Strategic Project Management

Writing about project management for @task gives me the opportunity to speak with many of our customers about their success and challenges. I'll be sharing many of the lessons learned from those conversations here—hopefully demonstrating that it really doesn't matter what industry you're in, the rewards of successfully executing project-based work are universal.

The results of our informal survey are in.  I thought they were pretty interesting.  Roughly 63% of those who responded identified themselves as accidental project managers.  This wasn't a surprise to me.  From conversations I've had with colleagues, many of them stumbled into project management because they were capable leaders who could effectively deal with an ever changing environment.  (I am an accidental project manager myself.)

What type of project manager are you?



Understanding the complexity of project based work, it made perfect sense to me that 66-67% of you invested in regular training.

Do you participate in regular project management training?



Here is where I was a little surprised—but because of the audience, I probably shouldn't have been.  Books and Social Media tied at 66% as where you turn for training.  I have long felt that the community that exists within the social media landscape is a valuable source for sharing best practices, I just didn't expect it to be the source.

Where do you turn for project management training?



I was also curious to see how many of you accidental project managers pursued a more formal path once you made the leap to becoming a project manager.  Not surprisingly, being the dedicated over-achievers that project managers tend to be, 54% of you have subsequently pursued a formal PM education and certification.

If you started out as an accidental project manager, have you subsequently pursued a formal project management education and certification?



Thanks to everyone that participated in our survey.  It's rewarding to be part of a community that spends so much time contributing to the education and success of its peers.  For anyone who didn't contribute to the poll, feel free to visit and add your experience.

One of my colleagues and I were recently discussing how most people get their start in project management.  She was a formally-trained and certified Project Management Professional (PMP), while I am what would be called an "accidental" project manager.  I started by managing projects as part of my responsibilities, although we didn't call them projects at that time.

With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to see how all of you got your start.  I've put together a short (only four questions) poll to see where the rest of us stand.  I have an opinion, which I won't share until after we see the results.

Click HERE to participate in the totally anonymous poll.

In baseball, the base coach's job is very important.  It begins the moment he enters the ballpark.  During the opposing team's pre-game infield warm-up, his job includes:

• Scouting the strength of the outfielders' and catcher's throwing arm and where the fielders position themselves in the outfield
• Analize the pitcher's pick-off moves and determine whether or not there is a clue in his body movement before he thows to the base.
• Is the pitcher's delivery predictable—can you time it with a stopwatch?  If the pitcher takes more than 1.5 seconds to deliver a pitch from the stretch position, a fast base runner might be able to take advantage of the delivery to steal second base.
• Does the pitcher tip off his pitches or follow a pattern in his pitch selection.

Like the base coach, the project managers job starts before the project begins.  However, it doesn't stop there, I've noticed that project managers share some other common traits, here are the top four:

1. Communicate Clearly: Good base coaches are effective communicators—even when it's in "code" or with a "sign."  A project manager must be able to communicate objectives clearly to ensure the success of any project based work.
2. Be Animated & Loud: A good base coach is easily seen and heard by runners and batters.  An effective team leader can't hide in the office buried in reports all day—successfully leading a project team requires that he or she be seen and available to give direction, advice, and remove impediments. 
3. Good Decision-Making Skills: A good base coach is ready to react to the unexpected—good decision-making skills are vital to being a good base coach.  Projects seldom seem to turn out exactly as planned.  Project managers need to be great decision-makers.
4. Encourage Aggressiveness: A good base coach sets the tone for the offense.  When the coach shows confidence in the player's ability to execute, it boosts their confidence.  Recognizing the individual talents of the project team, and leveraging them to the benefit of the project is a critical skill.  Helping individual team members stretch and improve helps ensure consistent success.

It doesn't really matter what your work management methodology is or what project managment tools you use, there's a lot a project manager could learn at the ball diamond.  Would you be a good base coach?  Successful baseball coaches also rely on the right equipment to help their teams win.  Project management software can be invaluable at automating reporting, data collection, along with encouraging collaboration and communication for project leaders—making it easier for them to successfully lead their teams.

