Online Project Management

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Project-Based Work and Six Common Challenges

24 May 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

As an accidental project manager, I used to think the challenges I faced were the result of my background (or lack of same). Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that regardless of your level of project management training, there are some common challenges that need to be addressed by every project manager. It doesn’t even really matter the nature of the project or your particular project management methodology, if you neglect the following, the odds are against the success of your project:

Unrealistic Deadlines: The success of some projects might depend on a hard deadline, but most projects don’t. Creative and flexible planning can remove the stresses of unrealistic deadlines.
Scope Changes: Although I think most of us would agree that you can’t always stop change, you can make stakeholders aware of what scope changes cost. Changes in schedule, cost, and even the quality of the product can add up fast.
Failing to Manage Risk: Ignoring risk doesn’t make it go away. Acknowledging risk and addressing it early will at least minimize expensive issues later. Risk and efforts to mitigate risk should be identified before the project has even begun.
Poor Team Communication and Collaboration: With all the technology available today, there is almost no excuse for poor project team communication. The right PPM software makes collaboration easier—and online project management software makes it possible for teams spread throughout the world.
Stakeholders Who Aren’t Engaged: Keeping stakeholders informed of project status is only a start. The real challenge involves helping stakeholders see the value of becoming real project advocates.
Undefined Project Goals and Objectives: To maximize the value of every project, each project should be tied to some kind of strategic objective. Once identified, it’s critical that everyone know what the strategic value of any particular project in process. Most people want to be part of something bigger than themselves. It’s always been a puzzle to me why so many organizations neglect to share their vision with the workforce.

What are you doing within your organization to overcome some of these challenges?

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Work Management and the Desired Future State

27 April 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

As a kid I loved the Jetsons TV show. I wanted to live in a world with flying cars, jet-tubes that whisked you from room to room, a robotic housekeeper like Rosie to clean up after me, and a dog like Astro. Since then I’ve grown up a little (although my wife would suggest that it might be debatable). Although we don’t have flying cars or robot housekeepers, I live with many of the futuristic conveniences that the writers of the Jetsons only fantasized about.

As organizations look into the future to set goals and establish corporate objectives, many are turning to project management best practices to help them streamline processes and increase the efficiency of their workforce. (There may even be someone trying to build my flying car—although I’m doubtful they will ever get dogs to talk.)

Whenever my colleagues and I talk about the future of work management methodologies, we often discuss the importance of doing the right projects, not just doing projects right. Doing the right projects is the key to helping organizations get to where they want to go—their desired future state. Success depends upon rethinking what we are doing and how we are doing it.

That being said, it doesn’t mean we can wish ourselves into our desired future state. It requires creating a structure around two important concepts:

The work being accomplished by project teams needs to reflect the strategic goals of the organization. For many companies, this is easier said than done. It requires a game plan (strategy) for getting organizations from where they are to where they want to go. Without a strategy, in the heat of battle it’s easy for executives and managers to make knee-jerk reactions to current circumstances. Successful organizations understand that workforce execution must reflect the organization’s strategic vision. Otherwise, it’s like being tossed about on the sea in a boat with no rudder.
Optimizing projects and team communication is critical. This is where project and portfolio management solutions can help. A good work management solution will help your organization evaluate potential projects to ensure they are a reflection of corporate strategy, enable project managers to optimize current resources to execute projects that provide the most business value, and facilitate top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top communication and visibility. Virtually ensuring that executives, managers, and project teams are all focused on the right projects, not just doing them right.

Over the course of my career, I’ve noticed that there really is no secret sauce that makes one organization successful and another fail. Usually, it’s applying common-sense principles with the available technology. I’m sure you’d agree that the pyramids’ master builder was an incredible project manager, he just didn’t have a computer or an online project management solution.

Project management expert and author Harvey Levine talks about the means to implement corporate strategy and achieving the desired future state in a recent video interview. To view the video, click HERE.

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Project Management Time Travel

20 April 2010 - POSTED by Doug Den Hoed

Hmm…where is that Flying DeLorean I ordered, anyway?

Remember Back to the Future? Great movie. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could shift Project Management back through time and see exactly how things looked back then? Although lots of PPM Software packages have auditing — after all, no one likes mismatched SOX — wading through a laundry pile of data edits to reconstruct what your Project was wearing at the time is no way to spend a Friday night.

