Holiday Action Items - Be grateful and help others

Happy holidays and best of luck in 2009 for you and your family!

Back to the blog after the new year.....

Regards,

Rick Price

Best Practices of 2009 - Rescoping Project Plans

It has been a very tough year for project work across the board. Maybe you started out the year with a clean slate and a few projects to complete. But, as the year wore on, you found yourself rescoping your project plan, and the completion of those projects is delayed. If you have been around awhile you rescoped your plan in response to market conditions as they impact the business sector you work in. You were able to stay on plan and execute. If you have not been working during a recession before, then you may have reacted to market impacts while you rescoped your project plan. You got off track with your project plan, and struggled to get back onto the plan for execution.

So, its the end of the year and many, many C-level guys and managers are preaching doom and gloom for 2009. No matter what happens, your will need to manager your projects for results. You want to ensure project success, even if you have market constraints impacting your project plans.

What positive actions can you take to rescope your project plans for 2009?

1. Accept that you have to do more with less, and reallocate resources via the triple constraint. Become the turn-around Project Manager.

2. Retain experienced staff by offering job security while taking wage cuts. Make sure you lead this effort by a substantive pay cut as well.

3. Recruit new hires at lower wages, for longer project lifecycles. Make sure you do not take a large salary increase against your project payroll.

4. Review vendor contracts and relationships with prospective vendors to lower acquisition costs for products needed to support the project. Retain vendors who can renegotiate financial terms, and release those that cannot (keep in mind the cost of any penalties).

5. Review and revalidate project requirements with stakeholders. Some project requirements are mission critical, perhaps other requirements can be postponed to later phases of the project plan's master schedule. Reprioritize requirements in the Change Management Plan, Risk Management Plan, Impact Analyses, Change Control Board to avoid any out of balance ripple effects.

I am sure there are many other ways to leverage project success during a recession. If you have examples, please feel free to post them here.

Happy holiday wishes for you and your family and the very best wishes for your projects in 2009!

"Hands-On Project Management"

Whenever I read job posts for Project Manager, there is a wide variation or misuse of this term. Would you hire a Project Manager without appropriate credentials, skills, and experience? Why do I keep seeing postings for Project Managers with 1 - 3 years experience? How much of a budget will you entrust to such a junior level person? In actual fact, the hiring manager is recruiting a "Task Manager" at best, who will not have budget authority, hire/fire responsibilities, who will not manager people, but more likely will coordinate tasks, go for coffee and doughnuts, etc. Can you imagine a Project Manager with 3 years experience leading a project such as the Petronas Towers? This is one of my favorite all-time great projects which had 2 extremely experienced Project Managers (one for each tower!).

I recently spoke with the C-level of a firm that feels happy enough to use the term "global" in its corporate appellation, as well as its search for a "Global" Project Manager. During our talk about my credentials, skills and experience I was bombarded with what seemed to be a accusation, "I don't see where you have been "hands-on" anywhere in your resume. While he never gave his definition of "hands-on," I spent about 10 minutes trying to determine what he meant before I decided I was talking to a box of rocks and hung up. I suppose he was speaking about some depth of technical experience but failed to communicate that when using jargon.

"Hands-on" as a project manager? What did he mean?

1. "Hands-on" as a member of the Project Management Office?

2. "Hands-on" as a member of some part of the organization the PMO had a service level agreement (SLA) with?

3. "Hands-on" as any number of technical staff from telecom engineer, software developer, network engineer, tester, QA manager, release manager, and so it goes. I think this generally is what he meant in between his personal insults (a great management tactic used by drill sergeants on unsuspecting recruits everywhere!)

Asking if I was "hands-on" is a really poor way of trying to communicate. It shows more of what a person does not know, while expecting the listener to "fill in the blanks" or "connect the dots." This kind of double speak reminds of the very funny FedEx advertising campaign a few years back. "Run it up the flag pole to Rizzo!"

Solution #1 - Our communication in Project Management must be clear, concise and technical where appropriate.

There are several problems when a Project Manager role is "underfilled" by someone who is "hands-on":

1. Title does not match the actual years of experience/accomplishments

2. Years of experience does not match problem to be solved

3. Role as defined does not match an equitable salary

4. Credentials do not match those needed for the role

5. Required project results do not match the planned-for level of project effort

Risk #1 - If being "hands-on" means having a Project Manager serve other roles and do tasks more properly assigned to other roles on a project, there will be a true lack of project management capability and project maturity. That means the organization is not ready to undertake the project at all.

