In This Issue:
From the Editor
Falling in Love with GREAT Communications by Carl Pritchard
Cinda Voegtli: Executive View
Site Highlights
For the Thousandth Time, It's Not Just Paperwork
You Don't Need 2 Years and 100 Pieces of Paper to Make the World a Better Place
It Also Doesn't Have to be Monumentally Complex!
It's Truly a Deciding Factor for Team Productivity
Have You Found the One Hidden Person Who Could Truly Blow Up Your Project?
Feeling Lost In Mechanics?
Who Have You Talked to Lately? And Are You Sure It's Everyone Who Matters?
When You Think You're Being Snookered About Being "Almost Done"
Put Down the Tools, and Step Away Slowly
Educating the Owners to Save the Team
You Won, They're Here… But Are They Productive?
From the Blogs
From the Editor
What's on our minds right now is "what really matters" in managing our projects. We want to be great at it as individuals and organizations. We want to produce results and have a sane and rewarding and even fun experience on projects. Processes and tools are there to help, assuming we use them well. This week, Cinda Voegtli shares some thoughts on safe and sane project management, and some favorite tools in her kit. Plus, Carl Pritchard reminds us of some basics of successful project communication that we've probably all overlooked from time to time.
Speaking of communication, if you're on Twitter or Facebook, look for us. We now send out a regular dose of ProjectConnections through our Twitter feed (@ProjConnections) and on our Facebook Fan Page. When it comes to fast, practical PM, it doesn't get much faster than keeping up with a Twitter feed.
Featured Article
Falling in Love with GREAT Communications
by Carl Pritchard
We all acknowledge that a significant amount of our success or failure is rooted in our abilities to communicate. Great communicators are more likely to have great project success. Poor communicators are more likely to find themselves struggling to get their project messages across. And yet we donât invest a lot of time thinking about how to turn our mundane communications into opportunities for others to fall in love with us and our message.
I raised this specter in a recent class and got an interesting array of responses from my students. They suggested a host of fundamental rules and protocols that would simplify, clarify and render messages more powerful and effective. Rather than simply share my insights, I offer theirs here with a simple suggestion. Pick two. Steel yourself to try them consistently. Make them a personal mission. Youâll be surprised by the shift.
Suggestions collected from other project managers on how to make your day-to-day communication more powerful and effective, and less like garlic-sauce hoagie. Read More »
Executive View
By Cinda Voegtli
The danger in proliferating standards, practices, techniques, and tools is that we can get lost in them and lose all common sense. I routinely encounter situations out there that underscore how important it is for all PMs and organizations to periodically clarify what really matters most—to make sure we're putting effort in the right places, and not abusing the processes and tools that were meant to help. (Or abusing our teams via those processes or tools!) We need to make sure that we're using our tools with common sense, that we're treating people well (because they're the ones who get the work done), and that our processes add value rather than killing productivity.
A few situations I've seen lately that remind me that we need to step back:
- A company went wild with a requirements management system, to the point that the developers were treated as interchangeable piece-workers working off lists of little tasks. Never mind the developers understanding what the heck all this work is supposed to accomplish for the customer so they could make decent decisions. Never mind the drag on motivation. Never mind that the managers couldn't tell whether actual customer needs were going to be fulfilled. Never mind how much effort it was taking to feed this beast of a tool.
- An organization implemented a new PM tool and schedule templates to help get new PM processes into daily use. Great stuff, but they experienced a constant struggle to combat tool angst (having to learn a new tool during critical projects) and outright avoidance. What mattered for the adoption was to keep conveying what really mattered to the executives—and then how to do "just enough" in the tool to make sure critical checkpoints were honored and execs were getting a meaningful view of the projects.
- A process improvement situation where knee-jerk cultural resistance to new project deliverables ("You're not seriously going to make me write down a stakeholder analysis. That's just more paperwork and I already know who they are.") resulted in one big omission in understanding user impacts—and a project "blown up" late in the game by an unhappy stakeholder.
Here, then, are some things I think really matter for us as we execute projects, and try to get ever better at how we do so:
- Common-sense process and tools introduction and use, with an understanding by all of how those things are meant to provide true leverage and benefit for the project
- Keeping an eye on true productivity, because there most certainly is such a thing as too much process
- Always keeping in mind the people implications and impacts of how we do everything we do on projects
To help with this, I've pulled together a set of tools, reminders, and thought-provokers to help us all make sure we pay attention to what really matters!
Site Highlights
NEW - For the Thousandth Time, It's Not Just Paperwork - Project Process Philosophy Chart – PREMIUM
It can be hard getting people to see past the deliverables lists to understand that all this process stuff is there for good, practical, time- and money-saving reasons. Sometimes it takes a picture to get them past the thousands of words in the process docs. Try adapting and using this one-page chart to help everyone see that process is good—really—and show them clearly and concisely how the major pieces simply help the team apply common sense approaches to avoid trouble and get it all done.
