Read on to find out and discover real strategies for elevating your PM skills to a higher level.

Many companies and even blog articles boast the process of this and that in order to be successful. To be a Project Manager these days you need two things; a PMP in your back pocket and the ability to calculate earned value without a calculator! The reality is there aren’t many project managers that are even capable of delivering and following processes. How are we still at over half of all projects failing and only 2.5% of companies meeting time and budget with all these PMPs?

Well if you believe that knowledge is all you need to be the successful, then herein lies the problem. The PMP implies knowledge. Knowledge is great, but there is a difference between street smarts and book smarts. To have both is an awesome, unbeatable combination. However, most people are “snowed” with the PMP title; that knowledge is more valuable than anything. A PMP couldn’t be responsible for a failed project!

Project Managers that are able to manage a project to the book are the Prima Donna’s of the PM world. They manage by the book. However, when you flip the ideology of ‘managing the project’ to ‘the project being managed well” you have crossed over into the light! Experience and knowledge are like watching a conductor conduct a symphony; like watching an artist paint a masterpiece; like a chef creating a master in culinary arts. So, how do we get out of this destructive cycle?

How do we turn these PM Prima Donna’s into an asset of management grandeur?

1. Concede that all knowledge is not known by you alone
2. Make Project Management your career goal
3. Make friends in high places
4. Communicate effectively
5. Mentor and be mentored
6. Be a ‘natural’ leader

Concede

Experience does not need to take a lifetime or even years to achieve. You can gain experience by managing your own personal life and family. All the books in the world will not replace the experience you will get from running your own project. If you are one of those PM Prima Donna’s that writes books, white papers and teaches everything you know; sit down every day and take in something new for yourself. And always do what you are preaching. In my experience, I have been unfortunate to see companies push out processes only to find that the project by which to push out this new process did not follow any processes itself. If you tell people to report their time every single day, report your time every single day. You need to gain the same experience. Sure your knowledge tells you that reporting time every day is the best approach, but of you do not have experience doing it yourself, you will lose respect. You may actually come to realize that reporting time everyday was not feasible and improve your own process!

Experience can also come from shadowing others. We will get more into this topic in the following bullet points. Shadowing allows you to witness the experience of another PM, without actually “doing” the managing. In this case, you are simply learning and storing experience.

Conceding is the most difficult of all. There are so many PM’s not ‘managing projects well’ by the book and it’s obvious in our national statistics. How many times have you sat in a meeting and someone had to tell you, “that’s not reality.” Stop and think to yourself, “Am I really a Prima Donna?  Do I have the experience to get this done on time and on budet? Do I have the experience to really satisfy my stakeholders?”  And finally, “Do I care?”

Your PM career choice

“Do I care?” Is Project Management what I really want to do? If you don’t care and you are still a Prima Donna, this advice is not for you!

Project Managers that have made the decision that Project Management is their career goal need to ensure 2 things:

1. You are in a supportive environment to promote yourself in project management. Having a purpose and being valued will determine anyone’s fate, especially a PM.
2. Follow these steps to be the best you can be. You, your teams and your projects will benefit!

Companies that promote better processes and invest in project management are better suited to advance your career and support your vision. Most companies know that they want projects that are successful. They don’t know what it takes to do that, but you do. They hired your knowledge and experience to deliver those successful projects, so they will listen to your needs and respect your approach. This is a winning combination.

The most destructive position you can be in as a Project Manager, is with a company that does not believe in processes and does not support your growth. Your growth should be valuable because it results in their growth.

Friends in high places

It may be time to re-view the landscape around you. An associate of mine enjoys going to gym early in the morning. She says that most of the new moms in there have more weight to lose than she does, so she feels great. What she is missing out on is the drive to make herself better than she is. When she walks into the gym, she feels great about herself, so she doesn’t work as hard.

Are your friends in low places? Do they inspire you to be better? Do they encourage you?

Your friends will define who you are, like it or not. Finding and making friends in high places will, subconsciously, encourage you. Even if they do not personally drive you, their presence will be uplifting. These people will have more experiences to share with you also. I can feel your storage tank filling already!

