What If I’m in a Project Management “Lite” Culture?

Let’s face it. There are environments, situations, and organizations that are not supportive of ideal project management practices. The reasons for these project management “lite” cultures can vary. The organization or industry might be new to project management. The organization might have been burned by ineffective Project Management Office (PMO) experiments or frustrated by past project managers who emphasized administrative details at the expense of critical success factors. In some organizations, the project manager is responsible for several projects simultaneously. In other situations, the project manager is serving multiple roles on the team. Whatever the reason, you might find yourself in an environment where you cannot implement the full arsenal of project management best practices. Yet, you are still accountable for successfully managing the project. What can you do?

First, take confidence in knowing that many successful projects have been managed using project management lite approaches. You can do it too. In many cases, it is in these environments where a project manager must use all their skills and leverage their creativity. In most project management lite environments, the “lite” pertains more to the level of documentation, planning detail, and tracking administration (project control detail) that is generated. Let’s review the keys to thriving in a project management lite culture:

• Focus on the core—No matter the project situation, you (and your team) must have clarity on the following:

  • Project context—Why are we doing this project?

  • Project scope—What are we doing on this project?

  • Success factors—How will we be measured?

  • Approach—How will we get the work done?

  • Roles and responsibilities—What are these for each team member?

  • Timeline—When does work need to be completed?

  • Management approach—At the minimum, what meetings, tools, or reports will be used to check and facilitate team progress?

• Focus on communication, relationships, and managing expectations—These are always important, but in these environments, you must be very effective in all three areas to successfully lead and manage a project.

• Lead the project—In these environments, you cannot be successful by simply managing the project. You must lead it. See Chapter 16, “Leading a Project,” for a review of these principles and skills, especially servant leadership.

• Emphasize personal contact and relationships—Especially in these environments, you need to get to know your team, the key expert resources you will need, and anyone else who will need to provide work to your project. Take the time to learn what drives them, how they work, and what other priorities they are managing. Look for ways to help make them successful, and always show your appreciation for their willingness to help you.

• Emphasize value-added deliverables only—You should only require a deliverable (work product) that is value-added to the overall process, especially if you are asking others to generate effort that is not directly related to their targeted work products (such as project administration or management items). Look for opportunities to right-size or combine your list of required deliverables.

• Tailor your scheduling approach—In environments like this, you might not be able to develop a detail work schedule, and we discuss how to manage this in more detail in the next section. At the minimum, what is important is that everyone is clear on what they are working on (responsible for), the quality level that is expected or the process that needs to be followed, and when the work product is due.

• Right-size your monitoring and tracking procedures—This is closely related to the emphasis on value-added deliverables. For both yourself and your team, be sure that all project monitoring and tracking procedures are streamlined, necessary, and not duplicated.

• Generate work products as early as possible—In environments where it is either difficult or impractical to perform detail planning or detail requirements definition, an approach that generates tangible results early can be invaluable. This approach is one of the tenets of iterative, agile methodologies that I talk more about in Chapter 25, “The Fun Never Stops.” The approach is invaluable because until stakeholders are able to experience the targeted concepts or products, they are not able to consider all their requirements.

• Plan on multiple iterations—For the same reasons as mentioned earlier, you should plan on multiple iterations of your process. To assume that any work product will be correct with only one iteration is not practical. This applies to definition, design, development, testing, and deployment approaches.

What If I Can’t Develop a Detailed Schedule?

In spite of all the logical and practical benefits we reviewed in Chapters 5–8 for leveraging a detailed schedule development process, you might actually find yourself in an organization or a project situation where you cannot build a project schedule to the level of detail or completeness that you would ideally like. In other cases, you cannot develop a detailed multiphase schedule because there is too much unknown, too much uncertainty in the early stages of the project. What can you do in these cases? The best approaches are to leverage one or more aspects of quality schedule development. Here are techniques to consider:

• Detail what you can—Include as much WBS detail as you can. This is one of the advantages of building a schedule using a WBS. At a minimum, you should always know the first few levels of your WBS. Do what you can.

• Manage to milestones—Set target dates for key deliverables, events, and decision points, then monitor progress against these dates. The key with this approach is to target the right milestones and include enough interim checkpoint milestones so you can identify any major issues and variances early enough to take corrective action.