Risk #2 - If the expectation of the C-level is to use a Project Manager as "hands-on" in #3 above, then C-level does not have an adequate understanding of Project Management and will not enjoy project success. So at the "end of the day" time, money, people are wasted. Then the "re-work" must be done. Again, more time, money, and people are wasted. Expensive project indeed!

Solution #2 - Aligning and optimizing the Project Manager's credentials, skills and experience is key to project success. Afterwards the Project Manager must do the same task in recruiting the PMO team, and project teams.

Here is a link to an article you may enjoy about the 4 types of Project Managers/Projects:

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-9182234_ITM

In the long run, I think the C-level was trying to tell me his projects are all in complete disarray and total chaos. And, that he wanted someone to fix it all overnight, for the salary he would pay a person with 3 years experience. I wish him good luck finding that person!

Chai yo Rama IX! Happy Birthday to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand

We wish a very happy birthday and also our hope for a speedy recovery to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand.

His Majesty has initiated over 3,000 projects to benefit the people of Thailand during his more than 60 years on the throne in Thailand. As Project Managers go, this number of projects is truly amazing. His Majesty can be seen in every corner of Thailand with his ever present camera documenting all phases of the project management lifecycle. His projects cover literally every public sector need for the Thai people.

I would encourage Project Managers everywhere to study the projects undertaken in Thailand under the leadership of this very special Project Manager. There are many lessons learned, and best practices for us all to benefit from.

We pay our respects to Rama IX and the people of Thailand on this special day, December 5, 2008! Chai yo krub! Long Live His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej!

The Cranes of Singapore

This past week I was waiting for a meeting to start high above downtown Singapore. I looked out the window and counted at least 15 cranes within a few blocks of the Suntec Tower One. Market crash? Downtown in global economy? Life goes on. Business goes on. Building goes on so far. The sun still rises each day, even if overspeculation and loose credit rules have conspired with the greedy to wipe trillions off global stock exchanges. Project managers still lead the resources for accomplishment of work in portfolios, programs and projects.

Singapore construction cranes. Cranes that tower over the skyline. Asian cranes. Beautiful birds in flight or standing still. Legends, in literature, sculpture and painting in Asia. In some Asian martial arts the crane is a mascot if you will. Great lessons are learned from observing both the beauty and actions of the birds. A crane's meaning to a particular martial art will mean BALANCE among other things as in the story below:

The Fāng family lived in Fujian, a province of China, in a place where there were manycranes. Qīniáng's father knew the Southern Chinese martial arts and taught them to his daughter. One day, while Qīniáng was doing her chores, a crane alighted nearby. Qīniáng tried to scare the bird off using a stick and the skills she learned from her father but whatever she did, the crane would counter. Qīniáng tried to hit the crane on the head, but the bird moved its head out of the way and blocked the stick with its wings. Qīniáng tried to hit the crane's wings, but the crane stepped to the side and this time blocked with the claws of its feet. Qīniáng tried to poke the crane's body, but the crane dodged backwards and struck the stick with its beak. From then on, Qīniáng carefully studied the movements of cranes and combined these movements with the martial arts she learned from her father, creating the White Crane style of Fujian Province.

Balance is essential in portfolio management on Wall Street as well as portfolio management of the projects you have under management now. Right now Project Managers are still managing portfolios of projects globally. Many are doing more with less. Less budget. Fewer people. Maybe aging IT infrastructure or telecom assets. Maybe postponing the start of new projects until risk can be lowered, and operating cash flows restored.

What is the solution? Who will be the hero and provide balance as Project Manager, if anyone?

I would refer you back to your original Project Charter, Project Plan and Master Schedule. I suggest that you ensure that your day-to-day tasking, whether it be design, development, or operations comply with those original "living" documents.

Balanced. Optimized. Aligned.

If not, you may want to perform a very quick assessment to find out how far off the critical path you have gone for your project. What will it take to get in back on track? What will that cost? Who will you need on the team to get it done? How long will it take?

Maybe you are not a hero. Maybe you are a crane. You have the balance, and the tactics to block bad moves aimed at your project and restore the project to its own balanced actions. A crane, rather than looking good standing still, is balanced and fierce in actions taken to reconfigure project performance. You are a crane!

Have a relaxing weekend. Let me know what you think as you have time...

Regards,

Rick

Building Cross-Cultural Project Teams for High Performance Results

In this global economy whether it is strong or weak, projects have a cross-cultural element that we must all work to strengthen. There are so many factors and I will go into just a few here that should be considered when building a global and thus cross-cultural team.