Friends in high places do not need to be wealthy. They need to be supportive and be encouraging. They do not need to be a project manager or a CIO, but they do need to have experience that they are eager to pass along. Do not befriend a Prima Donna. Bad habits are more easily obtained. Enjoy the challenge of actually making yourself better!

Communicate

Introducing my weak spot! For many others also. Communicating can be difficult. There are so many things to consider: mood elevators, gender, age, topic, etc. Believe it or not, these factors are a constant, even when people say it’s all equal and it’s all professional. Well, it’s not true. We are all human, therefore we have emotions and personalities. Unless you are dry or lacking in any emotion (these people are in the “low places” category), you will probably be offended or hurt in a conversation with a PM in your lifetime. Think back on that conversation and learn from it. Was it beneficial? Were you responsive? What was the goal of the conversation?

There are tons of classes just on how to communicate with others. There is more than I could possibly communicate in this blog. However, the point here is TO communicate. Every communication should be a learning opportunity. You will gain experience giving and receiving communication.

If we associate this back to Project Management, let’s think of our sponsors and stakeholders. Our Prima Donna’s are not very good communicators. If they do communicate, question the integrity. Remember, Prima Donna’s are certain that they are on time and budget, even if they are not. They are very ‘busy’ managing.

Communicating with sponsors and stakeholders should be open and honest. It should also be frequent. Believe it or not, they really do want to hear from you and how the projects is doing. They also know want to know how they can help.

Mentoring

Our Prima Donna’s will have trouble mentoring. Truth is, mentoring other PM’s on experiences is a great opportunity. Your mentoree will gain wonderful knowledge and experience from you, but also you may learn something with a fresh pair of eyes. It never fails, once you concede, the flood gates open and you can’t help but learn something new!

Great PM’s should mentor. We need more PM’s with great habits. Great habits are learned from experience. Experience is obtained by doing something over and over. Manage one project well and mentor another project and you double the experience, with very little effort.

While you are gaining mentorees, reach out to be monitored. Are you an awesome, well respected PM, but are challenged with earned value? Search for where the expertise is and invite yourself to “shadow.” This is one of the most welcomed job descriptions. 5 years ago I knew a Sr. VP in the insurance industry, who was anxiously awaiting someone to ask to shadow him. He wanted the desire to be there, so he did not search out someone to mentor. He was looking for a replacement. Funny, no one ever asked him. And a replacement was hired in. This was a missed opportunity. I’m certain the desire was there. Fear was the catalyst here.

Natural leaders

There are those out there, that believe you are born to be a leader. Most of these people are bossy, mean and have foul language. They may be able to lead you out of hostile environments, under harsh gunfire and under catastrophic conditions, but they can’t follow their own orders. Leaders can and should allow themselves to follow. Can you take direction? Do you have the experience to lead these people towards a successful outcome? Will they respect you? Once you see your own reactions to being led, you will learn and store experience in following. This experience will make you a better leader.

Project Managers are leaders. They will make the tough decisions. It’s like a doctor of Diagnostics in the hospital. Firefighting is a common, everyday thing and one accountable person needs to make the difficult decisions. These are based on experience with some book knowledge, especially in the case of the doctor. The decisions will not always be right and they won’t always be popular, but the decision was made and the project moves forward.

Recently, a project I was involved in implemented into production. A script was run and erased an entire field from projects in the database. When we tested this, no one could confirm or trace the script design to a requirement. Unable to produce any traceability, I made the decision to pull the script until the requirement was understood and known. This prevented any new fields from being populated. This upset many people and many stakeholders. The tough decision was made. Was it right or wrong did not matter at the time. It was made, carried through and the project moved on.

This was a fun article to write. Thanks to many of you for helping provide this input. This article is dedicated and inspired by my friend, Philip S.

Good luck in your transition! A remember that a little risk planning will safe a lot of fan cleaning!

P.S. There is an excellent book about this same topic. I highly recommend ‘Alpha Project Managers‘ by Andy Crowe.

