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The Power of Choosing
By Raymond Posch

Someone asked me if I really believe that companies have ever empowered their employees. This was following my newsletter article on empowered teams (in Issue 4).

"Isn't that really one of those idealistic things... something that everyone agrees is a great idea, but which no real company ever does?", he asked me. He went on to say that he had never met any managers who were willing to share their power with the people who worked for them.

I think it's very sad that empowerment is still so uncommon after so much has been said about the subject over the last ten years or more. And though it is uncommon, empowerment has happened and does happen. It's one of those things that allows those few rare companies who empower employees to stand out miles above the competition. And my friend is right, managers (especially senior managers) in the herd companies are indeed, for the most part, unwilling to share their "power".

But I have been fortunate enough to see empowered teams and the difference empowerment makes in several different situations. The first time was at a division of Galileo International which operated the Apollo travel reservation system. The division was a software start-up that was trying some things that were new and different than the stodgy parent company.

Employees of the start-up business were not empowered generally, but there were cross-functional process improvement teams that were facilitated by one particular "change agent" within the division. On those teams, or at least on the team I was on, I saw empowerment happen and very creative and successful results come out of the team.

More recently, I have seen glimpses of it on a large cross-functional project that I am managing and on other projects at DaVita where I am employed as a project manager. What I have seen happen is a higher level of energy, creativeness, productivity, and accomplishment in projects and in certain team events than I have seen in other corporate organizations. I mentioned DaVita in the article, and I attribute the higher level of empowerment to DaVita's mission, values, and culture which comes from the leadership at the top.

So empowerment can and does happen, at least some of the time. But I would like to add that I have experienced the power of choice, or choosing, and I would like to explain how it relates to empowerment.

Sometimes we think that certain things that we desire can only be achieved by someone else giving us permission or by certain things happening, usually under the control of others, that will make what we desire possible for us. A great example is happiness. So many people think that they will finally be happy if they make X amount of money, or achieve a certain level of success, or if someone (like a spouse or a boss) changes their behavior and does the right things to make them happy.

But happiness is not accrued that way. Happiness is a choice. You will be happy when you finally choose to be happy - right now or next week, whenever you make up your mind to be happy, pretty much independent of outside circumstances. It is an inside job, as someone once said.

I've learned that freedom is also very much a choice. Choosing freedom from previous limitations is very powerful. It breaks through old beliefs that are holding us back. When I choose to be free to become the person I desire to be or to create the life I desire to live, I am saying that I will tap into hidden energies and resources that I know, deep down inside, that I have access to and through which I can produce new results in my life.

I happen to think empowerment is fundamentally a choice like happiness and freedom. You have to choose to be empowered to do whatever it is you are committing to doing or achieving - whether that is on a business project or at a personal level. When you choose to be empowered, you are deciding deep down to find a way.

Yes, the company culture may put up roadblocks. Yes, you may have to jump through hoops and ask for more approvals than you think should be necessary. But when you choose to be empowered - and to empower others - you will make a difference in your relationships, your enjoyment in work, the results you produce, and in the results of others around you.

So choose to be an empowered project manager, and find ways to empower your team.

Raymond Posch is publisher of Project Success Tips newsletter. See Ray's bio on our Meet the Experts page. He can be reached at ray@projectsuccesstips.com.

Book Review: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers
By Elizabeth Harrin

Firstly, a big SORRY to Anthony Mersino. Anthony sent me his book at the end of last year and it has taken me forever to get around to posting a review.

That’s not because I haven’t read it. On the contrary, as soon as it arrived I picked it up and then couldn’t put it down. And there aren’t that many business books that I can sit and read cover to cover without being bored.

It’s the book I wished I’d written. If you don’t own a copy, go out and get one.

That’s the short review. If you want to know a bit more about what you’d be investing in if you buy a copy, then read on…

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers covers all the soft skills that they don’t teach you on project management training courses. The book’s subtitle is ‘The people skills you need to achieve outstanding results’. EI is all about being able to use your hard skills successfully through people: essentially, you could be the best project manager in the world but if you rub everyone up the wrong way every time you open your mouth then you are never going to be good at your job. Project management, in my opinion (although I expect Anthony would agree) is all about getting things done through people, and knowing how people tick is a great skill for project managers to have.

