June 30, 2009

What to Do When There’s Nothing to Do

Posted by Brad Egeland

Whether or not you’re ever in this situation probably depends a lot on the size of your own personal project portfolio and how your company handles projects. It’s happened to me a few times, but it’s not a constant.

Here’s the scenario I’m talking about…. You have a lot of projects on your plate. For me, when it happened the most is when I had maybe 12-15 projects on my radar at any given time. 4-5 of those projects would be very active – moving ahead full steam. Another 4-5 of those projects would be moving along slowly – possibly experiencing some sort of delay but moving along never-the-less. And then there would be a final list of 4-5 projects that seemed dead in the water but promising to jumpstart as soon as one of the following happens:

Customer funding kicks in
Customer agrees with the price or estimate (depending on whether it’s an external or internal project)
The right internal delivery resource becomes available (really only applies to internal projects – you can’t hold an external customer up for an internal resource…you’ll be out of business)
The customer is waiting on the right customer-side resources to staff the project
Did I already mention funding? (the most common reason a project – especially internal – would get stalled to the point of death or near death)

For the purpose of this article, I want to look at those 8-10 projects that aren’t moving along – or are moving along at such a slow pace they’re like the rotating bar atop the Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta – you’re trying to figure out which part is actually moving but you can’t because it’s all moving too slow. Ok, maybe I had consumed one too many drinks and I was sitting with the future runner-up to Miss America, but it was a long time ago and I was in college.

Staying on Top of Things

So how can we keep track of those nearly dead or slow moving projects? Well, we don’t need to keep track of them so much as we just need to stay in touch with them. It’s easy to let them fall away because we’re swamped trying to ensure the success of the 4-5 projects that are hot. But we can’t overlook these other projects. They still need care and feeding…the customers still need us to reach out to them – they need to know we’re still in the game and ready to kick things off again when they’re ready or when whatever is holding things up is lifted.

Here’s a few ways we can make sure we’re still in sync with our customers and our teams for each these stalled projects project:

Maintain weekly contact with the customer – no status reports, but a call or quick face-to-face (depending on logistics) to share any updates, etc.
Weekly communication with delivery team resources assigned to your ‘on hold’ projects to provide any updates, ensure they’re still ready and available if and when the project starts up again
Regular communication with your delivery team resources’ direct managers to keep them up-to-date on status – if your currently assigned resources are going to be assigned elsewhere, then you need to know you can get skilled replacements fast if things start up quickly and the only way to do that is to keep managers informed
Regular updates to the PMO Director (if applicable) so they are aware of the status of each stalled project and can make adjustments to your work project assignments accordingly

Summary

In reality, there’s usually little you can do for a project that is stalled or on what seems like permanent hold. What you can do as the Project Manager in charge is maintain regular contact with the customer or project sponsor to let them know you’re still out there, ready and waiting. Sometimes that will help jar a project loose to get it started again, but it will also keep you in front of the customer when the current stalled project restarts and hopefully will move more engagements from that customer your way.

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