I recently came across a Project Management article by Anna Possek on Dice.com.  In her article, she describes project management in a unique way.   Here is Anna’s take on what qualities are required to be a project manager:

The project manager must be:

* a diplomat to deal with conflicts between different stakeholders
* a psychologist to keep morale of the team high
* a merchant in negotiations
* an engineer to verify designs and quality
* a passionate leader to keep everybody focused
* a scapegoat if this will calm down unnecessary blaming

The most important quality for a project manager is verbal and written communication skills…

Have you ever heard that before on HR Think Tank?  Of course… Communication Style Bias. Managing Scope: It’s Really About Trust, Communication, and Delivery. No shortage of communications articles here.

What’s missing though?  Here’s something that should be a part of every project management job description – Great project managers should be able to excel and move forward in an orderly and purposeful manner in situations of uncertainty.  You need to be able to chart a course.  Tolerate ambiguity.  Make decisions.

IT Project Manager: A Fraud, Hero or Scapegoat is a post from: HR Think Tank

I think that communication and relationship management is THE NUMBER 1 driver of project success.  Hands down.  Scan the tags in my blog, and come across posts like Four Types of People: Know Your Audience and Managing Scope: It’s Really About Trust, Communication, and Delivery.  I saw a quote and it reminded me just how important it is not to lose sight of barriers to communication in the workplace.

What you say may not be what the other person hears.  What you hear may not be what the other person means.

Communication.  Trust.  Important concepts in business and project management.  But I can’t emphasize how important it is to consider your audience and to tailor your delivery to prevent communication style bias from harpooning your project’s progress.  This approach, dubbed style flexing, is a common practice with successful sales professionals who are skilled at modifying their approach to communicate on their customer’s communication style level.  Improve in this area, and see instant results.  You can bet on it.

Communication Style Bias is a post from: HR Think Tank

I was in a meeting last week discussing project management and client delivery and an executive made the point that the scope of the project is what the client thinks it is – period – and that as consultants it is our job to effectively manage expectations around scope continuously throughout an engagement.

Nailing down project scope has always been difficult, and it’s no surprise that when managing using a Waterfall/SDLC approach, scope creep and lack of scope definition are often some of the root causes of catastrophic project overruns and busted projects (Hence immense growth of Agile/Iterative… future post).  This is because, as depicted in the Dilbert cartoon, most businesses and hence most projects aren’t particularly good at documenting requirements.  And bad requirements lead to scope assumptions that will later contribute to a business sponsor being significantly underwhelmed by the final product.  However, even without perfectly documented requirements, there are ways to effectively manage project scope without having to rely on (and hide behind) some formal 100 page contract?  The key is to ensure your team is focused on the three things that contribute most to effectively managing expectations on the project: Trust, Communication, and Delivery.

1. Trust – Trust is not a nice to have – in both B2B relationships and B2C relationships – trust is critical in today’s economy where partnering and relationships are king.  Stephen Covey said “Business moves at the speed of trust” and when you are managing scope, it’s important to have that “high-trust dividend” in play.

2. Communication (and other soft-skills critical to relationship management!) – Maybe this one should be first on the list.  Why?  Because effective communication is the key to establishing trust in the first place.  In my Rockstar Project Management series, HR technology veteran Michael Krupa noted that “You can’t teach someone to be a Rockstar Project Manager. Either they “get it” or they don’t.”  We went on to agree that you can teach someone to be a ‘Good PM’, but to really excel, a PM has to have a little something extra that is hard to teach.  Part of that something extra is a great communication style, the ability to quickly build relationships, and a knack for bringing disparate and often dysfunctional teams together and moving in the same direction.  It’s tough (nearly impossible) to screen and hire for, but when you find it hold on tight, because it’s gold!

3. Delivery – Trust and communication are the currency that buy you autonomy and a little runway as a project manager.  At the end of the day, it’s still all about delivery.  Your clients are counting on you to solve problems, communicate progress, and hold up your end of the deal.  The scope may not be bounded by a formal contract, but it’s bounded by something far more important – your reputation.  I don’t advise compromising on communication, and certainly not on trust, but a client buys delivery, not friends.  Deliver.

The other interesting thing is that it really takes ALL THREE of these to sustain business in a healthy, continued vendor-client relationship.  Think about it, if you establish trust and communicate well but don’t deliver it’s a no brainer – you might get the invite to happy hour or to the weekend BBQ, but you won’t be on the project team.  If you communicate and deliver, but don’t establish trust, you may get some niche, difficult roles here and there, but you will never be the go-to resource for the client.  And if you are in a trusting relationship and deliver, but don’t communicate well, you put your business sponsor in that tough position to defend your existence without arming them with the information they need to manage up.

