You’d think we would be in favor of unplugging.  That is,saving energy, preventing waste…you know, being “green”.

And we are in favor of unplugging.

But there’s an exception - a big one.

That exception has to do with a huge source of power for Project Managers, a renewable source of endless project energy that often, as shown in the sophisticated schematic diagram on the right, goes untapped.  What is this power of which we speak?

It’s simple – it’s the power of your own organization. And it’s right there ‘above’ and ‘below’ you.

Let’s start at the top. We refer to the power in your organization’s Purpose, Identity, and Long-term Intentions.  These are the Top Leadership ideals that are often publicly stated, and always should be communicated to shareholders and employees.  They give “ideation” to  your organization.

 

Now let’s jump down to the bottom.  Your organization’s heartbeat, its flow, is its operations.  This is the day-to-day reality of your business.

And where are we, the project, program, and portfolio managers of the world?  We, dear friends, are where the rubber (the strategy that comes from Ideation) meets the road (the operations).

What’s all this coming from?

Below you see the Strategic Execution Framework or SEF (courtesy and copyright of IPS), which is used as the basis of Stanford University’s Center for Professional Development’s Certificate in Advanced Project Management.  We were lucky enough to attend one of their courses where this was presented.  It struck a chord with us because we have always preached that project managers can gain power by aligning with the organization’s strategy, and often overlook this.  Furthermore we have insisted that project managers often put on blinders when it comes to the “end” of their project, failing to connect with (or plug in to) the operations of the company.  Why?  We’re programmed to consider a project as having a definitive beginning and end – and that end occurs when we hand over the final deliverable.

 

Only “final” is not so final, after all.  When a project, say a bridge, is “done”, that only means that it can BEGIN sending pedestrians and/or vehicles over a river.  Does this mean we, as project managers, have to continue monitoring each car as it goes over the bridge?  Of course not.  But it DOES mean that we should think about the long-term disposition of the bridge in the steady state.  It will help us identify risk, connect with stakeholders that we mightn’t have thought of, and in general do a better job of creating sustainable projects.  In the bridge example, we assert that the project manager should consider the paving material, not just for its ability to provide improved mileage for vehicles, but also for its ability to withstand heating and cooling without breaking up and requiring repaving every year.  At least ask these questions.  It will help you connect to the operations ‘below’ and the ‘long term initiatives’ above.

 

Take a look at the SEF (you forgot already?  It stands for Strategic Execution Framework) below.  See how important it is for an organization to plug together all of the pieces if they want to get to a sustainable steady-state.  And guess who is at the center of it all?  You.  The well-connected project, program, and/or portfolio manager.

 

What we expound here are great general PM principles and practices, and by no coincidence, are great green (or better-stated) sustainable PM principles.  Even Stanford’s naming of the areas is important.  Notice “Long-term Intentions”.  Long-term.  Smacks of the word “sustainable”, doesn’t it?  How about “operations”?  Hmm, that word also implies ongoing, enduring…. yes, there it is –sustainability, again.

 

So why wouldn’t the middle portion of this flowchart (where we PMs live) not ALSO think sustainably?  We should!  We need to plug in!

• Connect upwards: You don’t have to be a top corporate HQ leader or CEO to know and live the organizations’ strategies.
• Read and re-read your organization’s mission, vision and values.  Check messaging from company leaders.  Of course we would steer you to messages on sustainability and the environment, but you can derive power for your projects’ charters from any of the messages at the top of the SEF.
• Connect downwards: You can, and should, consider our discipline of PM as distinct from operations.  But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore them.
• Get to know the people who will operate the product of your project
• Understand the set of users as a stakeholder group and drink in their requirements and expectations as fodder for risk identification
• Think life-cycle.  What happens to the final product of the operations of your product in the long term?  Can you learn anything with that mindset?  We assert that you absolutely can.
• PLUG IN! Peers in both directions are working towards sustainability, both economic and ecological.  We need to pair with these colleagues and learn from both.

 

 

Have a look at the SEF, we provide a large version below.

And think, really THINK about whether you are unplugged – and losing a precious source of project power.

Original Post Can Be Found Here

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EarthPM and their green project management concepts are collaborations of Rich Maltzman and Dave Shirley.  Below is a short snapshot of their bio’s and we highly suggest you check out their bio, book, and other happenings at EarthPM

Rich Maltzman, PMP, has been an engineer since 1978 and a Project Management supervisor since 1988, including a recent 2-year assignment in The Netherlands in which he built a team of PMs overseeing deployments of telecom networks in Europe and the Middle East. His project work has been diverse, including projects such as the successful deployment of the entire video and telecom infrastructure for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, to the 2006 integration of the PMOs of two large merging corporations. As a second, but intertwined career, Rich has also focused on consulting and teaching, having developed curricula and/or taught at:

• Boston University’s Corporate Education Center
• Merrimack College
• Northern Essex Community College
• University of Massachusetts – Lowell

Dave Shirley has been an instructor and consultant, with more than 30 years experience in management and project management, in the corporate, public, and small business arenas.  He has presented at such prestigious organizations as The Conference Board and the PMI® Global Congress.

