationship closeness. Relationship closeness is defined by a) a relatively strong influence partners have on each other when interacting, b) a high frequency of interactions and c) diverse forms of interacting with each other.  PMs may want to direct their primary resources to deepen and broaden these relationships as these relationships are usually the most fruitful.  But what happens when your customer is insecure about you or your organization?  How do you manage them?

Many companies promote relationship management through a universal Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  Too often it’s a “one size fits all” plan that really doesn’t.  PMs have to manage their relationships if they want their project to be successful.  If the company CRM isn’t working, the PM needs to answer a couple of questions.  Is your customer open to relationship marketing?  Do you know your customer’s relational needs and desires in their relationship with your company or with you at an individual level?  Luckily, research has shown that consumers display identifiable patterns of preferences regarding their relationships.  Additionally, some consumers seem to willingly engage in close personal relationships with service firms and employees, while others seem to proactively avoid any form of bonding.  These patterns of how we relate to each other are referred to as attachment styles.

Psychologists have studied attachment styles for some time and have found three major styles relevant to service organizations; more specifically, secure, attachment anxiety (anxious) and attachment avoidance (avoidant).  Attachment anxiety describes the extent to which a consumer worries that the service organization might not be available in times of need, has an excessive need for approval and fears rejection and abandonment.  Attachment avoidance mirrors the extent to which an individual distrusts their relationship partner’s goodwill, is characterized by an excessive need for self-reliance, fears depending on others and strive to maintain emotional distance from their relationship partner.

Attachment styles influence consumer behavior, such as consumer loyalty (i.e. satisfaction, trust and commitment) to the company.  High levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance are associated with significantly lower levels of satisfaction, trust and commitment to both the individual and the organization.  Understanding consumer satisfaction is critical as it is an indicator for future loyalty, repurchase intentions and word-of-mouth.  For example, customers with low levels of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance toward the firm are candidates for social relationship programs, whereas customers with high levels of attachment avoidance are likely to be more responsive to financial reward programs.

Repurchase intentions typically have a negative relationship with the organization, where increases in anxiety and avoidance towards the organization, decreases repurchase intentions.  Research results indicate that this pattern is not significant for the individual, highlighting the fact that the services of the organization are seen to be provided by the organization and not the individual.  However, if the services are closely tied to individuals, this relationship is likely to be different, as with lawyers, doctors and consultants.

Word-of-mouth has been characterized to be directly related to attachment avoidance.  High avoidance leads to low word-of-mouth.  In other words, avoidant customers recommend the company with a drastically smaller likelihood than anxious or secure customers.  Therefore, if a PM is looking to promote the organization through customer programs, the participation of secure customers is required.  Avoidant customers may see such a request as intrusive and a good way to avoid insulting a customer with a request is to understand their attachment style.

Once the attachment style is known, creating a marketing strategy becomes a simple determination of where you want the customer to attach to your organization.  If your customer is highly anxious or avoidant, you consider building and nurturing the relationship first, then center the relationship on the services you provide.  Remember, the avoidant customer will respond to the non-personal communication from your corporate office, as opposed to direct personal communication from the PM.  In contrast, a relationship focused attachment may be centered on a particular individual within your program team, such as the sales representative.  If the customer is large and there are multiple interactions, it may become necessary to utilize both methods, in which the ideal configuration becomes a homework assignment and whose choice becomes one of trial and error.  After all, relationships are a learning experience.

With a sufficient level of understanding, PMs can develop communication strategies to improve the closeness of the relationship.  Again, this is accomplished by increasing the frequency of interaction, using a broader variety of methods, and communicating on a deeper level.   Anxious customers will welcome such activities, whereas avoidant customers won’t.

Using attachment styles to develop the proper relationship for your projects and programs is quite useful in avoiding getting off on the wrong foot with a new customer.  Spend a little time on the internet reading about attachment theory and styles.  There’s a plethora of research that can help you create a small survey to analyze your customer.  Once you determine their attachment style,
you can develop a plan to build the ideal long-term mutually beneficial relationship with your customer.

Some rules are meant to be broken…when things are not going your way.

Whether you are a manager at the office, a parent at home, or project lead for a corporation, getting people to follow your rules can be trying and exhausting.

