The Hard-Nosed Project Manager

O Group update

Way, way, way back in the early days of this blog (OK, barely a year ago) I wrote a post about O Groups based on my experience as an Artillery Battery Sergeant Major (BSM).  It is now time for an update.

This weekend my brother, who is a Company Sergeant Major (CSM) in an Air Force command, told me that these days O Groups are delivered via email while in garrison.  What does this tell you outside of the fact that being a Sergeant Major runs in my family?

The purpose of the O Group is efficient information dissemination.  They manage through a single, clearly written, one way email O Group to direct the activities of a large organization (300+ persons) for a period of time that can stretch to many days.  Wouldn't you just love to get this efficient?

Think about it a little.  How many meetings does it take in your organization to get 5-10 people organized and executing effectively for a couple of day?  How much time gets consumed running the meeting, the meeting to clarify the meeting, the meeting to get people back on track, etc.?  Don’t forget the time to write the minute and doing the old back and forth with everyone.  Of course you enjoy those meetings, don’t you?

I say have an O Group, kill a meeting…

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

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Growing leaders

This past Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending a briefing on the future state of the Artillery given by the RCAA (Royal Canadian Artillery Association) and hosted by my unit.  I’ve been out for more than 20 years but “Once a Gunner, always a Gunner”, so I do attend these as much as I can.  As a bonus we get to trade “war” stories with the other old crusties…

Among many subjects discussed was the state of leadership in the various units of the Royal Canadian Artillery.  I’m happy to say that my old unit is still at the top of the list due to its strength in identifying, training, and mentoring new leaders.  This yields a few observations:

• Organizations that believe in leadership regularly discuss the state of leadership in their organization.
• Leaders do not pop out of the womb fully formed, they are grown.
• Leadership begets leadership.  Those I trained years ago have trained others who trained others, who trained others.  You get the pattern...

A few months ago I ran as series on leadership that discussed how to identify and pick future leaders.  Let’s assume some candidates have been identified, now comes the time to get them to grow into the job and to strengthen the qualities that got them the job in the first place. 

Here are a few tips that served me well in the past:

• Mentor the new leader.  In the army you don’t have a choice as you’re graded on how you bring up the new wave.  In the “real” life those you mentor will fill your shoes allowing you to move to something new.
• Mistakes are part of learning.  Mistakes indicate the need for more training while repeated mistakes may indicate that the new leader was promoted too early.
• Offer advice even when it has not been requested.  Do this softly as the new leader may not have realised yet that he doesn’t know everything.  Hell, do you?
• Help the new leader identify his strengths and weaknesses.  Sometimes this will be a hard pill to swallow but it needs to be done.  As we well know 90% of drivers think that they are above average.
• Help the new leader “read” people, their strengths, weaknesses, and motivations.  That’ll help him get the best out of everyone to the benefit of the whole team or organization.  That’ll start him on the path to mentoring others.

I read somewhere that only 10% or so of all leaders in civilian companies have been groomed for their position.  I guess it says a lot and explains a lot.  If the organization you’re in does not believe in training leaders then I guess you’ll have to do it on your own.  You don’t know but maybe 20 odd years from now you’ll meet someone from way back whose professional life you’ve influenced for the better.  I’d call that a great reward.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Not really off topic

 The video below is both funny and educative.  Although its primary focus is not project management, I believe many of the subjects discussed can benefit a project manager. 

 

A few that come to mind are:

• Communications between cultures.  Except if you have lived a very sheltered life, you'll have been in contact with other cultures or, even worse, members of a younger generation...  Seeing this from a different point of view or just acknowledging that they exist goes a long way.
• The impact of choice.  Have you ever had a project unravel because too many choices or path were available?  I know I've had clients that mandated that "all possible avenues" be investigated and multiple options be included in proposals.

After you've listened to the video you can let me know that I'm all wrong and that not everything can or must be related back to project management.  I know, I have a tendency to oversimplify things...

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Mission statement and Executive Leadership

I hate corporate mission statements.  The kind of ”ACME will be the best something or other company in the world” statement that rings about as true as those inspirational poster about teamwork.  I also feel that Executive and Leadership are two words that almost never belong in the same phrase.  I never saw the correlation between someone’s place in an org chart and leadership especially since most executive have a very short shelf life, a pre-packed golden parachute, and almost never exhibit care for those they “lead”.

Well, Saturday as I was driving around, I listened to a Stanford University Entrepreneurship Corner podcast by Guy Kawasaki.  The title of the podcast is “Creating Enchantment”.

Kawasaki is a much better speaker and communicator than I’ll ever be so allow me to direct you to listen to the segment from 21:35 to 23:30 for his take on mission statements.  I wish I could have voiced it as well as he does.   Note that he also threw in tidbits about Executive Leadership and team building.  That sealed the deal; I’m buying his book!