All companies, large and small, have a mix of resources that can perform different functions and have specific skills. The most important thing you can do is identify them all. Resource skills are also the largest gap in many industries. There is administrative cost in collecting all that information, maintaining it and storing it somewhere.

We have opted to store all of our resource information into one central repository. Our current challenge is how to organize these resources and attributes associated with our people. We have an organization that is established and aligns our people to a detailed view by area. This allows us to easily view our teams, divisions or executive levels.

We also have skills and knowledge areas that we are associating to the individual resources. Realizing that we do not need every single skill that anyone has ever had, we are struggling with the structure of these attributes and marrying up the demand of the resource versus the supply.

We are soliciting feedback from the PM Majik project management community. Have you and your organizations addressed the organizing of your resources and what were the lessons learned? We want to know the industry best practice or just your personal thoughts and experience. Our goal; to mitigate the everlasting fan cleaning! Please help by contacting us at our parent site!

The reasons many small businesses don’t fully embrace project management may be cost of over-head and the pre-concieved notion that project management is time consuming and a sunken cost. It is difficult to convince some smaller companies that there is benefit to putting that structure into place and proving value. It is sometimes easier for them to jot the plan down on a post it note and keep it simple.  Offices may be small, people in-reach and no real fear of failing a process step. Failing a project deliverable is the concern and where the focus is. Failure is where project management and specific processes start to emerge. Many companies, even without a PMO, know how to “learn a lesson.”

Another trigger to implementing project management could be an increase in funding. As the small business starts to be successful and profits come in, the company may start to invest in processes, or wonder why ‘fix something that is not broken.’ However, in my experience, I have learned that if it is working, now is the time to break it! No comfort zones, no surprises!

There is no question that project management offices, with all their bureaucracies, come with a larger up front price tag. However, this ‘formality’ can be attrative because they can provide those predictable outcomes that executives love so much! Holding people accountable, enhanced communication and ultimately more success can make them start drooling!
All company culture is the same, as long as there are people working for them. People are naturally resistant to change, but it also stimulates growth. Break it and they will come! This is another form of “creative destruction” (see our previous post).

I recommend that all companies implement project management in some form or another. What is important is how you proceed. So, let’s start with small wins:

• Problem solving – project management processes, templates, offices, tools – these can all be seen as solving a problem and an attempt to make their every day lives better and more efficient.
• Natural talent – there are natural leaders already in your staff. Find them or let them come to you. Don’t insult your team by hiring external unless absolutely necessary
• Start small – try running a full process in one department; Or start with one group of people that will play a specific role. The Big Bang has never worked!
• Constant Communication – the idea is only as important as the attention and example you give.
• Small wins – make sure that ideas and people are always recognized for making even the smallest effort. As processes start to prove their value on paper, share this information with your staff
• Celebrate – Acknowledge the success!

The return on your investment? Small businesses have more to lose without scheduling to very tight guidelines. In order to achieve goals and achieve them quickly, you need to know your impacts before they happen and have complete control. Attention to deliverables and quality can have huge pay offs. Everything should be measured. As a small company, assuming that every single project came in on time, on schedule and on budget, is certainly different when you can say you can prove it!

One of favorite project management process inputs is Risk Management. I can’t imagine a world without it! No matter what size company you are, a little risk management can save a lot of fan cleaning, the only difference may be the size of the fan!

• Career development
• Home Improvements
• Acquiring a home
• Family celebrations
• Community

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP provides insight to this special celebration. She is recognized as one of the most influential women in project management.

• Read more at Michelle’s blog or www.cheetahlearning.com.  
• You can also check out www.internationalpmday.org.

Realizing real resource management can be hard to swallow. For many organizations, just being able to visualize a current supply model in an excel spreadsheet is a god-send! Realizing Resource Capacity management is a much bigger thing, with a much bigger gain.
In this article we will lay out the phases and details to realizing resource capacity management.

Organizations are not typically ready for a big bang approach. We created Waves, Phases, Tracks,etc. to indicate incremental steps to realization.