An acquaintance of mine was complaining that his volunteers were not doing everything he wanted them to do.  He shares, “Most are doing A, but no one is doing B or C.”  He is extremely frustrated because he constantly sends email reminders and requests to get them to comply.  He pleads, cajoles, sweet-talks, flatters and even highlights when someone does what they are “supposed to do”.  Some tactics work for a short period of time.  But nothing works in the long term.

When things are not going our way, we need to stop and evaluate; because things are supposed to work smoothly together.  So, when we find any type of resistance, chances are something isn’t matching.   Either the rules or the people involved are not aligned.  Once again – no one is doing anything wrong.  It’s just not a perfect match, yet.

 How can we get a better match? 

There are two steps that we can use to better align the rules and the people involved.  Once these are better aligned, things will run much smoother.

The two steps are:

• Understand each stakeholder’s needs and perceptions
• Create a solution that encompasses all needs.

Take this example:  An entrepreneur is leading project and he is making effective use of volunteers to provide career counseling via on-line chat sessions, instructional video blogs, written blogs etc.  The volunteers are happy to share their talents and skills with his clients because they are aligned with the overall mission and vision of his program. 

Understanding each stakeholder’s needs:

This project is important to the entrepreneur because it is one of his product funnels.  It is how his organization makes money, gets leads and increases his client database and subscriptions.  To accomplish the entrepreneur’s goals he needs A, B and C in the following format, timeframe, and frequency.   He has put together a procedure plan that fits his target client, his tool set and his capability. He also wants his volunteers to share these links with their contacts and their networks. By sharing and encouraging their contacts to subscribe to his website, he builds his contact list and makes money.  He can see this as a great advantage to his organization.  He can call upon these notable and established professionals to help build his contact list.

As implied above, these volunteers are coaches and entrepreneurs in their own right. They have their own businesses, family and other obligations.  Although they support the overall vision, they have their own product funnels to feed, their own database and subscriptions to grow, and their own marketing plans to execute.  The volunteers are already providing their talent, time and intellectual property for free toward this project.  So, from their point of view, if they are freely giving of their talent – they should be able to volunteer at the level that THEY want, using the tools THEY are familiar with, and at a frequency that is convenient to THEM.  And since they are professionals volunteering their services, they may appreciate better tools to write and schedule their intellectual property at their own frequency and format (over being micro-managed via email reminders).  These tools may allow the volunteers more freedom and ease in which to supply the entrepreneur with what he really wants.

Creating a solution that encompasses all needs.

Now that we understand where each group stands, we can design a solution that works for most people.

The project manager entrepreneur doesn’t necessarily need to abandon what he really wants.  He should stay focused on A, B and C.  But these current volunteers may not be the vortex in which he can accomplish all that he wants.

For instance:

1)     Since everyone is already doing A – this set of volunteers cover that need perfectly.

2)     Since no one in this volunteer group is consistently doing B or C, he may want to devise another solution for B and/or C.  This may not be the right group to accomplish B or C.

3)     He may need to pay someone (or get tools) to do some of the things not being done by the volunteers.

4)     He may want to look into a tool that people can use to write whenever they want.  The tool can then automatically schedule it for later publication that is in lined with his schedule and format needs.  Or the tool can automatically choose from the pool of articles for appropriate publications.  This might eliminate his need to blanket email reminders to everyone.  And would eliminated volunteers from wasting their time reading email reminders that they do not need or appreciate.

5)     If his current volunteers will not learn the new tools, maybe those are not the right caliper of volunteers.  If he seems to be dummy down his tool usage or process improvement items, to match the capability of his volunteers, maybe these aren’t the right level of volunteers.  Maybe he isn’t shooting high enough with these volunteer criteria.  Maybe they are actually slowing him down.   Maybe he needs to clearly identify his volunteer prerequisite or criteria (including ability work with certain tools).

6)     If he wants the volunteers to work harder to expand his subscription list, he might consider sharing this full contact database with them.  If the volunteers perceive that they will get 10 times the names they supply, they may be properly incentivized to help him increase his contact database (because they will be getting much more in return).

7)     If he does not want to share his contact lists with his volunteers (which is totally fine), then he may want to consider other form of reciprocation for that extra effort.

8)     If he is constantly reminding his volunteers what level he wants them to write, maybe his current volunteer’s target clients and his target clients are a mis-match.  Maybe he needs to find volunteers that share his same target clients.  Otherwise, he is asking his volunteers to do double duty, because when they are writing for his clients they are not helping their own business.

