In This Issue:
From the Editor
The Where, Who, and When of Risk Management by Kimberly Wiefling
Career Corner: The "Secret Sauce" That Experienced PMs Have and New PMs Need
Site Highlights:
Expecting the Unexpected
Spirits of Yesteryear, Take Me to Where the Requirements Appear
Fighting Project FUD Poisoning
Where the Wild Ideas Are
On the Other Other Other (Other Other) Hand…
Where's ProjectConnections?
This month: Japan, Greece, California, Florida, Spain, Arizona, Massachusetts and Texas
From the Editor
How we do things is often more important than what we do. When a fellow project manager with a new project approaches us for advice, we might encourage them to "go interview the stakeholders for requirements" or "keep management posted on the issue" or "remember to create a risk list." With a slightly bemused look, they head back to the tangled project, feeling informed but not really empowered. They know what to do, but not how to do it. How do you write a risk list that does more than take up space on the hard drive? What's the difference between a requirements interview or status report that impresses your stakeholders and one that frustrates them? What, in short, is the secret sauce?
Cinda Voegtli's September blog post on this subject prompts this week's collection of resources. We're here to help you get to the bottom of things, to explain how to pull off the what everyone has been telling you to do. There are often nuances to these things—words of experience or time-tested ideas—that make it easier to have a really great brainstorming session, or feel confident you've weighed all the alternatives, or truly thought things through. If you're an experienced PM in a place to coach your peers, remember to share the secret sauce with them. Don't diminish the art and nuance in what you do; we all know there's more to it than "just keeping people updated."
Featured Article
The Where, Who, and When of Risk Management, by Kimberly Wiefling
When project teams engage in risk management they often focus on "What" could happen to threaten the project goals, the assumption being that the only risks we care about are the risks to the goals. That would be terrific, if those goals represented all stakeholders with an interest in the project (in priority order, of course!). But project goals frequently do a poor job of precisely describing "success." As you may know from personal experience, many projects are plagued by unclear, misunderstood, rapidly shifting, or purposely postponed goals (a.k.a. SCRUM, Agile, Lean, spiral model, whatever you want to call common sense iterative product development these days). And, in spite of much consciousness raising over the past 20 years, measures of project success still routinely ignore metrics associated with employee retention and long-term customer loyalty, to name a few. Even in this age of Corporate Social Responsibility, most projects aren't tracking "reducing our negative impact on the earth" as a high-priority metric of success. Nope, just thinking about risk from the standpoint of What threatens the all-too-often nebulous and ill-defined goals of a project just isn't going to cut it. We need to explore the Who, When and Where of project risk.
Career Corner
The "Secret Sauce" That Experienced PMs Have and New PMs NeedRecently, ProjectConnections founder Cinda Voegtli had an opportunity to observe something you might find familiar: someone who knew all about how to do something, but still found herself paralyzed by doubt and insecurity. Perhaps, like Cinda, you've found yourself thinking, "Why are you making me do this for you, isn't this obvious, what is the big deal??" In her case, it was a teen chasing a coveted internship. In your case, it's probably a team member or fellow PM double-checking with you on what seems like every decision or move they make. In either case, what's at stake is not understanding, but confidence, and experienced project managers are in a unique position to advance both.
"In the realm of project management, any of us who've been doing this for a while KNOW that it's not just the mechanics, the basic techniques or skills. Every situation is a little different. We hit new things and have to decide exactly how to handle them, including adapting our planning techniques or our communication style or our project methodology, to the situation at hand. The more we do it, the more confidence we get, until we just do it naturally without thinking about it.
"Yet I think we may forget about that critical evolution of judgment and confidence when we throw new PMs in—even if we've given them a bunch of training to get them going. That's a great foundation… But there will always be new situations calling for new applications of various skills. We can help new managers a great deal by coaching them on and modeling how to make judgment calls, how to apply the basics, how to adapt to different situations. That help is not about telling them exactly what to do, it's about helping them see what the options are and why one way might be better than another and how to decide for this situation."
This week, we'd like to remind experienced project managers everywhere to "NOT take for granted the nuances of things you now do naturally as an experienced project manager, and to take opportunities to spread the wealth."
Read Cinda's full column and leave your own thoughts on bridging newer project managers from simple knowledge to confidence in their capabilities.