With the baseball season just around the corner, maybe an afternoon with your favorite team could be a good team-building, training experience—or maybe I'm just craving some peanuts and Craker-Jacks.

Project management professionals tend to be highly technical, process-driven individuals.  Both are great qualities for managing projects.  However, those who seem to rise to the top also understand that there is something more to successful work management than the technology used or the process employed.

As the technology incorporated within business project management software continues to improve and automate many of the tasks project managers once had to perform manually, the role of project managers is changing.  The ability to "roll up the sleeves" and interact with individual team members is making some project managers very effective at facilitating collaboration and eliminating the impediments faced by project teams.  The more project managers are able to spend time leading project teams rather than collecting data and building reports, the more likely we are to see a drop in the project failure rate and a more positive bottom-line in our organizations.

To facilitate this, project managers need to make sure they have a couple of things nailed down:

1. They need a thorough understanding of their process and how to best use project management tools to successfully execute that process.  PPM software has the ability to automate much of the data collection and reporting requirements of project management and should make it easier for managers and project teams to collect and evaluate information.  Software, or any project management tool for that matter, that forces double entry or encumbers the process, should probably be abandoned.
2. Project managers need exceptional people skills.  A command-and-control management style is not the most effective way to lead a project team.  It's becoming more and more critical that project managers encourage collaborative communication to drive project success.  Successful teams are where the rubber hits the road—and successful project based work has more to do with people than technology.

Has your role as a project manager changed in recent years?  How do you utilize technology to make you a more effective project leader?

Learning project management best practice doesn't just happen.

Because there is so much project-based work accomplished by managers who have had no formal project management education, and the trend of organizations turning to projects for increasing productivity and profitability continues to grow, the need for education is important.  Unfortunately, those responsible for managing projects are often "accidental" project managers—and are left to figure out for themselves the best way to manage projects, motivate teams, and get work done.  That being said, some of those "accidental" project managers turn out to be incredibly effective and some of the most intuitive and successful managers.

Without getting into a discussion about certification and formal training there are other ways for budding project managers to learn the ropes.  (Anyone considering the path of the PMP should talk to Josh Nankivel at PMStudent, he offers a number of great resources for preparing for the exam.)  However, I'd like to talk about the less formal ways we share information and learn best practices.

Over the past several weeks, I've written a couple posts regarding how we learn and how that applies to projects and project management: The Challenges of Project Learning and The Value of Social Media.  I'd like to take another step down that path and talk about the value of community in learning best practices and the basics of work management.

I'm amazed at the wealth of knowledge available to anyone willing to spend the time to find it.  Whether in the form of blog posts, webinars, user groups, conferences, tradeshows, or seminars—it's never been easier to learn best practices and how to implement them into your work management methodology.

To understand how this benefits our industry, imagine a rowboat with project managers inside.  Some are experienced, some are not.  As the water level rises, what happens to everyone inside the boat?

They all rise with the level of the boat.

Those with experience and expertise rise, those just getting started rise, and they rise collectively.  We are very fortunate as project professionals that there are so many talented and capable people willing to share their insight into what makes successful projects click and what it takes to be a skilled project leader.  This "community" makes it possible for everyone in our profession to enjoy greater perceived value in the workplace.

I know that I enjoy the time I spend with my peers in person, on the phone, and even online.  I think it helps me be better at what I do and inspires me to share with the rest of the community.  As I talk to our customers about what makes them successful, it's rarely a discussion about on-demand project management software (although the right project management tools contribute to project success).  It's usually about implementing sound methodology and best practices.

An @task Opportunity to Mingle with Your Peers

I rarely promote @task events on the blog, but I think this is worthy of a little plug.  For anyone near New York City, @task's CEO Scott Johnson and one of our customers from the area, will be making a presentation on best practices and software developments to help organizations get more work done.  Hors d'oeuvres (which are on us) and the discussion will take place at the Ritz-Carlton on March 25, 2010 from 4:00 to 6:30 pm.  If you're interested in attending the FREE event, you can register HERE.

Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?

At one time or another we all do it.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if procrastination is part of human nature.  However, when it comes to project management decision-making, procrastination can be detrimental to the success of the project and expensive.

Of course, overcoming the urge to procrastinate is easier said than done.  "Just Do It" might work for Nike, but project managers in the trenches have to do more than pull on a pair of running shoes and hit the streets.  That being said, planning for procrastination as we do for resources, return, and risk could provide an answer.

By "planning for procrastination" I mean, making as many decisions up front as possible—eliminating the need for spontaneous decision-making when it's crunch time.  That doesn't mean there's no room for making decisions as situations change, but it does eliminate the need to make decisions about things that could easily be made in advance.  Thomas Edison said, "Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets planning."  I think inventing the lightbulb was a pretty successful project.

Another option is to pre-establish the criteria for making decisions in any given circumstance.  Of course you can't anticipate everything, but you can plan ahead for many of the common challenges and situations that might occur.

With that in mind, we will need to remember the words of humorist Will Rogers, "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

With any project based work the ramifications associated with procrastination are serious.  There are project management tools that will make it easier to plan, communicate with team members, and evaluate success, but ultimately we have to "Just Do It."

Maybe Nike is right after all.

What are you doing to avoid procrastination? 

"How do you hold onto your best change leaders?  Promote them," says Robert W. Gunn at the Harvard Business Review.  "That's a key finding of my consultancy's study of 84 major, multiyear change initiatives completed between 1995 and 2005 at 36 Fortune 500 companies.  The programs—such as restructuring, reducing costs, globalizing supply chains, creating shared services, and implementing Six Sigma—where among those that figure prominently in companies' annual reports."

Gunn awarded high scores to those organizations that embraced change and consciously developed change leaders.  About one-third of the companies studied received the high marks.  "Perhaps not surprisingly," writes Gunn, "all of the change events at these high-scoring companies met or exceeded leadership's expectations, and 62% of the executives who led these initiatives were promoted."  According to Gunn, about 11% of the change leaders left these companies once the projects ended.

This was not the case with the remaining two-thirds.  Although these organizations experienced a 74% project success rate, only 12% of the change leaders were promoted and 25% of them left.  "Thus," argues Gunn, "CEOs of poorly rated firms lost proven change leaders—the executives most comfortable with taking risks, going after big goals, and leading in the face of uncertainty—at about twice the rate as CDOs of the high-scoring firms."

Gunn suggests that organizations that use change initiatives to promote leadership development create what he calls a "virtuous circle."  Change initiatives thrive, and the development of skilled executives provides leaders who are able to drive the next wave of reform.  Gunn also says that, "Valuations suggest that investors notice companies that are adept at managing change and supporting change leadership."

Managing change is a big part of successful work management.  Nurturing managers who are skilled at dealing with the challenges of project based work is important—particularly if you want to keep your best project management leaders.

The Magic 8 Ball is not a good project management decision-making tool.

In a blog post written by John McKee for TechRepublic a while back, I stumbled upon these three decision-making techniques that have been successfully utilized by great leaders:

1. Trust the Marines: The US Marines have a tool they teach their officers called the 70% solution.  If you have 70% of the information you need to have, 70% of the analysis you think is required, and feel 70% confident that you are right—get on with it.  The Marines feel that a well-reasoned decision that is well executed has a fair chance of success, but no action has no chance of success.
2. Take a clue from the coaches: Coaches are always asking questions.  By asking questions you will learn the good, the bad, and the ugly—helping you make the best decisions.
3. Trust your feelings, Luke: Sometimes your "internal barometer" helps you make decisions and take action.  Of course, intuition, gut instinct, or "the Force" might not be a good way to make all your decisions, but it's often a good place to start.

The ability to make quick and informed decisions is part of what makes a good leader.  After all, leaders are paid to make decisions.  "Otherwise," writes McKee, "we could just populate entire organizations with lawyers presenting both sides of any case/problem to each other all day long."