Wave 1

• Capturing a current organizational landscape to assist with current issues and planning

Wave 2

• Creating a current view of the processes and tools
• Creating a future for resource capapcity management
• Creating a roadmap to operationalize the future

Wave 3

• Proving that the future will work
• Creating use case
• Gathering tool requirements

Mobilization and roll out will be key! They must follow every wave! They will be the catalyst to cultural adoption!

All projects have scope and this one should be no exception. However, as stated as an executive summary, might give the project more boundaries and respect. This project will need:

1. A Vision
2. Several Goals
3. Several supporting Objectives

These should be very specific to what your stakeholders believe should be the future for resource management. Every requirement that comes from the rest of this process MUST have a place in this executive summary or it is put in an out of scope bucket for later consideration. Boundaries will make you successful and ensure a successful implementation.

Now, you have mapped out a pretty good plan and are making great progress. People maybe getting a little too optimistic. It’s time to prevent all that unnecessary “fan” cleaning and plan risks and roadblocks. Develop not only the risks, but the mitigations to those as well. This proves all things were thought through and there is plan, should things not go exactly to the plan.

Some examples to look for:

1. How is your organization a change and adoption?
   Adoption will stop any good project implementation dead in its tracks. Assess your environment and survey your stakeholders. They will tell you which areas have the most to lose by not implementing. They will tell you where the support is and is not.
2. Is this a priority to your company?
   If this is not a priority to your senior or executive leaders, cultural buy in, is already at risk. Start here. 
3. Does your company experience firedrills?
   So as you are going down the path to realizing resource management, and the federal government has just decided that this mandate has priority or your company pays millions. What’s the back up plan for firedrills?
4. Are the accountable resources known?
   Have names
   How are you measuring progress?
   What metrics or ROI are you providing to prove value?
   Who will maintain this project once it is implemented?
   Who will be keeping the lights on?

Okay, so let’s get into planning!

We will provide an approach for each wave. This will communicate “how” we plan to achieve the objectives of this particular initiative.

Wave 1 Planning Approach might look something like this:

• Develop a baseline of your current capacity and maybe demand, if you know it. Recognize here, that you will be making a ton of assumptions, so make sure that they are documented. One major assumption is that there is a financial target and there is a strategy!
• Identify your resource gaps and constraints. This will be that current capacity versus the demand.
• Propose resource changes. What is the current company vision and are our resources staffed correctly?

Wave 2 Approach may look like this:

• Current environment assessment. Identify what the current state demand and capacity looks like. Do this with interviews and workshops so that your stakeholders are very involved.
• Define what capabilities your users want in the future. Once these are identified, you will realize a Porsche has just been designed. Get yuor stakeholders to prioritize this list. The core team has veto power! Identify gaps in current state maturity.
• Develop a roadmap to achieve realization
• Develop your resource environment. This is tagging your resources to roles, cost centers, applications, some common lists of identifiers that will used to identify your resources and allow you to place demand and view capacity by another indicator other than “name.”

Wave 3 Approach may look like this:

• Identify a small group where resource contention is an issue.
• Gather the data from this group and build a model to use that is agnostic.
• Gather Tool requirements

As a summary, guiding principles drive the goals and objectives and create a collection of future state requirements. A gap analysis, prioritization and ranking will follow and lay the ground-work for the roadmap. All of this develops the companies future!

We will follow up this discussion with realized improvements and the actual defined process. Good luck with your own adventure into realizing Real Organizational Capacity Management!

In our last post, we discussed an opportunity to conduct an assessment of Portfolio Management suites featured from the Gartner Magic Quadrant. This was from a user point of view. Although there were many customer interviews already conducted, there is always another side to the story.

Before we start that PM Suites discussion, I want to introduce an excellent speech I heard just this morning.  The topic was compelling because it deals with right now, at this moment and the changes and troubles we “appear” to be facing.  The speaker focused the attention on an Alan Greenspan book, “The Age of Turbulence.”  Mr Greenspan talks about the single most significant event in our [meaning the world] history was the fall of the Great Wall.  The Berlin Wall.  The reason why this was so significant to Greenspan, to the speaker, to me and hopefully now to you, is the idea of “Creative Destruction.”  This concept is a natural phenomenon, but was termed by Joseph Schumpeter.  What was learned from the Great Wall falling was that the East was actually producing 35% of what the West was able to produce.  They learned that while the West was advancing in technology, engineering and management, the East was very stagnant, producing at the same capacity for the same amount of time.  This is significant and not natural. 