Bottom line: We can accomplish everything that we want, as long as we are not limiting ourselves to just one solution.  In the above example, once the project manager released that notion that his volunteers had to provide him with everything that he wanted, he was able to define a better business plan to accomplish his goals.

Certified Business Coach and Corporate Exit Strategist

This is the second part of a three part article discussing “how does a project manager intelligently handle delays?”

Last article we focused on acknowledging the natural flow of a project which includes periodic speed bumps and roadblocks.  In today’s article we’ll focus on using critical path analysis to assist with project management.  Diagramming the critical paths of a project accomplishes several things:

1. Identifies imaginary dependencies
2. Highlights invisible bottlenecks
3. Allows you to untangle the issues before they materialize.

Take a look at the below flowchart example:

 

Critical Path Identification:

This flowchart illustrates a work flow by sorting which items can be conducted in parallel and which needs to be done serially (i.e. has some dependencies among them).  By plotting out the parallel tasks in columns and the serial tasks in row, you forecast how long this current plan will take to execute.  The longest time through each phase (or column) is the critical path time.

At first glance, you may think that it will take a maximum of :

1 day to execute phase Task 1 list; maximum of 3 days to execute phase Task 2 lists; maximum of 2 days to execute phase Task 3, 2 days for phase Task 4 lists, 1 day for Task 5 and 2 days for Task 6.  This totals 11 days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But from the above chart, you can see that there are three arrows going into and out of Task 3.  Anytime you have three or more lines going to or from a single task,  you have created a bottleneck.  Task 3 cannot start it’s coding duties until all three of the previous tasks have completed and been delivered.  Also, the rest of the team is in a ‘stop production’ mode until Task 3 is completed.  This is something we need to ‘nip in the bud’ before any resources, design specifications and develop clocks are started.

Coding resource allocation in your Critical Path Charts:

Another helpful trick is to color-code your resources directly into your Critical Path Charts.  In this example, each developer or resource has a different color assigned:

Once you have color-coded your critical path charts with your resources, you can now re-evaluate the time it will take your team to actually complete the phases.  You now see that (although your original estimate was three days to complete phase Task 2 lists) it will take at least 5 days to get through the phase Task 2 iteration because Dave is assigned to both Task 2a and Task 2b.  The tasks themselves are not dependent upon each other (and therefore could have been done in parallel), but Dave can only concentrate on one task at a time.

Once you have identified this issue, you can choose to:

• Add time to the schedule
• Assign one of the Tasks to another resource
• Split and isolate specialized functions into separate routines, and have other people (not familiar with that specific technology) just call those specialized macros or routines.

By color coding our resources, we can visibly see when we are under or over utilizing our people. We can quickly see that perhaps we can re-allocate some of Dave’s duties in phase Task 2 to Dianne.

Since we have already identified Task 3 as a potential bottleneck and risk, we can investigate splitting that task into mini-tasks and assign to Dianne or Deek.

But what if Dave is the only person that can do this work?  Not to worry.  There are still things we can investigate to untangle Dave from this resource bottleneck.

For instance: If Dave is the only person that has Sequel Server knowledge, then isolate all the Sequel Server items from the rest of Task 3 goals.  Have Dave create re-usable subroutines in which Dianne and Deek can call upon to accomplish the rest of the activities. Dianne and Deek doesn’t need to know exactly how the database works underneath.  They only need to understand the essence of what they are trying to accomplish with the code and use the proper function calls.

 Identifying imaginary dependencies:

The last gift that critical path analysis presents us: highlighting imaginary dependencies.  In this example, Task 6 is scheduled for the “end-game” of the project only because it isn’t needed until the end-game.  But, once you map out the workflow and the true dependencies, you see that it isn’t actually dependent on any predecessors’ task.  This is a great advantage to the project manager.  He can now use this task when the project hits an unexpected delay or speed bump.  When code is delayed, resources can be using that time to work on Task 6 without affecting the big-picture schedule or delivery dates.  The 2-days it takes to setup Task 6 is already absorbed in the project plan.  Therefore, you have essentially shaved 2 days in your schedule by moving up Task 6 and/or allocating other resources to it.

