In my last blog, I summarised the three steps to successful digital transformation, of any size:
No serious diver would step off the boat without planning ahead. Similarly in business, project management is crucial to reducing risk and allowing you to actually enjoy the experience.
Why write about project management?
There is a huge amount of literature about project management. Why write more? I don’t plan to duplicate what’s out there already. But there are a few key principles that underlie everything else. If you do nothing else, focus on those and use the rest flexibly.
I’ve qualified in Prince2 as well as following rigorous processes as a project manager at Accenture Services, so I know how to manage projects in a large organisation. I’ve also managed 18 month development and implementation projects in a small company, and adapted the processes to suit the leaner reporting requirements. I’ve adapted again for smaller projects, with a minimal budget for project management time to keep the project on track.
Enjoying project management?
Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? It doesn’t have to be. There is a huge potential to make things happen that otherwise would drift forever, and helping a business achieve its goals can be a big motivator.
1. Always remember the big picture
Every project should start with a business goal. Make sure every member of the project team knows it. When the scope starts to creep, check back in – does this align with our goal?
Beyond the stated goal, there are almost certainly some unwritten objectives that are critical for success. If someone has told the board that the project will go live in February, their credibility is on the line. Their job may even be at risk if the project is late. In that case, prioritise ruthlessly and plan work in phases. The board may not notice if a few bits are missing at go-live, but they will definitely notice if go-live is in the wrong month.
Sneaky tip: when you give dates, aim to give the first day of the month. If you say you will deliver on 1st February and you deliver on 8th, it looks far less bad than saying you will deliver on 28th February and delivering on 1st March. Human psychology is odd like that.
2. Sometimes you have to dive into the detail
One of the challenges of managing projects is when you don’t have the skills to understand the tasks involved. You need to manage experts but you don’t know what they are doing. Many people suffer imposter’s syndrome at this point, but your team don’t need you to understand them and they will respect you for your own skills. In an IT world, most techies view the thought of managing a project with horror. They are perfectly happy for you to do the managing while they do the doing.
Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions, so that you can plan realistically. The more you get people talking, the more you learn to sense when they are over-complicating solutions or under-estimating difficulties.
A useful set of questions for update meetings is:
- What have you achieved (or been working on) since we last met?
- What are you working on now?
- Is anything holding you up?
3. Enable your team to succeed
One of your key roles as project manager is to remove the blockers that are holding people up. In addition, you need to encourage them to develop their skills and to step outside their comfort zone when need be. If they know you will support them in trying new things, your team will be more willing and motivated.
Being aware of individual strengths and weaknesses in your team helps you to plan around them. Don’t forget that anyone can go off sick, so think about contingency plans and make sure that knowledge is shared.
It’s definitely easier to enjoy project management when the team are happy and well-utilised.
4. People forget the wrong things
It is an unfortunate fact of life that people remember the embarrassing facts that you would prefer they forgot. But they will not remember the details of the project, so make sure important things are documented. If your project is more than a month or so, you need to keep more detailed notes or formal documents.
When a key decision is made, capture the reason why that option was chosen. Then if (when?) it is challenged later, you can remind people why the choice was made. It doesn’t stop anyone changing it, but it makes sure the new decision is made in full knowledge of the circumstances.
Similarly, if you decide to increase the scope, keep a change log, so you remember what you’ve done and why.
5. People like certainty
This is a problem when managing projects. Unless you are doing the same thing repeatedly with the same people, there is always uncertainty.
Estimating is difficult and a major source of that uncertainty. To make it easier, find a previous project to compare it to. If you didn’t log timesheets, ask how many people were on the project? For how many days or weeks or months? For what proportion of their time? If the new project feels twice as complicated, that gives a starting point that it might take twice as long.
Your budget should have contingency in it. The less certain the project, the higher the contingency. I’ve had projects with 100% contingency at early stages. For those projects, ask what do we need to know in order to feel more certain? Then prioritise getting the answers to those questions as your first items in the plan, so you can reduce the uncertainty and make people less nervous.
6. Stakeholders get nervous
Consider how your stakeholders will know whether your project is on track or not. Share your high level plan and mark progress on it regularly. Much depends on how detail-oriented your stakeholders are, and they may not all be the same. But in general, if they trust you, they will dig for fewer details and you will spend far less time chasing follow-up questions.
The challenge comes when the project is veering off track. When things go wrong, it is tempting to keep it quiet while trying to solve the issues, to avoid the risk of being shot as the bearer of bad news. This is a bad plan. My rule of thumb is that the less I want to speak to someone, the more urgent it probably is to pick up the phone.
Because my stakeholders know that I will tell them when the project is at risk, they trust me when I say the project is going well. But if they think you might hide bad news, they will feel obliged to double-check everything in detail.
7. Enjoying success
One of the reasons for keeping an eye on the big goals is so that you know when you’ve achieved them! It’s easy to get stressed by all the niggles and delays that are common to projects. Make sure you take a step back every now and again to review how far you’ve come. Then share that with your stakeholders and with your team and celebrate your success!