Looking at the project manager’s tasks

Historically, the performance rules in traditional organizations were simple: Your boss made assignments; you carried them out. Questioning your assignments was a sign of insubordination or incompetence.

But these rules have changed. Today your manager (and/or others) may generate ideas, but you assess how to implement them. You confirm that a project meets your leadership’s real need and then determine the work, schedules, and resources you require to implement it.

Handling a project any other way simply doesn’t make sense. The project manager must be involved in developing the plans because they need the opportunity to clarify expectations and proposed approaches and then to raise any questions they may have before the project work begins.

The key to project success is being proactive, so rather than waiting for others to tell you what to do:

• Seek out information because you know you need it
• Follow the plan because you believe it’s the best way
• Involve people whom you know are important for the project
• Identify issues and risks, analyze them, and elicit support to address them
• Share information with the people you know need to have it
• Put all important information in writing
• Ask questions and encourage other people to do the same
• Commit to your project’s success

Staving off excuses for not following a structured project management approach

Be prepared for other people to fight your attempts to use proven project management approaches. Take it from me: You need to be prepared for everything! The following list provides a few examples of excuses you may encounter as a project manager and appropriate responses you can give:

• Excuse: Our projects are all crises; we have no time to plan.

  Response: Unfortunately for the excuse giver, this logic is illogical! In a crisis, you have limited time and resources to address the critical issues, and you definitely can’t afford to make mistakes. Because acting under pressure and emotion (two key characteristics of crises) practically guarantees that mistakes will occur, you can’t afford not to plan.

• Excuse: Structured project management is only for large projects.

  Response: No matter what size the project is, the information you need to perform it is the same. What are the end goals? What do you need to produce? What work has to be done? Who’s going to do that work? When will the work end? Have you met expectations?

  Large projects may require many weeks or months to develop satisfactory answers to these questions. Small projects that last a few days or less may take only 15 minutes, but either way, you still have to answer the questions.

• Excuse: These projects require creativity and new development. They can’t be predicted with any certainty.

  Response: It’s true that some projects are more predictable than others; however, people awaiting the outcomes of any project still have expectations for what they’ll get and when. Therefore, a project with many uncertainties needs a manager to develop and share initial plans and then to assess and communicate the effects of unexpected occurrences.

• Excuse: As long as everyone does their job, we don’t need any formal planning.

  Response: Everyone involved in any project needs to understand their goals, their deliverables, on whom they must depend, and any potential conflicts that could block a successful outcome. Formally and holistically planning the project up front will help to ensure project goals, deliverables, and expectations are consistent and understood by all.

Even if you don’t encounter these specific excuses, you can adapt the response examples we provide here to address your own situations.

Avoiding shortcuts

The short-term pressures of your job as a project manager may tempt you to act today in ways that cause you, your team, or your organization to pay a price tomorrow. Especially with smaller, less formal projects, you may feel no need for organized planning and control.

Don’t be seduced into the following, seemingly easier shortcuts:

• Jumping directly from starting the project to carrying out the work: You have an idea and your project is on a short schedule. Why not just start doing the work? Sounds good, but you haven’t defined the work to be done!

  Other variations on this shortcut include the following:

  • “This project’s been done many times before, so why do I have to plan it out again?” Even though projects can be similar to past ones, some elements are always different. Perhaps you’re working with some new people, using a new piece of equipment, and so on. Take a moment now to be sure your plan addresses the current situation.
  • “Our project’s different than it was before, so what good is trying to plan?” Taking this attitude is like saying you’re traveling in an unknown area, so why try to lay out your route on a roadmap? Planning for a new project is important because no one’s taken this particular path before. Although your initial plan may have to be revised during the project, you and your team need to have a clear statement of your intended plan from the outset.
• Failing to prepare in the carrying-out-the-work phase: Time pressure is often the apparent justification for this shortcut. However, the real reason is that people don’t appreciate the need to define procedures and relationships before jumping into the actual project work. See Chapter 13 for a discussion of why this preparation step is so important — and get tips on how to complete it.
• Jumping right into the work when you join the project in the carrying-out-the-work phase: The plan has already been developed, so why go back and revisit the starting-the-project and the organizing-and-preparing phases? You need to do so for two reasons:
  • To identify any issues that may have overlooked by those who developed it.
  • To understand the reasoning behind the plan and decide whether you feel the plan is achievable.

