My presentation on effective project management, entitled GET MORE DONE! is now available for viewing online at http://partners.adobe.acrobat.com/p78705036/

This is the presentation I gave at CFUnited 09 and is aimed at providing project management tips and techniques for getting more done.

It is a touch over an hour long.

Different project management techniques impact the type of information you can collect on projects and therefore the level of visibility you have on your processes - both for single projects as well as for reports across all projects.

One of the advantages of a more classic, Waterfall approach, is that time is a variable that can shift and be measured.  With this approach you:

• create a task list or work breakdown structure,
• assign resources,
• assign estimated hours,
• enter start dates and due dates for each task.

Then, you can measure how long it takes to actually complete the tasks in several dimensions.

1. First, in terms of calendar dates: when the task was started and when it was completed.
2. Secondly, you can measure in terms of duration: the number of days it took to complete.
3. Thirdly, in terms of actual hours: the amount of people hours worth of effort it took to complete the task.

When measured and kept over time it creates a robust data set that can be used to improve estimates on projects.

If you bill by the hour or by project, this data can help improve your pricing and profitability by providing visibility into the actual time it takes to do the tasks or projects you are charging for.

If you bid on projects, this same data will improve your understanding of the variables you can look at when pricing your bid.

In a more Agile project management approach, time is generally held constant and it is the functionality or amount of work that shifts.  The amount of work that can be accomplish shifts according to the time allocated, the skill set of the team and the complexity of the work involved.

This can provide a benefit for the project manager -they don’t have to worry about schedules and effort estimates in the same way as a Waterfall approach. It also makes it easier to track progress and shut out distractions for the team.

However, it comes at a price of reduced visibility and decreased data for management to use to make strategic decisions. The variables often left to management for decision making then become ones of:

• hiring more people,
• working on the team’s skill set,
• firing people or
• limiting project scope to the constraints of the team’s historic performance over a fixed period of time.

It limits the information that can be generated from projects and therefore the data that can be used for strategic decision making, portfolio management or long term planning.

Here are simple steps you can take to have better visibility on resources and answer the question: “How much more work can we do?”. They are geared towards answering the question how much can we do this month. But the same principals apply if you want to look at it for a week, a quarter, a year, etc.

1. Break your project down into separate months.
2. Put in all the team members on that project (the whole project team).
3. Add in each person’s total availability to work for the month.
4. As you enter in tasks for that project, put in the estimated hours each person will spend on that task.
5. Keep a rolling sum of estimated hours per person for the month.
6. Subtract that rolling sum from total availability.

This will show you how much time each person has left for the month, based on current workload.  If you are considering adding on a new task, think about how much time it will take a specific team member to do that task. Then, see if that person has the availability left to take it on.

These type of calculations are automatically done by Vertabase project management software. Project management software also makes it far easier to see this information across all projects and to scale for large numbers of people with varying schedules (including holidays, sick days, etc.)

One of the first steps to getting buy-in for more project management is to make the need apparent.

The first step to achieving this transparency is to put together a list of every single project that’s being requested, match it with the departments or people involved in making that project happen, and matching it, as well, with the requestors.

This simple list will show you how many total projects there are on the table, how many projects are requested by each requestor and how many projects each department has to be involved with.

For an average size group the number of requested projects is generally in the 50 to 150 project range -with the lion’s share of the projects touching IT and/or a marketing or art department. Summarize these statistics and share them with key decision makers. It provides a simple but powerful view on everything going on within a group.

By seeing the amount of requested activity it should highlight the need to prioritize projects, really ask the requestors which are the most important projects to get done and to track the progress of projects by department so that the decision makers and key stakeholders can have visibility into how shared resources (namely IT, marketing, HR, procurement etc.) are being spent.

Project management as a practice and project management software as a tool can help facilitate this transparency and present it in a non-threatening way.

Tasks lists can be super helpful for creative firms or creative departments (e.g. art departments, interactive agencies, internal marketing or communications) to get more done, manage processes better and to get better information on their work (including tracking billable hours). They can also kill well meaning attempts at implementing project management.

People usually get tripped up by making task lists overly detailed, trying to map every single step in a process. On the other end of the pendulum, people make tasks are so broad that they become meaningless and don’t add any value to getting things done or to providing information to managers.

