Christopher McSpiritt

I was having a debate with a friend of mine who is a project manager at a manufacturing plant.

I began the debate by declaring that his title is inappropriate and that he isn’t a project manager based on what he does every day.

He countered that had a project team and was required to submit weekly project status updates to his management team.

I asked what his status updates contained and his reply was that they highlight the output of the team and any issues the team encountered. Sounds like a project update to me, but when I pried deeper he revealed that the output was simply a count of the products the line produced that week.

I then calmly explained to him that projects are unique and designed to bring about change. They are not about:

• Maintaining the status quo is not a project
• Repeating the same thing over and over again is not a project

Projects are endeavors that by their nature are not repeatable, while you want your operational conduct to be very repeatable. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with conducting operations, but too often people in the world confuse operations and projects.

Let me know if you have ever ran across management who confuses the two a well.

As many of you can attest, projects can fall behind schedule. This is not a situation that is pleasant for any project manager. Thankfully, there are things that you can do to bring your project back from the brink. The three main ways to handle this problem are:

1. Fast-tracking
2. Reducing scope
3. Crashing

Fast-tracking

We have discussed fast-tracking in more detail in a previous post “What is fast-tracking?“. Basically this trying to perform tasks that normally occur sequentially in a parallel manner. This can be successful, but it brings increased risk to your project.

Reducing Scope

Reducing scope is just that. In order to reduce the remaining time you need to complete the project, you can reduce the scope of what is required from the project. This requires buy-in from the project sponsor, but this is sometimes the best solution because it does not increase the risk of the project.

Crashing

Crashing is the practice of applying additional resources to a task to reduce its duration. This can be applied effectively when the tasks in question support divided effort. However, many tasks do not support this. As we have all heard, you can’t have a baby in one month by involving nine women! Also, throwing additional resources at the task often winds up being inefficient and costly. We will dive more into the process of crashing in a later post.

Basically, there are ways to reduce the time needed to complete your project but they all come with tradeoffs. Following sound project management processes will help you to keep the project on schedule and hopefully prevent you from having to try any of these strategies.

1. Google voice – auto transcription of my voicemail is my favorite feature
2. Audible – leading audio book service is now available on the Android
3. Twitter – official app that allows me to access Twitter (no explanation needed) from my phone
4. WordPress – allows me to review comments and write blog posts on the fly
5. NewsRob – great RSS reader that keeps me in the loop

Let me know if you have other apps that you would recommend to your fellow project managers.

You have probably heard the expression “This is on the critical path”.

Sounds scary doesn’t it. The term critical conjures up a bad image in most people’s minds. They immediately think of the emergency room and critical condition patients.

Thankfully the critical path is actually a good thing for project managers. It helps us to manage our projects more effectively by focusing our energy in the right places.

What is the critical path?

The critical path is the set of tasks that determine the duration of the project. This occurs when these tasks combine durations and dependencies in such a manner that if any of these tasks slip, the entire project slips.

Why do I care about the critical path?

The critical path is important for two main reasons.

1. As a PM, you need to make sure that the tasks on this path are completed within their planned time frames. This will put your project in good position to finish on time.
2. The critical path is the list of tasks where you can make up for lost ground on your project (when things go wrong). You can use fast-tracking or crashing of the tasks on the critical path to reduce the duration of the path and improve your timelines.

What to do next

Look at the project schedule for your current project.  Have you focused on these tasks to make sure they are completed on time? Have you thought of ways you could compress the critical path if something goes wrong with the project?

Results without Authority and Making Things Happen are the two books in the list that do not focus on IT/software project management. The authors of these books focus on how you can be a project manager by focusing on communication and the stakeholders. This sounds pretty basic, but it never hurts to be told (and told, and told) that as PMs we need to focus the majority of our energy on communicating.

The remaining three books come from an IT-background, but the ideas of them can be applied to projects in every arena. Many of you have read the book The Mythical Man-Month. This book was one of the first to raise that throwing resources at a problem won’t fix it because the complexity and communication needs for the project skyrocket and can actually slow down you project. This is just one of the insights in the book.

Reading these books will not make you a better PM…only practice and application of what you learn can do that. However. I am confident that reading these books will provide you with more information and ideas on how to be a better project manager.

Please let me know your thoughts on these books and let me know if there are other books that are essential on your bookcase.

What is a kick-off meeting?

The kick-off meeting is the generally the first meeting that the project team and the client/stakeholders have on a meeting. For client projects (those for which a client is paying your company), the kick-off meeting will probabaly be the first time the project team has talked to the stakeholders at all.

What do you want to accomplish during the kick-off meeting?