You Don't Need 2 Years and 100 Pieces of Paper to Make the World a Better Place - How to Implement and Develop Project Management Procedures and Skills – SPECIAL
This Premium resource is free to registered Members until February 4, 2010
If you want to find ways to improve how projects get done, with fast results for the project and the team's sanity, then just take it a step at a time. This guideline on implementing new project management techniques talks about practical ways to identify leverage points, introduce simple "tools" (yes, maybe a few new pieces of paper, but only a few...), and get everyone on board quickly with a few good, common-sense practices.
It Also Doesn't Have to be Monumentally Complex! - Just Serve Vanilla, and Be Like Switzerland – MEMBER
So says Lisa DiTullio in this interview on her experiences starting enterprise-level Project Management Offices and the philosophies she's developed about what works. If you're about to dive in to a new PMO effort—or already in the vast waters of PMO possibilities and politics wondering if you'll ever see shore again—check out Lisa's opinions on keeping it simple to survive and thrive.
Related blogs:
Lisa DiTullio shared some additional thoughts on PMO effectiveness last week in her blog "What to Know, Do, and Think About"
NEW - It's Truly a Deciding Factor for Team Productivity - Recording Key Project Decisions – PREMIUM
Whatever other process choices you make, don't decide to not write down your decisions! Keeping a Key Decisions List for a project can cut short arguments, angst, decision-revisitation, decision-denial, and all decision-revocation rework. Choose a format from our examples to keep those critical project decisions well and truly made.
NEW - Have You Found the One Hidden Person Who Could Truly Blow Up Your Project? - The Mighty and Destructive Power of a Forgotten Stakeholder
This blog is about a real-life case of mistaken stakeholder identification—missing who had the real seat of power on the author's project. This cautionary tale illustrates that you unless through think it through, you'll never know just who truly has the power to blow up your project.
NEW - Feeling Lost In Mechanics? - Follow Some Project Management Rules that Actually Bring Freedom
Follow some different "rules" that actually bring freedom! Although process can help and tools have their uses, do we really get that it's mostly NOT about either one? This blog discusses 5 Golden Rules of Project Management that were created by the author and some like-minded colleagues, to try to express the epitome of an effective project team and environment, way beyond the mechanics and the documents.
Related blogs:BURNING QUESTIONS - Who Have You Talked to Lately? And Are You Sure It's Everyone Who Matters? – PREMIUM
In Getting back to basics, Ann Drinkwater reminds us that people and their intellect and actions drive our projects, not the tools we use!
Are you absolutely sure you've found all the people you should be talking to about your project? This Burning Question on project communication provides a quick reminder of how we should think about who we should talk to. It also points to two "thinking tools" for identifying all the right groups and individuals who should be on our list. Even small projects can benefit from understanding your project influencers and keeping them in the loop.
BURNING QUESTIONS - When You Think You're Being Snookered About Being "Almost Done" – PREMIUM
Ah, yes, that perennially hopeful state of being "almost done" with a critical part of the project. What the people and the tools are telling you isn't always what matters and means something. This Burning Question provides quick tips on stepping back from such claims and bottom-level details from your tools, to understand objectively what truly is happening and what to do about it.
NEW - Put Down the Tools, and Step Away Slowly - Reducing Project Churn
How do you know when it's time to stop doing something in your process? Yes, there are times when a supposedly valuable process step or management task is actually hurting productivity, and therefore should be ruthlessly jettisoned. This breath-of-fresh-air blog posting from a CIO discusses the "standard good practice" meeting he now absolutely refuses to have, and why.
Educating the Owners to Save the Team - The DVD's of Business Ownership
All the great project team techniques for planning and managing the work lose their oomph if the project definition is wrong, thrashing, or outright missing in action. Business owners have a critical role to play in defining the project, ensuring it is set to deliver real value, and participating in critical project decisions. This article discusses how one organization expressed those key owner responsibilities and educated their owners on the concepts.
You Won, They're Here… But Are They Productive? Fast, Effective Ramp Up of New Team Members – MEMBER
Just because you finally got someone to give you those critical resources doesn't mean those new people are ready to go forth and contribute 100%. This interview contains great ideas on ways to ramp up new team members, from their environment to their understanding of the project.
From the Blogs
Kent McDonald dares us to ask "What's the worst that could happen?" in order to root out risks, even if the project isn't one most people would traditionally consider risky.
Jerry Perone reminds us how critical it is for everyone to clearly understand the project scope, and provides his top 5 project scope recommendations.
As 2010 gets fully underway, Matt Glei reminds us to take stock of 2009 by updating some of our most important documents.
The upcoming census prompted DeAnna Burghart to muse about our frequent instincts to shelter information, particularly from authority figures, and wonders what's hiding on your desk because of that tendency.
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