There has been a fair amount written about EI (or EQ as it is also called), and Anthony sets out the development of EI before going on to explain how you can measure your own. This forms the first part of the book. Part 2 covers self-awareness and self-management. After all, you can’t manage others if you can’t manage yourself. This section includes tips on self-confidence and techniques to better understand your impact on others.

Part 3 looks at social awareness and relationship management. It’s a really useful guide to building successful relationships and how this can help stakeholder management. It sets out explain group dynamics and also includes a chunk on developing others, which I found particularly interesting.

Each part specifically puts EI in the project context. This was important to me as so many business books are incredibly general and don’t take into account the sensitivities of managing diverse, non-co-located, matrix teams in a project environment. The final part of the book is very targeted as it covers using EI to lead project teams. This section looks at what it takes to lead a team, techniques for creating a positive team environment and different leadership styles. The bit about how project managers set the tone and direction for the project is very interesting.

All through the book Anthony draws on his experience and the experiences of his colleagues, and he writes in a very conversational style. There’s lots of useful information and further reading in the appendices, but I thought the emotional tally sheet (where you tick off the emotions of team members during a meeting) would probably do more harm than good in my team. As with all the techniques discussed in the book, you don’t have to use it. There is more than enough in here for you to take the bits that appeal to you and leave the rest for when you have more time.

If that sounds interesting, but you still aren’t sure enough to buy it on Amazon straight away, then check out Anthony’s blog, EQ4PM, which talks more about the practical application of soft skills and EI in a project environment.

Elizabeth Harrin, BA, MA, MBCS, is the author of the book "Project Management in the Real World", writes the irreverent blog A Girl's Guide to Project Management, and is a columnist for pmtips.net. (This article was previously published on her blog.) See Elizabeth's complete bio on the Meet the Experts page.

On Communication and Coordination
By Raymond Posch

Probably the single most important thing that is needed in managing a project – especially any large project – is communication and coordination. I treat them here as one activity because, in a project, the purpose of communication for the most part is not just to send information in one direction, but to solicit responses and to coordinate actions.

So “communication and coordination” is the core activity that a project manager does, day in and day out, to make a project happen. Now that is not to say that communication and coordination should be the only thing. A project without a plan is merely unorganized activity and is doomed to fail, at least by most measures that should be applied to business projects. (And believe me, there are lots of “cowboy” types that think they can just work it out as they go. Yee hah!) So planning is also absolutely critical.

The project manager must communicate frequently with the team about their tasks and deliverables, but he or she must also communicate with the customer or business sponsor, the stakeholders, senior management, and others in the organization who have a need to know about project status and need to discuss specific areas of progress and specific issues in some detail.

What kind of communication are we talking about? Customers want to know whether issues have been resolved. Customers and users should want to know when they can see products or design drawings or mockups. Sponsors want to know how the project is doing against the planned schedule and budget. Resource managers need to know if the resource forecasts and schedule when the resources will be needed are on track. If the project is critical and/or expensive, execute management or the board will want to know if projections for completion date and total cost are staying in line with the original forecasts. And so on.

Most large organizations that have established and repeatable project management processes require the project manager to develop a communication plan early in the project. Developing a communication plan helps the project manager think through how recurring communications with specific players, including written status reports, should occur.

For example, there will likely need to be:

a weekly status meeting with the core project team
a weekly status meeting with the customer or sponsor
a weekly status report to the core team and customer
a bi-weekly or monthly status meeting with key stakeholders and/or managers
a monthly report to senior management measuring actual progress and cost against plan
a quarterly project review with the PMO and/or senior management, at least on projects above a certain size, to ensure that the project is reasonably on track and dealing effectively with all serious risks that could impact the project

Status reports to senior management will typically require that indicators of project health, based on specific kinds of conditions or business rules, be included. These indicators usually are in the form of green/yellow/red, where:

green indicates the project is healthy in terms of schedule and budget,
yellow indicates that problems have occurred or might occur and appropriate actions have been taken, although with some impact on schedule or budget, and
red indicates that intervention by or escalation to senior management is required (usually by adding resources to the project). Red status might also mean that there are problems that cannot be readily resolved or that certain risks, known or unknown, have occurred which had serious impact on the project.