For project management efforts to succeed in a creative environment, you have to get the task list right. It has to be the right balance between a traditional work breakdown structure (WBS) and an MS Excel based to-do list.

The way to figure out the right combination is to start out by deciding exactly:

A. Why you want a task list i.e. what you are using the list for and

B. What do you want to track i.e. what kind of information you want to track on your projects.

Here are a few of the things tasks lists can be used for along with some guidelines for building truly usefull tasks lists and project schedules around them.

1. Creating Templates. Templates make life so much easier. Once you’ve come up with the right level of detail on your task list, make a template out of it and re-use it for every project. If you do several different kind of projects, create different templates for each one.

Templates have a ton of benefits.

• Templates make it fast and easy to populate a schedule with tasks, dates and even resources and time estimates;
• Templates provide consistent names of tasks so that you can run task reports that compare the status of the same task across all projects and you can;
• Compare how long specific tasks take on one client versus the other or one project versus the other.

2. Categories for Entering Time. The task list becomes a framework for items your team can enter time on. As a rule of thumb, each task should be something to which at least 20 hours of time will be spent. Group together related activities to make up those 20 hour plus tasks e.g. “Browser Testing of Website” instead of “Testing Website on Safari”, “Testing Website on IE8″ etc. On projects lasting 3 months or more, the threshold for a task should be 40 hours or more.

If multiple people are assigned to the same task or if different bill rates are used on different projects, use work types or categories of effort to distinguish the work one person does on a task from the work another person does on a task.

3. Controlling a Process. Here, the manager or team lead creates a task list so they can monitor and give team members specific direction on the steps they need to take. This is an illusion. A manager can specify the projects, goals and deliverables on a project but it is pretty near impossible to make a list of all the tasks that go into the work a creative professional does. Set up major goals as milestones or critical tasks. This will make it easier to track progress (see next item).

That’s not to say that a manager can’t better manage the resources on a creative team. But instead of trying to map out every step of the process, focus on prioritizing which projects and deliverables are most important. This will get you a lot farther than telling someone which steps of the process to work on.

To get a handle on how long a process takes or where there might be room for improvements, spend time with the creative professional to understand how they do their work. Be open to learning, start a dialogue with the professional and be constructive in working together to find process improvements.

4. Track Progress on a Project. Here, the task list is a tool to get a sense of how far along you are in the process of producing specific deliverables. Given the above mentioned difficulty of listing every step that goes into the creative process, focus on having the team members give you an update on the percent complete of a task or deliverable.

For example: instead of having 10 subtasks under “Testing a Website” and determining percent complete by seeing how many of the 10 subtasks are checked-off as done, creating a single milestone task called “Testing a Website” and have the team member enter in that they are 40% done with that task.

(Project management geek-out note: If you track actual versus estimated hours on tasks, as well, you can compare the number of hours used against percent complete to get even more information. This is back of the envelope earned-value management.)

Flagging a few tasks as milestones or as critical tasks will help you focus your project management efforts on those items that impact delivery the most. And if you have trouble getting team members to update the status of all tasks, asking them to update the status of only milestone or critical tasks can be much more palatable.

A Word About Schedules
As a side note, much of traditional project management and traditional management software (like MS Project) will use a critical path to auto calculate a schedule. This idea comes from a world where processes flow linearly and in a relatively predetermine way -and where people often have a small number of things on their plate. This isn’t the case with art departments, agencies, marketing, interactive or with just about any creative processes in general. For a creative group, project management can’t really be about critical path. Its more about getting the right information on a process, increasing efficiencies, great delivery and making good decisions. Other approaches can stifle.

In a creative process, therefore, instead of an auto-calculated critical path, the schedule should be determined

• By your commitment to your client (whether internal or external) and
• Critical tasks should be those which you manually indicate as being of critical importance to your project and schedule.

This gives you and your team the room to apply your own experience and expertise to setting up a project schedule. While, on the other hand, you’re still setting up crucial project gateways that need to be met to effectively track progress, manage the project and delivery on time.

Prioritizing tasks is critical when you have limited resources. A traditional project management approach doesn’t work in most situation. I generally recommended a holistic approach to task prioritization.

