CEOs and the Changing Technology Around Them

Today’s CEO is challenged in a way that no CEOs were challenged before.  Technology is changing and too fast for even the CIO of an organization to keep up with, let alone the CEO.  Yet those critical decisions of company direction, how and where to grow the business, and what new technology to incorporate ultimately falls in the lap of the CEO.

How does one person do it?  The right answer is, they don’t.  It’s critical for the CEO to be surrounded by the right people to help him make good decisions for the company.  Just like an employee has to answer to their manager or management team, likewise the CEO is subject to the guidance, oversight, and decision-making of his board of directors.  Everyone is accountable to someone.

Making tough decisions

The CEO must make sound decisions on what new market niches to attack.  He’ll look to his marketing team and expect the right decisions will be made based on their analysis of the industry, but ultimately he’s responsible.

The CEO must make sound technology decisions.  He’ll look to the CIO or IT Director for their input on what direction to take, what technology to acquire, who to partner with, etc., but ultimately it’s his decision and the target is on his head.

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Onboarding with Success

When you’re asked to jump on a new project how do you go about doing that to ensure your best chance for success? That may often depend on why you’re being asked to take over the project … and it can be for any one of the following reasons:

• Previous project manager failed to manage the team and project effectively
• Previous project manager lost the customer’s confidence
• Previous project manager lacked the expertise to lead the project based on new direction
• An emergency necessitated an early departure for the project manager
• Co-management became a necessity due to changes on the project Read more »

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 »

Five Indicators that Your Project May be in Trouble

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 world of project management is not always black and white. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad. Actually, there are some things that are cut and dried….

• You’re project budget is either green or red
• A milestone is either met or it isn’t
• A customer either accepts a deliverable or they don’t
• You either get to keep your job at the end of the engagement or you don’t

However, so many things in the PM world are not that clear. And you have to learn to look for the subtleties at times to gauge certain things about your project, your customer’s satisfaction level, your team’s focus, etc. New project managers won’t be there yet. Experienced project managers learn – over time – to look for certain indicators that will help tell them how things are going, how the project is being perceived, and if there are some corrective or evasive actions they may need to be taking.

Here are some signs I’ve observed in the course of my career in project management that usually will raise a red flag:

• Executive management has a sudden interest in your project. This one could be good or bad – but it’s usually bad. The project may have taken on a higher level of visibility within the organization due to many reasons or factors. However, it’s also very likely that your customer is troubled by something and has contacted someone higher up resulting in this new interest. This indicates both that your customer has a concern and that they went around you as the PM and discussed it with executive management without your knowledge. Not a good sign.
• New staff has been added to your project without you requesting them. When management starts to add staff to your project – look out. They are likely putting someone senior on the project to baby-sit it and the PM. I’ve seen it happen to project managers on projects. Somehow, along the way, confidence in the PM has diminished. It may be because of something the customer said or because of activities that have been observed, but it’s not usually a good sign. Requests for resources should always come from the project manager.
• Your PMO director has started dialing in to your customer status calls. A sudden interest in your project from the PMO director when they were hands-off before may be a bad indicator. Again, it may mean the customer has gone around the PM and complained about something, but for whatever reason the PMO director is indirectly expressing concern about the project status.
• Accounting is asking you about unpaid customer invoices related to your project. This one is bad because it means that, for whatever reason, your customer has become slow in paying their bills. It’s up to the project manager to engage the customer in a discussion about the outstanding invoices and possible discuss overall satisfaction. Only two things will slow a customer down in paying their bills and both are bad – customer cash flow issues and customer satisfaction issues.
• The customer has been less communicative / more distant. If the customer has been less involved, less communicative, slower in making decisions or you’re just sensing a lack of commitment to the project on the part of the customer, it may be a bad sign. What it can mean is that the project has lost priority on the customer side. Or that it has lost funding. Or that the customer team is about to be re-assigned elsewhere. No matter what the cause, it’s not a good sign because it may mean the project is going to be slowed way down or that it is going to be canceled completely. It’s a good sign that you should contact the customer project team lead and have a serious discussion about the project direction and customer commitment to finishing the project.

Estimating Project Effort and Cost

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.

This article is based on information from “The Project Management Question and Answer Book,” by Michael Newell and Marina Grashina.

As part of your project management responsibilities, estimating the effort and cost on the project is going to be something you’ll have to do from time to time. Sometimes that will all be decided up front by sales and the customer and there won’t be much you can do about it. However, there will be times…hopefully…where you’ll get some solid input to the estimation process – especially on change orders.

In order to run the project you first need to know how long things take, how much they will cost, and what kind of resources will be required. The only way you can get this data is by doing good estimates. Without good estimates you really have no way of knowing where you are at any point in the project, and you have no way of predicting how much the project will cost or how long it is going to take to do it.

A project estimate is the determination of the effort it will take to achieve a desired result. There are two major things that we estimate in a project; one is the cost of the project or the money that will have to be spent to produce it. The second is the time that the project will take to be completed. Whenever we are doing project estimates, we will not only be estimating the cost of doing the work but also the time that it will take to complete it.

No one said project management is easy – and likewise there are many pitfalls in producing a good estimate for a project. The deliverables may not all be identified, key project supports change their minds, project team members may be optimistic or pessimistic, time may be limited, and so forth. If the project is poorly defined, there is not much of a possibility that the cost and schedule estimates are going to come out anywhere near what the actual cost and schedule time for the project will be.

Project management is about realistic expectations. Therefore, overly optimistic schedules can cause problems in estimating as well. Stakeholders or management frequently shorten schedules without adding budget to the project. Generally we can look for increases in cost when schedules are shortened. An inaccurate work breakdown structure causes work tasks to be missed. When the individual estimates for the tasks are added up to make a bottom-up estimate for the project, missed work tasks cause underestimation which can severely affect the budget. Understating risks underestimates our cost and schedule estimates as well. Risks that are not identified and identified risks that have the wrong value for their estimated probability or impact cause management reserves and contingency budgets to be misstated. Cost inflation and failure to include appropriate overheads cause erroneous estimates. It is important to recognize wage and price increases that will occur during the project and adjust estimates accordingly.

Summary

Project estimation is a skill that comes from experience. However, even the most inexperienced project manager can produce good estimates. Look to your skilled team resources and management to assist and make estimates with confidence. And don’t be afraid to adjust estimates as your project moves along and you gain more knowledge – your project budget will be healthier for it.