Do you have any decision-making tips you'd be willing to share? Do you have project management tools that help you make good decisions?

"Go West, young man," wrote Horace Greeley.

I live in the west.  Smack dab in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.  I don't tote around a six-shooter, but I do drive a Jeep, like to go camping, and enjoy playing in the mountains or the high deserts of Southern Utah. 

After you escape the bigger cities and get off the Interstate, there's a lot of wide-open country—towns are about thirty miles apart.  It's the distance a buggy or a horse and rider could travel in a day (and the distance I can cover in my Jeep in about 30 minutes).  My world is a little smaller than the early settlers in Utah.

However, for organizations doing project based work, the world has become even smaller.  The vast array of technological tools available today are getting better and better at making virtual project teams effective, allowing people to be accessible without being in the same building, the same country, or even the same continent.

Some of the benefits of building virtual teams include:

• Organizations can hire the best people for the job regardless of geographic proximity
• The overhead expenses related to brick-and-mortar office space can be reduced
• Global project teams make it possible for work to be virtually done around-the-clock

The benefits of working with virtual teams can be pretty substantial, but there are some considerations that need to taken into account before jumping in with both feet.  If you're considering working with virtual teams, let me suggest the following regarding people, process, and technology:

People:

• Trust yourself and your employees
• Clearly communicate roles, responsibilities, and expectations
• As a team, understand how productivity will be measured

Process:

• Build a communication plan that takes into account the diverse geographical relationship of the team
• Define an electronic records archiving policy
• Establish an electronic communications standard

Technology:

• Use collaborative workspaces to manage project content
• Deploy and use an online "chat-like" capability
• Use Internet-based meetings with both voice and video

Online project management software has come a long way in the last few years, making it possible for organizations to manage projects and teams from anywhere with an Internet connection.  When looking for a technology solution, it's important to consider a few things like foreign language capability, platform independence, collaboration and communication capabilities, as well as scalability of the network and online access.  The right solution will help address many of the people and process requirements of working with a virtual team.

Do you have experience working virtually with a project team?  Please share what you're doing to promote efficiency and effectiveness with a global team.

In the military, when any soldier or other military member leaves his or her post without permission, he or she is considered AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave).  A missing soldier leaves a void—which could negatively contribute to the success of the mission.  Everyone involved in a project, including the sponsor, has a role to play in the results obtained by any project based work.

Any work management plan should include sponsor and stakeholder involvement.  Here are some suggestions for keeping sponsors engaged and participating:

1. Schedule regular meetings (generally monthly) with sponsors, team members and other important stakeholders: This may be a good time for a "quick" status update; but more importantly, it is a time for reinforcing the value and significance of the project in terms of business value and the sponsor's commitment to helping the team.
2. Educate the sponsor on their role as part of the team:  The sponsor has a significant role as a project advocate in a steering/stakeholder committee as a way to communicate with stakeholders and provide visibility to executives.
3. Don't neglect impromptu one-on-one time with the project sponsor: Make sure your sponsor is willing to have the occasional informal meetings as needed.  It's not only important to cultivate the relationship with the sponsor—your success impacts their success, and vice versa.

Keeping sponsors engaged often makes the difference between a project that succeeds and one that fails.  Project management tools that facilitate sponsor and stakeholder communication can help make this easier, but regardless of whether or not it's a part of your work management solution, allowing project sponsors to go AWOL isn't a good idea.

How do you keep project sponsors from going AWOL?

I see on Twitter all the time lists of the best project management software, the best business intelligence tools, or the best portfolio management products.  I thought I would toss in my two cents today.

The polish poet, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec said, "The weakest link in the chain is also the strongest.  It can break the chain."

When most organizations consider project and portfolio management tools, they look at visibility and business intelligence tools for validating that execution aligns with corporate strategy.  This is important, even critical, but most project software misses the point.  It ignores the end user, the person who is actually in a position to input the most accurate data.  This oversight forces project managers to spend the lion's share of their time chasing down status instead of leading project teams and facilitating successful projects.

