In This Issue:
From the Editor
Checklist? Check! by Geof Lory
Site Highlights
Never Mind the Flak Jackets
It's Either This, or a Cage Match
Do It Right or Do It Over. Again.
Project Practitioners
What Matters Most?
Practical Perspectives on Portfolio Management
The Intersection of Attitudes and Actions
Corporate Subscriptions and Licensing
From the Editor
Eliciting, interpreting, and managing requirements is a cornerstone of project management responsibilities. Someone needs to keep track of why we started, what we're after, and how those requirements shift, change, and rearrange as we approach the finish line. We have scads of new content this week to help you get off on the right foot with this critical responsibility and balance the teeter-totter as your project careens toward the finish line: guidelines for running a productive requirements workshop, a new SWOT analysis to help your team assure themselves that they're doing the right thing for the right reasons, and 25 new Burning Questions as part of a new tab in our Business Analyst Fast Track.
You'll also find a raft of new articles from the Project Practitioners blog, reminding us to keep track of what matters most (hint, it's not necessarily the requirements) and to remember the impact of our attitudes on our actions and those of our team. Plus, columnist Geof Lory suggests that if your project management procedures are gathering dust on a shelf, it might be time to downscale to a few simple checklists. After all, you might find that procedures aren't what's really required. Read on…
Featured Article
Checklist? Check!
by Geof Lory
In my experience, there is a tendency to get carried away and over-engineer the natural flow of a process into inflexible and prescriptive procedures, in an attempt to account for all possible permutations. I'd like to think that this is a product of the technical nature of most of the teams I work with, but I have also worked with sales and business teams and am continuously surprised at the inherent propensity to over-think things.
Processes convert inputs into outputs. They create a change of state. So when it comes to simplifying a process, more often than not I have found that a simple checklist will fulfill 80% of the process governance requirements with a fraction of the effort and frustration. Checklists define the undone and done states through a simple binary process. It is either done, or not done. It tracks the process through examination of empirical evidence that something exists and can be visually verified. It can be checked off. You can't get much simpler than that. Read more »
Site Highlights
NEW – Never Mind the Flak Jackets – SWOT Analysis – PREMIUMYou don't have to wait for an emergency to call on this SWOT team. A SWOT Analysis—a review of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats affecting something—is often used to evaluate strategic choices (project objectives, priorities, etc.) But it can also be used to review potential impacts on things like a process, solution, or business entity. This template provides forms and tips for conducting one, and includes some contextual examples of SWOT analysis applied to specific situations, to help you see the possible breadth of applications. It's a great tool for considering your options when you're trying to get a grip on your strategic and tactical options.
NEW – It's Either This, or a Cage Match – Requirements Workshop Planning Guide – PREMIUM
You could try to sift through all the competing priorities and interests yourself, but why not enlist the wisdom of the group? In a series of focused, organized, and well planned workshops, your stakeholders and subject matter experts can help you elicit and understand a specific set of requirements, categorize and prioritize them, and maybe even resolve major conflicts in functionality or priority. This guide provides tips to help you think through important qualities of a successful requirements workshop: clear and deliberate opening and closing activities; carefully selected exercises, discussions, and activities; and balanced facilitation. You'll get better results, and it's a lot easier to clean up after.
NEW – Do It Right or Do It Over. Again. – BA Fast Track: Elicit and Manage the Details
"There's a common misconception that project requirements are 'gathered'—as if the requirements are waiting, like amber waves of grain, for someone to come along and harvest. The reality, of course, is different—requirements must almost always be elicited. That is, it's your job to discover, draw-out, detail, review, and document any and all requirements, and review them again and carefully manage them as increasing numbers of requirements are uncovered." It's hard to imagine a better summary of the new Fast Track tab we just added. This is one of those portions of BA-type work that Project Managers need to know too—extracting the right requirements from your stakeholders, organizing them rationally, and prioritizing them according to organizational goals is critical to getting your projects off on the right foot, no matter what your formal title is. Here are just a few of the 25 new Burning Questions available this week:
So what is elicitation and how do I do it?
How am I ever going to keep track of all these requirements?
What should someone be looking for when they review and approve requirements? – PREMIUM
Look for the last two tabs—Analyze the Solutions and Transfer Knowledge—to be released over the next month.