As a member of the graduate faculty at New England College, he developed and teaches Managing Projects in Health Care. As part of the Masters of Management (MoM) in Health Care Administration and the MoM in Project Management and Organizational Leadership, he has taught project management at hospitals and businesses as well as online and on campus for the past seven years. He also developed, directed, and taught a project management certification program at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, MA

 

In a world where projects are becoming larger, more complex and increasingly cross-cultural it is no longer enough to be an effective manager of events, processes, costs and resources. To be a successful project manager you must be as good at leading people as you are at managing tasks and processes. You must be able to build effective relationships at all levels and actively lead the team to success through your vision and engagement. You must have drive, confidence and attitude, and sufficient vision and insight to set a great example for others to follow. That is what I call project leadership!

 

To improve your project leadership capabilities, focus your efforts on the following three competencies:

 

Fully Lead and Motivate the Team: In order to build a high performing team you need to relate to each team member at an individual level. You must spend sufficient time understanding what each person’s aspirations and strengths are and effectively use those strengths on the project. When you know what motivates people do their job even better, you can align the individual’s aims and purposes with that of the project and create a truly motivated and highly effective team.

 

If you want to be a project leader, you must also learn to adapt your leadership style to each individual team member. An employee who is very experienced and motivated needs to be led and managed very differently to someone who is relatively inexperienced and lacks motivation. When people are able to work independently you can delegate entire tasks and must avoid micro-management. On the contrary you should spend much more time explaining and demonstrating how to do things to those who are less experienced, and provide moral support to those who lack drive and motivation.

 

To get started, place your team members in the matrix below according to their level of competence & skills on the horizontal axis and their level of drive & motivation on the vertical axis. Completing this exercise will make you aware of the diversity of your team members and how you can adapt your leadership style to provide each person with the right amount of direction and support.

Be a Project Champion: The greater clarity you have with regards to the future and project-end-state you wish to create, the easier it will be for you to serve your customer, deliver that end-state and provide focus and direction to the team. When you understand and take ownership of the strategy for achieving a successful project outcome, you are able to inspire and motivate the team and make the day-to-day decisions necessary to reach that future. To become a project champion, you should:

 

1. Fully embrace the goals, objectives, and plans of the project.
2. Visualize what the end state of your project looks like.
3. See it the way the end users and beneficiaries see it.
4. Feel it, taste it, and smell it.
5. Take ownership, not just for delivering project outputs and capabilities, but for the ultimate businessbenefits.
6. Draw your team into the vision by illustrating how each person fits in and matters to the project’s overall execution.

 

As a project champion, you are more than a manager of people and resources. You become an inspiration to the team and the embodiment of the project. You become an agent of change who monitors and delivers the ultimate business benefits and makes sure that the customer adopts and implements the necessary business processes to support the change initiative.

 

Build Effective Relationships with Senior Stakeholders: Many project managers hide behind their desk and prefer to communicate via email as opposed to picking up the phone or meeting stakeholders face to face. They may even avoid stakeholder contact as it’s a potential source of conflict, requests and changes. To become a true project leader, you must spend time with the project’s most powerful decision makers on a regular basis. It’s not enough to diligently send out status reports and conduct steering committee meetings. You have to proactively engage your stakeholders on a one-to-one basis. That means asking about and listening to their concerns and suggestions, taking on board their feedback and understanding their success criteria.

 

You can do that by first identifying the project’s most powerful and influential stakeholders – i.e. those who have the power to allocate funding and decide on the project’s scope – and subsequently set up short, reoccurring meetings with each of them. Use these focused meetings to better understand your stakeholders’ priorities and to start building strong and trusting relationships. With time these stakeholders will become allies who actively work to support you and your project.

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Susanne Madsen is a published author, public speaker, project manager, mentor, and coach with over 15 years of experience in managing and rolling out major change programs. Susanne is a PRINCE2 and MSP practitioner and holds several qualifications in the area of personal performance and corporate and executive coaching.

Her recent book, The Project Management Coaching Workbook – Six Steps to Unleashing Your Potential, is a direct result of Susanne’s project management coaching work over the years.

To find out more about Susanne, please visit her website at www.susannemadsen.com. You can also follow Susanne on Twitter: @SusanneMadsen.