I think Google Maps is onto the right idea. They’ve worked out a way to let you view a geographical location as you slide through time. And a few years back, I built a custom budgeting database that did something similar.

We called it Time Slicing. Every Friday at noon, a routine took a Snapshot of all of the Projects in the budget and saved them collectively as a Time Slice. Whenever our users ran variance reports, they could compare any two Time Slices. They’d often run the current budget against the previous week, but would sometimes run Q1 against Q2, or perhaps the current date against same date the year previous. The contrasts were amazing! They could literally follow the money as the budget migrated from one geographical area to a hotter one.

I hadn’t thought about that budgeting application in quite a while, but it came up last month.

I’ve been advising a team that uses @task as their Online Project Management Software. Their goal is to rationalize all business applications (e.g. Word, Excel, etc.) as two huge Oil & Gas companies merge. There are over 4400 applications across 8 major business units. Ultimately, each application has to be either Retained, Consolidated, or Decommissioned; although at the moment, there are still several Apps that are Unknown. It’s hard to digest that much data. To help them with work management, they asked if I could find a way to compare this week vs last week…in other words: Time Slicing.

In the end, thanks to some timely coaching from AtTask, we figured out a solution. Here’s an example of our AppRat Matrix Report, which shows how the Decisions have progressed in the past week, by Major Business Area:

AppRatMatrix

There were a few tricks to get it all going:

Set Up the Custom Data

The 4400+ Apps were being tracked in @task as Tasks under a single Project called AR-01 AppRat.
Each Task has a custom Category behind it with Parameters that note the current state of the Decision on the App (e.g. Retain), and to which major business unit the App belonged (e.g. Corporate).
Both dimensions can slowly change over time.

Create a Snapshot Status

@task allows users to define their own Custom Status codes.
I called mine "Snapshot", and based it on the "Dead" Status, to hide it on searches, and to prevent inadvertent edits of the historic data.

Create a Snapshot Group

I created a new Group called "Snapshot". Surprised?
The Group has NO users assigned it.

Copy the Current Project (Weekly)

Each Wednesday at noon, I copy the AR-01 AppRat Project.
My naming convention for the copy is AR-01 AppRat Snapshot YYYY-MM-DD.
I also set the Status to "Snapshot" along the way.
I then edit the copy and set its Group to the "Snapshot" Group.
Since normal users can only see their Home Group Tasks, when they use the quick find in @task (i.e. the top right drop down), @task prevents them from accidentally finding the old Snapshot versions of the Tasks.

Archive Previous Snapshots (Weekly)

By convention, I rename any previous Snapshots to AR-OLD AppRat Snapshot YYYY-MM-DD.
This removes them from the Matrix, but keeps them around in case I ever decide to do multi-snapshot reports.

Build the Matrix Report

The screen shot above was just a normal @task matrix report.
The main trick was that the Filter says where Project Name Contains AR-01, which excludes the AR-OLD Snapshots.
From there, it was just a matter of grouping by Decision, by Project Name (which gives the comparison column), by major business unit.
I also tied the report to a user with enough rights in their Access Level to see both the Current and the Snapshot tasks.

The result? When the team logs into @task, they now have an easy to read comparison of where they’re at, and where they were, all in real time. Although it’s not flying DeLorean, the Snapshot technique I described has helped our team visualize their progress over time, without having to sift through audit information or keep a second set of books for historic comparisons. With Time Slices now at hand, there are sure to be many other interesting insights.

I hope I’ve given you some, too.

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The Joys of Importing Data

20 April 2010 - POSTED by Eric Neilsen

In high school I had the worst job ever! A data entry job for some no-name company. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed good grades because I didn’t want to be doing data entry for the rest of my life.

