ON THE EDGE
New Years' Project Resolutions!
Five New Tactics and Tools to Try in 2003
by Carl Pritchard, Pritchard Management Associates
The New Year is well underway, and by now, many of us have already broken our New Year's resolutions. I might suggest that the New Year is a great excuse to drag out some new strategies for project implementation. Oddly enough, folks in many organizations seem ready and willing to accept changes at the beginning of the year that they would otherwise be unwilling to consider. Take advantage of this "accepting" mentality and put it to work to your advantage. Specifically, here are five strategies, tactics and tools that you may wish to consider as a means to enhance practice in your organization. Some are tried and true. Others are bleeding edge and relatively untested. In both cases, they represent a chance to examine the way your organization does business.
Resolution #1-I will be the king/queen of the templates. OK, template construction is boring. Dull. Dull. Dull. But templates ensure consistency. They affirm that there is some consistency that can and will be applied in the organization. They affirm what's important and what's not. They identify what information is critical and how it should be retained. The key to success in a template is to be able to point to where it has been applied successfully, and to clarify how and where they will be applied. Samples of well-crafted and well-applied templates go a long way toward ensuring their proper application later on.
Resolution #2-I will try a cutting edge project management tool, like David Hillson's Risk Breakdown Structure. At this year's national PMI® Symposium, David Hillson presented a groundbreaking paper suggesting that organizations can get a much better perspective on their risks and their project issues by virtue of implementation of his new Risk Breakdown Structure. The Risk Breakdown is much like any of a variety of matrixes that seek to analyze project potential or concerns. With the Risk Breakdown, Hillson suggests that organizations can increase their understanding of their risk factors and the affect they're having on a given project by creating a standardized list of risk factors and creating a simple matrix with the lowest level of the WBS. For each task in the WBS, the individual applying the Risk Breakdown will evaluate it against each of the risk factors, simply to determine if those risk factors are potentially present within the activity. The result is a matrix populated with a cross-reference of risks and work packages. Those work packages with the highest number of potential risk factors are seen as the highest-risk activities. Those risk factors with the highest number of activities are seen as the highest risk factors within the project. As simple as it may sound, the insight provided is another tool in the battle to identify the big-issue risks on a project, either from the task- or risk-area perspective.
Resolution #3-I will find new applications of the software tools. Perhaps the greatest tragedy in applying software tools is the fact that many users don't understand the breadth of the capabilities that exist, short-changing the users from their full potential. Whether the tool is Primavera® or Microsoft Project®, there are myriad capabilities that most organizations either don't fully understand or exercise. Tied to Resolution #1, it's possible now to build templates within the software packages. Microsoft Project®, for example, has 30 text fields and a similar number of numbers fields for project managers to apply in spreadsheets at their discretion. If that's not sufficiently advanced, consider a foray into some of the new software packages and iterations, such as the new updated (and now 'for-profit') Risk Radar available through www.spmn.com. No matter the choice, find out what you may have been missing in application of the tools.
Resolution #4-I will invest real time with a team member. When I say 'real time', I refer back to an earlier article I posted here titled It's a Beautiful Day in the (Project) Neighborhood. Select any team member or stakeholder from the customer to an internal team member to a vendor, and the next time they call or stop by your office, take the time to clear out the other distractions before beginning the conversation. Shut down the computer screen and mute the phone (or put it on "Do Not Disturb." Isolate the time you invest with them as purely time with them, excluding all of the other potential distractions. Such time is eerily effective, drawing them into a more efficacious conversation and ensuring that there is a heightened sense of clarity on both sides of the discussion.
Resolution #5-I will find a new means to transfer knowledge. Knowledge management is hot "buzz" in project management right know, and the project managers who find new and effective means to share insights and information will continue to lead the practice. Be it something as pedantic as building a lessons-learned database or as clever as NASA's "webtoons", the key to success will be infusing the means and methods to enable real input into the repository of information and (in many ways more importantly) extracting it back out. Without the transfer of knowledge within an organization, the organization is only as good or effective as their current cadre of experts. The organizations that find the means to build on their expertise over time have a clear winning edge.
None of these practices, in and of themselves, are necessarily going to be considered radical. But because they may represent a shift from current practice or from historical precedent, they may draw attention. Good. That's part of the idea. A key to success in building a practice is to find out what people like and dislike about it.
One final analogy. About three years ago, I stood at the cutting edge as I bought the first new car I ever owned in my life. I purchased one of Daimler-Chrysler's PT Cruisers. I put in my order the first day the dealerships accepted orders and was the first owner on the block for the better part of six months (while others waited through the backlog). I was a Cruiser pioneer. About a week after I got my car, I drove through the Burger King drive-through window for a soda. The young man at the window stood agape at my vehicle. "This is one of those….those…uh….."
"It's a PT Cruiser", I proudly replied.
"I saw these in a car magazine," he offered excitedly. "I hate them."
Oddly enough, that didn't bother me. But it did energize me. I realized I had incited some passion over something that for most of my life had been perceived as an unexciting element of who I was and what I did. My car had gone from being an adjunct to being an accent!
As the New Year rolls along, we have that same opportunity as project managers. We can pioneer something that may prove to be popular (or loathed) and we can do so with relative impunity. We have the beauty of being able to blame it on the time of year! It's a chance to infuse some new capacities and capabilities into our PM practices. Happy New Year!
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