Addressing the needs of individual project team members is the crucial link (weak or strong), that determines whether or not the information business leaders use for making decisions is accurate or a bunch of bunk.  Making it difficult for team members to contribute to the project management process just doesn't make sense—and virtually guarantees that information will be out of date and unreliable.

What's more, organizations that rely on any solution, including project management software that doesn't automatically capture status information simply can't guarantee that decision-makers have accurate and up-to-date information.  They might as well continue to use a spreadsheet and sticky notes.

In my opinion, when looking for project software, I think it's critical to include the following criteria in your evaluation:

1. Does the solution address ease-of-use needs for end users?
2. Does the solution automatically push project status information into reports and dashboards that executives can use to make data-driven decisions?
3. Or does if force project managers to manually input data, duplicating effort, forcing them to ignore their primary responsibilities to keep projects on track and lead project teams?

Admittedly, these are only a few of the questions you'll need to ask as you evaluate the available project management software solutions—but they are critical questions if you want to effectively engage the workforce and enjoy success.

I don't believe the workforce is the weakest link in the chain.  In fact, I think they are the keystone to successful project-based work.  Workforce involvement in the project management process results in accurate information and good decisions.  What are you doing to keep your project teams involved in the process?  Are you using software or something else?

As long as organizations are flush with cash and resource rich, achieving work management success is relatively easy.  However, when budgets are tight and resources are stretched thin, the secret to successful project based work is a little more challenging.  That being said, as project teams are forced to work with smaller budgets and minimal resources, focusing on these three things will enable success:

1. The Right Projects
2. The Right Team
3. The Right Approach

The Right Projects:

Depending on the organization, there are a number of criteria for choosing the right projects, however, when resources are scarce you might want to ask the following questions:

• What will it cost to get the project done (low capital cost is most desirable)?
• Can we achieve the objective with our current resources?
• Is it possible to finish in a short time period (less than six months)?
• Is there a lot of need?
• Is it a low-risk initiative?
• Will it provide a high payback?

The above questions will help you determine if the project under consideration is the right project.

The Right Team:

Merely because someone is available doesn't mean they are the right person for the team.  Make sure you have the right skills and the right people on the team.

The Right Approach:

Depending on the project, there are many approaches; however successful projects have a few things in common regardless of the project management tools you use: an engaged project sponsor, a clear list of objectives, and a reasonable timeline.

It's not impossible to be successful with smaller budgets, all you need is the right projects, the right team, and the right approach.

The philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

This is sometimes referred to as Santayana's Law of Repetitive Consequences; and is nowhere more evident than in project based work.  It's been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.  The increasing pace of change in the workplace often makes it difficult to learn from experience as processes and personnel are constantly changing.

In my opinion, to successfully learn from experience requires a regular and consistent approach that can be incorporated into any work management methodology.  Here are a few suggestions to help any project team learn from experience:

• Establish a venue for sharing lessons-learned: It doesn't matter whether you call it a post-mortem, a project review, or a project retrospective, most organizations don't do them—but they should. 
• Share what has been learned: Although most organizatios don't bother with a project retrospective, those that do don't always create an environment that encorages real learning—and even fewer share what was learned.
• Don't make learning the next corporate initiative: It's natural for organizations to try to formalize the learning process into the next corporate project.  Although the natural learning process should be encouraged, "corporate" is all to often the same as "bureaucratic," which employees will be more likely to avoid.
• Don't make learning a one-time activity: Project learning should be ongoing and interactive—don't let it become an isolated activity that happens rarely.

Every organization has different needs.  Some rely on their project software to help facilitate the learning process.  I think that's good, but even organizations that don't use any specific project management tools need to create an environment where project learning can regularly take place.  Because this is a challenge for a number of organizations, please share some of your suggestions and successes.

