In This Issue:
From the Editor
Featured Templates
Before the Code, the Plan
If You Can Dodge a Project, You Can Dodge a Ball
Career Corner
They're More Guidelines Than Actual Rules
Site Highlights
You Call That a Project?
One More and We Get a Set of Steak Knives
You Could Say We Right-Sized the Paperwork
It's So Small, I Didn't Even Recognize It
Agile Methodologies
Baby Steps
Project Practitioners Blog
Managing our risk attitude
Take time to learn
Build a better mousetrap
Where's ProjectConnections?
Corporate Subscriptions
From the Editor
Can you run a small project without overloading on paperwork? Absolutely. This week we're writing to point out tools designed specifically for smaller projects, along with examples of these tools in action. But it's possible to too minimalist; our featured burning question this week addresses the documentation recommended for any project, no matter what size. You'll also find advice for trying out agile on a smaller basis, and a new IT Project Plan (for IT projects of any size). Plus, columnist Kimberly Wiefling offers suggestions for clearing up muddy thinking, and our bloggers echo the sentiment. Read on...
Featured Article
Clarity – The Cure for Muddy Thinking by Kimberly Wiefling
Aloha! The ocean's roar fills my ears, and a beautiful Kona sunset paints the sky. But me, I'm thinking about mud. Muddy thinking, to be exact. Being educated as a physicist, as I was, has its drawbacks. For one, most people assume we have no marketable skills. Sometimes we are misunderstood. I once was contacted by somebody wanting help with their âauraâ. Apparently âpsychicâ and âphysicsâ are pretty close in the dictionary. But the biggest challenge I'm facing these days—and I think it's a result of the extremely rigorous and self-consistent thinking I learned during those years—is a complete lack of tolerance for what I call muddy thinking. People work on low priority items while urgent issues languish. Teams fall apart because no one confronts behaviors that undermine trust. Organizations spend huge amounts of money on a project, then suddenly wonder how they will measure success. These bizarre behaviors may seem like examples of muddy behaviors, but to me they indicate either a brain that has flat-lined or a total lack of clarity about what really matters.
Muddy thinking is jeopardizing far too many people's success, and your project may be getting stuck in some of this mud. Here's my approach to thinking and acting with clarity in order to steer clear of the morass. Read More »
Kimberly is in Tokyo Friday (July 24) for an open enrollment workshop: Leadership for Breakthrough Results. And if you've been following her adventures in Japan, you may be interested to know you can now read her book Scrappy Project Management in Japanese as well! She returns to the states for a weeklong workshop in Houston the first week of August, followed by the Case University STEP program the week of August 17.
Featured Templates
NEW – Before the Code, the Plan – IT Project Plan – SPECIAL
This Premium resource is free to registered Members until August 5, 2009
Project plans and schedules are often confused, but project plans go beyond scheduling to define how the team will work together. How will you perform code reviews, and how often? How will bugs be logged and managed? Who will manage the flood of change requests? The plan answers these questions and more. Depending on the environment, it may be a detailed document describing the management approach, or a summary pointing to a variety of other planning documents. This template takes a middle path between those options, by outlining key strategic guidelines and referring to other documents where appropriate. It includes several sections particularly useful for managing IT projects—the processes and strategies you need in place before starting the code (tempting though it may be). Get the plan »
If You Can Dodge a Project, You Can Dodge a Ball – Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda and Guidelines – SPECIAL
This Premium resource is free to registered Members until August 5, 2009
If you're having trouble keeping all the balls in the air, imagine how confused your teams probably feel. Deliverables, demands, and deadlines come hurtling at them from every direction. You see the connections and dependencies, but do they? Boost coordination with a project kickoff meeting that helps them see the effort as a project, and not a series of unconnected tasks flying out of nowhere. Connect the team members to each other, and the team to a project vision, then stand back and watch productivity and morale fly. (Just remember to duck.) Get the guideline »
Multi-Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda – MEMBER If you're managing a series of related projects, consider running a multi-project kickoff meeting that explains how all the pieces fit together, why they're being done at the same time, and orients (or re-orients) the team to the relative priorities and business objectives.
Career Corner
They're More Guidelines Than Actual Rules – Adapting Processes for Different Projects – PREMIUM Flexibility is a key aspect of this profession, and that includes the occasional willingness to throw out the rulebook. You need to be smart about it though. If you're making a substantial process change, you should be able to explain what makes this project different enough that the usual processes shouldn't apply. Everyone should understand how the change will make things go better, not just go faster. If you're a project manager, this means understanding how and when to bend the so-called rules and when to toe the line. If you manage project managers, it means knowing when to cut them some slack and when the process is absolutely critical, and making sure they know it too. This guideline illustrates practical approaches to tailoring project management processes, and provides examples of documentation and communication you can borrow for your own educational efforts. Understanding how to follow the rules is important—just like understanding when it's OK to follow your gut. Get the guideline »
What Everybody Ought to Know About Switching Careers to Project Management, by Josh Nankivel
Josh offers his suggestions to C.D. from New York—a project manager looking to break into the formal job role without any formal training. He wants your suggestions too; leave your advice and tips for C.D. and job hunters in a similar situation.