When shopping for an online project management tool the important thing to look for is options. It is helpful to have different solutions to solve the same problem. One of the most painful parts of implementing a new system is migrating the data from the old to the new system. If you were asked to preform this migration, how would you do it? The last thing I would want to do is manually type in the data. There isn’t always a perfect solution. What you choose today might not be feasible tomorrow. A coworker might want to take a completely different approach. A project management tool should support several ways to import data. Including:

An API suite. If a project management tool doesn’t have an API in their system don’t buy it. An API will allow a user to important anything and everything. It is the first thing a developer is going to look for data migration. It is the only way to reliably import terabytes of data.
A toolbox full of tools. I’m comparing a toolbox to a host of different options for importing data into the system. An array of many one-off file import options. They allow a user to upload data using a comma separated value (CSV), spreadsheets, MS Project, and zip files. Tools are now integrating with email servers. Just email a document to an email address and it will be added to the system. Having a toolbox full of options to import data can turn a expensive data migration problem into a simple copy and paste. It’s "game over" once you can reduce a complex operations into simple steps that you already know how to solve. The next time you are faced with the problem of trying to import data, ask yourself the question: Would you rather be looking for a developer or opening up an excel spreadsheet?

When you have a lot of options for importing data it allows you to streamline the process. Importing data will always be tedious and boring. Don’t make it harder then it should be. When shopping for an online project management tool first look for an API and then look for a toolbox full of different options.

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Work Management Using Social Media

13 April 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

A few days ago Elizabeth Harrin of the Girl’s Guide to Project Management blog, published the results of her survey Social Media in a Project Environment. A colleague introduced me to the study knowing I supported incorporating the communication and collaboration aspects of social media into project management tools. Harrin explains her reasons for compiling the survey like this, "There’s growing evidence that ways of working are adapting to include social media tools and that these are becoming prevalent in the workplace. While social media practices are established for marketing, brand awareness and customer outreach, I felt that project managers should be taking advantage of the available tools—and I wanted to find out if they were."

If you follow the link provided above you can download a PDF of the survey (which is very informative). That being said, rather than plow through the entire thing, there are a couple of highlights I found interesting:

One of the most widely used social media tools by project managers for business is Linkedin. 47% of respondents use Linkedin, which makes sense to me. Linkedin provides an opportunity to connect with friends and peers along with the ability to participate in a broader community of project managers. As I’ve mentioned before, participation in an online community is a great way to share best practices and experiences that ultimately benefit individuals and the profession.
Wikis are a popular social media collaboration tool. A useful tool for encouraging collaboration and communication, at 35%, it looks like a lot of project managers are using wikis.
At 24%, it looks like project managers are active bloggers and blog readers. Of course a blog doesn’t offer a very practical way for project teams to collaborate, but like wikis, blogs are a great place to learn from others within the project management community.
Interestingly, online project management tools are used by 27% of the respondents. For anyone providing on-demand project management software like @task, this is good news.
Facebook, Twitter, SharePoint, MySpace, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Skype, Instant Messaging, Podcasts, and Video podcasts round out the rest of the survey. From as low as 1% for MySpace to the 48% that identify themselves as SharePoint users, social media appears to be alive and well within project management.

The primary way project managers are using social media is to stay in touch with friends and colleagues, however document sharing, communicating status updates, sharing project information, and even task tracking made the list. I guess the question then becomes, "Does social media provide any benefit to the project in terms of increases in productivity?"

The answer seems to be yes. 62% of the respondents said that it improved communication while another 56% claimed improved collaboration. According to Harrin, "More people report gaining efficiency benefits than financial benefits, and the two seen most often were improved collaboration and communications." However, "Not all companies are tracking benefits of the social media tools deployed."

The final question of the survey was, "Social media tools can/do improve the way I manage projects." 83% of respondents agreed.

So I guess we can put all the discussion about social media to bed because it is obviously increasing productivity, right? I don’t think so. Those who responded to Harrin’s survey were social media users, who at the very least read her blog, which would skew the results in favor of applying social media to the project management process, in my opinion.

However, I believe it does say that there are aspects of social media that can help facilitate, and even encourage, collaboration and communication among project teams. Social media tools not typically used by the surveyed population, like Facebook and Twitter jump from 3% and 11% respectively for those using that media for business purposes to 23% and 29% respectively for those who use the tools for business and personal use. I don’t believe it’s the specific media that is as important as how the media is used. Linkedin, blogs, podcasts, and video seem to be very effective ways to share best practice and educate, while wikis, Twitter, and Facebook offer something that encourages people to interact and collaborate—important activities for successful projects.

I have gone on record as an advocate of making project management software more "social." I believe the PPM software that is successful at incorporating those features of social media into their products that facilitate communication and collaboration will provide incredible value to the work management process—those who can’t will ultimately become obsolete and irrelevant.