I think it's universally accepted that collaboration and cooperation are critical to the success of project based work.  That being said, how should organizations define cooperation success and how do they achieve it?  In an article written by Sue Dyer for Projects@Work, she suggests three levels of cooperation:

1. Cooperation
2. Collaboration
   
3. Co-Creation

"These three levels of cooperation are available to all teams," writes Dyer.  Let's talk about her five suggestions for pushing cooperation to the next level.

Tip #1: Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities

Successful cooperation depends on clearly defining what you are trying to accomplish.  It's easy to make assignments and hold each other accountable for whether or not specific tasks are completed, but cooperation can only happen if everyone understands the vision of what they are doing "together." 

Tip #2: Commit to Being Fair

The foundation of trust in any kind of strategic partnership or cooperative effort is a commitment to being fair.  Successful project management cooperation requires that team members have confidence that they will be treated fairly.  When that atmosphere exists, cooperation and synergy really begins.

Tip #3: Get Off Your Butts

Objectives might not always be easy.  If all you ever hear is, "yes, but," you're team is defeated before you've even begun.  This can make the team adversarial—the opposite of cooperative.  Take time to find out why there is push-back and work together to find a solution.  Cooperation implies working together to overcome obstacles.  Saying, "Just make it happen," doesn't just make it happen.

Tip #4: Create Accountability

Dyer recommends some kind of a scorecard for offering anonymous feedback, so team members can see where they stand with each other and on the objectives.  I prefer making expectations clear in the beginning (see Tip #1), and regularly evaluating progress against the objectives.  Of course, sometimes situations change which will require objectives to be adjusted.  Regular and productive communication and collaboration will make this a seamless process.

Tip #5: Plan For Disagreements

Regardless of your particular work management plan, nothing ever seems to go exactly as planned—and people don't always get along.  Creating a conflict resolution plan before conflicts exist makes dealing with issues among team members easier to resolve.

Creating an atmosphere of cooperation, collaboration, and co-creation doesn't just happen.  It takes some elbow grease.  I'd love to hear about successes you've experienced in this regard.

You may have a stakeholder meeting scheduled for half and hour, but in reality you've only got about 60 seconds.  After that, you've got to earn their attention, or they'll start checking their email and watching the clock. 

Everyone involved in project based work has to deal with sponsors and stakeholders.  I stumbled across these 10 tips to keep stakeholders interested and engaged a couple of years ago, I think they still apply:

1. Pique their interest—An agenda is always a good idea, but a brief summary of what will be discussed gives them a take-away and allows them to come prepared with questions.
2. Don't assume they know their job as stakeholder—They might understand the high-level view, but you might need to help with the details.
3. Keep it simple—Give them the situation in straightforward terms.  Don't overwhelm them with information.  Cut to the chase.
4. Use numbers and pictures—PowerPoint is a great tool for presenting graphics and numbers to stakeholders.  It's how they present information to each other.  You should use it too.
5. Sometimes you'll have to use logic—Accept the fact that there might not always be data to support a particular situation.  Not having numbers to back up your position will make your argument problematic, so you may have to turn to "if...then..." logic to shed light on a situation.  However, don't expect the same results or response from stakeholders—numbers rule with them.
6. Waiting is never a good option—Don't wait until a problem is obvious—it's often more difficult to solve the issue at that point.
7. Always offer a solution—If you are going to bring up a problem without offering a potential solution, you might as well tell all the stakeholders, "Fire me now."  That's why you're the project manager.
8. Specify the actions required of them—If stakeholders need to take any action, don't assume it will be obvious to them.  Restate—in list form—what actions need to be taken and by whom.
9. Always say "yes," but make sure they understand the cost of "yes"—Sponsors and stakeholders don't like to be told "no," so don't do it.  Just make sure that they all understand what "yes" will cost.  That way they can judge for themselves whether or not "yes" is worth it.
10. One last tip—Don't stop reporting status just because stakeholders stop requiring it.

Regardless of your work management methodology, there are a lot of project management tools out there to help manage tasks and timelines—just make sure you also have access to the data stakeholders want to see to make decisons.