Conduct an internet search on “causes for project failure” and you will find many of the same reasons cited across sources. You will likely recognize these failures on some of your own projects –

1. Poorly developed requirements
2. Scope creep
3. Lack of communication
4. Lack of quality assurance
5. Unrealistic deadline

The Challenge

Most common issues associated with project failure are things that are outside of the project manager’s control. Sponsors and executive level stakeholders make important project scope, resource, and schedule decisions without any project management expertise or contrary to expert advice.

Industry Solution

Attempts by industry leaders to educate executive level stakeholders on project management concepts and best practices are challenged. I give a presentation on Project Sponsorship. The presentation announcement encourages project sponsors to attend with their project managers to get the most out of the discussion. I have yet to have a project sponsor in attendance. This audience does not have the time nor interest in project management to avail themselves to opportunities. They rely on the project managers they hire to be the experts. Project management thought-leaders need to change the focus and target of messages. Instead, provide information to project managers on how to educate and involve executive stakeholders to optimize chance for project success.

Project Solution

Successful projects require a blend of skills and experience in project management and the business that the project supports. The stakeholder management plan needs to drive toward educating stakeholders on project needs given our expertise and experience in managing projects. We must also recognize and leverage the expert knowledge of the business stakeholders to best shape the project management plan, communicate, and identify risks. The goal is to build a project culture that encourages collaboration, knowledge sharing, respect, and trust amongst all project stakeholders. Project managers will have greater influence in those important project decisions when this culture exists. 

Strategies for Sponsorship will follow this model by focusing on the project managers’ needs to increase project sponsorship effectiveness. The book will also speak directly to project sponsors as well with tools the project manager may leverage at the most appropriate time.

These strategies can be adapted to suit the circumstances but the focus must be the executive stakeholder- who after all is the owner; even though they may not realize it. 

 

Bio

Strategies for Project Sponsorship is a future book by Peter Taylor, Vicki James, and Ron Rosenhead. Please visit www.strategies4sponsors.com for more information. Please complete the survey found here. There is also an opportunity to earn PDUs by sharing your project sponsor story.

Gathering and managing requirements is one of the most critical activities in any product development project. If requirements for a project are not properly gathered and documented, the odds of project success are often greatly diminished. This short blog post shares 4 practical tips for better requirements management.

Tip-1: Capture 100% of Requirements

This may sound rather basic and elementary. But the fact is, at most companies, capturing 100% of the requirements is a huge challenge. Why is this so?

At most companies, requirements come from many varied sources (Customers, Prospective customers, Partners, Executives, Employees, et al), via many different channels (Email, Phone calls, IM chats, Tweets, Hallway conversations, etc), and in many different formats (Word, Excel, Post-it notes, Wikis, Forums, etc). Add it all up – and it is no wonder most companies struggle to capture 100% of the requirements!

By ensuring you capture 100% of the requirements, you can ensure your project gets off on the right foot. At the end of this post, I’ll share a link to a PDF that provides concrete, practical steps for achieving this.

Tip-2: Proactively Verify Requirements

Once you’ve captured 100% of the requirements, the next step is to ensure that the requirements are verified. What do I mean by “verify”?

Most stakeholders from whom you and your project team receive requirements are not trained in writing requirements. As a result, their requirements often tend to be vague, ambiguous and sometimes even self-contradictory!

By following up with the requestors proactively to make sure their requirements are properly understood & documented is critical. Otherwise, valuable resources can be spent implementing the wrong requirements! The PDF linked at the end of this post shares more details on this too.

Tip-3: Ensure Completeness of Requirements

After you’ve made sure that all the requirements are captured and properly verified – the next step is to ensure that the requirements are complete. A lot of projects struggle with this step.

In fact, The Standish CHAOS Report, which surveyed 9,236 IT projects found that “Incomplete Requirements” was one of the top reasons for project failures.

By creating and using a well-defined template for requirements – a template that addresses all essential attributes of a requirement – you can make sure the requirements are complete. A good requirements management software tool can also help with this.

Tip-4: Prioritize Requirements Systematically

Most projects use what I refer to as the “Squeaky Wheel” prioritization method! That os – whoever is the loudest gets high priority assigned to their requirements!

It is important to use a systematic method to evaluate and prioritize requirements. Prioritization should ideally be based on Return-on-Investment (ROI).

When it is hard to do thorough ROI analysis for each requirement (or bucket of requirements), it is okay to use a “proxy” for ROI – this could be as simple as incremental revenue achievable by implementing a set of requirements. But make sure the prioritization is based on a systematic, documented analysis – this will help you avoid the pitfalls of the “Squeaky Wheel Prioritization” method.