Do you agree?  What else would you add to the list?

Managing Scope: It’s Really About Trust, Communication, and Delivery is a post from: HR Think Tank

First of all, I think that most of the time spent in meetings is a waste of time.  I don’t think the actual meetings are a waste of time, since they are an enabler to face-to-face interaction, which is critical, but EVERY meeting should have a set duration, agenda, and a desired outcome before you get to the table.  And about that duration,  I think that in most cases, meetings should limited to 20 minutes.  There are just too many channels for real-time communication to save it all up for a three-hour marathon sessions.

In any case, in today’s business world, meetings still exist, so you should schedule them wisely.  Back when I was a road warrior consultant, I got accustomed to Monday being a travel day and Friday being a “home office” day to catch up on paperwork and local office requirements.  This schedule is convenient for both personal and professional purposes.  Personally, you don’t miss critical weekend time with your friends and family, and professionally, it pulls your real work into the most productive days of the work-week: Tuesday through Thursday.  If you have a meeting that you need people to show up to, and you want their attention, avoid scheduling on Mondays or Fridays.

Also, in my opinion the best time to schedule those meetings is mid-morning.  Ending your meeting at lunch is a great idea too – it helps bound the meeting, and it provides an opportunity for you to take your client, or your staff to lunch following the meeting.  Need to get at a senior executive?  Look for early morning, before their calendar becomes completely derailed, or early evening, where they are less likely to have their schedules blocked to handle other unexpected fire drills.

But remember, scheduling is only half the battle.  To truly excel in this space you have to master meeting execution.  The #1 reason that people complain about having too many meetings is not only because of the quantity of the meetings, but they are also being dragged through unproductive time wasting meetings with no objective and no clear articulated path to solve a problem.  Do you know your audience?  Knowing the attendees and how they consume information to make decisions is critical to meeting success.  Before you block the calendar for your next session, make sure to think through the problem, objective, and approach.  Attendees, duration, and even the venue will set the tone.  Your job is to get stuff done.  Are meeting habits in your organization getting in the way of that?

Are You Having Board Meetings or Bored Meetings? is a post from: HR Think Tank

If you know me, you know that I have a book buying addiction.  The other day, I strolled in to Barnes and Noble and saw a career help section set up.  I picked up a small book called The Job Survival Instruction Book, which is a book offering “400+ Tips, Tricks, and Techniques” on how to get, and stay, employed.  I love the tip Karin Ireland gives to readers on page 113:

Here are four types of people, and how to win them over:

1. Directors like to be in charge.  Give them facts quickly and clearly.  Let them know what to expect.

2. Promoters like to gather information and pass it along.  Help them find ways to solve problems and overcome challenges.

3. Analyzers like to question and analyze issues from all sides.  Don’t ask them to be promoters.

4. Supporters like to support others.  Let them know you appreciate their help.

Whether or not you agree with boiling down all people into these four types (or if these are even the ‘right’ types), you should certainly make it a common practice to analyze your audience – be it customers, peers, superiors, or your employees.  To be successful, you need an understanding on how they approach issues and decision making.  Knowing your audience, and tailoring the way you deliver information to help influence the outcome, is one of those ‘difficult to teach’ traits that isn’t on a resume or a job description, but it’s a rockstar trait that separates the great from the rest of the pack.

Think about it – are you assuming your customers want to see what YOU want to show them in your latest software demo?  Do they make decisions the same way, and on the same information as you?  Are you killing a superior with data and information that is impacting their ability to make a timely decision impacting your project?

Do you agree with these four types?  Do you have any experience with seeing a lack of understanding of personality types impact your business?  I would love to hear about it in the comments section!

Four Types of People: Know Your Audience is a post from: HR Think Tank

It was 2004, in a critical stretch of a major project, and the project team was spending the weekend holed up in a conference room in intense design sessions.  The team was staring at magnified circuit boards, a small but immensely critical piece of a complex radar system and there was a serious problem: the boards were burning up during testing.  There was another problem too – the project manager was behavioral science major who knew way more about Maslow, intrinsic & extrinsic motivators, and cognitive biases than he did about electrical engineering, circuit analysis, and capacitors…and that project manager was me.