Conclusion:
This is just a quick review of how developers, testers and project managers can make good use of a color-coded critical path system.  It’s a great way to map the workflows, identify imaginary dependencies, and highlight bottlenecks before a project even starts.

In the last three articles, we presented some tools to help the developer, tester and project manager to adapt to the natural flow of a development product life cycle.  Once again, the trick isn’t to stay on track.  The skill is to seamlessly get back on track when we wax and wane.

Corporate Exit Strategist for the blooming entrepreneur and business coach.

Last week I was taping a series of lectures for the Sequel Server World Wide User Group (SSWUG.org), and I was asked “how does a project manager handle items that causes us to miss deadlines?”

This is an interesting question, because every project will have speed bumps.  A good project manager expects speed-bumps and actually plans for the unexpected.  So – how does one do this intelligently to synchronize with the final delivery dates?

There are several tools in the good project manager’s arsenal:

1. Acknowledging the natural ebb and flow of a project
2. Recovery Protocol
3. Critical Path Analysis

The next three articles will cover some high-level points of the above:

Acknowledging the natural ebb and flows:

Acknowledging the natural ebb and flows, the peaks and valleys, and the seasons of every endeavor is the first step.   Since every project in the past has had problems or issues that have temporarily derailed the plan, there is no reason to believe that your next project won’t have something unexpected occur.  This recognition is a power tool.  If you can recognize and acknowledge this, you can plan and manage.

Some examples:

The development team on Project A is hitting a road block.  Although the development team is doing everything they can do resolve the issue, the test team is waiting on code to test and the documentation team has nothing to write about.  Others developers are waiting for this feature or code library to continue their work.  And as everyone is waiting, the project time clock is still ticking.  How does the project manager stay on schedule?

The good project manager will have a recovery plan already in mind.  He will move some isolated “later” scheduled items up on the schedule.   He plays around with time.  For instance:

1. Even though there isn’t any code to test, the testers can be building the system test lab.  Although that was a later task, it is isolated and can be moved up,  to save time at the end.
2. Developers not working on the problem, can be working on the backlog of defects.  There are always lower severity level defects that need to be corrected.  Many severity 3 and 4 defects (even though they are lower severity) have an affect on usability and therefore impact on the clients’ perception of quality.  Fixing these level defects early in the development cycle will improve the perceived usability of the product.
3.  The testers can be assisting developers with their unit testing on the backlog of defects.
4.  Documentation team can be writing user case test scenarios, which can later be used in their User Manuals.
5.  Testers can assist with the test-driven development features.
6. Tech writers can assist with writing more accurate and instructional error messages and dialogues.

Conclusion:
A good project manager doesn’t try to control a project.  A good project manager adapts and manages the natural flow of things.  The trick isn’t to stay on track.  That is pretty much an impossible request.   The skill is to seamlessly get back on track when we wax and wane.

The next feature will cover the idea of a recovery protocol chart.

Certified Business Coach and Corporate Exit Strategist

 This is the second part of a three part article discussing “how does a project manager intelligently  handle delays in a project?”

Last article we focused on acknowledging the natural flow of a project which includes periodic speed bumps and roadblocks.  In today’s article we’ll focus on using recovery protocol plans to assist with project management.

Agree to a Protocol Recovery plan at the start of a project:

All projects will hit some unexpected issues.  By discussing a “protocol recovery plan” at the start of the project, the team will understand how to proceed when time is running out.  A “protocol recovery plan” is like a “fire escape route”.  At the start of the project, your project sponsors and stakeholder discuss the flexibility of the following:  Add Resources, Remove Features, Change Schedule, Reduce Quality.  The idea is to agree up-front (before the project starts) which order you will do them.  For example, if/when you hit a snag does the team agree to first investigate adding more resources to the problem?  At some point, adding resources will no long be an effective option.  At that point, which is the next flexible item to adjust?  Would it me to remove some features from the list or would it be acceptable to add time to the schedule?

Take a look at the below figure:

 

 

 

 

 

In this company, the group discussed and created the above protocol recovery plan.  In their last release they were hit hard with client complaints; technical journals reported on their dismal quality; and they decided as a team that they were going to put out a high-quality product this release.  As a result, the group agreed from the start that the QUALITY is the main priority and last to be modified.   They also understand the order in which the other items will be attacked.  Because the group agreed upfront that “QUALITY Standards” will be the last to change, there was no lost time in deciding how to proceed when an issue arose.