Oh, by the way, listen to the whole thing.  It’s worth your time.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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A believable plan

As I was catching up on my reading I landed on The Late Finish Strategy by Glen Alleman.  I find that reading his posts usually make me think, sometimes make me smile, and that linking to them make people believe that I’m not that dumb after all…  Often times Glen’s post are about those common sense things that, for some reason, end up being neglected.  Things like knowing what you are trying to deliver or having a believable plan.

In this post he talks about the need for budget and schedule margins.  Most of the time you are not given margins; your team has to fight hard to build them up.  Most of the time you look at your schedule and there is a sea of red tasks; the critical path extends from project beginning to project end with no break.  To state the obvious; if your schedule does not have any slack, it’s not that you MAY get in trouble, you ARE in trouble.

Now, if you are blessed with some slack in your project schedule you are not out of the woods yet.  As the old saying goes: ”How does a project end up late? One day at a time…”  So, however you got that slack, you have to fight tooth and nail to avoid seeing it disappear.  You likely won’t be able to end with all the slack you started with or all the slack you managed to build up but you just can’t give it away or you’ll end up being the meat in a “rock and a hard place” sandwich.  This situation can happen real fast or creep up on you but the result is the same; pain.

I’ll add to Glen’s post that on top of a budget margin and of a schedule margin you also need a personnel margin.  What good are schedule and budget margins if you don’t have the personnel to do the work?  I contend that like for budget and schedule you need a personnel margin.  Why?  Here are a few scenarios were that margin would be useful:

• Your resources are “potentially overcommitted” due to their name or skills being linked to numerous proposals or future projects.  Don’t you love “do not substitute” clauses in contracts?
• You work in a matrix environment, your resources are on “loan”, and the loan is being called.
• Your resources are committed to more than one project and the other project manager (not you of course) dropped the ball, his project is in trouble and he is sucking all available resources.
• Your resources are committed to more than one project, business priorities change and your resources end up overcommitted.  Multitasking and overtime are taking their toll.

Once again, if your schedule does not have any slack, it’s not that you MAY get in trouble, you ARE in trouble.  You must have slack in your schedule, budget, and resources or you plan is not believable and you have to stop lying to yourself and others.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Be wise

Yesterday, on the train back home, I listened to this TED video with Barry Schwartz.

TED videos are good to amazing; actually I’ve found only one to date that I found boring.  Anyway, I think this video on being wise applies quite a bit to project management.  Listen to it and see if you concur.  Even if it starts with a mention of Obama, force yourself to listen to the whole thing.

I know this will read like a list of common sense items but here are my takeaways:

• Procedures and rules should guide people not rule them.  If you must stick to rules at all times, either you are in the wrong organization and should run away or you are the wrong person for the job because you are plain dumb.  In the same vein, a schedule is just a plan; if you expect to stick 100% to the schedule, expect to fail.
• As an incentive, money has a limited effect.  If money is a person’s only driving force, you may run out of driving force before you reach your goal.  That person should leave.  Given a choice, appealing to greed is likely to be the wrong one.
• Tell your team members what needs to be done, not how to get it done; they already know that.  Don’t micromanage, lead.  If you micromanage because you have to, you have the wrong people on your team; clean house.  If you micromanage because that is your way, you will fail because your team members will expect you to decide everything; you will run out of time.

Be wise.  Lead, mentor, let the main incentive you offer your team members be free agency.  They will trust you because you trust them.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Military teamwork benefits project teams

I had some free time and a PMI Community Post caught my eye; it baited me with a reference to the military in the June 2010 issue of Project Management Journal.  I just could not resist…

Overall it is an interesting article, the full version being more interesting than the condensed version in the PMI Community Post.  My interpretation of the article is:

• You can’t use predefined coordination methods developed for routine environments in a project environment. I would call that a tautology as projects are not, by definition, routine endeavors.
• Theoretical decision frameworks do not work well when uncertainty increases.  Again, this is a tautology.  Theoretical models and frameworks are just that; theories.  Reality is more of the SNAFU flavor.  By the way, F does not stand for fouled; use your imagination…
• Planning is essential and contributes greatly to success but the ability to adapt to changing conditions is also essential.  Looks like the old saw “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, attributed to many but probably due to Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke still holds true.

• Using a common language and methods helps.  As in everyone speaks the same language but also uses the same terms, concepts, and methods with a common understanding of those terms,concepts, and methods.  Especially important when the fur starts flying.