In the days that followed, project managers from both sides, Government and Industry, sat back and let the engineers go to work.  It’s not that we did nothing – We cleared schedules, resolved contract scope issues, and managed leadership expectations and project communications.  But at the end of the day, the engineers saved the project because they were allowed to use their expertise and work, instead of answering endless questions from the PM or attending daily status meetings with management.  The PMs job is to lead and facilitate project execution, and Rockstar PMs know their role in project success. Back there in the conference room, in 2004, my role was not to tell the engineers to put a 2db pad here and a capacitor there within a circuit board I knew nothing about.  So I shut up, got out of their way, and ran cover for them.  The best PMs understand the limits of their technical knowledge and use the experts on their team effectively.  Do this, and your people will be happier, and your projects more successful.

What can a PM can do to optimize the performance of their teams while staying within their role? Here are a few things that nearly every Rockstar PM practices on their projects:

1.  Understand the Team -  These PMs understand team chemistry, strengths and weaknesses of team members, and how they best fit on the project.  The best PMs are also good leaders, and that requires the need to coach, develop community, and be a dependable resource for the team.  Want to do this?  Understanding your people is the first step.

2.  Clear Barriers - These PMs work ahead of their teams to move barriers to progress.  They handle both the easy stuff – logistics, application security, badging, IDs, and the big stuff – management intervention, cross-departmental politics, adoption issues.  It’s important to lead from the from the front and remove the barriers so that your people can focus on their individual role.

3.  Filter, Filter, Filter! – They protect their team.  They’re loyal.  They don’t let the business sponsor or client tear into their developers, and they filter communication effectively to the team.  The goal is to keep the people focused on their responsibilities, not worried about how their performance is perceived three managers up.

4.  Don’t Micro Manage -  Obvious, maybe, but this still happens ALL THE TIME.  The most ineffective PMs routinely micromanage their teams – demanding unrealistic progress on software development they don’t understand or inundating their staff with useless status reports and grueling meetings.  Nobody likes that PM.  Don’t be that PM.

So there you have it – four areas to think about while attempting to optimize the expertise and productivity of your project team.  Pair this with the tips from last week’s post about the Art of Escalation and you are on your way.  Stay tuned for the final post in the series, about the importance of soft-skills and relationship management in determining project success.

Readers – Agree? Disagree?  Let’s hear those stories about PMs that can’t seem to stay in their lane…

Rockstar Project Management: Know Your Role is a post from: HR Think Tank

My first job out of the Air Force Academy was simple: Manage the ‘task list’ of action items and have them ready for the Colonel’s stand-up staff meeting at 7 AM. The expectations were clear – Show up on time with a status for every task, and run through brick walls if needed to chase down the contributors to make sure nothing was late.  This was not the type of leader that accepted no shows, no status, or late. It was an unassuming job, and trust me when I say I wasn’t the envy of any of the other junior officers.  Even the guy running the snack room liked his discreet, no pressure duty more than being in charge of the task list.

The Colonel expected his directs to be managing their projects to tight schedules, and the stand-up was specifically to highlight issues that couldn’t be handled without involving senior management – those sticky issues that needed some additional horsepower from the top to drive decisions or outcomes to keep the projects on schedule.  It wasn’t uncommon to witness the Colonel tear apart project managers for ineffectively escalating issues.  Some project managers would avoid escalation at all costs, only escalating at the 25th hour when remediation was ineffective because it was too late.  Others were alarmists, escalating every issue or decision to leadership.  This was the first time I realized just how important mastering the art of escalating project issues is to being a high-performing project manager.

The ability to strategically manage escalation is one of the key differentiators between the Rockstar Project Managers (PM) and the average, or even good, PMs.

To kick off my Rockstar Project Management Series – here are a few tips on how to manage issue escalation effectively:

1. Timing is Everything: It’s a delicate balance, escalate too early and your manager will feel like they are doing your work for you; Escalate too late and the project slip is on your shoulders.  Effective escalation is an art, not a science, but in general an issue should be escalated after all reasonable avenues of resolution have been investigated and exhausted without success, but while allowing reasonable runway for the escalation to still result in a successful outcome.  Issues must be escalated in time to enable management to outline and execute a mitigation strategy.

2. Don’t be an Alarmist: Have you ever looked at an issues log and seen every item classified as high priority?  If you are a business sponsor, is your e-mail stream full of status updates from project managers that are over-communicating on every task/issue?  Project Manager’s should set reasonable reporting requirements with the management.  Report at a milestone or major task level, but manage your project at the task level.  Managers will appreciate the quiet progress and will take the issues that you do raise much more seriously.

