Cinda's Corner

In this day and age when too many of us deal every day with too much to do, can you articulate at any given moment why you and the team are doing what you're doing? If you looked at every item that was taking up precious project time, could you swear that there was a darned good reason for it?

Because I'm tired of the "too much to do phenomenon", and because I think countering it is critical to project success and to our career opportunities, I'm taking most of newsletter this week to focus on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. It's what I refer to as "business savvy"—specifically in the context of commissioning and managing projects.

Executive View

Cinda Voegtli on Business-Savvy Project Managers
Why can't we spend a reasonable amount of time on the right, best things instead of killing ourselves trying to do everything? The good can truly be the enemy of the best when we insist that the merely good stuff really deserves to be on our list. I think that some team-wide business savvy can help us achieve more project sanity over time.

And I don't think I'm the only one who cares about this. When asked what PM traits he feels are critical, but not necessarily common, an executive said to me, "There's always more we could do than we have time for. I want managers who can lead the inevitably tough project decision-making. To do that, they need an excellent understanding of the company and the business, and they need to know how use that knowledge to facilitate fast project decision making." And this mindset is a key underpinning to Agile project approaches—delivering value to customers more quickly—which means of course that teams need to be able to determine at every step what's most valuable.

Does that mean the project manager is supposed to do the job of the product manager or the business owner or the business analyst too? No, that's not what I mean. However, in my opinion, neither does the project manager get to sit back and let all those other "business people" worry about it all. Neither should the team sit back! I've actually escaped endless requirements fights thanks to fed-up team members who finally spoke up on what was most important, and feasible in the right timeframe, because the project manager didn't. Business-savvy—aimed at making sure that everything we're doing is worthdoing right now from the standpoint of the organization investing its precious resources—is a critical team mindset, not just an individual project manager skill.

I've therefore pulled together a set of resources on the site that tackle various angles on this subject. The first resource below is a new presentation covering what I see as the job, characteristics, and phase-by-phase key actions of the business-savvy project manager. The other articles, blogs, templates, etc. can help us strike a blow for project sanity—by bringing business-savvy mindsets, behaviors, and tools to bear during the "fuzzy front end" of our too-much-to-do project environments.

NEW - The Business-Savvy PM: What it means to be one and lead like one – MEMBER
The project manager job is supposed to be about results. And specifically results that involve financial symbols and digits, plus customers whose most pressing needs have been met. What the business-savvy PM focuses on and does through the project to achieve those bottom-line goals.

Rock-solid project mandate or squishy vision? Either way, interview that sponsor!
Because you should never, ever accept someone else's interpretation of what the sponsor is looking for. Questions to help you get a Sponsor mind-meld on the rationale for this project.

When everyone has an opinion and no one can decide
Tips on business-oriented project decision-making on and among projects, to get at the real reasons people are asking for things (not to mention achieving more than a snowball's chance of surviving the heated discussions).

You only thought you knew why we're doing this project! – PREMIUM
Tools for translating from what your group is trying to accomplish to criteria that help you select the projects that should get the dollars and resources right now.

To be Agile or just more agile - A way to decide rationally what should get done first – PREMIUM
An approach to help the team understand true value, so they can make objective decisions on projects, features, and priorities then "do less sooner" for the good of the business.

The path forward from "glimmer in the eye"
See the first tab, "Understand the Business Need," in this Business Analysts role Fast Track for tools a BA and team can use to understand the business needs—before all the hard work of eliciting, uncovering, and defining detailed goals and requirements for the project.

When requirements gathering goes really, really bad... – MEMBER
To guard against requirements processes run amuck, see this mini-case on how a team was unwittingly sabotaged by its genuine desire to serve its customers, and how they recovered clarity in time to save the project.

When "customer-centric" goes bad: Avoiding timeline-killing decision-maker delays
Because no one person has all the business-savvy for a given project's tough choices, advice on who else to involve, but also how to get timely inputs and decisions rather than stopping the project in its tracks.

It's way beyond scheduling! Ways to develop business-related career-differentiators – PREMIUM
Executives prefer people who understand what they're trying to accomplish for the business. Ideas for developing common language and understanding with the people who write the checks for and supply resources to your projects.

Other Related Tools:

• Project selection tools: Project proposals, opportunity analysis tools, business cases
• Project Vision document: Customer-centric way to define business goals for the project
• Project Trade-offs Guideline: Team approach for making business-focused project tradeoffs (Premium)
• Project Alternatives Tradeoff Table: Template for data-driven objective decision-making among alternatives. (Premium)

Featured Article

Fix It Fast vs. Fix It Right, by Alan S. Koch

A few months earlier, when I did their Quality Appraisal, RCA stood out as a big opportunity. They were already doing something (this put them light years ahead of most places), but for a number of reasons, they were failing to get any real benefit from it. This was our opportunity! Take an RCA process that was limping along, and turn it into a quality improvement powerhouse.

The heart of the problem with their old RCA process lies in the fact they were mixing and confusing the two distinct and different ways that you can respond to any problem that comes along. Your choices when dealing with a problem are to 1) fix it fast, or 2) fix it right. They were trying to do both of them at the same time, which often isn't possible. They learned how to fix things fast, and so the "fix it right" part of the equation kept failing, even though they were trying to make it work.

A deliberate Root Cause Analysis process will help you get to the bottom of a problem and fix it permanently, not just quickly. Read Alan's vision for a better process » »

Hear from Alan in person:
Alan Koch will be covering ITIL Foundations in Pittsburgh, PA November 16-17, and in Denver, Colorado November 18-19. Virtual attendees of International Institute for Software Processes free webinars will be able to hear from Alan about Seeing the Discipline in Agile Methods on November 23, and about Agile Software Development Methods on November 24. More information and links to these and future events are available on Alan's website.

Where's ProjectConnections?

Kimberly Wiefling is back in Japan for most of the rest of the year, though November 30 she'll be in Europe for the Global Leadership Development program at Kuraray. December 15 she will be conducting a free demo workshop for HR Managers and decision makers in Tokyo. (The page is in Japanese, but the brilliant rubber chicken picture says it all.)

Geof Lory will be in Seattle in November guiding a Fissure Project Management Simulation for 140 of Microsoft's top performers. He will also be delivering a two-day Scrum Team Training class for Medica in Minneapolis the end of November.

Carl Pritchard will be conducting PMP Exam Prep at U of Maryland - Shady Grove on November 12 and 13. November 30, he'll be teaching PM Essentials at Frederick Community College. On December 3, he begins Risk Management Professional courses in Baltimore and "Managing Multiple Projects" for PMI's E-Seminars World. More information and registration available on Carl's website.

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