Site Highlights
NEW – Expecting the Unexpected – Project Risk Checklist – MEMBERDrafting a risk list can be a daunting proposition. The rules all say to consider everything, but how can you ever be sure you haven't missed one of those dreaded "unknown-unknowns"? This risk checklist from Sinikka Waugh of Your Clear Next Step LLC covers a wide variety of categories, and serves as a thinking tool or discussion prompt to ensure the team has looked at the project and its environment from all angles when they sign off on the risk list. Thorough consideration can help you avoid getting blindsided by foreseeable risks like staffing changes at a critical vendor or shifting regulatory requirements.
NEW – Spirits of Yesteryear, Take Me to Where the Requirements Appear – Requirements Interview Checklist – PREMIUM
Requirements gathering is too often treated like a mining expedition; we get a general sense of the layout from initial meetings, then spelunk into our projects and hope our requirements detector will start beeping. Focused, well-prepared interviews with stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs) can tilt the odds in your favor. This checklist by Sinikka Waugh of Your Clear Next Step LLC is organized into sets of questions you should consider for each interview. Thorough preparation will boost your credibility with key stakeholders, ensure you make the most of your time with busy SMEs, and vastly increase your chances of discovering a major cache of requirements, instead of tripping over scattered tidbits strewn across your project timeline.
From the Blogs: Ann Drinkwater reminds us not to fall into the order-taker trap, and to serve our customers well by being masters of our own domains.
Fighting Project FUD Poisoning – Issue Resolution Status Report – PREMIUM
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt have disabled more than their fair share of projects over the years. One of the best ways to combat the scourge of FUD poisoning is to make sure everyone knows what's going on – preferably in short, succinct bullet points that can be easily digested before the panic sets in. This template illustrates how you can provide all the critical information in just a few bullet points on a slide or a single sheet of paper, so you can convey confidence and control, and focus attention on the issues that still need attention.
Where the Wild Ideas Are – Brainstorming Meeting Techniques – SPECIAL
This Premium resource is free to registered Members until October 14, 2009
Brainstorming is the one aspect of modern business life where we ask people to cast aside their inhibitions, throw caution to the wind, and generate as many ideas as possible, no matter how wild and crazy they sound. It's necessary when solving sticky problems, but it can be really hard to do. This guideline offers some valuable and really effective suggestions for getting the creative juices going, avoiding common idea killers, and handling different kinds of group dynamics. Let the wild rumpus start!
On the Other Other Other (Other Other) Hand… – Project Alternatives Tradeoff Table – SPECIAL
This Premium resource is free to registered Members until October 14, 2009
Having trouble balancing out all the alternatives and their implications? It can be difficult to sort out all the possibilities, particularly in complicated or technical tradeoffs. On the other (other other) hand, an orderly comparison of the options and their effects can make it a whole lot easier to pick the best solution. This table will help your team systematically capture data related to each alternative, and to cut through the complexity to reach decisions. Getting it all onto a page or two can really help a cross-functional team reach agreement on a reasonable scope that meets most important customer requirements.
Where's ProjectConnections?
Kimberly Wiefling is in Japan again this week, for the Daiichi Sankyo Pharma Global Leader Development Program.
Niel Nickolaisen is speaking in Athens, Greece on Thursday, October 15th on "Pragmatic IT and Alignment" for the IT Directors Forum '09. Next month, he'll appear at CIO Magazine's CIO: The Year Ahead conference, November 8-10, at Indian Wells, California, where he will address "How to Flawlessly Execute Your Strategy – For Free!"
Carl Pritchard will be at the PMI Global Congress North America in Orlando, Florida, October 14-15, to present a two-day Risk Management Workshop.
Randy Englund will also be in Orlando, to present a paper on "Leading for Results." The following week he presents "Facilitating Risk Management into a Corporate Culture" at the PMI Austin, Texas Professional Development Day. Then he's off to Barcelona, Spain to work with Alfonso Bucero on the second annual Project Portfolio Day, October 29-30.
You can find Lisa DiTullio at the Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA) Fall Conference in Chandler, Arizona on October 12, and in Orlando for the PMI Global Congress North America on October 13. On October 17, she leads a 4PDU workshop at the Juniper Hills Country Club for the PMI Central Massachusetts chapter, and on the 19th she'll be at the PMI Austin Professional Development Day.
Sinikka Waugh is leading a webinar series offered through the State of Iowa, addressing topics like project uncertainty and change management. More information and registration is available through her website, http://www.yourclearnextstep.com/.
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