The Facts and Only The Facts

Lady Justice in Frankfurt am MainWhen managing project team members, the objective project manager focuses on the behaviours of his team. Attitudes, state of mind, and motives are explanations we give for behaviours and we make many mistakes interpreting people’s actions. Telling someone they are lazy, that they are acting angrily, or, that they are selfish, are interpretations of behaviour. Attributing intent to actions makes the observation subjective, probably inaccurate, and more likely to be disputed.

Behaviours are observable. Behaviours are what we say, how we say them, our facial expressions, our body language and the results of our work. Observing that someone was late on three out of four tasks, that they raised their voice when answering a question, or that they asked for help in their task but declined to help another colleague with theirs, are behaviours. Talking about the actions you see or hear makes the observation objective.

Related:
Fundamental attribution error — (wikipedia.org)

Manage the Odds

Peter DruckerThere are two quotes from Peter  Drucker that are well worth remembering when planning.

“The planner must be right in his timing of 10 or 20 separate developments, all of which must arrive at the same point at the same moment lest the whole plan collapse. The planner stakes all on an unbroken series of 20 rolls of seven.” — The New Society

This first quote warns us that each additional date in the schedule exponentially increases the risk of variations in the schedule. This is not a call to reduce the number of deadlines.

“Unless we build expectations into the planning decision in such a way that we can find out early whether they are actually fulfilled or not – including a fair understanding of what are significant deviations both in time and in scale – we cannot plan. We have no feedback, no way of self-control from events back to the planning process.” — Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Targets are control points. Monitoring and managing deviations to the schedule requires that there enough control points to catch the deviations as they happen. This is one of the objectives of breaking down the deliverables for the WBS.

Related:
The Best Plans Are Incomplete Plans

The Bridge Building Plan

According to the PMBOK, the Project Management Plan defines how the project is executed, monitored, and controlled. Steven Sinofsky, the former President of Microsoft’s Windows division, adds that the how and why of the project is an important piece of the plan. The post, “Engineering and social science lead to plans“, is about projects to build technology products. Its lessons are applicable to all types of projects

The Plan as a Bridge

Bridge of Sighs (Cambridge)The team owns the how and the sponsor owns the why. Sharing these through the plan creates a guideline for the project team and the sponsors.

The team makes choices about the means to produce the deliverables. At the same time, the sponsor is making decisions in response to an ever-changing environment. This makes a shared and detailed sense of the overall plan a critical element for success.

The plan acts as a “framework for making decisions.” To make informed decisions, the team needs to understand the context of the project, the sponsor needs to understand how the solution works. “The point of a plan is to build a bridge made up of the how and why.”

About the Plan

Leaderfoot stepping stones tabletThe article also presents many key aspects of a project plan:

  • “The most counter-intuitive notion of a plan is that the presence of a plan means you have the tools to change the plan, together as a team.” — Plans are not chiseled into stone and publishing them provides anchor points that avoid chaos, finger-pointing and accountability dodging.
  • The headline of a plan is a solution to a problem — A plan that gives the objective as a top-line business goal forgets the how. Setting the solution as the goal forgets the why. A plan’s headline needs two legs, the how and the why, to stand.
  • The plan is a team effort  — The best plans are the plans that have the best ideas from the most people and more people contributing is more people with a real commitment to the project.
  • Write down the plan – Slides are summary bullet points. The writing process helps you check the plan for completeness and consistency. It is as important as the contents of the plan.

Starting your plan with the how and why gives context for simpler, better decision-making. Including everyone in the preparation gets buy-in and improves the quality of the plan. Together they help create a plan that makes the execution, the monitoring, and the controlling of the project easier.

Resource Your Project With Peter Drucker’s Help

Plan made of good intentions“The best plan is only good intentions unless it leads into work.” — Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Commit to the Plan

The first step in getting resources for your project is to get agreement on how to deliver the project. Prepare the approach for delivering your project and call for a meeting with the stated objective of getting agreement on the plan; your unstated objective is getting a commitment for resources.

Prepare the meeting. Make sure you have addressed the concerns of key players. The ask for resources is only done if the team agrees to the plan as a team.

Build a Team Identity

This is also the time to build or reinforce the definition of the group. Identify the meeting and the attendees with a group name, e.g. Project X Sponsors; Project X Steering Committee; Project X Key Stakeholders.

Once you have agreement on the plan, it is time talk about the next actions. Instill a sense of urgency. We have plan, we have agreed it needs to get done; let’s get started on the actions before time is lost.

The Quote

Peter Drucker goes on to explain that the only way a plan will lead into work is through the commitment of key resources to work on specific tasks. The plan is ‘only a plan’ if the project is missing the resources needed to deliver the results.

Set an Example

Start by committing your resources first. If you have an ally, have them commit next. It is important that the team supply their best resources for the job. Anything less and the plan is just good intentions. Anything less is showing a lack of commitment to the freshly agreed plan. The project will struggle to get completed successfully without a show of full commitment.

The Power Behind the Method

This approach leverages, in varying degrees, Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion.

  • Reciprocity – The project manager volunteer’s his best resources first.
  • Commitment and Consistency – We get the team to commit to the plan first.
  • Social Proof – The group commits together to the plan and we ask our ally, a group member, to commit to commit his resources.
  • Authority – Peter Drucker is an authority on management. This will speak louder to the team than project management theory.
  • Liking – We create an atmosphere for mutual liking by identifying the group as a team and approving the plan together.
  • Scarcity – We frame our request in terms of avoiding lost time and taking advantage of an opportunity.

Agree to the plan as a team, ask the team to put their money where their mouths are and you have increased your chances of delivering your project successfully.

The ABC’s of ROI

ROI ChartAnalyze Benefits and Costs and Always Be Capturing ROI

Some project managers stop measuring ROI once they have sold the business case. Good project managers understand that capturing ROI is a continuous task that can continue even when the project is closed.

ROI stands for Return On Investment or, in other words, “What do I get for my money?” It is often used to decide whether or not to proceed with a project and to prioritize the projects worked on. ROI is taking all of the costs, the investment, of the project; working out all the benefits, the return, of the project; and calculating what you get for what you are spending. It is a great selling technique because people will invest when they see what they get for their money.

The first ROI calculations are often prepared as a part of the business case before the project is authorized. There are many unknowns at this stage of the project and assumptions are used. Another uncertainty in early stage calculations are the estimates used to quantify things that are not normally measured. The first step in capturing the project’s ROI is making sure the assumptions are confirmed and the estimates are replaced with facts as soon as is possible.

The associated (hidden) costs are the important part to think about when measuring costs for ROI, e.g. Benefits and Overhead for labor; OS, db and maintenance for hardware. Check for completeness and track the costs throughout the project.

The returns of an IT project are typically harder to quantify and it is the most difficult things to measure that can matter most of all: increased sales, productivity, happier employees, better customer service, better customer relations, increased number of leads, better corporate image… . Furthermore, many IT projects target these hard to measure areas.

You will need measures of “before” to measure returns. Analyze the current situation and identify what the project will change. Take the time to quantify the efforts/results pre-change to get your baseline. The only way to get “before” measurements is to measure the current state before you introduce change.

Start capturing returns as soon as they start. If you are staging the deliveries, then start measuring the impact of each deliverable from the day it’s delivered. If you are doing a big bang, make sure you are ready and able to measure the results.

Remember your ABC’s and your customers will be grateful because they can show they are smart investors. More importantly, you can show you are a good project manager with quantified results in your list of accomplishments.