But, aside from regular meetings and status reports, communications will often need to be spontaneous and in reaction to things that happen day to day. These communications can be face to face, over the phone, or in ad hoc meetings with the purpose of dealing with the immediate issue at hand. Face to face discussions or one-on-one phone calls should be used often because the project manager needs to know what the other person really feels about the issue, and sometimes levels of concern or frustration get suppressed or toned down in meetings. And it is good to know about real concerns and real frustrations with all the players – especially with the customer or senior management, but also with the members of the team who are the closest to the project.

It is actually hard for the project manager to communicate too much. But it can be disastrous when the project manager does not communicate enough with the project’s constituents.

Raymond Posch is publisher of Project Success Tips newsletter. See Ray's bio on our Meet the Experts page. He can be reached at ray@projectsuccesstips.com.

Issue 9 - December 13, 2009

In this issue:

We begin a four-part series by Aaron Shenhar entitled "Unleashing the Power of Project Management." Based on an enormous amount of research into project management, Aaron gives us this introduction to this series:
Projects are the engines that drive innovation and change. Yet top management ignored them for a long time. Thus many projects today do not meet their objectives. In order to unleash the hidden potential that exists in projects, companies must learn how to manage projects in a highly adaptive, flexible, and strategic way. This change can make projects one of the most powerful competitive assets of modern corporations. In this series of articles we outline the potential that exists today in project management and what organizations can do to take advantage of this power.
The second article is by me, Ray Posch, on the importance of leveraging the team.
And in the last article, Michael Greer, writes about 10 ways the organization or the project manager can screw up any project.

Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 1 - The Project Management Opportunity
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

Although projects have been around for thousands of years and project management as a discipline about fifty years, there are two reasons why projects and project management are becoming more and more important today to almost all organizations and businesses. First, the share of on-going operations in most organizations is on the decline, while the share of projects is rising. This trend began in the early 1900s during the industrial revolution, and it is accelerating in almost every organization or industry: Not only do product lifecycles become shorter, today’s customers require greater variety and more choices, forcing companies to offer more products. In addition, market globalization is forcing businesses to respond to local markets and to low-cost competition around the world.

The second reason why organizations need to look closely at their project management is that across the board you may find that most projects today do not meet their time and budget goals and many do not meet their business objectives. Study after study shows that only one out of three projects is really considered successful. Thus, if two thirds of the efforts going into projects do not create the expected value, there is clearly a reason for concern.

Ironically, during the last few decades many organizations focused on improving their operations, but not their projects. This trend goes back to the turn of the Century when Frederick Taylor developed the scientific management principles, which greatly influenced the evolution of mass production systems, and it continued to this date with more recent concepts such as Just In Time, Lean Manufacturing, Reengineering, Supply Chain Management, and of course, the latest one, Six Sigma.

Although operational efficiency is important, it has its limitations. With time, at least conceptually, all companies may reach a similar level of efficiency. Additional investment in efficiency may not bring the advantages that it has created in the past. At best it may help you stay in the game and not fall behind. For comparison you may look at quality, which during the last decade has become a must, rather than a source of competitiveness as in the past.However, no business enterprise today can survive if it is only focused on improving its operations. Projects are the engines that drive innovations from idea to commercialization. But projects are also the drivers that make organizations better, stronger, and more efficient. And since most organizations today accelerate toward a project-based world, shouldn’t companies ask themselves are they doing a better job than their competitors?

This situation presents a tremendous opportunity. The time has come to unleash the untapped potential that exists in projects. We believe that if managers and organizations will pay a greater attention to their project management practices, the rewards will be significant. If top executives will spend as much time on project management as they did on Six Sigma, they will make their organizations much stronger and more competitive.

Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar is a Professor of Project and Program Management at Rutgers Business School and the CEO of the Technological Leadership Institute, a consulting and training company in technology and project leadership— http://www.tli-llc.com/. He is the coauthor of Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach to Successful Growth and Innovation, Harvard Business School Press.

Leverage the Team
By Raymond Posch

It is often tempting to a project manager, especially if he or she is also a subject matter expert in the type of project to be performed, to do too much planning independently and to make too many independent decisions.

