trend, as well as help you in your everyday project management battles. In addition, to make the series more exciting, I decided to run occasional book giveaways. All you will have to do to be eligible for such a giveaway will be to comment on a review. The author of the best comment will get a book for free. Now, get comfortable, prepare yourself for a few interesting reads about some outstanding books that will help you become a Project Manager 2.0.
I promised to share some tips and tricks that can help you make your project planning more efficient. So here they are: Pay close attention to the human factor. Critical path analysis and project management tools can be really helpful in administering and managing projects. The dependencies that you put on your project are usually fairly easy to grasp. Thus, the formal critical path for small projects is often obvious enough for project managers and for project management software. Project management tools are helpful in the visualization of the schedule, and in quick calculation of an approximate end date when there are estimates in place. However, they are not a substitute for the "human factor." Experienced project managers know that tools are important, but they always remember that they are dealing with human beings when planning project tasks, deadlines, milestones, and implementation dates. This human factor should be taken into consideration when creating your project schedule. I already mentioned the “resource critical path” method earlier in the post series. Another method that can complement your use of the critical path method and help you deal with resource constraints is called the critical chain. The Critical Chain Method (CCM) is a way of planning and managing projects that puts the main emphasis on the resources required to execute project tasks. A critical chain tends to keep the resources levelly loaded, but it requires them to be flexible in their start times and to quickly switch between tasks and task chains to keep the whole project on schedule. Dependencies used to determine the critical chain include both logical, hands-off dependencies (where the output of the predecessor task is required to start the successor) and resource dependencies (where a task has to wait for a resource to finish work on another task). The identification of the critical chain uses a network of tasks with "aggressive but achievable" estimates that is first "resource leveled" against a finite set of resources. What is resource leveling in project management? It's the act of adjusting the start or end dates of a project based on resource constraints. Involve your team in the planning process. The people doing the work should be actively involved in scheduling. They're motivated to get it right. They have the skills to understand the dependencies, and they need to accept the schedule. It also is helpful to involve your stakeholders and clients. They can provide you with valuable insights on when they need the project to be completed, etc. When choosing project management software to build your project plan and your critical path, keep in mind that the application should give your team members and clients an opportunity to contribute to the plan. It also is important to continue team involvement throughout the project lifecycle. Constant communications with your team will provide valuable information on bottlenecks, leaves of absence (planned or unplanned), and other issues that may arise during the project that may impact the critical path and overall project schedule. Iterate your plan. With the traditional approach, tasks usually should be completed one after another in an orderly sequence, so that a significant part of the project or even the whole project should be planned upfront. Traditional project management practices are geared toward examples of project assumptions that events affecting the project are predictable and that activities are well-understood. In addition, once a phase is complete, it often is assumed that the phase will not be revisited. Very often, this approach proves to be not very effective, taking into consideration the level of uncertainty on many business projects. Iterative planning is an approach borrowed from Agile project management. The Agile approach consists of many rapid, iterative planning and development cycles, allowing a project team to constantly evaluate the evolving product and obtain immediate feedback from customers or stakeholders. The team learns and improves its working methods during each successive cycle. After a streamlined planning and requirements definition phase is completed to get the project underway, iterations of more detailed planning and requirements take place in waves. So for example, it can be helpful to organize your plans into time-bound iterations, usually two to four weeks in length. During those iterations, you and your team focus only on one part of your project and do everything to take this part from an idea to a reality. This approach allows for immediate modifications in the project as requirements come into view. With iterative planning, portions of the project are delivered on a regular, frequent basis. This gives stakeholders a much better idea of the status of the project because they can see and may be even use the end result of each phase as it becomes available. Iterations make your schedule more realistic and allow you to better ensure your project’s success, as well as its delivery on time and on budget. Even with more traditional waterfall project management, opportunities to break down deliverables