• Manage to deliverables—This is a similar approach to “managing to milestones” except the emphasis is on the targeted work products. The work details are delegated to the respective deliverable owner, but they are accountable to the target completion. The key with this approach is to ask for enough interim deliverables so that you can identify any major issues and variances early enough to take corrective action.

• Manage to project phases—In this approach, you organize the project into phases with a defined checkpoint (gates, review session, go/no-go decision point) at the end. The appropriate stakeholders review the health of the project and determine whether the project should proceed to the next phase. The keys here are to clarify what the project health evaluation criteria will be and which stakeholders will participate in the evaluation process.

• Manage to short duration detail plans—This is a common technique with iterative, agile projects, troubled projects that are in recovery mode, projects with a lot of uncertainty and schedule risk, and projects that are managed by phases. In this approach, your focus is on the next milestone. What are we getting done in the next 2 to 4 weeks, or the next 30, 60, or 90 days? By ensuring that the work details (process, assignments, roles, and expectations) are clear to your team, they stay focused and productive. This helps the team experience accomplishment more often, and it is essential to building overall project momentum.

What If I Must Manage to a Hard Milestone Date?

If you have not already, you will soon find yourself managing a project that absolutely, positively must be completed by a certain date, a project in which being late or saying, “It can’t be done,” is not an option. What do you do in these cases? What do you need to focus on? Here are my recommendations for managing a project that has a hard milestone date:

• Clarify the real driver for the milestone date—As with any project goal, you must be clear about what is behind the milestone date, what is driving it. In the case of milestone dates that are imposed on a project, there are several common sources:

  • External event

  • Business/organizational goal

  • Business/organizational budgeting cycle

  • “Stretch” goal from project sponsor to make sure the project is completed by the actual/real target date

• Give yourself a contingency buffer—For any project that has a true hard milestone date, the project’s target completion date should be set well in advance of this date whenever possible to provide a contingency buffer and increase the probability that you will be ready for the actual, hard milestone event.

• Competing project demands—Remember the classic project management triangle discussed in Chapter 1, “Project Management Overview”: If time is fixed, then our management focus turns to the other factors. The common responses are increasing resources and decreasing scope or quality.

• Clarify what “done” looks like—Especially for these situations, you need to make sure your vision of the solution is the same as your project sponsor’s. This is the core of your expectations and scope management efforts and includes a detailed review of project success factors, assumptions, priority requirements, and implementation or deployment strategies.

• Get crystal clear on must-have functionality—As mentioned previously, you need to have clear priority on your solution requirements, including quality standards. This clarity helps drive and focus your team’s work efforts and provides a basis for a staged (or incremental) delivery approach.

• Manage scope diligently—When you must hit a specific date, you must be diligent about scope management. Invest the time up front to get buy-in on requirement priority levels and common understanding of the final solution. From there, use your change request process to manage any requests (or decisions) to modify scope, approach, priorities, assumptions, and so on. See Chapter 11, “Managing Project Changes,” for a review of this process.

• Focus the team’s work effort—Focus on the productivity level of your team and any key resources. Review Chapter 19, “Keys to Better Project Team Performance,” for a reminder of powerful techniques you can leverage. Here is a quick summary to keep in mind:

  • Get dedicated resources whenever possible.

  • Co-locate your team whenever possible.

  • Conduct frequent touchpoints with your team.

  • Remove any overhead or non-value-added tasks from their plates.

  • Avoid downtimes and delays. Be sure your team members have the information, deliverables, and resources they need to stay productive each day.

  • Resolve issues quickly.

• Prioritize testing efforts—Often in a fixed-time project, the work effort that is squeezed—asked to do their work in less time—is testing. It is always important to prioritize testing efforts based on two primary factors: requirement priorities and risk levels. If you have limited time, you want to get the biggest bang for your buck in your testing efforts. Focus on your high-risk items and set these expectations with your stakeholders.

• Mini-milestones—When the final milestone cannot be moved, make sure to set frequent, interim milestones in your schedule, so you can accurately gauge progress and take appropriate corrective actions while there is still time. Plus, the accomplishments of these mini-milestones help build momentum and team confidence.