Did I miss anything?

Yesterday we talked about some successful tactics for effectively working with project stakeholders.  I believe a productive and ongoing dialog with all the project stakeholders is critical to project success.  That being said, when stakeholders become nothing more than noisemakers they can hurt morale, hinder performance, and put projects in jeopardy.

What is a noisemaker?

A noisemaker is someone who tries to influence a project or a project's outcome to a degree that is disproportionate to their role and negatively affects project performance.  It's possible a noisemaker could be a stakeholder who is not directly involved in the project, a team member who overrides customer input on requirements, a customer who attempts to dictate technical details, or even an end user who insists his or her area of functionality receives attention at the expense of others.

That being said, not everyone who becomes involved in a project outside of their role is necessarily a "noisemaker."  Sometimes a stakeholder outside of your project can help you deal with other out-of-control stakeholders.  It all depends on whether or not their additional input has a positive effect on the project.  However, left unmanaged, noisemakers can have a disastrous effect on project based work.

How Does One Manage Noisemakers?

The first step is to recognize the problem—and this is a project-long activity.

Still, recognizing the problem doesn't solve it.  The next step is to make sure that there is an appropriate way for stakeholders to participate and offer input.  Directly soliciting opinions early sometimes helps cut noisemakers off at the pass—and helps circumvent any damage they might cause later on in the project.

There may also be times when you need to solicit help from another stakeholders to help turn a noisemaker into a team player—making them an asset to the project.  However, sometimes noisemakers actively work to prevent project success and you may need help to remove their influence in every way possible.

Managing stakeholders is an ongoing process and critical for work management success.  Successful project management requires diligence, persistence, and tact when working with stakeholders—and noisemakers.  I have yet to meet a project management professional who doesn't have to deal with noisemakers at one time or another.  I'd love to hear about what you are doing to manage those issues.

A good caddie is a critical component to a successful tournament for a golfer.  On the golf course, a caddie has a number of basic responsibilities:

• Ensure that the proper number of clubs are in the bag
• Help in the selection of clubs for specific shots
• Let the golfer know where pin placements are for each hole on the golf course
• Alert the golfer to where a good spot to hit their shots would be, and if they miss, where to miss
• Help read putts if needed

A great caddie will have walked the course and knows everything there is to know about the softness of the turf, the condition of the sand traps, and has personally paced off the yardage for each hole.  This information allows the caddie to provide the information the golfer will need to play the best round of golf possible.

Throughout the course of a project, it's often the tough decisions made by stakeholders that make the difference between a successful project and one that fails.  Sometimes the importance of stakeholders in the success of project based work is overlooked.  However, it's vital to keep them informed with the most timely and reliable information possible.  Regardless of  the project management software you employ or your particular work management methodology, here are three keys I've discovered to encourage successful stakeholder involvement:

1. Ensure that stakeholders, sponsors, change agents, and champions, are involved and in agreement throughout the project.
2. Guide the decision-makers through the key steps to success and make sure they are applied consistently throughout the project.
3. Keep stakeholder's decision-making efforts based on the best practice areas that have helped other projects deliver successfully to achieve the desired results.

Not unlike the relationship between a professional golfer and caddie, the biggest benefit to keeping stakeholders in the loop is an increase in stakeholder collaboration and a more successfully portfolio of projects.

How do you keep stakeholders engaged in your projects?  Do you have any suggestions that I may have left out?

To pay homage to all our friends in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, and other points East buried in the snow, I thought I would share a personal "snow" story.  Growing up in the Rocky Mountain West, I have lived with snow my entire life.  For example one night a couple of years ago, a freak snow storm turned my normal 35-40 minute commute home into a five plus hour ordeal (but that's another story).

As a seven- or eight-year-old I remember one snowy day when, for some reason I can't remember, I was all dressed up in my Sunday best just sitting at home when my best friend Scotty dropped by to see if I could play.  We wanted to venture out into the neighborhood and enjoy the beautiful snowy day—despite my polished dress shoes and the fact that my mother had told me not to go outside that day.