The traditional approach by project managers using traditional project management software is to prioritize tasks based on the critical path of the project.  This critical path is constructed by defining tasks, information about those tasks and constraints.  Project management software (like MS Project) then auto-calculates a critical path.

Time and again I’ve found that this isn’t helpful to getting projects done.

1. It doesn’t capture all the variables that should go into prioritizing a task and
2. It is way too cumbersome to be useful to most people doing projects.

Instead, try a holistic approach to task prioritization.

Here are two ways of doing that. They can be used separately or together.

Subjective Task Priorities
First, come up with at least three levels of task priority. For simplicity, these can be low, medium and high or 3,2,1 -with 1 being highest priority.

These are completely subjective priority levels which allow you, as a human being, to factor in any number of variables when deciding what is important to work on.

A human being can better appreciate all the factors around a project or task better than any algorithm or decision making model. Algorithms and models can only go so far when factoring in things like human error, rework time, and things simply taking longer than planned. Algorithms also allow the project manager to be aloof from the process as a whole. This isn’t good.

An added benefit of a subjective approach is that it requires the project manager to have detailed knowledge of the production process and the business goals behind the project. That way, they can weigh everything in when deciding what people should be working on and when.

Second, when putting together a task list, label each task with the priority.

When the relative importance of a task changes, change the label and make sure everyone on the team knows about it.

Project management tools like Vertabase can help you notify people automatically. Or, just make sure you continue to communicate with the team.

Subjective Critical Path
A second way of incorporating holistic prioritization is to manually flag critical tasks when you set up your task list or work breakdown structure. The critical tasks should be those which are key for your project to be completed properly and/or on time.  Many organizations call these project milestones, though I like to reserve the term for major phases of a project.

I’m happy to be presenting at CFUnited in August. This is my first time presenting there and I’ve been asked to tell people why they should come to my session (besides the free candy I’ll be passing out). My session is called Getting More Done: Effective Project and Team Management.

But before I tell you what it is about, let me tell you what the presentation is NOT.

It is not a demo of our project management software. It is not a talk about agile project management versus waterfall or other formal methodologies. It is not a description of the ideal personality type you have to be to be successful or the latest fad in management styles. There is a lot of that around already

This is different.

This is a collection of practical tips to getting more done. It is based on the Vertabase approach to project management that says

the role of project management is to provide accurate and meaningful information between the people who want the project done (the client) and the people doing the work (the team).

It has real-world examples, good developer specific stories and tons of tips you can implement immediately to make your life easier.

You may not have project management set aside in your workflow -it might even be just you and the client. But, by definition, there is a project management role that is filled by you every time you communicate with the client. You are giving them information, collecting information and setting expectations. This presentation will help you do that better (and with less effort).

If there is project management already in your organization, it can help you better understand the information you can provide (making you more valuable) and how you can get the information you need (so you can get on with your work).

Like so many of the presentations being given at CFUnited, it should give attendees tools and ideas to be more productive, to keep their shops at the edge of innovation and to raise the overall level of their skills.

It is a great investment.

On a behind the scenes note, the organizers and presenters of this conference together put a tremendous amount of themselves into it. It is truly a labor of love and a testament to the passion of the community involved. This passion can’t help but rub off and keep people excited about what they do for months after the conference.

I’ve often said that managing the active phase of a project is the most crucial part of a project’s lifecycle.  This is when the project’s goals are being worked on. Some have argued that planning is the most important phase. That good planning can take care of anything. An incident on the most recent spacewalk by NASA seems to prove my point.

Two astronauts went out on a spacewalk to fix a particular part on the Hubble Telescope. The part that needed repair was blocked by a handrail. To get to the part, they had to unscrew the handrail. But, of course, the bolt that held the handrail onto the telescope was stripped. They couldn’t use any of their tools to get it off. The plan called for them to use a tool to unscrew the bolt. But it wasn’t working. Eventually, they had to resort to brute force, yanking the handrail off with old fashion muscle, in order to get to the part. They called it ”Plan C.”

My wife and I cracked-up when we heard this. The same thing always seems to happen to our household projects. Nothing ever goes as planned, things take longer and you often have to come up with innovative solutions to achieve your goals (which sometimes involved brute force).  Even with the huge budget, master planners and technical information that NASA has, things don’t always go as planned.