3. Have a Process and Follow Through Simply escalating an issue is not enough.  There should be a process to track risks as they matriculate into issues, and then the systematic burn-down of those issues, including those that are escalated for action.  Escalated issues should also include documentation as to what actions have been taken, and recommendations for actions the manager can take to help resolve the issue.  Most business sponsors/managers won’t be as close to your project as you are, and your success lies in making them successful.  Don’t just throw issues on their desk and go grab DunkinDonuts

4. Communicate: Managers shouldn’t be completely surprised to see an issue escalated to them.  Under normal circumstances, you would have been tracking progress on this issue and communication would have occurred that there was an issue that may require escalation.  Transparent, early communication or risks will prevent embarrassment later.  Knowing what to communicate and what to work behind the scenes will mean the difference between Rockstar PM and a good or average PM.

Rockstar project management involves managing the balance because as much as leadership (and clients) don’t like to hear bad news on their project, they don’t like the Boy Who Cried Wolf either. The best project managers, and the best consultants, understand the delicate balance between candid project status with timely escalation of critical issues, and over-communication issues to the detriment of the project teams reputation and ability to work autonomously.

(Image courtesy of http://braddocksblog.com)

Rockstar Project Management: The Art of Escalation is a post from: HR Think Tank

I love making lists.  I’m OCD like that – to-do lists, music play-lists, best-of-whatever lists, lists about things that suck that should stay in 2009, and yes, Christmas lists (notice the obvious omission of grocery lists – that’s one list I don’t do!).  This year is no different, and I have my business Christmas list here ready to share!  It’s Christmas Eve – I have a bad sweater on, spiked eggnog in hand, and am hoping that Santa brings me these things in the business world for 2010:

1. Better Demos from Vendors – Seriously.  I spent a great deal of 2009 in software demos on behalf of my clients, most of which completely missed the mark. It’s not that hard: show up on time, connect, demo to the clients needs, be cognizant of your audience (and especially your buyer!) and PLEASE don’t start talking about shortcomings in this release that are fixed in the x.xx release that is going GA in 9 months from now.  Capiche?  Michael Krupa shared similar sentiment in his blog post Psst Vendors – Some Software Demo Tips For You.

2. Transparency in Corporate Communications – The economy is taking a nose-dive.  Lay-offs are coming.  You (HR leadership/Management) think it’s a big secret, but everyone else knows it’s coming, and guess what – they are talking about it!  I saw this a lot in 2009 – companies unable to come out with some true candor in their communications around staff reductions.  The rumor mill becomes reality, and your best employees might just get scared and jump ship.  In 2010, there will likely be more opportunities for them to do just that, which brings me to my next point…

3. Employee Engagement Initiatives - Companies need to continue to find both ways to be competitive, and ways to retain top talent.  Strategically investing in improving (and effectively measuring) employee engagement can help you with both.  The problem?  This is hard to do, and it’s hard to measure.  Lance hits on this on his blog Rehaul with his post My Christmas Wish: Employee Engagement.  I’m with Lance on this, let’s get this on the agenda for 2010.

4. More focus on Adoption for Technology Projects – Project managers and Business Sponsors are defining user adoption too narrowly.  Most projects are at least trying to manage adoption for their true end-user.  The neglected aspect, in my experience, seems to be managing a wider view of stakeholder adoption within the organization.  I have seen A TON of this in 2009.  HRIS upgrade goes live – we throw a big party – Employees and Managers know what’s coming for ESS/MSS, and global operations teams trained on all of the changes to run operations, but my new data model smacks finance in the mouth and breaks their executive reporting.  It also breaks Comp’s total comp process because all of their files leveraged bank titles, job codes, and the organization hierarchy, which has all changed – their expectations haven’t been managed on the changes and they are involved far too late.  Massive #FAIL.  In 2010, lets see Project Managers and Business Sponsors manage all stakeholders – and make sure your definition of “user” is wide enough to cover the employee, manager, administrators, and anyone who depends on that data downstream.

5. Accountability – 2009 was a bit of a mess in this area wouldn’t ya say?  Economic meltdown.  Bear Stearns – gone.  Lehman Bros – gone.  American Home Mortgage – gone.  AIG – should have been gone but was saved by taxpayers.  Executive compensation was never discussed with such furor.  People wanted accountability for greed and corruption on Wall Street, and for the much slimmer 401K’s and new retirement time lines.  In 2010, standards have to be higher.  We need to hold companies, and individuals accountable.

What things do you want “under your tree”?  Comment it up!  Let’s get this party started early!

Dear Santa… is a post from: HR Think Tank