Project Communication Series: Meaningful Meetings
Posted by Brad Egeland
On projects, meetings are usually one of the three primary methods of communication. The other two are emails and phone calls. Given that, conducting high-quality and efficient meetings is important not only to continued project success but also to team member productivity. No one likes to waste time – and often on highly visible, mission-critical projects the project manager can ill afford to waste anyone’s time, let alone their own.
Gary Heerkens book entitled “Project Management” covers the concept of high-quality, effective meeting communications. Though I don’t fully agree with all of it – specifically when he discusses how you should not have a meeting if you have nothing new to discuss, because I think it’s critical to stay on schedule and at least have a brief weekly status meeting with the team and customer even if there’s little to discuss – I still think the text is interesting and worth noting here. Please read on for Mr. Heerken’s views on this topic…
Conducting productive meetings
Meetings can be a very effective way to conduct business. They bring people together for a relatively short amount of time so that large amounts of information can be shared. As mentioned several times previously, you should conduct core team meetings regularly to promote a steady flow of information to and from team members. But you’ll find that there are many other times when you may need to call for a meeting. Meetings are a critical form of communication.
March Survey – Remote Project Management
Posted by Brad Egeland
If you’ve been reading my articles for any length of time you’ll know that I’m somewhat passionate about remote project management and green or sustainable project management practices. And I believe that one supports the other.
For my March survey – or at least March survey #1 (there may be more) – I’d like to get an indication on where our readership stands on remote project management. How many of you out there are independent or involved in an organization that supports the management of projects in a primarily remote situation.
And for those of you who are, or have been, involved in the remote management of projects, I’d like to hear what you liked best or least about them. The capabilities of my website right now still limit my surveying options, but I’ve put up what I think are common pluses and minuses with remote or virtual project management in a team environment.
Please take the survey – it’s completely anonymous and it’s brief … only five questions. But I think the results could be very interesting. I’ll close this survey down in 10-15 days and then do a follow-up article on PM Tips analyzing the results.
Please go to this address to complete the survey…
http://www.bradegeland.com/march-survey.html
If any of you survey takers have feedback or something you’d like to add after taking the survey, please feel free to comment on this article or email me at Brad.Egeland@pmtips.net.
Thank you in advance for taking this survey. Your participation is greatly appreciated by me and everyone at PM Tips and Seavus – the creators of Project Planner and Project Viewer.
Do You Trust Your Organization’s Leadership?
Posted by Brad Egeland
This may seem like a simple question, but the answer is bigger than we think it is. We’ve all grown somewhat immune to the mocking of those in charge – you see the President of the United States mocked on Saturday Night Live all the time. But really, what about the leadership of your company? Do you have confidence in them? Do you think they have your back? Do you feel like they’re leading you, your co-workers … even your customers in the right direction?
I think the answer for many of us is often ‘no.’ And that’s sad. Why is that … why do we feel this way?
Let me look – generically – at situations I’ve both encountered personally at organizations I’ve worked with and for, as well as situations I’ve seen at customers and clients I’ve worked with. I’ll try to not be too specific so you can’t tie a situation back to one of my past employers – but you know who you are!
Examples of leadership failure
One Fortune 500 organization did very little support their PMO. I was around long enough to see it created, witness it flounder and fail, see it disassembled, and then see it re-assembled. And through all of this, there were other organizations within the company who were acting in renegade mode leading projects – and getting support from executive leadership to do so (crazy!) – while the actual PMO struggled and disintegrated. Rarely have I personally witnessed such an extreme waste of time, effort, good people and good money.
Is a Statement of Work Really Important?
Posted by Brad Egeland
How important is one document to a project? You know they drill… if you were stuck on a desert island and only had one project document to run with, what would it be? Sure, requirements are critical. I’ve always said that successfully documenting requirements on the project is one of the most critical things you can do. But how do you get there?
In my opinion, the Statement of Work, or SOW, is probably the most critical document you can start off with on a project. It gives you everything you need to start building your project from – of course that’s only if it exists and it’s done right.
Which brings me to my next question. How big or small does a project need to be to warrant an SOW? Is there a dollar amount below which an SOW is overkill? Or is there a minimum project duration below which a SOW would be an extravagance? An unnecessary luxury? My answer here is a definite no.
If a project is handed to you and there’s nothing but some notes on a paper, my recommendation is to stop, refuse to move forward, and request a formal statement of work. If one can not be produced, then I highly recommend building tasks into the front end of the schedule to incorporate sitting down with the project sponsor and creating at least a minimal statement of work document. What you’ll gain from this type of planning up front in the project is invaluable.
Best Practices for Mature Organizations
Posted by Brad Egeland
Eric Verzuh’s book “The Portable MBA in Project Management” discusses a study that was performed on 26 companies of varying sizes to determine whether implementing specific project management practices produced any actual project performance improvement.
Results from the study showed that companies with the best practice attributes I’ll describe next consistently scored better than their counterparts in four categories:
- Actual cost of projects as a percentage of budgeted cost was 6 percent better for best practice companies.
- Best practice companies had a 25 percent better rate of completing projects on budget.
- Best practice companies had a 29 percent better rate of completing projects on time.
- Actual hours as a percentage of budgeted hours was 15 percent lower for best practice companies.
The resulting data from the best practices study allows us to derive a profile of a mature project management organization. As we analyze the data, we find that the enablers and practices observed in the best practice companies can be isolated into a few core best practice attributes found in these companies.
These include:
1. Formal project management structure: Best practices companies have some type of project management structure, whether a program management office, project management office, project support office, or project knowledge center. Of the best practice companies surveyed, 50% had a program management office. What differentiates the program management office from other project management office structures is its responsibility for the delivery of programs, as opposed to strictly an administrative support role. In addition, the program management office is generally responsible to a vice president or director level with program managers directly assigned to this office. Data indicated that the program management office has a higher success rate than other project management structures in percentage of projects completed on time and on budget.