Another technique I’ve been using to increase Agility in our production process is to be less patient with team members when a customer’s need is not met.  This has shifted the focus of the team directly on creating value to the customer. Agile has breathed new life into this classic management principal, from Peter Drucker (perhaps because Agile ties it directly to project management and a production process rather than remaining an overarching corporate philosophy).

Cultural boundaries have become less important using this approach. We operate in a culturally diverse environment. People have different definitions on what it means to put in a good day’s work. By rating performance directly against customer value, people’s perspectives have started to converge and cultural backgrounds matter less.  Problem solving becomes the focus. Each person brings their unique talent to the table. Constraints like cultural norms or a person’s title fade into the background.

Vertabase and our team were recently recognized as Project Management Visionaries by the popular PaperCut Edge project management blog.

The article explains our vision  on project management and project management software.

Big thanks to Geoff for the recognition and kind words.

Should trust be a part of your project management style?

Yes,  because trust expands the value of communication.

It is still important to verify.  “Trust -but verify ” as the Cold War proverb says. Because the project is your responsibility. You need to confirm the accuracy of information in order to properly manage the project and expectations.

But build your relationships on trust. Build it in, starting when you gather requirements through to putting together estimates and building your schedule.

It allows communication to be a two-way street of information and education - instead of second guesses and confrontations.

…and join in the conversation

There’s a new website for project management questions and answers.  It is hosted by the people who do some of the most popular technical Q&A sites on the web, Stack Exchange. But the questions and answers are completely community driven.

It draws its questions and answers from some of the most active names in project management (including myself).

It is an outgrowth of the  Ask About Projects site which I wrote about a few months ago.

The project management Questions and answers range from the basic to the highly specialized.

I’ll be tweeting about particularly interesting or relevant questions at my personal twitter account.

The shorter the communication, the more careful you have to be.
That’s why many successful politicians cultivate the ability to talk for hours on end and not be pinned down to one particular point.

Email, text messages and twitter can be dangerous ground for miscommunication. If you are using those tools to speak to your project’s client or sponsors, you have to be doubly careful. Those communications form the client or sponsor’s expectations.

Communications set Expectations.

Misinterpretation and unmet expectations can easily happen, leading to a decline in your relationship with the client or sponsor.

To effectively use those tools for project management, you have to be certain of the parameters and flexibility around the relationship. The relationship should exist well before-hand and have room for the ups and downs mis-communication can bring.

Otherwise, make sure you use the phone more or even have face to face meetings. This gives you room to answer and ask questions, to read your client’s expressions and better understand the expectations set by your communication. Plus, it’s a great way to build a long lasting, personal relationship.

When building a trust relationship don’t try to win.

Trust is built in a relationship by meeting expectations. You either meet them or you don’t. You can’t talk your way into someone trusting you just by showing them how right you are. People have to come to their own conclusions. That’s how they’ll grow to trust you.

Forcing your conclusion on them may bring acknowledgment, or resentment, but it won’t bring trust.

This tidbit can be helpful for project managers to keep in mind when dealing with sponsors, stakeholders, customers and team members. It comes compliments of a presentation by Pam Hansen at the PMI Great Lakes Chapter.

I was recently interviewed by Cornelius Fichtner’s Project Management Podcast on the topic of how Project Managers are Agents for Economic Growth.

From Cornelius’ blurb:

Mark claims that all project managers are agents for Economic Growth. Really? Cause I’ve managed mostly small and medium sized project throughout my career and I didn’t see myself as an economic growth agent. And most of the companies I’ve worked for also didn’t have the appropriate corporate culture to make me one.

So you can guess that I was a bit skeptical, when Mark first suggested this topic. Let’s hear what he has to say about these arguments and what skills and mindset such a Project Management Agent of Economic Growth needs.

This is a premium podcast but here is the transcript in PDF.

If you have never listened to it, the PM Podcast is an outstanding source for project management information. I highly recommend subscribing to the podcast so you can catch all the great content they produce.