I would think most project managers would not be surprised by the items in my bullet list.  Most of this stuff is common sense I think.  By the way, you can get the benefits listed in the Project Management Journal article fairly easily; just hire an ex-soldier to be a project manager or team member.  It could do wonders for you and your projects…

I have a beef with the teaser in PMI Community Post; it says that Ms. Godé-Sanchez (the author of the original article) warns against soldiers spending too much time together and developing habits and methods that stifle their ability to think creatively.   That is not my reading at all; I believe she calls for changing team composition to increase the shared experience level of the team.  Throw in a few cherries with the old crusties; that should do it.

Finally, one thing that really gets me is Newspeak.  Why did the author feel the need to use “warfighter”?  This is a term that has been popularized by the Bush administration and the pseudo-news outfits since about 2003.  Warfighter?  Really?  Soldier was not good enough anymore?

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Kill, kill, kill

No, I’m not angry and no, I’m not going postal.  Anyway, we don’t have weapons up here in Canada.  Do you need a chief killing officer? is the title of an article I read a couple of day ago in The Globe and Mail.

The main premise of the article is that you need to clear out the clutter, the accumulated baggage.  And that applies to products, product features, people, standing (as in regular) meetings, reports, investors (partners), processes, HR practices, and software code.  Give it a little thought and I’m sure you can’t find other things that are in need of a good pruning; for example the project that doesn’t end and for which all hopes of an ROI have long since evaporated.

A couple of anecdote that illustrate the topic:

• In Steve McConnell’s book Code Complete he mentions the case of a lady who cuts the ends of a roast before cooking it.  She does that because he mom did it and mom did it because grandma did it too.  Looks like a best practice to me…  Eventually the lady asks grandma why she used to cut the ends of the roast; grandma’s answer?  Because my roasting pan was not big enough.  As I said, looks like a best practice to me…  

• A couple of years ago I took a couple of courses with Dr. Harold Kerzner.  Let me go in a tangent to say that it feels pretty good when a guy with 40+ years of project management says the things that you think about in your little corner of the world.  Anyway, Dr. Kerzner was advocating periodically weeding out best practices libraries and doing the same with project portfolios.  That sounds like a job for the CKO although the tendency is for project manager to reuse best practices and fight to complete their projects at all cost.  I don’t advocate giving up easy but you don’t want to have your own “Charge of the Light Brigade”; somehow the cry of “For the glory of project management” does nothing for

Now, I’ve always said that I didn’t want to be a CxO; I’d rather be a NOO (that’s a NO O), but I might just change my mind.  Elect me Chief Killing Officer; I promise to be ruthless…

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Agile? Me too or 2?

Craig Brown (Better Project) commented on my previous “Agile? Me?” post.  My main take away from the points he makes are that Agile, although not entirely new, packages software project management in such a way as to make it appealing to teams.

Other important points are:

• The command and control approach to software project management does not really work.
• A fool with a tool (or methodology) is still a fool or, in his words, “Smart people get it right. People that struggle with common sense will fail at this management system as much as any other”.

As previously stated, I see Agile as a different language or dialect of project management; I do understand that some (many?) project stakeholders do not “get” traditional project management.  I lost count of how many times I’ve been asked for a schedule only to have the person asking go totally blank when receiving it and then asking very basic questions about Gantt charts. 

However, talking with someone experienced in scheduling, EV, etc. you don’t get the blank stares.  This goes to say that speaking a language that all stakeholders understand gets you a long way down the path to success.

The aspect that is still evading me is, assuming that the Agile practitioner is not a fool or a micro manager, what is the economic benefit to the project organization that takes the Agile path?  Can I expect 15% shorter schedule, 17% lower cost, 8% lower rework, 21% fewer bugs, etc.?  The numbers are not that important but they would help me make a decision while investing my time and money training myself.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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Laser beam

I love making weird, some say intractable, analogies.  Let me throw one out; maybe it’ll resonate with you.  I don’t know, I may just be the next Yogi Berra…

Having your team members multitask is like trying to cut steel with a light bulb; you end up wasting a lot of energy with little result.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  Do you give up? 

The point I am trying to make is that multitasking wastes energy by scattering it; with 1000W of lighting you generate a lot of heat and some light, with a 1000W laser you cut through steel.  The difference?  Focus.  The same applies to teams and their members; we scatter the energy of teams in a number of ways:

• Not properly closing projects, leaving phantom tasks that need to be taken care of, which creates distractions and frustration.
• Assigning the same person, at a reduced utilization percentage, to a number of projects. This forces the person to switch and regain focus over and over again.
• Holding meetings with unclear agendas or that involve too many people.

I contend that if project were to follow Balanced Score Card (BSC) principles, greater focus would be achieved, team members would enjoy a greater sense of accomplishment, and energy (and $$$) would not be wasted.  When I first made mention of Balanced Score Cards, Glen Alleman contributed this document; you might want to steal a copy!

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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