into stages can provide iterative benefits to the stakeholders and reduce overall project delivery risk. Move tasks that involve risks closer to the start of your project. All projects have activities with potential risks that can lead to problems or delays. Some of these can be averted or reduced through advanced planning. This is always a better approach and carries a greater chance of project success, compared to relying on crisis management. Identify the most risky tasks on your project. These will need your special attention. If you manage to complete them earlier, you’ll be able to ensure your project’s success earlier. Therefore, putting these tasks closer to the beginning of your critical path, if this is possible, is highly recommended. When your critical path is delayed, you need to check the plan and see whether there are any tasks that can be completed a little earlier. It’s also often a good idea to communicate it clearly to stakeholders that your project may be delayed, along with reasons for the original deferral and the actions you’ll take to compensate for it. If the delay is unavoidable, you have to make a decision and consult with stakeholders about whether to deliver later than the due date or to reduce the scope of the work to be on time. This will change your initial critical path. Leverage technology to save time and make your project planning more efficient. If your projects have parallel activities, doing the scheduling calculations for the critical path method is quite laborious and feels like using pen and paper, instead of calculators, to do math, especially if you consider the fact that frequent updates to the schedule will force you to recalculate things. For large and complex projects, there’ll be thousands of activities and dependency relationships that need to be up-to-date. Fortunately, there is relatively inexpensive, Web-based project management software that can handle this with ease on the “pay as you go” basis. Project management applications, like desktop-based Microsoft Project or Web-based Wrike.com, will help you visualize your project schedule in the form of a Gantt chart and draw dependencies between your tasks. Such a tool will automatically calculate your project’s end date, as well as the length of your project. The tools also will help you identify the tasks that will not be on the critical path. Additionally, some of these software applications will allow you to easily reschedule your tasks as your project develops. You’ll be able to put the tasks on the path and take them off it easily. You’ll also be able to move whole task chains on the chart, according to your real project conditions. The Gantt chart you’ve seen above is an approximate schedule for our sample project created in an online tool, Wrike.com. Web-based tools focused on collaboration can be more useful when you work on a team. They allow your team members to update the schedule, making it realistic. This way, you immediately see the progress and changes on your project, without having to pull the information from your team members and put it into the project plan manually by yourself. You also may get the benefit of more realistic time estimates for future projects as the people who are doing the work are updating the tasks themselves, instead of relying on a project manager to estimate work and record actual completion dates. I hope you find these tips useful. Do you have your own tips and tricks on how to make project planning more efficient? Please post them in the comments!
Many analysts, including myself, say that project management 2.0 tools make teams more productive and make organizations agile and more competitive. But does this mean that they prevent project failure? Probably not. There are several aspects of project work, including tools, processes and people. Project managers still argue which one is the most important. Experts say that individual and team motivation is the leading factor affecting the productivity of a project team. Indeed, the Guide to PMBOK cites the ability to motivate people as one of the key skills a project manager should obtain. This is confirmed by many project managers with hands-on experience. One of them, Pawel Brodzinski, says that project success depends mainly on people, i.e. the project team. It’s hard to disagree with his point that there are situations that even the best project management methodology fails to predict. In this case, you can only count on people. Count on their dedication, commitment, flexibility, creativity, communication abilities, will, experience and knowledge. However, even organizations that consider project teams their most important assets often complain about productivity of their staff and admit that even the best teams sometimes fail to complete projects successfully. Perhaps the reason lies in the choice and execution of project processes? Trevor L. Young, in his book “Successful Project Management,” states that for project success, it is essential for everyone involved to commit to using a common set of processes and procedures. Defining project phases, developing project scope, planning, creating of WBS, defining activities, controlling and other processes were standardized years ago, and many organizations look at them as keys to project success. But in real life, there are no two identical organizations when concerning project management process requirements. Because of this organizational uniqueness, project managers often find it a daunting task to adapt to new project environments and leadership styles. Performance is ad hoc and changes