How does your organization stack up to the results of this survey? Are you incorporating social media into your processes?

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Developing Authority vs Influence as a Project Manager

12 March 2010 - POSTED by Josh Custer

I recently attended a PMI chapter meeting that got me thinking about the challenges project managers encounter while attempting to guide their projects to successful completion. The guest speaker, Ken Sardoni, discussed how project managers usually don’t have a lot of authority in the same way a department head has authority. Instead, he pointed out that project managers are perfectly positioned to influence up and down the chain of command. To put this another way, project managers are well equipped to be good gardeners. They can’t command the plants to grow, but with their nurturing influence the garden can thrive. My experience has shown me that good project managers do not equate power with growing authority, but rather focus on developing power through their influence.

I will use the next few blog posts to explore my ideas around how to increase your own influence as a project portfolio manager, and make project management an art form in diplomacy.

Sources of Power
To begin I’d like to focus on a couple sources of power that project managers can tap into to develop their own sphere of influence.

Connection-based
Expert or Informational-based
Charismatic

Connection-based
Use your network! As a project manager you are probably not the person who signs the checks, sets the budget, and creates corporate strategy, but you probably work closely with that individual. Project managers frequently rub elbows with executives, directors, and other key decision makers. That face time is priceless. You have the ears of decision makers, make sure your project successes and challenges are heard by them. To prepare for these opportunities, you should always be prepared with a 30 second pitch on the problems, challenges, and opportunities of your project. For longer discussions, expand that pitch into a 3-5 minute chat on your project based work.

Expert or Informational-based
Experts are those individuals who have invested the time and energy into their careers to be recognized as the ultimate source of information and insight in their field. On a smaller scale, you need to be the expert of everything related to your projects. Both your colleagues and employers need to have confidence that you know what you are talking about, and that you are the person best suited for the role of project manager. Being the expert is knowing the status, challenges, and opportunities of you project. Tools like PPM software can help you accomplish this. Online project management tools, help you keep your whole team up to date, and allow you to easily broadcast this information out. Tools are not the end all be all though. You still want to know the inner workings of your project just in case an executive stakeholder, stops by for an informative chat.

Charismatic
I personally like this source of power, because I see it as a way to battle the prevailing stereotype of a mousy, introverted, control-oriented project manager. Look, project managers need to be out in the trenches, talking with stakeholders and team members. It is a lot easier to persuade others, seek counsel, and problem solve if you like people and they like you back. If interpersonal skills are not your forte, start a book club, take a self-improvement class, volunteer at a retirement home!. The more your get out and interact with people in unexpected ways the easier it becomes, and the more interesting to others you appear. Never underestimate the power of personal charisma in winning over even the toughest opponents.

With these three sources of power under your belt, you will start to see new avenues to influence those around you. As your influence increases, others will come to trust you more, and seek your input on critical decisions…many of which will impact the success of your projects.

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People, Process, and Technology: Working with Virtual Project Teams

26 February 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

"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.

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The Project Stakeholders – Friend or Foe?

19 February 2010 - POSTED by Cindi Smith

What makes someone a stakeholder, anyway? Let’s see … project sponsor; customer; investor, CEO, champion .. actually I think it really means anyone who has any stake in the project or the outcome, but for now let’s focus on the sponsor/champion persona.

I was reading a discussion string on LinkedIn the other day about what factors lead to project failure, and the poster and most of the commenters agreed that the #1 factor leading to a failed project is stakeholders. This surprised me, but I guess I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never managed a project where I’ve had to deal with this personally. But I do see it and hear about it, so I wanted to consider it more closely.

Stakeholders seem to all start out as an avid champion of the project, regardless of their title or vantage point, but over time they tend to fall into one of three categories: friend, foe, or neutral. The friend is the easiest to work with – they have a vested interest in a successful outcome, and really want to see you and the project succeed. The neutral parties were most likely excited and invested at the beginning of the project, but have lost interest or been distracted by other things over time.

A foe is not someone who is against your project, but it might be someone who competes with you for resources or tries to allocate them to other projects. Anyone in project management or who performs project based work will have to deal with this conflict eventually. The trick is to do your best to anticipate the situation and communicate your resources needs … a preemptive strike, if you want to look at it as conflict resolution.