Rules are made to be broken, right?

We determined that the reason my mom didn't want me outside was because she didn't want me to get my shoes wet—so we devised a plan.  Scotty would take a trashcan lid and push the snow down in front of me so I could step in the mashed-down snow (keeping my shoes dry).  We went all over the neighborhood like this.  Until my mom found us.  I still don't remember why I wasn't supposed to go out, but she did try to impress on me that rules were NOT made to be broken.

A couple of years ago I stumbled across some rules that Mark Lilly and Tim Rahshulte had put together for Gantthead and called "Unbreakable" for everyone doing project based work.  Lily and Rahsulte ask, "Why do so few projects succeed?  Despite the decades of increasingly complex attempts to manage projects, far too many managers overlook the 10 Unbreakable rules for project success...these common sense guidelines hold the key to increasing your success rate and delivering greater consistency across your projects life-cycle."

Here are their 10 "unbreakable" project management rules:

1. Know what you are doing
2. Know why you are doing it
   
3. Be prudent, honest, and prepared
   
4. Play to your strengths
   
5. Know how to navigate
   
6. Know how to communicate
   
7. Know how to succeed
   
8. Know how to fail
   
9. Know when the project is over
   
10. Know how to learn

I've heard it said that "it's easier to get forgiveness than permission," but when considering successful work management methodologies, I think I agree with Lilly and Rahschulte.  How about you?  Are there any rules you think we should add?

After 1908, things would never be the same.

At the beginning of the 20th century, automobiles were expensive, complicated, hand-made machines that were unaffordable to the average American.  Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but he was determined to build something simple, reliable, and affordable—something the average American worker could buy.  The result of this goal were two significant innovations—the Model T and the assembly line.

The original price of a the Model T was $825, selling over 10,000 cars the first year.  Four years later, Ford was able to drop the price to $575, giving his Model T 48% of the market by 1914.

Describing the assembly line, Charles Sorensen, a major contributor to the development of the process, wrote, "What was worked out at Ford was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow of these units at the right time and the right place to a moving final assembly line from which came the finished product.  Regardless of earlier uses of some of these principles, the direct line of succession of mass production and its intensification into automation stems directly from what we worked out at Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1013..."

I think the genius of the early team at Ford was recognizing that the successful, and cost effective, manufacture of an automobile was the culmination of a sequential process.  A number of work management best practices probably have roots in the Model T and Ford's assembly line.

Similar to putting the pieces of an automobile together in an assembly line, successfully managing project based work is more than just planning and executing tasks.  It involves the entire project life-cycle.  From idea submission to the completed project.  Although project managers might not have direct impact on every step in the process, I believe they are the crux, or keystone, upon which the success or failure of any project depends.

Project management tools or methodology that only address part of the process are akin to building a really nice seat or chassis, without the rest of the car.  In my opinion, the following four critical steps in the project life-cycle need to be addressed by any work management process:

1. Initiation: This is where we ask the question, "What do we want to do?  Does it make sense to do it?" This requires some kind of request queue, a means to evaluate the merits of a potential project, along with a way to determine if there is adequate capacity to actually accomplish it.
2. Planning: We need to ask, "How are we going to do it? Who is going to do it? How much will it cost and how long will it take?" Project managers play a big role here—creating project plans, identifying and assigning resources, and managing project expenses.
3. Execution and Controlling: This is where the rubber hits the road.  "Are we doing what we agreed to do?  Are we doing it right?" Here's where project managers probably spend the lion's share of their day—managing time, costs, change, team performance, risk, issue, acceptance, and communications.
4. Closure: This is where we ask, "Did we accomplish what we wanted?  Can we do it better next time?" Tools and methodology should support a robust way to evaluate lessons learned, facilitate post mortem, and initiate project improvement.

I seldom think about the assembly line when I climb into my car for the drive to work each day.  But, I am glad that everyone on the assembly line was there when my car went through. 

Does your project management process address the complete project life-cycle?  Have I left anything out?