with each new project. Many organizations have developed or adopted what they consider to be the authoritative project management methodology, and in many cases, these methodologies are essentially fine. But, typically, out-of-the-box methodologies, no matter how well thought out, leave room for procedural gaps based on specific organizational and project team dynamics. Project processes should be supported by efficient project communications and information sharing. Only then will they be correctly executed. Well-organized sharing of information and clear communication helps multiple levels within an organization accept and support the benefits of project team’s actions. This is where tools play a vital role. According to Andrew McAfee, what we are witnessing today is that, within most organizations, the great majority of consultable digital information is either highly structured (customer order records stored in a database), a reflection of the viewpoints and priorities of the formal hierarchy (newsletters), and/or static (document repositories). As a result, this consultable information does not show the current state of the organization as perceived by its members, nor does it accurately represent their views, skills, judgments, experiences, activities, etc. In fact, it seems almost incredible how few opportunities people have to generate, modify, share and communicate information freely and widely inside of an organization, especially when compared with their abilities to do the same on the consumer Web. Since so many organizations describe people as their most important assets, it is perplexing why these opportunities are so constrained. Sharing and communicating project information can be even more important, as a project plan has to be quickly adjusted to any changes going on outside of the project. Gaps in information sharing and communication lead to sluggishness, redundancy, inferior decisions and missed opportunities. This problem can be fixed with the help of the right tools. Project management 2.0 applications open new opportunities for collaboration, by streamlining project communications and improving sharing and collection of project information. Team members contribute pieces of relevant project data to a common project workspace, making them available for everybody to access, use and modify. Project communications via e-mail are integrated into the overall project collaboration process, which prevents loss of any valuable information. My conclusion will be that all three aspects of a project should be in perfect balance. People, processes and tools are equally important in project management, and the weakness of one element will have an impact on the whole project. The same can be said about project management software. Project management 2.0 tools alone can hardly do the whole job, but they can empower people, and they can catalyze changes in processes. Which element of project management do you consider the most important? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and arguments in the comments to this post.
John Wanamaker, considered by some to be the father of modern advertising, once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.” By using carefully designed experiments, you can do a better job than Wanamaker. For example, all professional advertisers today know about conversion tracking and A/B testing. These are basic tools of the trade for specialists in marketing or advertising that enable them to evaluate the effect of every small change in banner ads, landing pages and e-mails. But this kind of testing can only answer tactical questions and normally doesn’t affect business strategy. Is it possible to make the whole business structure respond to this type of feedback? "Lean startups," a term popularized by Eric Ries, are particularly successful at doing this. The main idea of a “lean startup” is to deploy a minimum viable product and test it as soon as possible. In today’s software world, it’s possible to release software updates several times a day, continuously getting feedback on every 20 new lines of code and aligning the direction of the product. This way, “lean startups” meet customers’ needs much faster than big companies, like Microsoft, which have a multi-year release cycle. In fact, staying in contact with customers throughout the creation of a product is the only way to make something they will actually use. This is especially true for the new companies coming up with new products. They always have to act in an unknown environment, relying only on their hypotheses. “No business plan survives first contact with a customer,” says Steve Blank, well known in the start-up community as the father of Customer Development theory. Our assumptions about what our customers need are no more than assumptions before we actually talk to customers and test the assumptions. Thanks to Web technologies, getting closer to customers has become a lot easier. We can regularly receive their feedback, without even getting out of the room. Still, don’t get too comfortable, since the dry bits, numbers and characters, while easy to aggregate, are often superfluous. So, at least initially, it’s very important to get out of your office and speak directly to your customers, person-to-person. You will see your product in a way you’ve never seen it before. But this will be no more than a set of interesting facts without taking the next step – learning from the feedback you got and aligning your product vision and business strategy according to it. I will speak about this in the last post of this series.
