Project managers fail because they are often brought in by a manager looking for a baby-sitter until the team somehow gets that manager’s attention again.

Project management fails for the same reason. It is put-in as a proxy for spending time, by a product owner who really doesn’t want to get involved in the details but somehow wants the perfect outcome at the end.

Of course, these are straw man arguments.  Project managers don’t always fail. Project management can be extremely successful. But if you find yourself in the situations above, don’t be frustrated if you or the discipline are not effective.  The environment is standing in your way.

To move your organization forward you have to manage change.

Change can come from outside the organization, like a change in the laws or the economy. It can come from inside the organization, like a quality improvement initiative.  Or, it can come from the market.  Often, you need to proactively make changes to succeed.

These can include changing the way you do things, changing the products or services you provide or changing how you market those products.

Here is a six step guide to managing change successfully. It connects the dots from the previous two posts (with a philosophical p.s. on the importance of change and good project management).

First, a definition. At its core, change is about going from where you are to where you have to be.

1. Create a work-flow. A good work-flow gives you a picture of your current state.  Analyzing the work-flow can help you decide where you want to go. Use data on the effectiveness of the current work-flow as a baseline against which to compare your future work-flow.

2. Create what you want your future work-flow to look like.  This is your target work-flow. It should be driven by your goals. That is, figure out what it is you want to improve (customer satisfaction, profitability, job satisfaction, costs, etc.) and build a target work-flow that should deliver those improvements.

If change is being imposed from outside your organization (e.g. because of the economy) your target work-flow is about figuring out how to do what you currently do in a different, but equally effective, way.

3. Build a project plan that maps out how you are going to get from here to there. It should tell you the road you’re going to take, who’s getting you there and  how to keep moving forward when you hit road-blocks.

4. Once you get there, once the target work-flow is implemented, measure its effectiveness to see if it meets your goals. Did it improve what you wanted it to?

5. If it didn’t meet your goals, figure out what else has to change and go through the process of creating that change.

6. If it did meet your goals, find another area to improve and do it again.

It has been said that change is inevitable. All things change. Having a process in place to manage change makes it more comfortable and increases your chances of have a successful transition.

On a Philosophical Level:

Economic growth depends on change. If that’s the case, a good project manager, one that can manage change and make positive changes a reality, is an engine for economic growth.

Planning is a critical component to being a successful innovator.

It sounds counter-intuitive.

You might think that innovation is all about inspiration and the eureka moment. But its not. Its about executing.  To paraphrase Seth Godin, real innovators ship. That is, real innovators get things done.  And often.  The more often you deliver something, the better you’ll become at delivering more in the future.  Your ability to innovate and implement real change will increase.

The problem with relying on inspiration is that it is often fueled by emotion alone. Soon, those emotions fade. Or, they become harder to generate as problems arise. Then you get stuck.

If everything is on the fly, you are always late.

You can never execute and ship as fast as your ideas come.  Rely on inspiration and you’ll get frustrated when things take longer than “now.”

You need to build project plans. You need to plan the next steps.  That way you won’t get frustrated when things take longer than “now.”  You’ll be able to keep moving forward even when you hit set-backs.

The plan will be in place. You’ll know where to pick up from and where you want to go.

You might have to modify it. Actually, you’ll most certainly have to modify it.  But you’ll have a baseline to move forward on.

The plan doesn’t have to be elaborate. In fact, I would caution against getting too carried away. Many great ideas never became reality due to “paralysis from analysis or over-planning and under executing.

How much planning is enough?

You’ll learn over time as you see one plan be too constrictive or the other too loose, and therefore useless.  Just be conscious of the plan and gauge its success at helping you deliver.  That’s one of the advantages of having a planning. You have something to tweak and improve.

Often enough, whether you can get the idea done or is more a reflection of your plan, and not of your idea.

By consistently measuring the outcome of different plans and tweaking the plan over successive iterations, you’ll find the right plan. You’ll find the mix that allows you to innovate and ship your ideas.

Not every idea you ship will be a hit.   But by shipping, you’ll at least be in the marketplace. You will be executing and delivering innovation. You will have the satisfaction and fulfillment of seeing your ideas through to their fruition.

This, in turn, will give you confidence to try the next idea. And the next. And soon, you will have a steady process to deliver innovation.

Good project management can be the missing piece in revenue growth.

Here is a simple test to know if project management could help you grow revenue:

How long does it take you to generate a list of all projects you’re working on?

If the answer is anything greater than 5 minutes, you could benefit from more formal project management and project management software.

A quick case study that demonstrates this point.

A client of ours targeted a division for revenue growth over the next 5 years. They allocated sales people and marketing dollars to capture the opportunity. They saw a market opportunity to grow this division significantly.

Management, though, was worried that the division wouldn’t be handle to handle the growth. They were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill all the new orders.

Why were they worried?  They asked a simple question.

They asked the head of the division to show them a list of all current projects.

The head of the division said she’d get back to them in a day or two.

That’s when red flags started to go off.

