Major sporting events can get in the way of even the best managed projects, particularly a best of 7 type event like the World Series of Major League Baseball that can go on for a week.
Take this year’s series between the Cinderella story Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals. It can definitely take its toll on the productivity (measured in sleep deprivation) and morale of fans involved in the whole event.
For those inclined, coffee or Diet Coke can make-up for the sleep.
The morale component, though, is harder.
There is no magic pill. It is not something easily assuaged by project managers, project management software or a therapeutic cursing-out and finger point on play by error-filled painful play by the water-cooler or coffee machine.
While the kind of visibility and replay that project management software or reports offer can sometimes be valuable to a project (and certainly to know who to hold accountable -like a young pitcher or two, perhaps) when your team is down -and there’s no reason it should be, it doesn’t seem to help.
Sometimes, it just takes time and the commitment to keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving along the path to get the project or deliverable done.
Communication is one of the biggest challenges in project management.
Its bad enough when a project manager has trouble communicating with the team that will be doing the project. But it can be down-right dangerous for a manager when there is a lack of clear communication with the project sponsor the person who navigated corporate politics to get the project approved.
The problem stems from not understanding what each person is looking for or unrealistically expecting the other party to speak your language. This can be aggravated by the project manager’s insistence on using only the project management tools which suite their needs, regardless of whether the project management solutions generate the kind of information the political sponsors of the project are looking for.
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Hiro Nakamura from NBC’s show Heroes has done the truly remarkable. The man from Yamagato Industries has broken all rules in project management and set new boundaries. Sure he can move time with his mind, bend the space time continuum and teleport. But yesterday he did something even more remarkable.
He executed a project using a comic book as the project plan.
Most project managers plan projects using some form of project management software or a Microsoft Project like tool. Even those that don’t use any project management software will, at least, use a spreadsheet like MS Excel to list all their tasks and keep note of their status. (These can get pretty complicated -as complicated as some project management software, with a variety of Excel Macros and built-in MS Excel functions set to automatically track and calculate the overall health of their projects.)
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Here is a rough translation of an internal memo to Hiro Nakamura (from NBC’s new television show Heroes). It is from the project management office of Yamagoto Industries.
While the PMO has been enthusiastically trying to recruit Hiro for a project management job, the memo points out two areas where Hiro needs to improve his project management skills.
These are lessons all project managers face.
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For comic book fans, X-men fans and all around superhero fans in the project management community a hero has been born: Hiro Nakamura, the 24 year old sales salary-man for Yamagoto Industries in Tokyo, Japan.
Hiro is one of the main characters on NBC’s new show, Heroes. He would be a fantastic project manager.
His communication, risk management or people skills haven’t yet been revealed. But in terms of raw assets, this guy would be value-add to any process or project -from six sigma, to ISO to best practices, Agile, whatever. His super powers transcend project management methodology. They are project management black-belt in the rough.
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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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Project planning is often taken for granted by people in charge of projects (in an everyday, business sense) -or by their bosses. They overlook the need develop a deliberate and disciplined approach to spelling out tasks, personnel and resources on a project by project basis.
This may come from a mix-up in the way people talk about planning and project plans.
There are two different ways of looking at project plans and the act of planning.
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There are two ways to manage a project: with brute force and with finesse.
Brute force managers are like rock climbers who uses their arms to pull themselves up a wall. It can get you there if you have the strength, but it sure is tiring and ugly.
Project managers who use finesse are like climbers who realize that their can legs do most of the vertical lifting. They just need to use their head to find the right placement. Climbing with their legs (which are stronger than arms), using their hands mostly for balance, they can climb a lot higher, for a lot longer and its much prettier to see.
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I have the pleasure of speaking to hundreds of people looking for project management software every month, and what I find amazing is the great difference in the way they are all working from one another. When I started speaking to people about their project management needs, I believed for the most part that everyone would basically be working in a very similar fashion. After all, we all put on our shoes basically the same way, brush our teeth, and walk upright as we move from place to place. But the more I spoke with potential customers, the more they kept asking me about very specific software functionalities. The first part of the question does your software do x and then y and then z, is followed by surprise when I answer that no, no one else has ever asked about that feature before. “Really?!” Is a classic response and they pause in disbelief.
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Mark Phillips, PMP
The opinions expressed on this blog are my own (aside from the periodic guest post).
I am the principal project management theorist and practitioner for Vertabase. It’s my job to determine the optimal operating practices for the company and implement them, as well as to explore new methods for getting work done that can be built into Vertabase products. I am also an independent project management consultant and theorist, providing project management, research and product management services to private and public clients, with a focus on software development projects, system design and the user experience. I apply an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving and 24 years of experience as an entrepreneur.
I speak extensively on these topics at events for organizations such as the PMI, Adobe, CHI/IUE, the State of Michigan and HOW. My work has been published in publications such as C|Net, ComputerWorld Magazine and eWeek. I have appeared on project management and design podcasts, and am a moderator on Stack Exchange’s project management site.
Before getting into project management and technology, I worked on Wall Street as an economic and financial analyst, first at Morgan Stanley, then at Oppenheimer & Co where I was a Vice President. I write an economics column for a Michigan publication and sometimes, on this blog, you’ll find comments on economic and financial events.
I am a PMP and hold a Masters degree in Applied Economics from the University of Michigan and a Bachelors of Science [Econ] in Philosophy and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. I live in Michigan with my wife and kids, our dog, a cat and a turtle.