• Only partially completing the closing phase: At the end of one project, you often move right on to the next. Scarce resources and short deadlines encourage this rapid movement, and starting a new project is always more challenging than wrapping up an old one.

  However, you never really know how successful your project is if you don’t take the time to ensure that all tasks are complete and that you’ve satisfied your clients. If you don’t take positive steps to apply the lessons this project has taught you, you’re likely to make the same mistakes you made in this project again or fail to repeat this project’s successful approaches.

Staying aware of other potential challenges

Projects are temporary; they’re created to achieve particular results. Ideally, when the results are achieved, the project ends. Unfortunately, the transitory nature of projects may create some project management challenges, including the following:

• Additional assignments: People may be asked to accept an assignment to a new project in addition to — not in lieu of — existing assignments. They may not be asked how the new work might affect their existing projects (your organization’s leadership may just assume the project manager can handle everything). When conflicts arise over a person’s time, the organization may not have adequate guidelines or procedures to resolve those conflicts (or they may not have any guidelines at all).

• New people on new teams: People who haven’t worked together before and who may not even know each other may be assigned to the same project team. This lack of familiarity with each other may slow the project down because team members may:

  • Have different operating and communicating styles
  • Use different procedures for performing the same type of activity
  • Not have time to develop mutual respect and trust

  Flip ahead to Part 3 for guidance on how to put together a successful team and get off on the right foot.

• No direct authority: For most projects, the project manager and team members have no direct authority over each other. Therefore, the rewards that usually encourage top performance (such as salary increases, superior performance appraisals, and job promotions) aren’t available. In addition, conflicts over time commitments or technical direction may require input from a number of sources. As a result, they can’t be settled with one unilateral decision (see Chapter 12 for suggestions on how to work effectively with people when you have no direct authority over them).

The price of greatness is responsibility

This quote, attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, captures the importance and potential reward of responsibility and even begins to reveal one of the reasons people tend to gravitate toward and respond positively to the leadership of those who are generally perceived as responsible.

Let’s be real — as a project manager, you’re responsible for all aspects of your project: the product or service to be delivered, the budget, the schedule, your project team, managing risks, ensuring that your stakeholders receive timely and meaningful status updates and are ultimately satisfied, and more. If the idea of taking on increased responsibility doesn’t appeal to you, then project management may not be a great fit. However, you’ve already taken responsibility for advancing your PM knowledge by reading this book and also, presumably, preparing to sit for the PMP certification exam. Both are very responsible choices that will almost certainly help you achieve greatness!

R-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to…your project

Few things can derail your project faster than a lack of respect and professionalism between project team members, and a team culture of respect begins with you as the project manager. Project team members need to feel they are working in an environment that encourages collaboration, out-of-the-box thinking, and open and effective communication.

The next best idea, suggestion, or solution for your project could reside in the mind of a team member who may not feel comfortable injecting their point of view into a conversation where disrespect is deemed acceptable. Would you blame them? What a shame it would be if you and all your stakeholders missed out on that idea or solution because the environment isn’t one of mutual respect, openness, and understanding!

Maintaining fairness

Impartial, objective decisions based on facts and data, not on opinions, are the cornerstone of a fair project, project team, and work environment. We share with you that most decisions will be met with acceptance by some and resistance by others. It’s rare that you’ll have the opportunity to make impactful decisions that provide only positive outcomes for everyone involved. With that said, decisions are significantly easier to accept, whether they benefit you or not, if they are made and communicated in a fair and equitable manner.

