Overcoming Common Project Issues – Part 2
Posted by Brad Egeland
No matter how well you plan and no matter how organized you are, there are still some common problems that can rear their ugly heads and try to derail your projects. Sometimes, no amount of lessons learned sessions will get you past these issues, so we need to examine them further and discuss ways to eliminate them or at least minimize their affects.
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we discussed the first five of ten problems commonly experienced on projects. In Part 2 we’ll dive further into these issues as we examine problems six through ten.
#6 – Communication with top management while the project is underway is not effective
How do you handle the problem of poor communication with top management? Even when you make the effort to keep the lines of communication open, management may simply fail to keep you up-to-date on priorities.
Your solution: You cannot force top management to improve their communication skills, but you can do your best to present status reports, ask for continuing definition, and convey information to the top—even if your only avenue is the interoffice memo. If you can’t even get an executive to take time for a brief meeting, chances are your communication link will suffer. You may find that management does not respond to your requests or suggestions, fails to confirm project goals, and offers little support; but when the project is completed, you are told that “this is not what we wanted.”
In most cases, management wants to support you, and will try to maintain morale. So even though the problems seem formidable, if you make an effort to communicate, they can usually be resolved – even if you have to train top management in the development of communication skills!
#7 – The schedule is difficult to control
Coordinating the many ongoing efforts of your team members and successfully completing many different phases within the same limited time period may be a struggle. If so, examine the method you are using to develop and control your schedule. You may have to invest more time in developing a detailed network diagram and showing team members how to use it as a control document. Most instances of scheduling control problems are created by a lack of preparation in creating the schedule itself.
Your solution: Revise your methods.
#8 – Deadlines are not being met, and projects are completed late
You may have an excellent process for schedule control, and team members are working well together. But in spite of that, you simply don’t meet phase deadlines, and projects aren’t completed on time.
Your solution: Allow more time, or increase the size of your team. Your schedule is not realistic, and phases cannot be executed at the pace built into it. You may have been forced to accelerate your schedule because management imposed an early deadline. When you first organize your schedule, the realistic completion time will be dictated by the scope of the job. If the final deadline is unrealistic, convey this fact to management, explain why there is a problem, and ask for a later deadline or a larger project team.
Can Good Project Management Save a Troubled Company?
Posted by Brad Egeland
While there’s no way we can truly answer this in an article like this because there are just too many variables, we can certainly look at this concept in general terms. Can good project management save a troubled organization?
Best practices for the stable organization
It goes without saying that implementing sound project management principles based upon the industry’s best PM practices along with an injection of good project management experience will likely get your company off on the right foot. A setup like this will help an organization do a good job of managing projects, providing consistent project outcomes to customers, retain good project professionals, and maintain higher levels of customer satisfaction. And that’s great for the organization that is not yet in trouble. For the stable organization, setting up a good, repeatable PM practice is likely a good use of some targeted dollars.
Will it work for the troubled company?
But what about a troubled organization? Can an organization that is already experiencing severe financial drain due to poor customer performance and is near the end of its rope find any hope in implementing project management best practices? Or is it just a waste of dollars or at least not the right injection of money where it is most needed?
I think the answer is somewhere in between yes and no. Good project management breeds good customer service and usually increased customer satisfaction. It’s never the wrong time to try to serve your customer better. It’s never the wrong time to work hard to increase your overall customer satisfaction levels.
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!
Is PMP Helping Your Job Hunt?
Posted by Brad Egeland
Whether you’re employed right now, independently consulting, or unemployed, we’re all really looking for a job, right? No job is safe in this economy so if you’re employed you can’t afford to raise any flags for fear you could lose the job you have. But we’re all looking just in case. Or looking for our next gig. And even if you’re independent, you’d still probably take a W2 position – especially in this uncertain economy – if the right option presented itself to you, right?
So, here’s my question. For those of you who have the PMP certification after your name… are you finding that it is helping your job hunt? I actually had one recent comment to one of my articles from a reader who stated that the PMP designation actually hurt his job hunt. He started getting interviews based solely on the PMP certification (insert my comment here about lazy HR reps) only to have the interview end early when they found out that he had very little experience. Sometimes that hadn’t even bothered to check out his actual PM experience – they only included him in the interview process because he was PMP certified.
June 2010 PM Survey: Managing the Project – Part 1
Posted by Brad Egeland
I’m seeing June as a multiple survey month and then I’ll probably tie all of the results into one summary article near the end of the month. I’d like to take a look at how we go about managing our projects.
As always, your participation is greatly appreciated and highly needed to make the results meaningful. And as usual, the surveys are still very short meaning you can take them in less than a minute.
For the June PM survey on Managing the Project – Part 1, please go here.
This Part 1 of the June survey will look at three things:
- The most important characteristic of a good project manager
- The biggest reasons for project failure
- The extent to which we conduct lessons learned sessions