In this example, the team agreed to add resources (until it doesn’t make sense to add resources anymore).  Once you have reached the point where more resources will not help, you agree that the next step will be to start removing features.  This will only work if : at the start of the project, you understand the minimum set of features or services that make the project worthwhile to the client.  You will have a set of many other “nice-to-have” features or enhancements on your list as well.  This upfront knowledge allows you the flexibility to manage issues.   If you understand the minimum MUST HAVE feature set, you can then start removing or rescheduling the “nice-to-have” items to the next release.  Once you have removed all the “nice-to-have” items and are only left with the MUST HAVE, then you look back at your protocol recovery chart to find out what the team has agreed to do next.

If you have this outlined and approved at the start of the program, then you don’t have people complaining that you are cutting his/her features, etc.  This is all understood before the project starts.
Conclusion:
A protocol recovery plan is much like a “fire escape” plan.  It’s not something you scramble to put in place during the fire.

Once again, a good project manager doesn’t try to control a project.  A good project manager adapts and manages the natural flow of things.  The trick isn’t to stay on track.  The skill is to seamlessly get back on track when we wax and wane.

The next feature will cover the idea of a critical path analysis.

 

Many of us like to think of ourselves are multi-tasking experts.  But in reality, multi-tasking is an euphemism for “interruption” and  “distractions”.    You feel busy and much in demand.  But at the end of the day we feel exhausted with not much to show for the churn.

Below are some simple tips to increase your effectiveness at the office.

1) Take ownership of your time.

 Just because the phone is ringing, someone is instant-messaging, email is streaming in or someone is knocking at your door — doesn’t mean that item is urgent or important to you. It just means that it is happening now. Take ownership of your time. Block time in your calendar or schedule to do work. Turn on the do-not-disturb features on your phone, email and instant-message. Close the door to your office. Publish your schedule for reading and reviewing emails during the day. Don’t attend meetings unless you fully understand the agenda, the expected outcome and if the topic lines up with your overall goals.

2) Have your to-do list be an open book.

Continually review your project lists and priorities with anyone interrupting you. This allows you to better prioritize if the interruption is worth your attention or should be rescheduled for a later time. Most people (especially bosses) are only fully aware of their to-do list. They forget what other things you have on your plate. By communicating your tasks, their priorities and who are waiting on those items — you can better collaborate the best solution for everyone.

3) Continually evaluate what you are doing as it relates to the overall Big Picture.

We incorporate lots of ‘busy work’ in our day that has no beneficial results. Constantly review what you are doing against how it relates to the Big Picture. Focus on the essence or ‘the reason you are doing this’ — versus the task itself. The task will mutate in the course of time. Because the task mutates (or surrounding circumstances changes) completing the task may not actually accomplish the ‘reason you were doing it’.

4) Be an effective communicator and listener.

Seek to understand the requirements, the needs/priorities of the stakeholders, the various parts of the assignment, when team members need which part, what the stakeholders will get out of it, and the overall reason for doing this ‘thing’. Once you fully understand the task at hand, you can determine which pieces fit in your skillset and your goals. Then you can either delegate the other stuff, safely delete some stuff, delay or properly schedule other steps for another time, or diminsh the scope.

5) Log and track your time to improve your estimation skills.

Most of our schedule problems stem from under-estimating (trying to place 10 pounds of stuff into a 5 pound bag). The best way to improve your estimation skills is to practice, and log your actual time. When you estimate, write your estimate down and set your timer to match your estimate. Do the item until the timer goes off and experience/feel how much you actually did in that amount of time. Experience how long that amount of time actually is. Interpolate how long the rest of the task will take and set your timer (repeat until task is completed). Log the actual time. The next time you estimate a job, find something in your list that is similar and use the “actual time” to interpolate your estimate on your new job.

Taking ownership of ones’ time is critical. Often time we blame others for interrupting us, imposing new ‘emergency’ projects on us, calling us into meetings that have nothing to do with us, etc. The mentality that other people are wasting our time is a faulty premise. We have full control of what we choose to do with our time. Once you become deliberate and mindful of your value and your time, you will have more freedom to accomplish the things you really want to accomplish.

 

What can an employee gain by implementing these tips? Freedom and empowerment. Even in the corporate environment, you are the CEO of your life.