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.
Getting Your Organization Started in Project Management
Posted by Brad Egeland
This concept came to mind when I saw a recent discussion post in a LinkedIn project management group. The post was titled “How should small companies start implementing project management practices?”
Some people were responding “why just look at small companies – why not all organizations?” But I get it. Most larger organizations have PM practices in place – albeit often ineffective ones. Or they are large enough it’s very difficult for one person to jump in and make a difference quickly. You know … bureaucracy.
But with smaller organizations, an experience project manager or consultant could step in and make recommendations and – given the proper amount of authority – start hiring people, creating a practice, and truly implement a practice of managing projects and customers and teams productively. In other words, they could get some action going quickly – they could get the job done without too much red tape slowing everything down.
So, what would it take? For me, it took a start-up CIO with a need to find me out on the Allpm.com website, pay me a high enough hourly rate to make me say, “um, ok … I’m onboard with that” and then give me open access to everyone and everything that was going on with their troubled projects so that I could figure out why their customers were unhappy and what we all needed to do to make them happy. That won’t always be the case in every organization – some will lack the confidence to give such access or take such a bold step. And some won’t even be looking to bring in a hired gun to whip everything in to shape – they’ll be asking people from within to work together to make it happen. In other words, they’ll work with what they have and try to wrap PM practices around that.
However they do it, there are few things that need to happen to make it really work – to make it “make a difference” going forward:
Make sure the CEO is onboard with it
A good project management practice begins and ends with the CEO giving it his blessing … or not. If the top of the organization isn’t onboard – you might as well not proceed because they won’t value it, they won’t explain it’s value to the customers, and it will die a painful death.
But if the CEO IS onboard, anything is possible. It will be the next big thing in the company. The CEO will tout it to their customers – expectations will be high and enthusiasm will be, too. And that will only serve to help the project managers or consultant or whoever is trying to get this off the ground gain confidence and compliance from those in the organization that they need it most from – mainly those who will become part of their project teams.
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.
More on Pleasing the Customer and Management
Posted by Brad Egeland
Already my recent article on “Who’s More Important to Please – The Customer or Your Management?” has generated interesting discussion and feedback on LinkedIn. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some comments here on PM Tips as well.
In response to the discussions that are going on so far, I’d like to follow up with some thoughts on the matter.
The general agreement among responders is that both need to be important – and I agree. Also, it is being said that a talented project manager will make it apparent to both the customer and their management what is important and align the goals of each. I agree on this as well – in most cases.
The issue is, most of us have been in one or more poorly planned or poorly run project management offices or organizations with poorly run project oversight. In some of these cases, it really won’t matter how talented the project manager is, if management doesn’t get it, isn’t focused on project successes, or is often trying to ‘solve’ things behind the scenes before taking it to the customer (and by that time making it too late to resolve the real issues) then there’s not much that can be done.
Who’s More Important to Please – The Customer or Your Management?
Posted by Brad Egeland
I ask this question from the perspective of the W2 employee. If you consider this from the independent consultant angle, it gets too messy. In the consulting scenario, often your management in the PM role is YOUR customer and their customer is also YOUR customer. So, for the purpose of this article, I’m really just considering direct hire employees.
So who’s more important to please – your management or your customer? As a project manager, I always consider my customer to be the number one reason I’m carrying out a project. It’s their money and I’m trying to help get them to the solution that they are looking for – or at least the one that they really need (even if they need educated somewhat along the way). I’ve often been frustrated at the roadblocks that management has put up in front of me – rather than knock down – along the way to project success. And on at least two occasions the path that management has directed me to take on a project has led to utter disaster. I’m not saying my path would have yielded success, but the likelihood of success was definitely higher.
So for me personally, I err on the side of the customer. That is probably what makes me a better consultant than employee. In a perfect world you have management, a PMO Director, and an executive staff that is involved and helps build paths to project successes. But in more than half of the PMOs and project situations I’ve been involved in as a W2 employee that has not been the case. How can I tell beyond my own frustrations? Well, in all of those organizations either the PMO was eventually eliminated, the PMO Director removed, or the company shut down altogether. So in those instances, I’m banking on my opinion over theirs.