• Strongly consider phased implementations—Leveraging a phased implementation (incremental delivery, multiple releases) approach for deploying the project solution is not only invaluable for change management and risk management reasons, it can also be a powerful mechanism for balancing the needs of the project sponsors with the capacity of the project to get work done within a given time frame. This technique can be considered as a response (corrective action) to a project issue, even if it was not part of the original plan.

What If I Have Difficult Resources?

On occasion, you might have resources that do not seem to be concerned about the success of your project. Their lack of concern can come in various forms, from subtle or passive on one end to more direct, aggressive actions on the other end. These situations can be tough, and the best response can be less than obvious. Here are a few observations and recommendations for your consideration if you happen to find yourself in this situation:

• It’s not about you—Remember that 99.9% of the time, the source of their less-than-cooperative attitude has nothing to do with you personally, so stay calm, stay detached, be the eye of the storm, and don’t react emotionally.

• Difficult or different—Many people confuse difficult with different, especially those who are new to an organization. There is a wide range of personality types out there. Some people just naturally have more challenging styles. I always check with other people—people who have more experience with the given resource—before determining whether the observed behavior is normal.

• Diamonds in the rough—In many cases, resources are difficult when they are frustrated, especially if they feel they are not being heard or if they are not clear on the project context and purpose. Take the time to meet with them and listen purposefully. They can often provide early insights to risks you need to manage. In addition, people generally appreciate the opportunity to vent and offer counsel.

• Don’t avoid—Remember, good project managers do not avoid risks and issues. You need to proactively manage any potential resource issue. You need to clarify whether you have a really difficult resource issue as soon as possible.

• Focus on results—In most cases, after my initial investigation, I flag any difficult resource situation as a risk. It only becomes an issue if the resource is not delivering quality work on time, or if they are impacting the work of other team members. This helps to take the emotion out of things and helps make sure you are not overreacting to a “different personality” situation.

• Look for win-win—Although most people want to do their best and be part of successful endeavors, it might take more incentive for others. This occurs more frequently with shared resources that are not 100% dedicated to your specific project. Continue to build relationships with these people and look for opportunities to help them, recognize them, and make them care about your request or need.

• Avoid silos—If you have a resource who has a difficult work history or who is a known turnover risk, you want them to work on tasks where the knowledge and skills it takes to generate their deliverables does not reside solely with them.

• Assign noncritical tasks—If you have a quality of work concern from a resource that you have to keep, reduce your risk by assigning them noncritical, less visible tasks.

• Outsource the role—If you have known organizational resource difficulties, you should give strong consideration to a risk avoidance strategy—outsourcing the roles.

• Meet with supervisor—If you have not had any success in changing the resource’s behavior on your own, or learn that the real problem is a matter of priorities, reach out to the appropriate supervisor and discuss your situation. Often, immediate supervisors are much better equipped to change behavior.

What Can I Do About Turnover?

Nothing can put a project schedule more at risk than the sudden loss of key resources. As a project manager, you hope you are aware of these potential events well in advance, but this is not always the case. Let’s take a look at a few observations and recommendations that might help you prepare for and manage a turnover situation:

• The longer the project, the more likely turnover will occur—If you manage a project that is scheduled to last more than six months, you should assume that you have resource turnover risks, especially with your core team members. Circumstances change: People receive other opportunities, their personal or family situations change, their career interests shift, and they can lose interest. To the extent possible, leverage compensation packages, project incentives, and quality of work assignments to minimize this risk.

• Prepare for turnover—A benefit of documenting the definition of the project, your management plans, and your detailed work schedule is that it makes it much easier for a new resource to come up to speed in the context of their work. I think about how I would quickly orient any new person to the project. If you don’t have these materials, develop them.

• Avoid silos—To the extent that you can build in mentoring arrangements to your project teams, the better. Not only does it build work satisfaction, it also reduces impact if a resource leaves. In addition, encourage work processes that encourage openness and sharing of all work products.

• Increase visibility—If you are concerned about a key resource leaving, consider increasing the visibility and importance this person has on the project. This is generally done by a combination of the roles and work tasks assigned. Common examples include providing more exposure to senior management, providing more exposure to customers, assigning leadership roles, assigning mentoring roles, and assigning quality assurance tasks.

