Scoping the Project for Better Requirements

Good scope before requirements

The earlier you define scope, the more efficient your requirement definition process will be. Work done before scope definition is usually wasted effort. An early scope definition keeps requirements writers from diverging, reduces requirement inconsistencies, and keeps the big picture in view. It also shortens the time required for requirement writing and rewriting and reduces debates.

If you do not give everyone writing or reviewing requirements your scope definition, they are likely to create their own. Imagine listening to a movie without watching it – as I have done many times on trips in the SUV listening to a movie several times but never seeing it as it’s playing in the DVD player behind my head. I have a vision – my own vision – of what’s going on and what the characters look like and what the set looks like, but if no one describes it to me in detail or I don’t see it for myself then that’s all it is … my own vision. And it likely differs greatly from the actual film itself. Read more »

Communicating Project Scope

The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

The Scope Document

Once the project scope is defined, it must be documented to ensure that everyone assigned to the project will address the right tasks and work toward the same project goals. A formal scope document is essential to keeping a project on track. The order that these scope items are covered and the amount of space devoted to each in this document will depend on the type and size of the project and the number of scope items that need to be covered. On small projects, needs, goals, objectives, and missions will often be the same thing – easily described in a few statements. Distinguishing between these things is not that important, but establishing a flow from less measurable statements of need to more measurable ones truly is important. Read more »

The Most Valuable Role of a Project Manager

The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

Recently, I was reading a discussion thread on this on the LinkedIn site. Someone had posted the question, “What is the Most Valuable Role of a Project Manager?” Someone posted that question along with a follow-up question…”And how can a Project Manager optimize that role?”

At the time of this writing, the discussion has been going on for 9 days and has 11 comments so far. Breaking it down by responses that actually tried to answer the question rather than just chime in on the discussion, here are the results (the number in parentheses is the number of that specific response):

• Communicator (5)
• Deliverer of change to the business (1)
• Ability to say ‘no’ (1)
• Leader (1)

So, out of 11 comments, 8 actually gave answers. And of those 8 (one was me), 5 stated that communicator was the key role of the project manager (and yes, I was one of those 5).

I find this interesting. And all responses were good responses. The discussion will probably continue for a while, but I find it likely that communicator will still be on top down the road. The other responses are important ones.

Saying ‘no’

The ability for the PM to say ‘no’ – especially to the customer who they are trying to lead to the right solution – is very important. If the PM can’t be strong – stubborn as I’ve often called it – and stand firm on the goals of the project and know when to say ‘no’, then the project is likely to face issues and the project scope is in constant danger of getting out of hand.

Leader

Likewise, the project manager must be a strong leader. The responder stated that a good leader will know when to listen, when to speak, when to encourage, and when to cry out louder. The PM is the leader in charge of many different backgrounds and personalities. The role as the leader is a given, but they must adequately fulfill that role in order to hope to achieve success on the project. Yes, I agree, leadership is critical.

Change agent

Anytime you’re delivering a project you’re delivering change to the business or client. The project manager is that change agent and sometimes has to work hard to knock down barriers to change. They must work well with others inside the business or with the client to make that change happen and to help that change be accepted. The PM is definitely a change advocate.

Communicator

However, I still believe – as I always have – that the role of effective communicator is the most critical role for the project manager. All project communication happens with the project manager – it all needs to go through this one position. And if it doesn’t – if critical communication routinely circumvents the process and goes around the PM, then the project is likely headed for disaster. The PM is the central point for project status, project meetings, emails, revised schedules, issues tracking, risk tracking, and budget management. If key pieces of project information miss the project manager, then they will likely miss other critical communication points and individuals as well.

A project manager must be an effective communicator and must maintain control over the communication process in order to give the project its best chance at success.

Establishing Objects and Gaining Conceptual Agreement with the Client

I’m taking a little turn from purely project management concepts and thinking more in terms of the IT Consultant in general. Afterall, many of us working as project managers are at any given time part of a professional services organization that thinks of us basically as consultants to THEIR clients.

Establishing objectives is the starting point of any consulting project. It’s impossible to do anything else until and unless you know the desired ending point. Below are some specific questions to discuss with the client in order to elicit some outcome-based business objectives. Take them with you whenever you sit down with a client or potential client as you work through that initial meeting both selling your services and diving deeper into their need and expected results.

• How would conditions ideally improve as a result of this project?
• Ideally, what would you (the client) like to accomplish?
• What would be the difference in the organization if the project is successful?
• How would your customer (the client’s customer) be better served by this project?
• What is the impact you seek on return on investment/equity/sales/assets?
• What is the impact you seek on shareholder value?
• What is the market share/profitability/productivity improvement expected?
• How will you (the client) be evaluated in terms of the results of the project?
• How would your (the client’s) boss recognize the improvement?
• How would employees notice the difference?
• What precise aspects are most troubling to you – what keeps you up at night?
• What are the top three priorities to be accomplished?

In establishing conceptual agreement about the objectives of the project you are about to undertake together, you – as the consultant – are trying to ensure the following:

• The client is not expecting anything that you cannot deliver to them.
• The client is not expecting anything that is unreasonable under the circumstances and is not within the culture and environment that the project will be performed in.
• There will be no misunderstanding later about why additional work wasn’t performed. The limits and goals of the project will be understood and agreed upon.
• The client is maximizing your contribution and talents on the project so that the project is as effective as possible for the client and as lucrative as possible for you.

If you begin with carefully constructed objectives, you can then create a framework within which the project can be launched. From that, the project can progress toward the agreed upon goals and final solution and draw to a close. Boundaries can be derived from clear objectives. While it seems that a never-ending project is lucrative for you, it actually is not. If the end is never reached, then success is possibly never really understood and realized. Setting clear goals and reaching them is what leads to future work with the same client, not a seemingly ongoing project that drains their financial resources.

