June 9, 2008 – Project Success…at What Cost?

Great things can be accomplished if Scope, Budget and Duration are no object. Here are some historical examples:

Hoover Dam
Scope: Stop a river and produce 2080 megawatts of power.
Budget: $49M US cost (under budget)
Duration: < 5 years (2 years ahead of schedule)
Added Expense: 112 Deaths

Egyptian Pyramid
Scope: Started as a grave. Scope creep resulted in one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World with quite a bit of gold plating, literally.
Budget: Spare not Cost
Duration: 27 years each
Added Expense: Slave Labor

Great Wall of China
Scope: Stop the Xiongnu attacks with a really big wall (6400km / 4000miles long)
Budget: Unknown
Duration: Several Centuries
Added Expense: 2 to 3 million Chinese lives

Each of these was an amazing project and each came with a high price tag in human lives.

Unfortunately there are a fair number of companies that force their teams to nearly kill themselves for unrealistic timelines. A friend of mine told me of the unhealthy environment they had recently left. The pressure there was tremendous. Deadlines were strictly enforced, resulting in projects that came in on time. How? People were required to work as much as 80 hours a week and be on call when they weren’t physically there. This resulted in people quitting, massive amounts of sick time request, spouses threatening divorce and people being hauled off in ambulances.

What made this story ironic was the fact that the company was in the health care industry.

How can you avoid killing your team?

Involve them in the estimating process. It seems obvious, but the people that do a deed generally know what it takes to get it done. Your job is to question the numbers. First, make sure there are enough hours. Are their estimates only for development? Did they include requirements, design and testing? Next, get a second opinion. One method for this is Planning Poker (see entry on Agile Estimating Methods). Finally, work to eliminate padding. Create a contingency pool to apply where needed but estimate the pieces realistically.

Limit overtime. Your initial pass at the schedule should not include overtime. Then, if overtime can’t be avoided, set boundaries on the timeframe. People can survive a lot if there is an end in sight. Strive to keep the overtime sprints to 6 weeks in duration. Show the team the time line and ask for their commitment.

Compensate them. Even “exempt” employees (salaried / non-time and materials) can’t be expected to work tirelessly without receiving something. The promise of several days off following a sprint can keep the team pushing forward. This isn’t expected to be an hour per hour trade for the time they put in. After all, salaried employees are expected to put a bit more into their jobs when necessary.

Set realistic expectations. As the project manager it is your responsibility to set the expectations of upper management.

Schedule team outings. Get your team out of the office once in a while. Lunch can be a simple solution. On the flip side, a friend of mine is attempting to set up a cricket match here in the states.

Give family friendly rewards. Stressful environments wreak havoc on families. Token rewards such as movie tickets or gift cards can help ease some of that pressure. Acknowledgement of that fact can go a long way. Consider presenting awards directly to spouses to show you understand the strain they are under.

Watch for warning signs. Keep on eye out for people that are putting in too many hours. Encourage them to throttle down a little, especially if they are wearing the same cloths they had on yesterday.

Very few projects are worth killing your team over. Besides, the paperwork involved in having an ambulance on site is a real pain.

January 6, 2008 – Same Old Same Old?

I know. I’m a little late on the "welcome to the new year" thing. But as I sat down to write my blog tonight it struck me that we have a full new year in front of us. I’m not one to create huge goals or make great predictions, but think of the possibilities. If you have been waiting to get certified, this may be the year to do it. Sick of your old job? Find a new one. Stuck in a rut? Climb out.

Two thoughts to begin the year with:

1. Is this the type of _____ you want to be known as? Fill in the blank. Project Manager? Husband? Friend? Person? What is it that people know you as, or you feel like, that you no longer want to be. Tired of being the quiet one? Late one? The one that doesn’t have the monthly reports in on time? If people think they have you pegged, prove them wrong.

2. _____ is important enough for me to _____. Is there anything important enough to you that you will change your behavior? Decide what it is you want to make significant in your life and then do something about it. Many people live their life day to day without changing anything. Maybe it is your dignity. Would you say, "My dignity is important enough for me to walk out of a meeting the next time my director chooses to degrade me"? Or "My future is important enough to me to get certified"?

Go take on the year.

October 22, 2007 – Relationship vs. Task Oriented Management

Within project management there are two main types of personalities: Relationship oriented and Task oriented. It is fairly easy to tell the two apart. Aside from having a detailed project schedule, the Task oriented manager has a separate list of things they need to accomplish today and they feel great when all of them are checked off. The Relationship oriented manager’s schedule is really a guideline and they are more likely to have a list of people to call today.

Relationship Oriented managers are great at building a cohesive team. When planning out projects they take in the big picture and appoint people or groups to handle the details. Consensus is a major tool in their arsenal. One of the first artifacts they put together is an org chart and inevitably there is a spreadsheet with contact information posted close at hand. It probably even has birth dates written in. They make their teams feel comfortable. Deadlines are important but don’t seem to get in the way of progress. A good day for a Relationship oriented manager includes resolving conflict and holding productive meetings.

Task Oriented managers are good at directing people and moving the project forward step by step. On any give day they can tell you the status of each subproject, confirm if the project is on schedule, brief you on the budget and give you a graph of the progress. They know their team’s strengths and weaknesses but might not be able to remember last names. A productive day for a Task oriented manager probably doesn’t include too many meetings but does involve completing multiple things.

If you find yourself on either extreme you aren’t alone. Frankly, both types of project managers can be quite effective. Rather than telling you to be more like your opposite, I would like to encourage you to play to your strengths. You aren’t going to be able to change your stripes, so don’t kill yourself trying. Instead, invest in Personality Offsets.