Project Practitioners
Our blogs are overflowing with great, thought-provoking entries this week; so much so, that we chose to make these open access articles the focus point of this week's newsletter. You'll find tons of great ideas to explore here, and of course we've linked a few related templates and papers here and on the blogs themselves if any of these entries prompts you to move forward with some personal action items.What Matters Most?
Tom Ferguson reminds us that it's the little things… in this case, how apparently small violations of our psychological contract with team members can result in damaging project impacts that won't show up on a typical risk analysis. This is a great checklist item for starting up a team; be sure your "contract terms" with your teams are clear, by keeping a close eye on these issues and keeping the lines of communication open.
Related Items:
Fast, Effective Ramp Up of New Team Members – MEMBER
Get your team members up and running quickly.
Sweet Team Building Suggestion – PREMIUM
Stay in touch, so you can spot "contract violations" before they cause real problems.
Team Rewards and Recognition – PREMIUM
Recognize the value of team member contributions and the importance of having fun, without feeling corny.
What is your purpose? Randy Englund pushes for an answer to that question at both the personal and organizational level through his review and summation of Nikos Mourkogiannis's book Purpose: the Starting Point of Great Companies. An engaging and compelling read, Randy reminds us forcefully that vision and purpose aren't just feel-good concepts, but necessary compass points in the midst of chaos. Which way are you headed?
Related Links:
Project Definition: Mission Statement – SPECIAL
This Premium resource is free to registered Members until March 18, 2010
Construct a project mission statement that will move people and get results.
Project Definition: Vision Document – GUEST
There's no substitute for knowing your project's high-level purpose and scope—or your own, for that matter.
Practical Perspectives on Portfolio Management
Jerry Perone is intent on getting most bang for your buck when it comes to PMO value. This personal look at top key functions of a PMO is great for people starting out, and valuable for people already working with PMOs. There's more here than dry functional tasks—this is a discussion of services these groups provide in the real world.As an experienced CIO, Niel Nickolaisen's insights into IT governance and Project Portfolio Management hold tremendous value. This entry reveals a C-level voice talking about failures in the real world and how to learn from them and then make it work, about the value of common sense and intuition in the face of formulas and complex weighting factors. Blending them to generate true wisdom is PPM, The Final Frontier. (Cue overture.)
Related Links:
Building a PMO Executives Love – MEMBER
An executive-level look at the PMO elements that can dramatically increase the probability of your organization meeting its goals.
The Role of Executives in Project Portfolio Management – MEMBER
Speaking of executives and PMOs, make sure yours are both filling the right functions at the right level.
The Intersection of Attitudes and Actions
Alfonso Bucero has a thing or two to say about Project Manager Teachability. There are many good admonitions in here to help us be sure we are being honest with ourselves about our attitudes toward mistakes, and putting effort into learning and our continuing progress, even when sometimes it's just a challenge to make it through the mandatory stuff in our day. Don't just learn passively; be proactive and make the lessons stick.
Related Links:
Ways to Gain PM Skills and Experience – PREMIUM
You don't have to wait for decades on the job to become an experienced PM.
Project Manager Development Profile – MEMBER
If you're in charge of assisting PMs with their career growth, this one-page form can help you track their strengths and goals.
Agile Technique Brief: Retrospectives - PREMIUM
Take a page from Agile methodologies, and use quick, frequent retrospectives to capture important lessons and build on them.
Brian Irwin has been thinking about the Yin and Yang of Attitude, which he shared in his debut blog entry last week. Brian has written articles for us in the past and has now come on board as a regular blogger. His post reminds us that our attitudes do affect the attitudes and situations of our teams and our projects. Where's your pony?
An unusually dramatic Winter Games provided Ann Drinkwater with several inspirational moments for her entry on Olympic Lessons. Her thought-provoking list reminds us to examine the culture and context of our project environments. They may not all be Olympic-class sprints, but we can still apply their powerful inspiration to our daily project journeys.
Margaret de Haan has been tackling her spring cleaning, and in the process of reviewing her library she has re-discovered some basic customer value lessons from the mid-90s (that's the Dark Ages in Internet time!) that still apply today. Her takeaway—the basics never go out of style.
DeAnna Burghart has started delegating with the Delete key. Her relief over the now-empty inbox is palpable, and this blog discusses in general terms how she has begun translating an overwhelming flood of emails into actionable tasks.
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.