• Assign noncritical tasks—If you are concerned about a resource leaving, you can take the opposite approach to reduce your risk. You can assign them noncritical, less visible tasks. If the resource is part of an organization, this should be a decision made in collaboration with other impacted managers.

• Outsource to transfer the risk—If you have known organizational resource turnover risks, you should give strong consideration to a risk avoidance strategy—outsourcing the roles.

• Transition period or not?—What do you do if you actually lose a resource? First, determine whether you want a transition period. In some cases, it may be better to make a sudden, no-notice change. In most cases, especially if replacement resources cannot be found quickly, a transition period is helpful—the longer the better.

• Promote from within, backfill less-senior positions—Next, you need to determine how to replace the departing resource. Various strategies are available, but the one I encourage you to consider whenever possible is to fill the position by promoting from within, and then backfill the promotee’s former position.

Tips for Managing a Selection Process

Chapter 21, “Managing Vendors,” mentioned that the evaluation and selection process is a core aspect of effective vendor management. Because outsourcing continues to grow as a business management selection process, the odds are very good that you will direct a selection process, in one form or another, early in your project management career. Given the importance that this process has to your project success criteria, your funding efforts, and your ability to establish valuable vendor partnerships—not to mention the visibility you have to senior management and the marketplace—it is critical that you handle these endeavors well. To help you with this, consider these tips and observations from my experience as you plan your next evaluation or selection process:

• Understand why you are doing this—Due to the number of stakeholders and accompanying agendas to be managed, the logistical details involved, and the effort it takes, it can be easy to forget why we do evaluation and selection processes in the first place. The main reason that organizations perform selection processes is to reduce risk. There can be other, closely related reasons including gaining consensus, developing the business case, and satisfying due diligence requirements.

• What are the real goals?—One of the common complaints of these processes is that the organization ends up selecting the option that was not recommended by the evaluation team. This generally happens because the real purpose of the selection process or the actual decision criteria was not clear to the evaluation team. In addition, what is your organization really after? The answer can guide the focus and the specific approach you take. Do you just need competitive bids? Are you performing market research? Do you need to satisfy procurement requirements? Do you need to satisfy due diligence requirements?

• Clarify the driving strategies—Designing your selection process is easier if you have agreement and clarity on answers to the following questions:

  • Which is more important: partner relationships or lowest price?

  • Do we want a custom solution?

  • Are we willing to adapt the best practices of available market solutions?

  • Which is more important: the best solution or the best working relationship fit?

• Scale process to risk level—Selection processes can range greatly in activities, stages, time, cost, and effort. The important principle is to scale the process to the level of risk involved. For high-risk decisions, the process can include steps such as the following:

  • Current State Assessment

  • Future State Analysis

  • Develop Long List of Candidates

  • Develop Evaluation Criteria (Knockout)

  • Develop Scoring Process

  • Request for Information (RFI)

  • Request for Quote (RFQ)

  • Request for Proposal (RFP)

  • Bidders Conferences

  • Information Gathering Sessions by Candidate Vendors

  • Demonstrations (onsite, online)

  • Reference Checks

  • Client Site Visits

  • Vendor Site Visits

  • Financial Health Assessments

  • Quality Audits

  • Executive Relationship Building

  • Gap Analysis

  • Business Case (Benefit-Cost Analysis)

  • Final Rankings/Recommendations

  • Contract Negotiations

• Partner with procurement—Be sure to involve your procurement representative from the start. Clarify any, and all, procurement requirements and procedures that you need to follow. Clarify who owns vendor communications. Clarify your role versus the role of the procurement lead.

• Establish a clear process—With your evaluation team, develop a clear game plan for the overall selection that emphasizes objectivity and neutrality. Review the approach with your key stakeholders. This goes a long way in building confidence in your direction.

• Consider other factors—In addition to aligning with the risk level involved, make sure to consider these other factors before finalizing your selection methodology:

  • How much time do you have?

  • How many vendors/options do you need to evaluate?

  • What is the normal level of investment that vendors are willing to make in an evaluation process?

  • How many evaluators are involved?

  • Where are your evaluators located?

  • How available are your evaluators?