By independently, I mean without the direct involvement of the team, and often with too little direct or indirect input from the project manager stakeholders. This tends to be especially true for a project manager who is fairly new to the project management role.

Experience teaches, however, that the project manager needs to use the power, creativity, and collective intelligence of the team. Now I am using team in the general sense here. Teams, by their nature, bring the diverse experience, knowledge, viewpoints, styles of thinking and interacting, and so on, of a group of people to the table. Teams, in their diversity, hold the potential for great creative energy on any project.

In the case of your specific project, hopefully the project team has been chosen wisely for their fit and potential contribution to the project. A well chosen team can bring even greater focus, synergy, commitment, knowledge of the context and the problem to be solved, experience with existing processes, and appropriate skills to the project. Therefore, the project manager should always insist on selecting the project team with this in mind.

The project manager should leverage the power of the team working together, collectively and collaboratively, throughout all phases of the project. It is tempting, especially when team members are part-time contributors on your project and otherwise busy on other projects, to restrict participation of team members to specific activities in which they are the key players. But that usually results in a less effective team because the individuals know less about what is going on in the project, and they are less able to provide insights about how the other parts of the project interrelate and potentially impact their part of the project.

Leverage the whole team as much as possible. When you do, you will be surprised by the creativity and smarts of the team working as a collective whole. The team should be involved as a whole in the requirements definition process, the planning process, and even the project execution and control – because the more shared knowledge the team has about the project, and the more synchronized it is about the progress and events within the project, the more effective and successful it will be in working towards the project’s real goals.

Remember that a team is a collection of unique individuals – people with unique skills and capabilities. The more you know about them individually, the more you can leverage strengths and minimize weaknesses. Never make the mistake of treating people as interchangeable resources, and never allow senior managers or others to make that mistake.

Leverage the power of the team. It is the single most important, and I would even say critical, factor in how successful the project will be – in whatever way that is measured. But make sure the team is clear about the goals and how success will be measured from early on.

Raymond Posch is publisher of Project Success Tips newsletter. See Ray's bio on our Meet the Experts page. He can be reached at ray@projectsuccesstips.com.

Ten Guaranteed Ways to Screw Up Any Project
By Michael Greer

Don’t bother prioritizing your organization’s overall project load. After all, if there’s a free-for-all approach to your overall program management (i.e., “survival of the fittest”), then the projects that survive will be those that were destined to survive. In the meantime, senior management need not trouble themselves aligning projects with strategic goals or facing the logical imperative that people simply cannot have 12 number one priorities!
Encourage sponsors and key stakeholders to take a passive role on the project team. Let them assert their authority to reject deliverables at random, without participating in defining project outcomes in a high-resolution fashion. And above all, don’t bother project sponsors when their constituents (such as key SMEs and reviewers) drop the ball and miss their deadlines.
Set up ongoing committees focusing on management process (such as TQM groups, etc.) and make project team members participate in frequent meetings and write lots of reports… preferably when critical project deadlines are coming due.
Interrupt team members relentlessly … preferably during their time off. Find all sorts of trivial issues that “need to be addressed,” then keep their beepers and cell phones ringing and bury them in emails to keep them off balance.
Create a culture in which project managers are expected to “roll over” and take it when substantive new deliverables are added halfway through the project. (After all, only a tradesperson like a plumber or electrician would demand more money or more time for additional services; our people are “professionals” and should be prepared to be “flexible.”)
Half way through the project, when most of the deliverables have begun to take shape, add a whole bunch of previously unnamed stakeholders and ask them for their opinions about the project and its deliverables.
Encourage the sponsor to approve deliverables informally (with nods, smiles, and verbal praise); never force sponsors to stand behind their approvals with a formal sign-off. (In other words, give ‘em plenty of room to weasel out of agreements!)
Make sure project managers have lots of responsibilities and deadlines, but no authority whatsoever to acquire or remove people from the project; to get enough money, materials, or facilities; or insist on timely participation of SMEs and key reviewers.
Describe project deliverables in the vaguest possible terms so sponsors and reviewers have plenty of leeway to reinvent the project outputs repeatedly as the project unfolds.
Get projects up and running as quickly as possible – don’t worry about documenting agreements in a formal project charter, clearly describing team roles/responsibilities, or doing a thorough work breakdown analysis. After all, we know what we’re doing and we trust each other. So let’s get to it without a pesky audit trail!