My previous interview on the PM Podcast on Customizing and Contextualizing Your Project Communications is now available to non-subscribers. (The interview starts at around 9 minutes into the program.)

A software developer deals with unique situations almost every day.

Every project, every bug fix, every issue has its own unique challenges and one of a kind circumstances.

Even if the functionality has been built before in other systems or is available on other pieces of software, implementing it on a specific system or integrating it with existing code has its own set of challenges.  A developer really does work on “projects” in the sense that they work on unique endeavors that have some degree of uncertainty and risk of failure.

As far as the other side of the formal definition of a project, having a defined start and end date, that’s often a matter of controlling scope creep or change requests

Because developers are working on projects there is no single body of knowledge they can master to have answers to questions right off the bat.

When you ask a doctor about a pain in your side, there is a well documented set of potential answers and a huge body of research on the most probable answer based on other data points/symptoms reported.   They can usually give you an answer off the cuff.  And if not, there are prescribed recommend tests to further find the answer.  This isn’t the case with a software developer.

A software developer is not a doctor. No two bodies of code are the same.

Next time you ask a developer for an answer or an estimate, don’t surprised if they need time to come up with the answer. Or, if the answer they give is inaccurate or if the estimate is off.

The same is true of designers and creative knowledge workers.

A Job List or Project List has the power to keep competing deadlines off your back.

Start keeping a list of every project or job people request of your department. The list should have the project name, the person who requested it, their department, the date they requested it and the date they want it done by.

If you are like most internal marketing departments or internal IT departments, this list will get very long, very fast. It will become the living embodiment of all the competing pressures on you as a director or team member, and of the demands on your resources.

Of course, you probably already keep a list like this for managing your work, for keeping track of all your projects and the tasks everyone has to do.  It might be a paper list or in project management software.

The difference with this list is that this is a list you share.

This is a list that is openly available and public for every “client” to see.

If you are an internal department, your clients are your internal clients and it’s up to you to navigate the political territory.

If you are an independent agency, please don’t really show it to your clients.  Show it to the account managers and salespeople who are asking on behalf of the clients.

It is the list you bring out when someone else from another department asks you to get another project done, to squeeze in another job. It is the list you pull out when they make that job request and you say:

Great.

I’d love to get that job done for you. Here is a list of everything I’ve got going in the department right now. Some of them are from you. Some are from other people. Which one should I bump? Which one should I move to fit yours in?

Wait for the answer.

Nothing gets a process going for better project management or for more thoughtful allocation of resources and better decision making, than making people prioritize the work they want you to do for them.

It is also an outstanding exercise for an independent agency. It helps you evaluate which are the highest value clients, the highest value projects and it can help you better understand what makes them so valuable (so you can do more of that).

Next time your client comes to you with a tight deadline, an aggressive schedule or fast turnaround, ask them “why?”

And if they are coming to you every week with tight deadlines and crunch-times and overnight deadlines or deadlines in hours instead of days or weeks, ask them “why?”

Ask them why it’s such an emergency. Ask them why it’s so important and why they need it so quickly.  And did they have the need yesterday for it? Will they have the need tomorrow for it?

50% of the time they won’t have an answer.

50% of the time they are just getting something off their desk or trying out a new idea or seeing if they can relieve some of their pressures by having something new come out of your department or your team.

(You can usually tell if this is happening when they don’t have time to look at the draft work-product you produced for them or to comment on sketches or mock-ups or even the tweaks you made based on their initial feedback.)

Next time they come to you with super rush deadlines, ask “why?”

And build it into your process.

You’ll get a lot more work done. And your clients will be happier when you have the time to dedicate to the jobs they truly value for their longer-term needs.

Incidentally, “why?” doesn’t mean you’re turning away the work or saying you won’t do it.  The idea is to put a  business case ahead of the expenditure of resources. It’s about prioritizing work so you can focus on the most important jobs and knowing what the work-product is supposed accomplish.