The main goals of the kick-off meeting should be as follows:

• Team introductions
• Discussion of project assumptions
• Discussion of project managment methodology

How to prepare for the meeting

Prior to the kick-off meeting, the project manager should:

• Read the project charter/contract/statement of work
• Assemble the preliminary project team and brief them on the project
• Prepare a list of preliminary project assumptions
  • High-level scope
  • High-level timeline
• Create and distribute the meeting agenda

What to do during the meeting

During the meeting, the project manager should be focused on two main things:

1. gathering information from the stakeholders in terms of the key players, expectations, and success criteria
2. increasing stakeholder confidence by confidently presenting the project team and project methodology that will be followed

What not to do during the meeting

Too many times I have seen project managers try to have the kick-off meeting serve as the requirements workshop and timeline setting meetings so that the team can jump right into delivering deliverables. Don’t do this! It may seem that reducing a few additional hours/days of meetings is a great idea, but it will only hurt your project if you rush the analysis/planning phases of your project.

The kick-off meeting is not intender to replace other meetings. Rather, it is designed to start the project on the right foot. This means making your stakeholders confident that your team can successfully deliver the project and to make sure you know what success looks like to the client.

Follow-up activities for the meeting

The kick-off meeting follow-up is the first opportunity for you to follow your project methodology after you presented it to the client. As such, you need to do the following:

• Document and distribute meeting minutes
• Document and distribute any action items
• Complete all possible action items
• Schedule the follow-up meetings

The other day I was asked the following question:

Why do we need project management?

Of course, I was a little shocked that anyone would ask why project management is important in the business world. I understand that different people have different ideas on what methodology to follow, but everyone I know realizes the benefits of project management.

Well, I guess not everyone does. As such, I am going to list the most important reasons you should manage your projects:

• Sets expectations on what you and your team are going to be delivering
• Helps you define what activities your team will be performing to get to your goals
• Helps you to efficiently resource your company
• Helps you to more effectively manage costs
• Helps to you respond to change more effectively
• Helps to you share progress updates with your boss and clients

In general, project management processes help you to put some focus around items that otherwise can be hazy. They help to you plan, track, and report on your team and on your projects.

How many of you have worked with someone you simply didnt trust? How did this impact your work?

• Were you less likely to work hard for them?
• Were you less likely to share news with them?
• Were you more likely to complain about them?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, then you can see what trust is important in the workplace.

Even more so, trust is vital during agile projects. Projects can ill afford to have employees not motivated to do their best for their teammates. Likewise, they can ill afford to have team members in the dark to potentially important information.

Scrum Masters do not often arrive on a project with the trust of the team in place. You have to earn it. Sounds good, but how do you earn trust. Below are a few tips to help you gain the trust of the team.

1. Tell the truth – sounds simple, but is often easier said than done. Tell the team the truth even when it hurts you. The team needs to know that they can believe what they are told. You are the primary source of information for the team and they need to know that they are hearing accurate information.
2. Fulfill your obligations – when you say you are going to do something, do it! You expect the team to do this, so you better be prepared to live up to this standard yourself. This applies to the huge tasks (pushing back on requirements, gathering new resources) as it does to the small and mundane tasks.
3. Be available – don’t hide from your team. If the team knows where they can find you, they know that you will be there to help them and the project succeed.
4. Don’t hog the glory – everyone likes to be praised, but make sure you let your team be the ones to be praised. Since you are the one often speaking to the stakeholders (and bosses), make sure that you make it clear that the team did the heavy lifting. This will cause the team to get the recognition and they will respect you for not trying to take the credit.
5. Be good at what you do – most people think that trust is only your attitude,but it also ties into your aptitude. If the team is to trust you as the scrum master, they need to believe in your ability to perform the job.

Practice these five steps at all times. If you do, your team will trust you more and your projects are more likely to succeed.

Please share other tips you have to build trust with the team.

What is fast-tracking?

Many tasks in a project naturally occur sequentially. First you complete Task A and then you can complete Task B. Fast-tracking is when you perform these tasks in a parallel manner.

What are the benefits?

The benefit of fast-tracking is that you can potentially reduce the timeline for your project. Instead of having to wait until Task A is done, you can begin work on Task B.

What are the risks?

The risk of fast-tracking is that you are performing tasks before all the predecessors are complete. This could potentially cause errors to occur or may require future rework.

How to use effectively

When your project appears to be falling behind schedule, you should examine the tasks along the project’s critical path. When you identify tasks that can possibly occur in parallel (either completely or partially), work with your team to update the plan of attack to work on these tasks in parallel. Also, ensure that you closely monitor these tasks as the risk does increase for fast-tracked tasks.

I will be creating a weekly recap of the articles/news that I found interesting  that cover the topic of scrum. Below are the links from the week of June 20th.

• http://blog.projectconnections.com/project_practitioners/2010/06/the-benefits-of-documentation.html
• http://blog.versionone.com/blog/versionone/0/0/stories-and-size-what-is-too-large-when

Please let me know if there are additional articles that you would like included on the list.