PDF White Paper: For practical steps you can use to execute the above tips – as well as for 3 additional, valuable tips – get the free PDF white paper at http://www.accompa.com/wp.html.

If you’re interested in automating your requirements gathering and management using customizable templates/methodology – Accompa requirements management software can help you. It is used by more than 100 companies (from Fortune-500 companies to growing startups) to capture and manage their requirements systematically. If you’re interested, you can apply for a 30-day free trial here.

Let’s be honest… when you start a new project, which are the main areas you’re focusing on?

Validation of the Project Charter: yes, correct! Collect Requirements: absolutely, I agree! Proper Risk Management: I can’t say no!

We can list all different aspects that experienced Project Managers suggest to focus on, but very rarely would Ethics come to this list.

Yes, Ethics in Project Management!

 

PMI (Project Management Institute) started to focus on Ethics several years ago publishing the PMI® Code of Ethics (Honesty, Fairness, Respect and Responsibility), nowadays the PMP exam tests Ethics not as a separate knowledge area, but integrated in the whole framework, and I know other exciting tools will be shortly published.

Project managers, as professionals, have to apply ethics behavior at all levels:

Company:  when you’re assigned to a project, do you honestly make an assessment of your skills? Do you evaluate if you have the right knowledge to support your company’s strategic goals? You should make sure that you are Competent for the job you’ve been assigned to. Defining if you’re competent for a job is not an easy task, as –for instance- is not equal to credentials or education. According to Woods & Power, you should be able to manage and integrate various virtues, abilities and attitude. Remember, that starting a project without the proper competence may lead  the company to change the Project Manager (with all the unforeseeable costs) or, in the worst scenario, to a project failure.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should avoid challenging projects that will allow you to grow, it’s about evaluating honestly how big is the gap between your knowledge and what it’s required, and then act consequentially.

 

Team: in these times, all the companies I’ve worked with are suffering a lack or insufficient pool of resources. So, team-members are the most valuable assets and you should treat them in a rewarding way. If you create an Ethical Environment, where you encourage collaborative and respectful behavior, you can attract and retain the most valuable people, and you can ask them to run the extra mile when (and only when) needed. This is the biggest lesson I learned when I was a business consultant; I joined one of the most important projects of my company, but then the lack of transparency was so massive I then understood why my colleagues left that project!

Another core aspect is to help them understand clearly what they can expect by joining your team, so you can support their expectations or better clarify them before it’s too late.

 

Stakeholders: I feel that as Project Managers we are accountable for all the aspects of the project: when it’s successful and when it’s failing. Especially in troubled projects, it’d be easier to blame someone else who managed the project before or just the history of the project, but being accountable for it (with your clients or your company) will give you credibility; and credibility is another core asset for a professional, and a strong basis for a trustful relationship.

This is directly linked with accuracy on all the aspects: from a clear communication to setting the write expectation or to provide the correct report.  One of the biggest temptations we always have is to make-up reports to make them looking better than they actually are.  I can guarantee you that you could not easily make-up a broken trustful relationship.

 

Personal: be true to yourself: always be sure you do not have hidden agendas when you’re doing something within a project.

Avoid any kind of conflict of interest (or your reputation will be damaged) and especially be sure to maintain care of yourself. You should be honestly evaluating your level of stress and your health to always provide a professional level of commitment. Acting in an ethical way asks us to always evaluate if we’re able to support properly the team, the project, and the company.

Be always fair and you’ll be able to address all the kinds of communication, even the toughest ones, because you give and have gained respect to all the level.

 

I would like to conclude this very short excerpt, which purpose is to trigger some thoughts and start you noticing and amending small unethical acts your project might suffer, highlighting that the Cost of Integrity should always be counted in your decision.

In the short term changing some information in order to meet an important milestone would you bring benefit or relief some pressure; blaming someone else for a poor quality job might make look you as a strong leader; but be sure that in the long term, only Integrity can assure you and your project to be successful.

Do not misunderstand me: I know that Integrity costs and it’s hard to achieve and maintain, but the cost of lack of Integrity is way too high.

 

After Classical Studies, Fabio Rigamonti graduated in Management and Production Engineering.

He started as a business consultant for IT Industries and then moved to project management, enjoying the opportunity to manage both hard and soft skills.

He’s currently working for an International Company, on ERP implementations.

He is PMP since 2011 and holds Prince2 Foundation.

He’s volunteering as Knowledge Content Leader for “PMI – Ethics in Project management – Community of Practice” http://ethics.vc.pmi.org (an exclusively PMI member benefit!) and he encourages all to subscribe in order to join the discussion, participate to eLearning or just assist to webinars.

He can be reached on the Community of Practice or via Linkedin.