If it took the head of the division one to two days just to compile a list of what was going on, there was clearly no process in place.  They were flying by the seat of their pants. Without process, the division couldn’t scale. That’s why management was worried.

If growth came, they might get lucky at the beginning, like they have been. Key individuals and long-standing relationships could be relied on to push the work through.  But longer term, things will start to break. There are only so many items those key individuals can do. Tasks will fall through the cracks. Deadlines will be blown. Customers will be upset. And all the money spent acquiring new customers will go down the drain.

Project Management is a Foundation for Growth

Management knew they had to create a more mature and uniform process. They needed to formalize their processes into projects and implement project management software to keep things together and provide instant access to information. This initiative became part of the overall investment in revenue growth for that division, as critical as sales people and marketing dollars.

Once complete, the head of the division was able to generate a list of projects in one to two seconds, instead of one to two days.  The division was on firm footing to grow revenue.

So if you want to see if a lack of project management is holding back growth, see how long it takes to put together a list of all ongoing projects. If its anything longer than 5 minutes, you have a problem.

Fusion Authority published an article of mine describing a road-map of process improvement.

It puts project management in the context of the overall way an organization delivers its product.  Basically, project management changes depending on how “mature” an organization is and how much of their processes they’ve standardized.

By understanding where your organization is on the map, you can know how to improve your products.

The road-map is one developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University. Despite the name, though, it can be applied to almost any work and not just software projects.

Seth Godin’s post from today trash talks compliance, in favor of teaching initiative and intelligent problem solving. Surprising to many, I’d like to speak up in defence of compliance.

There is incredible value in compliance.

It is valuable for a person to be able to follow a plan and consistently perform. 

It is valuable for an organization to have people who can follow plans and perform consistently. 

To grow, an organization needs to be able do what it does, consistently.  It needs to be able to teach and train people to be part of doing it. That’s the value of process and project management.  

1. A process or plan is developed, then executed.
2. The work product is evaluated and;
3. The plan is evaluated and improved. 

The goal of management, as a field of study, is to get people with different skill sets to work together to produce remarkable results.  Compliance helps managers accomplish this goal, measure results and rework.

Be consistent, evaluate results and rework.

Seth often talks about consistency and plugging away at building a brand or product. Rare are the overnight successes and instant home runs. A much more sure path to success is to focus on base hits. Be consistent, evaluate results and rework. You can’t do that if people don’t follow the plan.

We have a client who wanted to document their current processes. This is a good thing to do.  It has many advantages and is crucial for setting a path to growth and higher customer satisfaction.  But they seemed to always get stuck in the process.

The project of writing down the process would suffer from the worst scope creep. Then the scope creep would kill the project for a while.

Every time they’d start to get things down, they’d stop to discuss some item that came up. The discussion would grow, more people were pulled in and suddenly the whole project was pushed back for another two months.

After watching this happen a few times over the course of a year, it was clear that whatever it was they discussed, was poison to the project.

Some people suggested that it was a problem of how they were discussing the item and the steps they were taking to develop conclusions. Others suggested that it was a matter of poor decision making process and that either more power was needed to be given to the people involved or the decision itself should be pushed higher up the chain to someone who had more power.

I took a look at this situation and it was clear that none of these factors was the problem. The group itself pretty efficient at discussing things and, while it was true that the people at the table didn’t have the right decision making authority, this was not a problem of decision making.  It was a problem of content.

The items they were discussing were not part of their current processes.  They were new items, new decisions that had to be made. They were totally novel concepts for the organization and were out of scope of the project and out of the decision making authority of the team involved.  The items had more to do with process improvement then in documenting the current process.

What would happen is, that as they would document their process, they would see ways to do things better. That’s great. Its one of the big advantages of writing things down. But instead of tabling the item or making a note to come back to it later, they would tackle the issue right there.

Instead of documenting what was already in place and working in their organization, they used the whole project as a springboard for process improvement or process modification.

That, is what was killing the project.  Noble intentions and good, creative thinking, but out of scope for that project and team.

After helping them stay focused on the project itself, and creating a bucket for all the good ideas that came up along the way, the client finished documenting their processes in under one month.  They were well on their way to better management and greater growth.

Project planning and project scheduling can be valuable tools in business intelligence (BI) or business performance management (BPM).

On the solutions side, project management software, particularly easier to use online project management software tools can generate powerful business intelligence and process optimization conclusions.

A previous post discussed the three key variables used to set a realistic due-date.

1) A defined process
2) Defined task durations
3) Resource availability/performance

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Benjamin Franklin took on a lot of projects in his life.  Here are five key concepts for effective project management culled from his Autobiography.

1) Deliver: Ideas are great but delivery is what projects are all about.

2) Do People Favors: Favors have a psychological affect on people and can build powerful bonds that go beyond the politics of a project.

3) Ask for Favors: People overestimate the value of things they do for other people and therefore feel superior and kinder towards people they’ve helped.

4) Solve Easy Problems: Great results can happen in changing things that look small and easy.

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