Strategies for Managing a Mobile Team

I ran across a great document put together by Terrence Gargiulo for Makingstories.net. Mr. Gargiulo discusses what he feels are the top ten strategies for managing mobile workers. His full document is a very good read because he also discusses things such as risks and issues to consider when managing mobile workers.  You can access his full document here.

I’m sharing this here because so many times as project managers we are overseeing the work of a very geographically dispersed team. In the past three years I’ve only managed one project with a team that I could see on a daily basis. Dozens of others involved remote workers all around the country.

Here are Mr. Gargiulo’s Top 10 Strategies for Managers of Mobile Workers as described in his document.

Top 10 Strategies for Managers of Mobile Workers

1.    Focus on building relationships

You are now in the business of managing relationships. Once a quarter audit your time. How much time are you spending engaged in activities meant to foster stronger relationships with your mobile employees? Rate each relationship on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is weak and 10 is very strong. Craft a strategy for continuing to develop your strong ones and triage the weak ones. Ask yourself why they are weak and what you can learn from them. Avoid finger pointing and hold up the mirror to reflect on your own opportunities for improvement. Extreme cases of under-performance do not warrant time or effort. These however are few and far between.

2.    Streamline communications

Consolidate and prioritize communications. Use email and IM (instant message), texting, blogging, threaded discussions, etc. for relationship-driven communications (i.e., staying in touch and being personal). Communications of an important nature should be cohesive and never delivered in fragmentary pieces that have to be cobbled together by the receiver. Mutually assess the communication preferences of yourself and your team members to develop a communication plan. Avoid assumptions and revisit your plan on a regularly basis especially when the nature of the work is about to change.

3.    Incorporate less didatic forms of communications

Determining the right amount of detail and when to provide detail is an ongoing responsibility of a manager with a mobile worker. As a general rule, less is more. This leaves bandwidth for the times when lengthy, explicit instructions and information are essential for the work at hand. Try working with more story-based forms of communications. Sharing tidbits from the field and office in the form of stories, anecdotes, case studies (use cases), jokes, innocent productive gossip, and even metaphors will relay context, encode key pieces of information, and give mobile workers a sense of inclusion.

4.    Spend more time listening

Obvious, but counterintuitive. When you are out of easy reach and you are tasked with managing the performance of others it’s easy to get sucked into the trap of needing to transmit lots of information. In most cases the opposite is what is most productive. Make listening a priority. This is the hardest and most tiring aspect of managing others. It is also the single most important thing you can do accelerate the development of strong relationships. Listening is not enough. Keep an open mind. Be present and try to enter the perspective of the speaker. This will help you ask effective questions and identify what direction to go with your own needs and agenda. You’ll be surprised at what emerges.

5.    Let mobile workers define communication and reporting practices they want to follow

Structure is critical. Adopt rules of engagement that place people at the center of their own decisions. Managers provide the boundaries and constraints but let employees define the working and communication styles, tools, and processes that will help them perform at the best. Set expectations on two fronts. First, treat these employees’ defined practices as privileges that can and will be modified if key performance metrics are not hit. Second, let employees know there will be times when a projects or work require less flexible, employee-driven communication and reporting practices.

6.    Manage deliverables, not activities

Lots of project-oriented work is well suited to mobile workers. Even roles that are more task driven can be effectively managed if they are broken into deliverables. For mobile workers this may mean collapsing some of the activities of a business process or workflow that had manual checkpoints and controls associated with them into deliverables. Automation where possible can be used or batching activities into larger groups can transform task oriented jobs into deliverables. Realize that there can be many facets of people’s jobs that need to be adjusted to accommodate a mobile work style.

7.    Engage in more frequent and informal performance management activities

When you manage mobile workers, relationships are at the heart of your job. Performance management does not need to be a loathsome, “administrivia” obligation. Designing some unstructured, informal ongoing dialogs with mobile employees about their performance goals and personal development plans is a great way to strengthen communications, and shows an active interest in employees and relationships. This might look and feel very different from one employee to the next. This is another tangible way managers can adapt their style to match the needs and preferences of employees. It works best when the performance management conversation flows in both directions.

8.    Give complete trust until given a concrete behavioral reason to do otherwise

According to a recent survey conduct by HR.com and ic4p, listening and trust are the two most important factors to virtual and remote teams. Without trust, relationships are bankrupt. Abuses of trust can always be found but these occur in spite of whatever systems we put in place. Mobile workers thrive when managers give them complete trust. In some respects managers of mobile workers have no other choice. Use trust to create strong relationships. When some concrete behavior and not just someone else’s word of mouth shows that trust has been violated, then take it away, but not until then.

9.    Use adaptive management styles tailored to individual workers

Every employee is different. Mobile workers make it easier for managers to take a more personalized approach in how they work and interact with members of their team. It takes more work and effort on a manager’s part but the results can be phenomenal. Understanding what enables each employee to perform at his or her best is the most important responsibility of a manager.

10. Leverage technology

Technology drives and supports managing mobile workers. Using technology well is not as simple as it appears. Standard models of communication and transaction should not always be mapped in a simple one-to-one way. Communication and collaboration technologies offer new and exciting models. These need to be purposely exploited in order for organizations to realize the full extent of benefits these wonderful new capabilities and features offer.

Beyond email, IM and phone, Web conferencing plays a key role in virtual team enablement. Take an inventory of “stuff” you need to collaborate on with your virtual team. If the list includes Word docs, spreadsheets, software applications, or anything else on your desktop, Web conferencing will be critical for collaborating in real time. You’re projects will lag if you can’t be on the same page with mobile workers.