Team integration should be seamless to kick off the project and move forward in step with the project plan and master schedule. The Project Manager should consider each stakeholder, member of the Project Management Office, as well as endusers. A few of the integration categories are:

• Credentials - Nation to nation, school systems have different accreditation bodies to ensure the quality of graduates. The Project Manager must be able to align the value of a university or trade school and its degrees


• Skills - Skillsets vary depending on demand in a market, and a Project Manager on a global project must know how and where to resource the appropriate skillsets needed based on the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS).


• Experience - The level of experience should be evaluated along with credentials and skills to determine a best fit on the project team. Years of experience should be assessed along with depth of experience.


• Merit - Project Managers should recognize the meaning and value of merit in recruitment, promotion, and success on a project may vary nation to nation, culture to culture to culture. Merit is sometimes like comparing apples to oranges, but a skilled, politically attuned Project Manager should be able to know the differences globally.


• Productivity - Master Schedule Plans developed in the "home office" of a corporation's PMO rarely reflect the local differences whether it be as simple as time zones or public holidays. A global, cross cultural Project Manager should know that he/she will not be taking off the 4th of July as an American when working overseas. By the same token, the global Project Manager should learn as quickly as possible that local offices of the project will observe differing working hours (maybe 10 instead of 8 hours), working days (Sundays for instance).


• Innovation - This area is often overlooked on projects. A degree of repeatability has been garnered over time by experienced Project Managers. However, change happens quickly on projects these days, and not just with technology. Innovation could either drive a project via new ideas or new ways of working, or be a reaction to the shortfalls of people, process or tools being experienced on a project. The Project Manager will have to which type of innovator he or she will be. I prefer to drive rather than to react.


• Creativity - A Project Manager who is adept globally, will be creative in completing the project on-time and on-budget. Creativity could be something as simple as using cultural themes to decorate and identify the conference rooms in the "home office", or to actually bring in language tutors to train long term staff in a local language or even business English. The Japanese have been very good about teaching their managers posted to Thailand the Thai language.


• Trust - For a Project Manager, or anyone really, trust takes a long time to build, and a New York minute to destroy. Credible, ethical Project Managers are an example to the global project team. Your words and actions are watched constantly, interpreted, misinterpreted, and reinterpreted. Building trust begins before the project kicks off, and in many cases may take an entire project lifecycle to fully achieve.

I always give high priority to these integration aspects of managing cross-cultural project teams for high performance results.

I am always interested in your comments to my blog posts. If you agree or disagree, lets start a dialogue so we all can upgrade our skills.

Have a great weekend!

Regards,

Rick

Standards Based Project Management

Every client I work with has unique measurable attributes given their business sector, and they in turn have customer relationships which provide valuable experiences that we have worked together to assess via post-mortem walk throughs and reviews. The value add for this type of task is not to enforce a standard rigidly on any enterprise, but to tailor it subtlety to achieve the baselined project management objectives and goals as evidenced in the original project charter without hindering either the enterprise values or culture. The primary standards I often advise my customers to implement include but are not limited to:

· Project Management Institute (PMI) – Organizational Project Management Maturity Model, (OPM3),

· PMI Portfolio Management Standard, version 2,

· Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge (a de facto standard derived from the membership’s best practices and lessons learned)

· ISO 9000 Quality management system in production environments,

· ISO 9001 Quality management,

· ISO 10006 Quality management – Guidelines to quality in project management,

· ISO 9126 - Software quality model

· ISO 10007 Quality management – Guidelines for configuration management

· ISO 15288 Systems engineering – System life cycle processes

· ISO/IEC 17799 Information technology: Code of practice for information security management

· ISO/IEC 20000:2005 IT Service Management System (based on BS15000)

· Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL version 3)

Teambuilding 101: The Old Fashioned Way

As Project Managers we have seen our share of PMO teams, both "dream teams", and the "Bad-News Bears"! These days when we are recruiting project teams and doing team building, what should be our criteria, and our metrics for fielding the best PMO this side of "project heaven"?


Any ideas? I would love to hear from other Project Managers and PMO team members as well.


My team building analogy goes back to the 1967 Stallions little league baseball team I played on for 2 seasons. We finished in first place both seasons. The first season we won ALL of our games. The second season we lost a few but still finished in first place.


What was the secret of that success? I think in one word, coaching! The coach was Mr. Manual Sisson. He was a Vince Lombardi type coach to all of the boys on the team including me. He made us practice a lot. He taught us the rules of the game including sportsmanship (remember that?!). He shouted encouragement, rather than expletives. He brought out the best in all of the team mates.


And, his radical policy in today's sports world was: EVERYONE PLAYS and HAS FUN!