So, it all appears to come down to Stakeholder Management, which we’ll leave to another post (except for this cartoon, which just amused me).

I will say that a flexible online project management tool with good reporting capabilities can go a long way to keeping stakeholders informed and so at bay. But I think the real trick is to avoid the pitfall of coming to see ALL your stakeholders as "The Enemy." It’s so easy to get into an us-against-them mindset, but this is completely counter-productive.

How do you see your stakeholders? What advice do you have to offer to other project managers to keep their stakeholders all planted solidly in the ‘Friends’ category so they can get on with the job of project management?

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Six Common Challenges for Project-Based Work

26 January 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

Regardless of whether or not you are a new or experienced project manager, there are some common challenges that need to be addressed in every project. Regardless of your project management methodology or whether or not you even use project management software, if you neglect the following, the odds are against the success of your project:

Unrealistic Deadlines. Sometimes the success or failure of a project depends upon a hard or "absolute" time constraint. That being said, there are a lot of projects where there are ways to manage the schedule. Creative and flexible planning can remove the stresses of unrealistic deadlines.
Scope Changes. Without going into a lot of detail about how project managers need to manage change requests, let's all agree that you can't stop change. However you can make sure stakeholders have a clear understanding of how changes will affect schedule, cost, and maybe even the quality of the product.
Ignoring or Failing to Manage Risk. Acknowledging risk, evaluating the likelihood of problems, and then crafting a mitigation plan needs to be done before a project is started. Addressing risk early eliminates, or at least minimizes, expensive issues later.
Team Collaboration and Communication is Ineffective or Non-Existent. With all the communication technology available today, there is no excuse for project teams not to communicate. The right PPM software makes team collaboration and communication easy—and online project management software tools make it possible from anywhere in the world.
Stakeholders Aren't Engaged During the Project. Keeping project stakeholders informed and involved with regular status meetings is a good start, but don't forget to take advantage of the time to gather information that will ensure that your final project will meet expectations.
Project Vision and Goals are NOT Well Defined. If we're doing it right, every project is tied to a strategic objective. It's always been a puzzle to me why so many organizations neglect to make everyone aware of the strategic or business value of the initiatives worked on by project teams. Most people want to be part of something bigger than themselves, getting everyone on board with the vision allows people to feel like they are contributing to something more than just a job.

What are some of the common challenges you face in your work management methodologies? Have I missed anything?

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Organizational Silos – Help or Hindrance?

29 December 2009 - POSTED by Cindi Smith

“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” -Vince Lombardi

Organizational Silos
Almost every organization, as it grows beyond the start-up stage, develops silos. It’s a tried-and-true, traditional way to organize and departmentalize a business, and it offers a level of comfort to employees and management alike. They know where they belong, what is expected of them, and who they report to.

By the same definition a project team can be seen as a siloed group—all members working together toward a common goal: the successful completion of project based work. This silo provides the right combination of talents and expertise needed for the project, and promotes strong team cohesion. Combine that with online project management software that promotes team collaboration, and you have the makings for a successful project.

But does that make silos right for an enterprise that hopes to succeed? I don’t believe it does.

Teaming works and is necessary; no argument there. The problem as I see it is that teams can become so insular and isolated they tend to forget to communicate outside of their (imaginary) walls. Even within a department (IT, Marketing, Sales, etc.) those doing disparate activities can get so focused on completing tasks and checking off to-do boxes they often ignore dependencies and can duplicate work. How many times have you seen an email go out to a number of people in different departments that ends with the words ‘take care of this’…? Without communication between those siloed departments, many people will take on the one task. What a waste of resources!

Help or Hindrance?
Silos, in my opinion, are a detriment to communication and in the long run a serious impediment to any business that hopes to succeed. But how do we overcome this?

In the area of project management, it’s probably on the PMs to set time aside each month or so to create bridges between teams, or even create a cross-functional team, to share successes, breakthroughs, and new ideas. This will benefit the individuals, the teams, the projects, and the company as a whole. Communication is still key to success, and anything that promotes team collaboration across the enterprise will help eliminate silos and lead to a stronger organization.

"The larger the organization, the more susceptible it is to the breakdown
of communication, the emergence of management silos, and misalignment."
Med Yones President of International Institute of Management since 2005)

Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts about the effectiveness or lack thereof of silos in the workplace?

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