• Tailor process to evaluators—As you develop your selection process with your evaluation team, determine what methods would work better for your team. This is closely related to understanding the learning styles and personalities of your team members (and organization). For some, reviewing and scoring a 100-page RFP response is a great fit; for others, not so much. For some, participating in an interactive, online demonstration works great, because they can see something in action, they can ask direct questions, and it’s a flexible use of their time. For others, they might lose context perspective or might not fully engage due to multitasking lures.

• Establish evaluation criteria—Determine what criteria will be evaluated. Develop a small set of must-have requirements—often referred to as “knockout” criteria—that can be used to quickly narrow your candidate list. In addition, for your longer list of evaluation criteria, establish a priority level for each criterion. You need this for your scoring process.

• Establish evaluation scoring—As part of your goal to have an objective process, it is imperative that your scoring process be determined in advance, agreed to by key stakeholders, documented, communicated clearly to all evaluators, and executed as designed. Here is a list of key considerations for your evaluation scoring process:

  • Score against evaluation criteria and requirements “fit.”

  • Use a scoring scale with clear differentiators between each score value.

  • Use an even number of scoring options whenever possible to avoid a middle-of-the-road, on-the-fence option.

  • Determine how nonresponses will be handled; make sure they do not skew the final scores.

  • Ensure there is a clear method to distinguish between a poor score and a nonapplicable criteria.

  • Ensure the stakeholder community is fairly represented.

  • Determine whether scores from specific stakeholder groups will carry greater weight.

  • Encourage each stakeholder group (department, business unit) to reach a consensus score to ensure that the number of final scores considered remains proportional.

  • Conduct preview (or readiness) sessions with all evaluation participants.

  • Ensure that all participants are clear on evaluation logistics, the scoring process, and related assumptions.

  • Archive the original evaluation scores from each participant.

• Use an open-book approach—From my experience, I favor an open-book approach with the candidate vendors. You can mitigate your risk with sharing confidential information with nondisclosure agreements (NDA) or confidentiality agreements. The benefits far outweigh the risks. The more open, the more complete, the clearer you are with your candidates about your requirements, your context, and your expectations, the better the candidate responses will be and the more efficient your selection process will be.

• Clarify timing of each process step—As an essential aspect of managing expectations for both you and your candidate vendors, make sure to communicate the timetable for your overall selection process to the candidate vendors. This helps the candidates plan appropriately, which should help increase the quality of your selection process. In addition, you should clearly communicate the specific timing expectations for any scheduled events or expected responses. If you need to have a documented response by Friday, provide the exact time the response is to be received, such as 12 noon Eastern Time.

• Control vendor communications—As part of your effort to manage expectations and keep the process objective, clarify who owns what aspects of vendor communications with your own team. In addition, clearly set expectations with your candidate vendors, such as who they are authorized to contact within your organization.

• Be consistent and fair—Be diligent that your process is consistent and fair. Be sure each candidate follows the same steps, is given the same opportunities, has access to the same information, and is evaluated using the same criteria.

• Value your vendor contacts—Handle all interactions with your candidate vendor contacts with professionalism, candor, and respect. Show appreciation for their interest and investment. Even if you do not select the vendor for this opportunity, you might need their services down the road. Plus, it never hurts your career to showcase your skills and professionalism with others in your industry and marketplace.

• Leverage expertise—There are times, often as a step to further reduce risk, that organizations hire firms (or individuals) to help them with the selection projects. The help can range from background consulting or advisory roles to out-in-front leading the project roles.

• Get to the short list quickly—The key to streamlining a selection process is to get to your short list as fast as you can. The short list represents the candidates who have a real opportunity to be selected. Depending on the level of due diligence that is required on a final recommendation, you might need to go from a short list to a list of finalists to control the effort and cost required to get to a final recommendation.

• Document gaps—As part of your evaluation process, make sure to document the gaps between the candidate vendor’s solution and your required future state. You need to develop the plan and figure the additional costs to address these gaps. This is a factor when evaluating your options.

• Focus on partnerships for strategic projects—When dealing with strategic initiatives, encourage your senior management to focus on partnership relationships versus the lowest cost option.

• Include negotiation and contract development times—When developing schedules for selection processes, make sure to allocate sufficient, realistic time blocks for negotiations and contract developments. It is common to underestimate this time, especially in corporate environments. When building your schedule, ask the procurement and legal groups for their input on this, and then keep them in your information loop throughout the process.