(C) Copyright 2009 Michael Greer's PM Resources. Michael Greer is a project management consultant and author. See Greer's bio on the Meet the Experts page. See his website at http://www.michaelgreer.com.

Issue 10 - December 20, 2009

In this issue:

We continue the four-part series by Aaron Shenhar entitled Unleashing the Power of Project Management with the second article of the series: "Part 2 - Why Managing a Project by the Book is Not Enough."
Following that is the first of a series by me, Ray Posch, on "Common Barriers to Successful Projects."
Multi-tasking is billed as a required skill of project managers, but study after study shows that multi-tasking is generally a bad thing. Sarah Gilbert shares her thoughts on multi-tasking.

Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 2 - Why Managing a Project by the Book is Not Enough
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

The current techniques as used in the discipline of project management form the necessary basis for learning and understanding what project management is all about, but they are insufficient to guarantee a project’s success or to address the needs of today’s dynamic and uncertain projects.

We have seen projects that were managed exactly as required “by the book”--and still failed. They followed a structured process of planning and execution, which is common in the profession, and even when completed on time, they ended up in disappointment to management and clients. And we have observed other projects that did not follow any acceptable structure or process, or did not have a full plan with all its elements, and yet they turned out to be outstanding successes, bringing-in value and fame to their performing organizations and great satisfaction to their customers.

The discipline of project management is based on an outdated model that assumes that projects are successful if they meet their time and budget goals. Once the project is launched, it must continue to its end to meet time, budget and requirements goals. Rarely do projects focus on business results or on changing at mid-course to better adjust to customer needs.

Most of today’s project problems are not technical, but managerial. When technical errors cause projects to fail, it is usually management that failed to put the right system in place so that these errors will be detected in time. We also realized that the current practices of project management are insufficient to predict project problems or to solve them. And we found that even if you do everything according to the conventional well-established practices of project management, you may still fail.

Ironically, these traditional practices remain typically unchallenged by top management. As a result, many project teams are left on their own. They often struggle to keep their projects on track while trying to fulfill unrealistic expectations of stability; often highly detached from dynamic business needs and changes in the environment.

Our conclusion is simple. There is more to project success than following a standard set of rules. It is not the tools or applications, nor is it the lack of process. The problem lies in the mindset and the assumptions that are driving the traditional approach to project management, rather than in process or practice. The critical questions are: can we help project teams make the right assessment before presenting their project proposals to top management? Can we show executives how to ask the right questions and foresee danger before they make a commitment to a project and before it is too late? And can we guide project teams on how to adapt their project management style to the right circumstances, environment, and task? It seems that managers at all levels need a new framework and a new language to communicate with each other about projects.

Common Barriers to Successful Projects - #1-7
By Raymond Posch

Experienced project managers are well aware that there are many barriers to success. To be honest, there could be an unlimited number of barriers that could be listed. I have identified 27 that are fairly common in my experience. Some of these are fully under control of the project manager, and it is his or her responsibility to take charge and do it right (and avoid the problem). Some may be only partially controllable by the PM and partially affected by factors outside of his or her control. And some of these are fully outside of the PM’s control.

Here are the first seven in my list:

Lack of clarity about the business goals for the project – First, it is imperative that the business sponsor (if internal) or customer (if external) be absolutely clear about the business goals and the business value that the project is supposed to create or enable. Unfortunately, this isn’t guaranteed when the project is initiated. There is often confusion or differences of opinion. Second, it is up to the project manager to get absolutely clear about the goals and intended results (value). Third, the PM must also ensure that the core team and the identified stakeholders also become clear. (This step usually occurs in the kickoff meeting and in subsequent discussions.)
Project objectives not in line with current business strategy and priorities – If the organization does not have a disciplined project initiation process, projects may be initiated at whim and they may not be fully aligned with current business strategy. It is up to the PM to question this (and how the project manager does this will likely depend very much on the players, politics, and culture).
Project started without proper business justification and approval – This can happen when there is an established project initiation process and the business sponsor/initiator does not follow the process. A project in a disciplined organization should have a specific goal with expected business results, a business case that defines the value and estimated cost at a high level, and a formal approval to proceed, at least through a planning phase that will refine the expected value and the cost.
Lack of or uninvolved project sponsor – The PM must ensure that there is a person from the business or customer organization that represents that organization on the project. The sponsor must own the project and be fully involved. Their role should be to understand everything happening on the project and to speak for all customer commitments – particularly approval of requirements, cost, and schedule, all changes to same, and acceptance of deliverables.
Poor PM pre-planning and preparation for project prior to kickoff – The project manager must get clear about the project goals, the constraints, and how to conduct the project, and then get fully onboard, organized, and prepared with how to run the project before jumping in to a project kickoff.
Changing goals or sponsor in mid project – Probably self explanatory. Changing the projects goals or sponsor (lead person on the business / customer side) can be an absolute project buster. A significant change of goals might require starting over at the beginning with a new business case and cost estimate.
Forcing PM to use overly bureaucratic and wasteful methodology – The purpose of a project management methodology should be twofold: 1) to help improve the likelihood of project success through a proven, standardized process, and 2) to provide some efficiency to the PM by leveraging existing tools and process. But if the process adds work that has limited value then it has the opposite effect.

Raymond Posch is publisher of Project Success Tips newsletter. See Ray's bio on our Meet the Experts page. He can be reached at ray@projectsuccesstips.com.

Multi-tasking: A pretend phenomenon
By Sarah Gilbert

It is very common these days to hear people talk about multi-tasking. Many believe multi-tasking helps them to be more efficient, get more things done and generally be available to everyone all the time. Ready access to information through Blackberrys, cell phones, text messaging and e-mails perpetuate the ability to multi-task.

But numerous studies have demonstrated that multitasking — at least in the way that most people hope it will work — doesn’t really exist. Sure, most people can walk and chew gum at the same time as the old saying goes, but if you used your mouth to walk it would be significantly more difficult. The point being, when you start to use the same or even similar cognitive skill sets during multi-tasking, it becomes literally impossible to do two things at once.

For example, talking on the phone and reading email is not possible because it requires very similar verbal processing skills in your brain. Talking on the phone while driving, an activity that has been studied intensively by scientists and highway safety experts, is possible, but even that tends to severely degrade one’s driving skills. And many states are imposing significant penalties for texting and driving, because not only is texting a distraction because it requires concentration to think and type, but it also typically requires people to look away from the road. So, forget it, texting and driving is impossible.

Instead of excelling at multi-tasking, people are actually best at “task switching”. We are good at applying focus for short periods of time on multiple things, but this attention is almost always sequential. One 2005 study found that many people were interrupted at work approximately every 11 minutes. After each interruption, it took about 25 minutes to circle back to the original item. Frequent task switching can seriously erode productivity because of the time required to switch from one task to the next.

At one company I worked at one of our developers had stopped listening to her headphones at work. Initially, I thought it was an effort to concentrate more on her work and less on the favorite songs that were playing in her ears. But as it turned out, she had stopped listening to her head phones, because she couldn’t listen to a single song from beginning to end without being interrupted by someone in the company asking her a question! Considering that the average song is only about 4 minutes long, this poor woman really only was able to complete her work before the rest of us got there or after we left.

Sarah Gilbert is a project management consultant and can be reached at
sarah.gilbert@what-if-project.com.

Issue 11 - December 27, 2009

In this issue:

We continue the Unleashing the Power of Project Management series by Aaron Shenhar with the next article: "Part 3 - What is Missing in Traditional Project Management".
That is followed by the second of a series on "Common Barriers to Successful Projects" by me, Ray Posch.

Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 3 - What is Missing in Traditional Project Management
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

As mentioned in the previous article, the current, standard, and formal approach to project management is based on a predictable, fixed, relatively simple, and certain model. It is also generally decoupled from the changes in the environment or the business needs; once you created the project plan, this plan sets out the objectives for the project, and the project manager must execute the plan, using a “management-as-planned” philosophy. After the project is launched, progress and performance are assessed against the plan and changes to the plan should be rare, and if possible avoided. Consider the following two major drivers of project management today:

The triple constraint: Project managers see their job as successful when they are able to complete the project on time, within budget, and achieve performance (or requirements) goals. This has famously been named “the triple constraint” (or “iron triangle”) of project management and deviations from it are seen as a negative sign, which must be prevented or corrected.
One size fits all: Many executives and managers assume that all projects are the same, thus suffering from the “project is a project is a project” syndrome. They expect to succeed by simply following a standard set of activities as outlined in the conventional project management books, which currently do not include guidelines for distinction among projects and for selecting the right approach for the right project.

In their struggle to keep projects on track, both executives and teams get frustrated when they are trying to fulfill unrealistic expectations of stability. Worse, in their effort to focus the project on the triple constraint, project teams often lose sight of the business rationale behind their projects, that they must satisfy a customer and achieve business results, and not just meet project requirements. And when they try to follow a standard set of rules for all projects, they often employ the wrong approach to their specific project.

The classical drivers of project management are no longer enough for today’s business environment. The traditional model fits only a small group of today’s projects. Most modern projects are uncertain, complex, and changing; and they are highly impacted by the dynamics in the environment. Virtually every project we studied underwent changes that were unpredictable upfront, and none of the projects was completed exactly as planned. Furthermore, as we found, projects differ in many ways, and “one size does not fit all.” In order to succeed, projects must be adjusted to the environment, task, and goal, rather than stick to one set of rules.

Common Barriers to Successful Projects - #8-14
By Raymond Posch

In this series, I am writing briefly about some barriers to projects success that are fairly common in my experience. Here are the next seven in my list:

Poor requirements gathering, analysis, specification – Having well understood requirements is critical to project success, regardless whether a classical waterfall, iterative cycle, agile, or other methodology is used. If you do not have the requirements, the team cannot develop the solution to those requirements. So having a methodology and understanding how to work through it is important. Also, the PM must determine who will do the gathering, analysis, and specification of the requirements – ideally it should be done by business analysts who are knowledgeable about business requirements for the type of project.
Inadequate planning or poor iteration through the planning process – (I am including requirements as part of the planning process.) Good, sufficiently detailed project planning is critical – it clarifies the goals and business value, deliverables, work to be done to produce the deliverables, risks and mitigations, resources required, costs, and schedule. Poor planning puts all of those things in question.
Mandatory deadline – A mandatory deadline imposed by management is usually a bad idea because it's not based on a realistic plan of what it will take to meet the business requirements of the project. But sometimes there is an important constraint outside the company's control that can drive a mandatory deadline. If it requires a death march (long hours and much overtime on the project), the company should incentify the project team appropriately.
Not having the right team – Having the right team means having team members who can do the tasks well and who have good chemistry to work together. The project manager should be able to pick the team to the extent possible to ensure that it is the right team to meet the business goals of the project. This may mean that the PM must do some research into who would be best choices to fill the various team roles.
Poor communication and coordination with team – This should be self explanatory. Communication and coordination are central to what a project manager does every day in the life of a project.
PM focuses on detailed task schedule instead of holistic project plan and execution – I have seen project managers who spend an exorbitant amount of time working on the schedule (usually on MS Project or other tool). The purpose of the tool – once tasks have been identified and estimated for needed skill types and amount of effort, and dependencies between tasks have been determined – is to help calculate schedules and help you visualize where parallel activities might make sense. But don’t assume it represents the exact reality of what must happen, and don’t let it keep you from paying attention to all aspects of the plan (of which the schedule is just one part). And especially don’t let it keep you from communicating and coordinating with the team on what work is supposed to be happening according to the plan (and when) and about issues that might be impacting the work.
Not involving the team in the whole planning process – Involving the team improves the plan and execution to the plan. Why? Because they will own the plan, make it a better plan, and understand why they need to follow the plan. And not only that, the members of the team will understand how they can help the rest of the team stay on track, sometimes even helping them perform tasks when they’ve fallen behind.

Raymond Posch is publisher of Project Success Tips newsletter. See Ray's bio on our Meet the Experts page. He can be reached at ray@projectsuccesstips.com.

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