Much talk has been made about using "carbon offsets" to pay for your global warming sins. Faulty as that logic may be, you can use "personality offsets" to keep the project warming to a minimal. Find someone on your team that can balance your weak areas. If tracking the project is not your thing, get a coordinator to handle the schedule. If your focus is "getting-to-done," put someone in charge of handling the touchy/feely aspects of the team.

This is not a free license to ignore your counter character traits. Give your "offset" the responsibility to tell you when to switch gears and take the appropriate actions. For the Relationship oriented this includes focusing on budget and schedule issues; discussing certain topics in meetings; and making decisive decisions when necessary. Task oriented managers need to be reminded to "socialize" certain ideas instead of dictating them; to recognize the efforts of team members; and to spend more time interacting with the team.

Your personality has successfully gotten you to where you are. Don’t abandon it, balance it.

April 5, 2007 – It’s in the Game – Information Overload Part 2

An overload of information is like adding Olympic Games traffic to major city rush hour. No one ends up going anywhere. Yesterday we looked at how to reasonably limit the Project Schedule. Today we will look at meeting minutes and messages.

Meeting Minutes. Minutes are extremely important. I recall one project that I transitioned to another project manager where the client immediately started changing things previously agreed to. When asked about it I was able to pull out the meeting minutes and set the record straight. Unfortunately, minutes are usually the first thing dropped when project managers get busy. Sometimes the problem is that too much information is crammed into the minutes. It ends up taking longer to issue them than the meeting took. Here are some tips on handling them better.

1. Just the facts. Minutes are not intended to capture every word everyone says. Skip the discussion points and just record the decisions and action items. Too much detail takes too long and is counter productive. No one is going to read multiple pages of minutes for every meeting they attend.

2. Use a consistent template. Find a format that helps you organize the minutes and encourages you to keep them concise. Blank documents lead to writing paragraphs of information instead of bullet points.

3. Fragments are ok. Unless it is a formal environment it is ok to skimp on full sentences for your bullet points. Use good grammar, but keep it short.

4. Off load. You don’t need to do everything. For team meetings especially, have a different team member take the minutes each week. Train them on what you expect and let them handle it. If you have a team member that is aspiring to be a PM, give more of that responsibility to him/her.

Messages. Nothing puts me to sleep faster than a long voice mail. Pointless emails come in a close second. I’m sure you have received your share of both. You have probably had someone leave you a long voice mail and then follow it up with a mega-email on the same topic. So what is the best way to avoid overload for messages?

1. Pick your platform. Some things are better said than read. Phone should be used to get someone’s attention and get them to call back. If you are leaving someone numbers or other details, email may be the better choice. On voice messages longer than 30 seconds my mind starts to loose focus.

2. Delete and rerecord. If you find that you are starting to ramble or are trying to cram too much information into a voice mail, stop. Delete what you have and start over again. You may even want to rethink your choice of platform.

3. Leaving your number…twice. It seems like the more information someone leaves in a voice mail, the faster they blurt out their phone number. I end up having to listen to the whole message twice just to make sure I captured it correctly. Give your phone number at the beginning of the message, tell them why you called and then leave your number again.

4. Reread your email. Take the time to read what you type. Look for redundancies and excess wording. Re-organize your thoughts if necessary. Shorter emails get read and acted on sooner.

Information is great but too much information can get in the way. Learn the balance and you can increase your odds of winning the game.

April 4, 2007 – It’s in the Game – Information Overload Part

One of the advertising campaigns for EA Sports is “It’s in the Game,” referring to the fact that the games are technically accurate as well as fun to play. Actual statistics are included to make their games as realistic as possible.

While I was managing a project for Electronic Arts I began playing more of their games. Depending on your perspective the level of detail included can either be great or a real pain. If your favorite football team was on the top of the heap when the stats were taken it is great. But what if, like me, you are a Buffalo Bills fan? Not so good, eh? If you are from the United States, FIFA World Cup can be extremely frustrating. No matter how you play the game you are unlikely to pull off a major victory based on statistics. Hard core players can change the stats and build a better team but maintaining that much detail can be overwhelming.

Managing a project can cause much the same information overload. The key is to identify the right balance between enough and too much. Let’s take a look at that balance for 3 areas: Project Schedules, Meeting Minutes and Messages.

Project Schedules. Project Schedules are notorious for either a complete lack of information or radical overload. When planning and tracking your projects there are a couple of things that can help make it manageable.

1. 4 – 80 rule. Ideally task effort should be between 4 and 80 hours per resource. Instead of having 1 hour to review a document, 1 hour to make changes, 1 hour to review it again, and 1 more to approve, combine the effort and create one task to “Review and Approve.”
   
   Task over 80 hours per person are difficult to truly estimate. If I’m asked to do something that it is more than 2 weeks of effort I need to break it down further to fully understand what is expected. An exception to this rule is fixed duration tasks like support where you know it is a certain amount of effort and no more. If 80 becomes too granular for tracking purposes, make sure to include a separate checklist of items that make up that task. This allows progress to be tracked and keeps the team from burning the entire budget without accomplishing anything.
   
2. Avoid recurring tasks. Don’t set up a task for each meeting. MS Project allows you to create a “Recurring Task” for things like status meetings. This actually creates multiple tasks that you will need to track against. Too much detail. Instead, create a single task for each meeting that spans the entire project. You may even be able to combine all meetings into one if it is clear who should be charging for which meetings.
   
3. Off load. When you manage multiple vendors or departments push some of the effort to the PM or Team Lead for those groups. Set expectations for the timelines, deliverables and level of reporting you are expecting but let them handle the details.

Next time we will continue with ideas on how to avoid information overload with Meeting Minutes and Messages.