Corb

Many PMs working in the building industry would have come across the name "Le Corbusier", a notable French architect of decades past. Many of those same PMs, of course, would have a degree in architecture.

Now, to lift the lid on Corb, an article in Quadrant. Much like E Michael Jones' lifting of the lid on architectural modernism.

Good for him, now let's get on with making buildings for people, not people-resistant ideas.

10 project factors

I recently received an e-mail from one of the project management services that has my address. It offered 10 factors for project success. They are:

1.    Requirements. Make sure that your customer defines their requirements in depth. You need to know exactly what must be delivered. Be specific, write them formally, and get them approved. This document will become one of the baselines upon which to measure your success.

2.    Scope. Define scope well. Get your sponsor approval for scope changes, making sure the sponsor understands any schedule, budget or other impact to the project.

3.    Stakeholders. Involve your stakeholders throughout the project. Get them involved in the analysis and planning, as well as execution. Gain their approval when needed and keep them informed when needed. The more you involve them, the greater their level of buy-in and the better you will manage their expectations.

4.    Duration. Keep your delivery timeframes short and realistic. It is easier to be successful if your deadlines are shorter rather than longer. Split large projects into "mini-projects" if possible. Keep each mini-project to less than six months if possible. This keeps everyone motivated and focused.

5.    Communication. Make sure you keep everyone informed by providing the right information at the right time. Produce status reports and run regular team meetings.

6.    Quality. Understand the expectations of your customer in terms of quality and put a plan in place to meet their expectations.

7.    Issues. Jump on issues as soon as they are identified. Prioritize and resolve them before they impact on your project. Take pride in keeping issues to a minimum.

8.    Risks. Risk management is a great proactive way to solve potential problems before they occur. Identify risks early in the project and continue to manage risks throughout the project.

9.    Deliverables. As each deliverable is complete, hand it formally over to your customer. Ask them to verify acceptance to make sure it meets their expectations. Only then can you consider each deliverable as 100% complete.

10. Your team. Be a great people manager. Show them the project vision and how they can make it happen. Motivate them. Trust and believe in them. Make them feel valued. They will work wonders.

Over the coming months I will discuss each factor and seek to put in into a more professional context.

Guiding Principles 10: Reuse

When possible, use existing processes and tools before creating or buying new ones.

A while ago I posted against the reflex reliance on ‘best practice’ to advance a project. Best practice in an oil drilling project might not be best practice in building a foundry or a robotic assembly line...or it might!

In projects the domain and context of the project is all important under the guiding judgement of the project team. So it depends on what type of project.

However, that said, the idea that does the rounds in pop management circles is to ‘fail often and fail early’. That might be fine if a minor process inefficiency that is easily corrected is the result, or in a paperwork activity that entails more hours than it should. It is not OK, as Glen Alleman points out, if you are putting a Rover on Mars, ‘cause there is no second shot. It is a right first time game.

So a project team finds, or knows, what works best. Innovate for sure, but do so against the backdrop of project needs and circumstances. Innovate to improve, to fine tune a working process, but don’t blue sky when the risk is project value that you know will be produced by known techniques.

Useful post by Glen on this.

The job

I recently reread a number of articles on management as I prepared for an interview for a role in a senior exec team of a med sized business ($200m annual revenue). The job advert talked about project skills, which I think I have in spades, but the panel obviously saw better elsewhere.

Nevertheless the articles I looked at also have a bearing on the management of projects. I commend them to you.

They are all by Henry Minzberg: Rounding Out the Manager's Job (Sloan Mgt Rev Fall 94); The Five Minds of a Manager (Havard Business Review Nov 2003) and The Role of the CEO, which I think was a Harvard publication, but I found it on DesignIntelligence Update.

I'm familiar with the first two, as I give them to the managers who report to me (and staff who are on a management pathway) to read. They both open up the world of management with more reality than most texts do.

One of the ideas that I like in Minzberg is that he talks about the role as being an integrating role; a role that brings lots of active plays to rolling conclusions. Much like a PM; however most of what I read about PM breaks the role into analytical approaches to PM 'tools' and techniques, but rarely integrates in into a flow of information, activity and people's commitment to produce a performance outcome.

Guiding Principles 9: Cost efficiency

Calibrate resource use and project management costs with project needs and expected returns.

Clearly essential to the sustainability of the project; but too easy to forget when an executive is going for broke to show that he or she has the goods.

If costs and their effect are not managed, the executive responsible could end up looking for other work.

Notice I’m not talking about the PM here, but the executive responsible. I take it the PM is keeping track of every cost account in the project and doing some sort of ‘earned value’ management, even if only informally.

An informal EV process won’t give reliable information, but with a skilled PM it will enable some objectivity in assessing progress and delivery against the expected value that will be produced; and in project delivery, business value is the only game in town.

PM training

How to train non-project staff in project management?

I have access to short courses sponsored by my employer that could be used, but from what I've seen of them they are what I call 'lock-step' or recipe courses. A collection of 'do this then that' courses rather than invitations to think through projects.

One course that I did like, also a short course, is the one at Stanford University. Looks good, but pricey!

I would steer away from courses aimed at a qualification: Prince2 and PMBoK (so called) as they train to the qualification; again, not for thinking about projects.

Frustrating.

Of the longer courses I think I'd lead towards Adelaide Universities' masters degree. It seems to be pitched at an appropriate conceptual level, but that's for longer courses.

What do I want in a course?

1. The business context of projects: the financial and competitive environment and how projects arise and are handled in organisations.
2. Projects as systems that respond over time to their own evolution effecting resources, information, capability (both the input capability and the performance capability sought).
3. Structure of projects: getting to details of the WBS as the central driver, and working back through dependency relationships. This would touch on the low level tools of scheduling, tracking (earned value), delivery methodologies and handling risk. I'd be loath to handle 'risk' as a separate category as risk should be incorporated in the project plan through offsetting activities, and scheduling adjusted for delay risk on a probabilistic basis, or at least using Goldratt's buffer system.

Project principles

I like the approach that Adam on Projects takes to project management. I've placed his blog in my list on the RHS of my blogsite.

He has five principles to guide project work. I might discuss them at some time.

His diagrammatic representation of them is below.