Creative Destruction is the impetus to build better tools.  It is change.  It is constantly challenging and improving upon.  It is innovation, industrial and everything about our world that brings us where we are today.  It is also the center of a free market and capitalist economy.  Central Planning, which is the term to define the East at that time, actually stifles creative destruction and does not allow for change.  Any time you use “stifle” and “not” to describe something, it will not have a good outcome.  In this case, it was proven and the impact profound.

With the innovative idea of re-allocating our resources to newer and more productive business, we can begin to understand behaviors and treat change a little than we have before.  It is in our nature to change.  It is in our nature to be change agents.  As Project Managers, we manage the very projects that get us to the change.  Projects, not portfolios, are the “real” change agents.  They help us to reach value creation and value realization.  This is not an easy process.  Change also causes stress.  This is why this speech was a great introduction to the “dynamic” portfolios that are part of that magic quadrant.  They provide us the capabilities to realize our value, guide us through the change and help us with the stress.

The products we will be discussing are the following:

• CA
• Planview
• Primavera
• HP

Not too long ago, I would have included the ever popular MS Project.  However, believe me, it did not make the Top 4.  So we’ll venture out and explore unchartered territory!

If you have comments that you would like to provide or experiences you would like to share about these “dynamic portfolios,” I encourage you to share them.  I will include them in my descriptions.  In the meantime, if you are finding yourself stressed out about current events and the changes that “appear” to be around you, turn off your television.  Events far great than these decorate our landscape and we have survived them all.  With great passion we will be successful through these times as well.

• Cost Cutting, with about 16 topics for a “lean” IT organization
• Process Improvements and Productivity
• Economic downturns can be a benefit.  They will have a topic dedicated to being Innovative during rough financial times
• Customer Service and Retention
• Risk and Change Management.  This is certainly a time of increase changes!

For Enterprise Portfolio Management software companies, this symposium is the “mothership.”  Gartner is the owner and creater of the Magic Quadrant.  If you work for a IT software company, you are certainly familiar with this quadrant.  It is an important tool to review application support and usage prior to purchasing and maintaining.  For more information on this event, go to the Gartner Symposium website. 

In a future discussion, PM Majik will do a full scale review of its own, for these Magic Quadrant participants.  More important than Gartners technical assessment, may be the assessment of the users.

Following an integrated process where the strategy and budget precede the lifecycle of project work, organizations and managers find solace in the operating model.  What is slowly realized is, that while everything is flowing smoothly, there are recognizable gaps at a much higher level.  Lower level impacts are usually hidden by managers who are simply surviving, using whatever archaic method to maintain independence and freedom from corporate intervention.  What is this gap?  Where are my people, who are my people and why can’t I deliver on my corporate strategies?

It is very common NOT to attempt to resolve every issue at one time.  Biting off more than you can chew will ruin just about every attempt to obtain cultural adoption.  Slowly gaining ground on perfection, allows the organization and company to actually REACH perfection.

So, to tackle the organizational gap we must first define a process at a very high level that will drive your direction.  This is something that your organization at all levels will understand.  In terminology that your company uses, define the various stages of planning. 

Here is the process you can use to define your organizational capacity gap:

1. Concept
2. Identified
3. Demand
4. Fully Defined
5. Fully Refined

Then identify the planning process that has actually been perfected, rolled out and is currently in use and hopefully adopted. Usually this looks like; 3-5 year forecasting-Annual planning-Governance-SDLC.

With these defined, line up where the organizational needs are. Be sensitive to the audience for each stage. For example, named resources are not required while conceptualizing the future for your company. Something like roles or FTE’s may be more appropriate. Determine where named resources are actually required.

Output from each planning stage should also be defined. This will provide purpose, focus and goals for this roll out.