So Coach Sisson taught me that teambuilding should have some cross-training to backup their team mates. Fun begins with a smile, so ask yourself often when you are on your project if it makes you smile. If not, find a project that puts a smile on your face and pass it on! Coach Sisson always had a smile for the Stallions!

Needed in Singapore: Mandarin Speaking Project Manager Needed

Please send me your resume if you are interested in this permanent position with a MNC with Software Development Project Management Office based in Singapore:

Project Manager Job Description

COMPETENCIES

Project /Practice Management
• Creates and executes project work plans and revises as appropriate to meet
changing needs and requirements.
• Identifies resources needed and assigns individual responsibilities.
• Manages day-to-day operational aspects of a project and scope.
• Reviews deliverables prepared by team before passing to client.
• Effectively applies Project Path methodology and enforces project standards.
• Prepares for engagement reviews and quality assurance procedures.
• Minimizes exposure to risks on project.
• Ensures project documents are complete, current, and stored appropriately.
• Organizes quarterly Change Control Board meetings to prioritize and decide on
enhancements for quarterly releases.
Project Accounting
• Tracks and reports team hours and expenses on a weekly basis.
• Manages project budget.
• Provide weekly, monthly, quarterly and half yearly status reports to program
manager.
Communication
• Facilitates team and client meetings effectively.
• Holds regular status meetings with project team.
• Keeps project team well informed of changes within the organization.
• Effectively communicates relevant project information to superiors.
• Delivers engaging, informative, well-organized presentations.
• Resolves and/or escalates issues in a timely fashion.
• Understands how to communicate difficult/sensitive information tactfully.
Technical Understanding
• Possesses general understanding in the areas of application programming,
database and system design.
• Understands Internet, Intranet, Extranet and client/server architectures.
• Possesses a thorough understanding of our capabilities.
• Maintains awareness of new and emerging technologies and the potential
application on client engagements.
• Possesses insurance domain knowledge.
Teamwork
• Consistently acknowledges and appreciates each team member's contributions.
• Effectively utilizes each team member to his/her fullest potential.
• Motivates team to work together in the most efficient manner.
• Keeps track of lessons learned and shares those lessons with team members.
• Mitigates team conflict and communication problems.
• Plans and facilitates regular team activities outside of the office.
Internal Client Management
• Manages day-to-day client interaction.
• Sets and manages client expectations.
• Develops lasting relationships with client personnel that foster client ties.
• Communicates effectively with clients to identify needs and evaluate alternative
business solutions.
• Continually seeks opportunities to increase customer satisfaction and deepen
client relationships.
• Builds a knowledge base of each client's business, organization and objectives.
Taskforce Management
• Suggests areas for improvement in internal processes along with possible
solutions.
• Leads internal teams/task forces to deliver Best Practices projects.
Project Path / Corporate Dashboard
• Compiles a month status report for high visibility projects.
• Attends a monthly conference call on process board matters.
• Reviews the status reports of Project Path domain teams and addresses issues as
appropriate.
• Complies with and helps to enforce standard policies and procedures.
• Organizes local Tech talks and symposiums where appropriate.

For more information please contact: Rick Price, +65 6728 0840 or rick@eprojectsource.com

Project Crisis, What Crisis?!

Today's topic reminds me of an old carpenter's saying: "Measure twice and saw once."

Keeping a project on time and on budget is a lot like that.

I think a lot of senior managers in corporate project shops today are wondering how much budget they have left to get their projects done before the end of the world. They are having their direct reports do data collection in a quick and dirty scramble to get a guesstimate to kick upstairs...and so it goes.

How do you get the right number and stay on it until project completion? Always a salient question, but especially now as the money belt tightens around your neck! And a few more?

Where do they find the capability? - In their Project Management Office?

What technique(s) can they use? - Earned Value Analysis? Balanced Scorecard? Project Dashboard? Portfolio Management?

How can they afford it? - Offshore the work? - Asia? India? China?

When will the assessments and reviews be complete? - Who will scope the work? How will they scope it?

When can they get us back on track? - How do we get buy-in now so we can start to get well?!

These are just some of the questions I am asked on a daily basis from prospects and clients who are seeking a project management solution, coaching, training. I have been working on projects for over 25 years now, recessions come and go, projects fail all the time, projects are turned around all the time. You can succeed and I know how to help you to be successful today!

eProject Source is competitive, cost-effective, and we provide service that begins with us listening to your requirements.

Please let me know how my team can help you.

Rick Price, MBA, PMP
eProject Source
Singapore
http://www.eprojectsource.com/
SKYPE: rickpricebangkok