The Practicing IT Project Manager

New project management articles published on the web during the week of March 21 – 27, 2011.  We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to!  Recommended:

• Elizabeth Harrin finishes her course with Villanova University; the final week was on, “managing others and establishing an environment that moves others through change …  [by] creating resiliency in your project team.” She’ll summarize her experience next week.
• Glen Alleman shares one of his briefings, “Agile Project Management is Systems Management.”  His insights on stable requirements and volatile requirements make it worth the read.
• Todd Williams asserts that project failures are organization failures, arising from lack of honesty, vision, and transparency.
• Taralyn Frasqueri-Molina talks about project governance, and leveraging steering committees to resolve conflicts.
• Ted Hardy has a personal “elevator pitch,” and after sharing it with us, he goes on to talk about giving a demo.  Good stuff!
• Bert Heymans reviews “Blink, the Power of Thinking without Thinking,” by Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point.”
• Dick Billows says, “Status reporting can either build or destroy your reputation.  You can look in control or look like a nincompoop.”  Presumably, there is a continuum between those two extremes, but Dick keeps it focused on a few key points.
• Bas de Baar points out that moving our team communications into cyberspace changes how we communicate and lead – if you can’t see someone’s response to what you said, you are missing a lot of information.
• On a related note, Derek Huether channels Jeff Foxworthy, “You may be in a zombie meeting if …” His last point is interesting: if there is food, there will always be a few attendees who are more interested in grazing than participating in the meeting.  Ouch!
• Mark Kenny shares five lessons project managers should learn from the aviation field.  “Project management does not pursue predictable outcomes to the same degree as aviation has pursued them. This may be due to the fact that the consequences of a failure in aviation are far higher than the consequences of a failure in the typical project that we manage.”  Good point!

Enjoy!

Back in November, I wrote an article about the life cycle of a change request, and noted that fifteen of the forty-two processes documented in the PMBOK may produce change requests.  More recently, I’ve had occasion to ask: what are our integrated change control processes trying to control?  Because it’s obvious that some projects need to facilitate changes and some need to resist changes, based on the larger context of the organization and the goals of the project, in terms of the constraints under which the project was initiated.  In short, different projects need to optimize for different parameters.  So let’s consider some alternatives:

• Optimizing for schedule – if a project has a drop-dead date that can’t be adjusted, then change control should facilitate changes that reduce risks associated with meeting that date, and resist changes that increase the risk of delivering late.  Note that such dates tend to be assigned by some external authority, for reasons that can’t be seriously challenged without also considering cancellation of the project.
• Optimizing for cost – if a project has little or no tolerance for cost over-runs, then change control should facilitate changes that reduce risks associated with cost increases, and resist changes that increase the risk of cost increases.  This is especially true if the project is being performed under contract.
• Optimizing for quality – if the deliverables of a project warrant placing a premium on quality, then change control should facilitate changes that reduce risks associated with errors, and resist changes that increase the risk of errors or defects.  If you’ve ever delayed a roll-out in order to remove critical defects from a software product, you know what this is about.
• Optimizing for compliance – some projects have external requirements that are absolutely non-negotiable, and all other considerations are secondary.  Let’s face it: you can’t accept unnecessary risks with some projects, like payroll and other financial calculations, or avionics.
• Optimizing for value – if a project is to be truly transformative for the receiving organization, then change control should facilitate changes that add value without unduly adding risks and resist changes that add more risk than is warranted by the value added.  When people extol the virtues of an Agile approach, this is usually  what they have in mind.

Note that I’ve expressed this in terms of managing risk; while you can always argue a business case for a specific change, integrated change management has to consider the totality of the project, and the overall risk profile.  We should resist adding the widget that breaks the camel’s back, and facilitate adding the one that improves the overall outcome.

There are probably other parameters for optimization.  If you can think of some, please add your comments!

New project management articles published on the web during the week of March 14 – 20, 2011.  We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to!  Recommended:

• Elizabeth Harrin reports on week seven (of eight) of her “Maximising IT/IS Team Effectiveness” course with Villanova University.  This episode: “When Project Managers Lie About Progress.”
• Glen Alleman has been busy this week.  His point: the antidote to bad project management is not Agile, the antidote to bad project management is good project management.  First, he takes issue with Jim Highsmith’s presentation at the PMI Agile Community of Practice.  Then, he expounds on the core principles of projects and their management, and he follows up with another critique of an Agile presentation, by Dennis Stevens.
• Who says it isn’t rocket science?  PM Hut reprints an article by NASA’s Ed Hoffman on team diversity, virtual work, sustainability, innovation, and portfolio management.
• Bert Heymans has developed a truly unique representation of project management processes, as a mind map.  Take a look!
• Chuck Morton makes some interesting points about the transient nature of commitments, as “universally conditional … you have resources and team members as long as the priority is the same and project schedule is consistent.”
• Brad Egeland recounts an example where having the most talented specialist available for his team wasn’t the best situation for his project.
• Bruce Temkin has discovered three characteristics of transformational leaders.
• New article on the PMI website’s Career Central page, “3 Ways to Leverage You PMI Certifications to Find a Job.”
• Also on the site, PMI’s study of cost reductions achieved and still possible in federal government programs.  A link to the study itself is at the end of the article.
• One more from PMI: Jim De Piante writes about achieving mutual trust between project manager and project sponsor.
• Ann All reports that federal agencies are making progress on improving their approach to project management.
• Bas de Baar shares an interview with Professor Jon Whitty, who talks about Gantt charts in the context of natural selection, and peacocks.  I’m not making this up.  Fifteen minutes, safe for work.

Enjoy!