It is important to realize that each stage has a specific audience with very different needs. Given this, separate your high level [organizational view] and lower level [named resources] into at least 2 process areas:

• Organizational Planning – aligning organizational availability to the business priorities based on the scheduled need.
• Capacity Analysis – Determining if we have adequate resource availability with the right knowledge at the right time to complete the organizations future objectives.
• Resource Management – identifying and managing the actual people who accomplish the company’s goals

These definitions assist in identifying the roles in each. At Organizational Planning for instance, you will typically see CIO’s here and their business counterparts.  Capacity Analysis is typically portfolio owners. Resource Management is self explanatory.

Capturing the current pain points and drivers from each of these groups will keep your information organized and complete. Digging into the details, therein, will narrow the gap between what the true needs of the company are.

Many companies have realized six sigma and CMM functions. In this case, simple SIPOCs for the high level and low levels will help to identify all areas that are impacted and the processes improvements that have to take place and the role that need to be changed or defined. This is a good process for any company, even if you are not CMM Level 4!

The leg worked involved in just kicking off this program is a project in and of itself. Too many companies skip this part entirely due to the administration and cost involved. We have learned that this was the key to solidifying adoption and organizational change. We were completely lined up with our people and the real needs!

In the next article we will discuss and lay out what the rest of the plan looks like. We will walk through the Tracks and phases, the successes and lessons learned. I’m excited to share this with you because it can make you the hero at your company!

So what can you do to ensure better PM success at your company?

From the beginning, identify a portfolio of projects that are key and will add value.  The next step here is to apply priority.  Be thoughtful of dependencies and resource contentions.   Executing proper and professional project management will kick off this process smoothly.

One key role of the project manager is risk management.  These are the unknowns and unwanteds.  Planning for these requires work plans, tracking, early warning signs and back up planning.  Just because there is a skilled project manager here does not mean the project is risk free!  They are, however, much better at handling the risk.

Within the project management office there should be a desire for standardization and consistency,  However, in reality by definition projects are unique and may require more flexibility in the method.

So how do you obtain these skilled, professional project managers?

They could be in your own organization.  They do not need to be a well versed, seasoned project managers, with said title.  There are many external options that can be implemented across the organization to develop these desired skills.  Bring in the experts, train up your managers and define development plans for interested resources.  This is golden for a PMO!

To deliver lessons learned is one thing; to receive is quite another.  I challenge all PM’s, no matter where you are in your career, to listen to those lessons learned by others.  You may find that even a new PM has learned something that will spare you a lot of clean up in the future.

I have come to enjoy taking on projects that are outside of my comfort zone.  In doing this, I have picked up new skills.  For example, I am skilled at software development projects and organization change management.  However, I have been challenged with learning budget management and taking on budget forecasting projects.  As I am going through my regular project management steps, I am jotting down new lessons learned, but my teachers are actually realizing potential gaps in their current processes as well.  Together we are making improvements that were absolutely necessary, but weren’t initially known.

There are added benefits from taking on these challenges as well; meeting new people.  Forever, I have been known by my previous skills and my landscape was limited.  Taking on new skills opened the flood gates to new people with greater skills and more lessons to be learned!  Sharing lessons learned is easier at this capacity because everyone comes to the table with something to share.

Being able to provide and receive information makes for a credible resource.  Obtaining respect from your organization is what is strived for and ultimately obtained.

Speak and share!  Attend and offer to speak at engagements and events that allow the sharing of information.  Sitting behind a desk sharing information and lessons learned only helps some people.  What is shocking is that there is a real demand out there for knowledge.  Forums like PM Majik allow the voices to be heard and believe me there are people waiting to listen!

One of my favorite ways to learn from another, is to shadow them.  This basically means sitting in the shadows, while they conduct meetings, review emails and communications and/or other areas where there may need to be improvement and development.  It has been motivating to self-realize that I actually came up to the same conclusion as the person that I am shadowing.  It has also been an interesting journey to learn that my weaknesses were actually in people skills, rather than PM skills. 

I believe a great leader is a great follower.  Be constantly willing to learn and share what you have to share!