Tips for Managing a Testing Process

Here’s a list of tips and insights from my experience that can help you manage a testing process and avoid many of the common pitfalls:

• Leverage expertise—As with any skill or experience that is in low supply on your team, consider procuring testing professionals to assist your effort.

• Trace to requirements—Think “testing” from the start of the project. Use a requirements traceability matrix to ensure that the final work product satisfies the targeted requirements and that all those requirements were properly validated.

• Develop a test plan—Take the time to plan your testing effort and to document your plan. This is critical when your testing process involves resources that are not dedicated to the project effort. In addition, the test plan should address the test data that is needed and how it will be managed, and it should address how the actual test execution will occur.

• Determine types of testing—Determine what types of testing you will perform. This is generally a factor of risk, schedule, and budget.

• Think customer experience—Do not limit your focus to functional testing. Place your focus on the overall customer experience. Key aspects of most customer experience are usability, data, and performance. If the performance risk is sufficient, I strongly recommend the use of load-testing tools.

• Identify high-risk items—Clarify the high-risk areas in your solution or in the customer’s acceptance of your solution. These should be your priorities. Start testing these as early as possible.

• Plan on multiple iterations—When estimating the time for test execution, make sure to include time for multiple iterations. Because it is difficult to know how many iterations will be necessary, estimates for test execution are often time-blocked and based on historical experiences.

• “To script or not to script”—This is often a controversial subject in testing endeavors. Do you need to document (script) how the tester performs each test case? Well, it all depends. If it is a requirement of your organizational methodology, then you’ll need to do it. Otherwise, it depends on the value it would provide. If your testers do not have knowledge or experience with the targeted work product, then you might need to script. If your testing efforts will be repeated or are a candidate for automated testing, then you might want to do it. Another benefit of test scripts is that it can make it easier to communicate test defects.

• Don’t forget the data—Data drives organizations. If your project involves data migration, data conversion, or data loading, realize that you need to develop procedures for validating that the data is correct and acceptable, too.

• Simulate production—Closely related to the “think customer experience” recommendation, your test plan should include a testing stage that occurs in an environment that mirrors (or gets as close as possible to) your production environment, the environment in which your customer will actually interact with your solution. If you cannot do this, you have a major project risk.

• Leverage checklists—Checklists are simple, yet powerful. They clearly capture and communicate the quality standards that must be met by the targeted work package, and they improve project team productivity. They are flexible—separate checklists can be developed for each work product or project management process. They provide a mechanism to capture the lessons learned from past projects. They can also provide a mechanism to document the verification performed on the work package.

• Identify completion criteria—This starts during project definition with defining the acceptance criteria for the project, and it continues for each deliverable and work assignment. Answer this question in advance for each deliverable: “How will we know when it is done?” Understanding the completion criteria up front increases productivity and prevents much of the rework that can occur when quality requirements are not understood from the start.

• Leverage DevOps methodology—If dealing with software projects, the use of DevOps methodology can be a huge asset in improving the quality of your testing process. By setting up the processes to integrate testing automation early and testing each software build, you can catch defects early, improve the quality of the product, and reduce the number of issues that have to be triaged and resolved later.

• Schedule readiness checkpoints—To improve the quality of test execution, to better manage expectations of all testing process participants, and to ensure all prerequisite test execution events are completed, schedule testing readiness checkpoints before the start of any new test execution phase.

• Capture metrics—To increase the professionalism of the testing process, keep track of the following in your testing process:

  • Traceability to requirements

  • Number of test runs

  • Number of total test cases

  • Number of total defects

  • Number of defects by severity level

  • Number of defects resolved

  • Number of defects closed

• Determine defect tracking process—Determine how test defects will be captured, documented, and logged. From there, decide how each defect will be assessed and assigned and who is involved in each step. After the defect is resolved, determine who needs to verify (retest) that the corrective action meets expectations.

• Pretest customer acceptance—Here’s an excellent expectation-management technique. Always test whatever your customer is going to test first; there should be no surprises. This also applies to verifying any resolved defects.

• Use a defect tracking/management system—Whenever possible, use an online defect management system to capture the defect tracking process you develop. The system helps implement the process, provides visibility, and enforces accountability.

Figure 24.1 summarizes the main points reviewed in this chapter.