Overcoming Common Project Issues – Part 1
Posted by Brad Egeland
Even when you organize and lead your projects well, there are still some common problems in the project management world that you may continue to run into on your engagements. Learning how to effectively deal with these recurring issues will both improve yourself as an effective project manager and also increase your chances for project success.
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we’ll examine the first five of ten problems commonly experienced on projects.
#1 – The team doesn’t work well together
When you struggle to create a team but don’t succeed, first examine your own management style. Do you truly offer team members an opportunity to participate? Or do you discourage them from speaking out, offering ideas, or suggesting changes? Teams work only when you encourage participation and then follow up on it.
The problem may also be caused by excessive diversity in the team. If you have the chance to pick your own team, try to limit as much as you can the involvement of a large number of other departments. Projects often demand help from people other than those you supervise directly, but it is not always necessary to strive for participation beyond those resources you absolutely need.
#2 – Other managers resist having their employees recruited to your team
You face a formidable task just in getting cooperation from other department managers – no matter how diplomatically you approach them or how well you define and explain the project. To solve this problem, you will need to convince the other managers that their priorities will be respected.
#3 – Management skills that work in the department don’t seem to work on the project
Be aware of the important differences between departmental and project management. They often require different levels of supervision and leadership. In fact, skills that work for you as a department manager may interfere with team participation, so you will probably need to develop a completely different approach to supervising the project team.
4 Categories of Stakeholders
Posted by Elizabeth
The OGC’s Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) framework uses a categorisation process to identify all the stakeholders for a programme, and this works equally well for project management.
There are four categories of stakeholders, which provide a starting point for your to brainstorm all of the relevant parties involved. The four categories are: users, governance, influencers and providers. Let’s look at each of those in a bit more detail.
Users
These are the people who will use the products of your project or programme. They are the beneficiaries of the outputs. For example, these could be customers or another internal department. In the case of delivering a new software package for your Sales team, the users would be the Sales team.
Governance
These are people or groups of people who have an interest in how things are managed on the project or programme. For example, management boards or steering groups would fall into this category. Auditors, regulators, health and safety executives would also be categorised as governance stakeholders.
Executive Management’s Role in Project Risk Management
Posted by Brad Egeland
In this article I wanted to share a segment from one of my favorite books, Eric Verzuh’s “The Portable MBA in Project Management.” Here, Mr. Verzuh acknowledges executive management’s overall role in the project management process and project successes, but outlines four key responsibilities or actions that the executive management team must take on pertaining to the risk management activities on the projects for their organization.
Executive management plays a crucial role in every project’s success. The primary responsibility for carrying out risk management activities lies with the project manager and the project team, but they cannot do it alone. The project sponsor and the executives responsible for project selection and portfolio oversight make four essential contributions to risk management:
- Maintain both a contingency and a reserve within the project budget. Contingency accounts for known risks and the possible cost of dealing with them if they arise. Reserve accounts for the unknown-unknowns.
- Hold the project manager and team accountable for the risk management deliverables, and allow for the time it takes to create them. Ben Franklin’s adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies to risk management; project executives must pay for and demand the ounce.
- Promote a climate that recognizes the value of risk management. Strange as it may seem, many project managers are criticized for identifying risks and developing contingency plans: they are accused of pessimism or planning to fail. These project managers should receive praise rather than criticism because they are investing in avoiding obstacles, solving problems before they arise; the ultimate act of proactive management. Read more »
Cover Your Risks from All Angles
Posted by Brad Egeland
As you engage on a project, either as a project manager, an independent consultant or both, there are many things you need to consider about the potential issues and risks that may come into play on your project.
I’ve written a lot in the past about the need for initial risk planning assessment and analysis. While I can’t say that I’m great at practicing these risk activities, I can say that they are of the utmost importance and when I’ve made the time on a project to do adequate initial risk preparation, it has always been beneficial. If nothing more, it makes the entire team and the customer aware that there are risks out there that are much more than mere annoyances. These risks can bring a project to its knees and could usually have been avoided by performing the proper analysis up front.
When analyzing and considering risks, there are a few angles to approach them from; as well as different categories that you need to consider in regards with the team and or customer.
Risk avoidance
I like this one the best because here you plan your project activities to actually avoid the risks that you’ve discussed. Not all risks can truly be avoided or predicted, but if you can avoid them you are much better off. You won’t have to battle it head on and it won’t potentially derail your project timeline and budget.
Running a Project is Sort of Like Raising a Baby – Sort of
Posted by Brad Egeland
I have a large family – and thankfully that family became a little larger three weeks ago today so this article topic seems appropriate. It came to me earlier this week that running a project from start to finish is kind of like raising a baby from infant to adulthood. Ok, it’s a stretch, but there are similarities.
It could be that this all came about in my mind as a result of several straight relatively sleepless nights. Or maybe I am on to something. Who knows? But the more I thought about it the more I realized that there are some relative similarities.
Pregnancy = pre-engagement/sales
Think of all the work that goes into the pre-engagement portion of the project … basically the sales portion. This is what happens before handoff of the project to the project manager. So, Sales = 9 months of pregnancy. Are you staying with me so far? When handoff is ready to happen, you kind of know what you’re getting – or at least you think you do. In reality, it may be close but there are lots of details that you really have no clue about and you have to dig deeper so you know what you’ve just gotten yourself into.
Delivery = kickoff
The actual delivery is somewhat like project kickoff. It’s when you finally see some early details of the project up close … live and in person. Just like you get some new and very key information from the customer you also get some initial information from the doctors and learn if there are any conditions of your baby that need immediate attention.
Infanthood/toddler = design
The infant and toddler stages = design, in my opinion. Just as you’re designing the system to the requirements of the customer, you’re also training your infant/toddler what’s right and what’s wrong and hopefully molding them to meet yours and God’s requirements for a well-rounded individual. And, just like designing to the customer’s requirements, it’s not very easy and it does often involve some re-work and change orders!