Site Highlights
Afraid PM will weigh down your small projects? You don't have to drown in paperwork to reap the benefits of practical project management. Even small, short, inexpensive projects have risks, deadlines, stakeholders, and customers. These resources can show you how to get the most out of project management without spending more time on coordination than on project work.
You Call That a Project? – Case: Adapting PM Techniques to a Mini-Project – GUEST Yes, we do. You can use project management to make any effort more successful, as long as you don't go overboard. A non-project manager explains in this case study how she used project management techniques on the least formal project we could think of—a family vacation. It only took six pages of hand-scribbled notes (which are included as illustration). Read the case study »One More and We Get a Set of Steak Knives – Planning & Managing Multiple Small Projects – PREMIUM Juggling more products than a late-night infomercial? There are ways to stay sane and in charge without continuously shouting, "But wait, there's more!" This compendium of project management techniques can help you stay in control without going overboard. The collection includes a detailed guideline illustrating how to use these tools to manage a set of small but related projects without creating a full set of individual deliverables for each one. Examples and excerpts demonstrate the principles in action, as captured from real projects. Get the collection »
You Could Say We Right-Sized the Paperwork – Project Plan Example: Small Project – PREMIUM No matter how small the project; someone, somewhere, thinks it's monumental. So it pays to treat even little projects with some respect, and a bit of forethought. In this case, a company needed to unify processes from three different divisions. It was a supposedly small project, but one with huge implications for getting things done well in the future, and many interested stakeholders. This example plan shows how the team coordinated the work and got buy-in without using a big, involved project plan document. Get the template »
It's So Small, I Didn't Even Recognize It – Tracking Example: Small Project – MEMBER As we mentioned in the Career Corner this issue, it's important to know when and how it's acceptable to bend the process rules. A companion to the template above, this example shows how the process team managed themselves without process overkill. It was a side project, but an important one, and they knew they needed to push and track to well-defined milestones, action items, and key reviews that had to be recorded. But they wanted to do so without micromanaging or overloading team members who all had other full-time projects. They did it by paring scaling down the existing project lifecycle to something that fit their short-horizon effort. See how they struck a balance »
Agile Methodologies
Baby Steps – Checklist for Adopting Agile Methods – PREMIUM If you've considered switching to agile, stop and take a deep breath before running straight into the arms of a new methodology. You can get a lot of mileage by taking a slower approach, trying out agile approaches one project at a time while your teams learn the concepts and get used to the idea. This checklist serves as a guide to adopting agile one project at a time, based on practices that have worked for project teams in the past. It's intended to position a project team to be as successful as possible with their first agile project, without charging headlong into agile across the whole organization. Take a walk on the agile side »
Project Practitioners Blog
Alfonso Bucero urges us to balance risks against opportunities by managing our risk attitude.
Niel Nickolaisen reminds us what we can do if we take time to learn, even if it means driving the extra 15 miles.
Ann Drinkwater challenges the assumption that the solution is to build a better mousetrap.
Where's ProjectConnections?
Carl Pritchard will be at PMI Seminars World in Washington D.C. August 10-11, with a seminar on Risk Management. September 16-17 he'll be teaching Project Management Essentials in Pittsburgh, PA. More details and registration information are available on Carl's website.
Kent McDonald will be at Agile 2009 in Chicago August 24-28. He has a session on "Barely Sufficient Portfolio Management" with Todd Little (one of the co-authors of Stand Back and Deliver) and one on "Feature Injection" with Chris Matts.
Niel Nickolaisen, another Stand Back and Deliver co-author and a ProjectConnections blogger, also has a session at Agile 2009 with Chris Matts, charmingly titled "First, Kill All the Metrics." (We like the way he thinks.) For a slightly more glamourous background, look for him in Athens, Greece on October 15, where he'll address Pragmatic IT and Alignment. (Details forthcoming.)
Corporate Subscriptions and Licensing
Want your team members to have their own access to templates and how-to resources for their project work? Need to share documents and deliverables beyond your project team? We make it easier with affordable corporate subscriptions and licensing. Detailed information regarding corporate options is available online. Give your whole team, or even the entire organization, cost-effective access to our comprehensive online library of resources. You already know how helpful it's been for you. Now it's time to share with everyone else. Find out more »Not sure if corporate terms apply to you? Check out our licensing terms at the top of our Terms of Service page, in refreshingly ordinary, everyday English.