Imagine you are working on a project (as an individual contributor, not the project manager) with a team of engineers, quality assurance specialists, and a project manager to design and build a new high-tech widget. Now, let’s assume that the project manager, Tanya, has been employed by your organization for over ten years and her son, Zack, is an intern serving as one of the engineers assigned to the project. Tanya routinely overrules you and the other engineers in favor of Zack’s ideas for the widget’s design, even though not one of his ideas has yet to work, and she rarely provides any explanation for overruling the more senior engineers for Zack’s ideas.

Tanya’s nepotism towards Zack is unfair and demotivating to others involved with the project and can be detrimental to the project’s overall success. This particular scenario can be tricky, though, because we don’t want to openly call out Zack each time his ideas are considered over everyone else’s (that would only serve to shame Zack with no beneficial outcome, especially since it isn’t Zack’s fault that Tanya continually favors only his ideas). Nor do we want to blatantly accuse Tanya of favoring her son despite the availability of objectively better ideas on multiple occasions from numerous team members (doing so could cause Tanya to become defensive or, worse yet, to dig in and continue to show favoritism toward Zack).

After the first couple demonstrations of such egregious unfairness, most rational team members would begin to become disillusioned and disinterested in providing meaningful contributions. They would understandably learn to expect that Tanya will continue to disregard their inputs in favor of Zack’s, without justification. Unfairness can become toxic to a project team, eventually resulting in a lack of trust of the project manager, which is very difficult to rebuild, and resentment.

By the way, if you do find yourself in a situation where someone shows obvious favoritism or otherwise flawed decision-making, as with Tanya in the previous example, keep the following in mind to avoid the perception that you’re accusing or attacking:

• Be objective: People can become understandably irrational when considering family and other personal matters. Rather than pointing fingers and blaming Tanya for favoring Zack, stick to the facts of specific situations where certain ideas were overlooked in favor of Zack’s idea. Describe the results of such decisions (why Zack’s idea didn’t work out and why you believe one or more of the overlooked ideas would have been worth pursuing instead).
• Don’t be selfish: Your concern for the project team, the client, your organization’s leadership, and for all the other project stakeholders, as well as the project’s ultimate success or failure, are all excellent reasons to be concerned that favoritism or other unfair practices may have a negative impact. Be sure to separate, from your discussion with Tanya, any feelings of personal resentment or frustration. This won’t help present your most effective argument for ending the unfair practice (facts and data are almost always more difficult to write off than a feeling or opinion).

Honesty is the best policy

Most people don’t enjoy delivering bad news, but all news (especially bad news) is best delivered as soon as possible, after you’ve performed your due diligence to confirm that the news is accurate and real. It’s also best delivered in a truthful, factually accurate, and direct manner. Your audience will ultimately appreciate your unemotional delivery of news, leaving as little as possible open to misinterpretation. Whether your audience is pleased with the content of your message or not, they cannot reasonably fault you for delivering the message professionally and honestly. Always remember that withholding information is akin to being dishonest!

You’ll likely find yourself at some point addressing one or more of the following example scenarios in your capacity as project manager that will require honest and frank conversations to remedy:

• Underperforming project team member: This can have a negative, demotivating impact on other team members and hinder the entire team’s ability to effectively deliver the project.
• Budget overrun: As soon as you are confident there exists a realistic risk of overrunning your project’s budget, loop in your organizational leadership, either for assistance in course-correcting the current path, depending on the cause of the projected overrun, or for a determination as to whether the project should continue as is or be adjusted in some manner. Perhaps it should be adjusted through a change order or similar contractual adjustment if there has been a documented deviation from the original project scope.
• Schedule slippage: Your stakeholders, particularly the client, need to know as soon as possible if the project schedule starts to slip so they have sufficient time to make any necessary adjustments to accommodate the updated schedule.

Each of these situations should be addressed head-on, by presenting all the facts available, as soon as available, so your audience has what they need to make fully informed, timely decisions.