Why is this important?  It has a direct impact on how you structure your projects, the techniques you use and the tools you use for managing projects.

Recognizing that the active phase is the most crucial part of a project’s lifecycle, means that the flow of information from team members to the project manager, and back again, is of utmost importance. It is only by having accurate information that the project manager can understand the situation and implement changes as needed.

Without good information, those astronauts would probably be stuck trying to build a tool that could unscrew the bolt, to go according to plan, rather than just getting the job done.

Great skills can get lost in a large organization. A good project manager can help find them.

I was at a usability conference recently looking over books on human-computer interaction. Standing next to me was a usability expert who worked for a government agency. Each of the many departments in that agency had their own website. I’d been to one of those website and found it very hard to use. (It wasn’t her department’s site.) We started chatting about it and she totally agreed.

I asked her why she, as a usability expert, couldn’t do anything to improve that website. She told me that she was siloed into her own department. I asked why the user interface (UI) expert in that other department didn’t do anything to improve the website. She said that the other department doesn’t have a usability expert on their team. She is the only UI specialist in the whole agency.

She has a unique skill amongst hundreds of employees -but her skills are trapped in one department.

This struck me as being an unproductive, though not uncommon, situation. And this is the type of situation where a good, get more done, project manager can come in.

A good project manager has access to information that other team members don’t. Specifically, the project manager knows where specialized knowledge and skills are within an organization. The PM can be the eyes and ears across project teams for talent.

This is a unique position that a project manager can use to expand their role as a value-added member of an organization. In this role, resource allocation becomes more than simply finding who has time to do what. It goes beyond traditional project management methodology. Resource allocation becomes about placing the right resource on a project. The one that can help get the job done better, faster or more cost effectively.

Project managers can take two approaches to distributing project related information or project knowledge.

The first is to silo the information. This is generally the approach of a project management specialist. The idea is that project management is a brain-trust of information and that distribution of the information is most effective when its carefully managed. Specifically:

• The project manager consolidates project information
• The project manager publishes the information at specific times
• Others must ask the manager for the information
• Often requires calling meetings to share the information
• Or the information gets distributed in ways that make sense to the project manager.

Some of the consequences are that it:

• Is opaque in how information is gathered and why
• Builds a clique around the project manager
• Carefully controls the flow of information
• Can be politically and strategically useful in an organization
• Can be hard for others to use the information in the way the project manager presents it.

The biggest benefit to siloing information is that if the project manager can successfully become the funnel for all information they can effectively manage expectations and improve processes. The biggest downside is that the project manager often becomes a bottleneck for information and then, in frustration, people just ignore project management and see project managers as a hindrance to getting things done.

The second is to spread project information. This is generally the approach of a team leader or non-specialist who is given responsibility for managing a process. The idea here is that the project manager wears many hats and the faster information can be received or distributed the less time the manager has to spend collecting or publishing that information. Specifically:

• Information is quickly distributed
• It is centralized in one place that everyone knows about
• It is available to anyone with the proper access level
• It is dynamically updated with any new information
• Can be received and viewed whenever its convenient to each person.

Some of the consequences of spreading information are that it:

• Can break hierarchies of control
• Makes skills rather than knowledge more valuable in a team
• Brings transparency to a process
• Raises accountability
• Can make projects and teams harder to manage
• Makes it easier to improve a team’s performance.

The biggest benefit is that it allows non-specialists to manage projects and makes it easy to push a consistent way of tracking projects across a team. The biggest downside is that team members sometimes don’t care about the nitty gritty of a project (they just want to know what they have to work on) and can’t be bothered to contribute to information on the project.

I recommend a blended approach. Start from a place of spreading information but make sure that you cater the specific information to each person based on what they will need -and don’t go overboard with sharing information.

• A designer might just want to know the amount of time they have to deliver the project whereas
• a developer wants to know the specific deadline and functionality required.
• An executive needs customized metrics on projects they’re tracking whereas
• a client wants to know if things are on track or not.

On the other hand, if you let too much information flow out you will lose control and visibility on a project or task. A free flow of information can be constructive for collaboration on a deliverable. However, not everything is a collaborative process. Many projects and processes benefit from being monitored, measured and controlled.