on August 18. The audience was terrific. I was pleased to find out that many project managers who attended my presentation had previous experience in using wikis and other Project Management 2.0 tools in their work. We had an interesting 30-minute Q&A. Those of you who missed the fun can download the Project Management 2.0 presentation, read the Project Management 2.0 paper and post your questions in the comments to this post. By the way, as a true proponent of agile methods, I’ve already updated the slides and the paper after the conference, so expect new posts about traditional versus 2.0 approaches in the near future. Related articles across the web Man Utd Target Mats Hummels' Girlfriend Is Magnificent
In my previous post that was also cross posted on CloudAve, I brought up the topic of enterprise agility. My conclusion was: to be agile and adapt quickly to the ever-changing business environment, you need to be able to blend top-down control with bottom-up agility in a "Ying and Yang" style. I also mentioned the latest research, showing that teams that foster a focused, unified dialogue between their members, managers and stakeholders are 250% more likely to thrive in the present economic situation. Less agile teams are 360% more likely to miss millions of dollars in lost opportunities. The idea of constant interaction and collaboration between managers, team members and stakeholders is not new, however. Here I want to write a few words about the origins of this idea, which later became the background for Project Management 2.0. Agile Management Essentials The idea of constant dialogue in project management surfaced in 2001 as one of the principles of so-called agile software development and is described in the Agile Manifesto. According to evangelists of agile methods, cooperation is crucial for the success of a project. Among other key principles of agile lifecycle management are: • Clear vision of the project • Fast pace • Self-organizing teams • Leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork These principles easily took over the software industry in several years because of the major benefits they bring to companies, such as: • Increased productivity • Early return on investment • Responsiveness to changes in the business environment Perhaps the brightest examples here are Google and IBM. Among others are Verizon, GE Mobile, HP and Rackspace. Now agile methods are used to manage various projects outside of the software development. One of the agile management methods called Scrum is often used as a best practice for managing various complex projects in an iterative fashion, and it is frequently applied to diverse industries and types of projects. Scrum can be used in business development, customer development, marketing projects and even as a general project management framework in industries like finance, telecommunications, automotive, publishing, etc. Sounds great, but can agile methods, or any other type of bottom-up management, be instantly adopted in your company? Probably not. If you have ever tried introducing the best bottom-up practices to your organization, you have most likely found it difficult to do that while utilizing traditional tools for project management. I already wrote about the three major gaps of traditional project management software that make them less useful in an agile organization.Change in Communication The situation is changing, thanks to the transformations going on in how people share and receive information. More methods for the successful implementation of the bottom-up management best practices have emerged. During the past few years, analysts, the business community and the media talked a lot about the companies that try to boost the productivity of their employees by adopting tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, etc. It’s not surprising that tech companies lead the way here. For instance, Intel was one of the first enterprises to utilize internal blogging. As far back as 2003, Intel began encouraging employees to communicate with each other by running their own internal blogs. These quickly gained a large following. In 2006, Intel launched the IT@Intel pilot blog, and in 2007 it rolled out a full blog program called Blogs@Intel. Today, through self-managed blogs and networking profiles, employees are encouraged to provide their own views on what’s going on at Intel and in the computer technology world. Intel is not the only example. Non-tech companies caught up very quickly. In April 2006, Intrawest Placemaking, a real estate development firm that operates in North America and Europe, undertook a bold technical initiative focused on empowering individual employees. Today, Intrawest Placemaking's wiki intranet allows practically unrestricted editing for all 250 employees. This has led to a tenfold increase in use over the previous intranet, and some excellent examples of knowledge sharing: One manager created a page with an idea that saved the company $500,000.Web 2.0 for the Enterprise This trend was recognized by technology and business experts, and in 2006, Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, coined the term “Enterprise 2.0.” The essential element of Enterprise 2.0 is freeform collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 gives people the capability to create, modify and mange information with ease. Using simple, Web-based tools, relevant and up-to-date knowledge within your organization can be found, tracked and shared efficiently. Leveraging the collective intelligence of employees brings real competitive advantages to organizations. It increases innovation, team productivity and agility. Does it work in the real world? It does, and there are hundreds of examples proving it. Here are some of them: - Simon Sproule, Nissan’s corporate vice president, is convinced that corporate social networking pays off. He recognized that Nissan’s internal social networking site "makes it easier for employees to tap into the expertise they need to do a better job." - Euan Semple, former head of knowledge management for the BBC, claimed the organization was getting "enormous benefits" from Enterprise 2.0. He reported to Forrester that BBC had 23,000 bulletin board users, 4,000 wiki users and over 400 people blogging. - General Electric, the venerable multinational corporation that was founded in 1878 in New Jersey, has at its core a hugely sophisticated enterprise collaboration system that is arguably the largest in the world. GE’s ‘SupportCentral’ users have created over 50,000 communities with over 100,000 experts signed up to answer questions and manage information. The experts are GE workers with full-time jobs who use the system because it helps them do their jobs better. Today, thanks to the influence of Enterprise 2.0 practices, Web 2.0 tools and agile methods, project management is evolving on a broader scale in a diverse set of industries that range from professional services to manufacturing. This evolution is often called Project Management 2.0 Now you are welcome to join the discussion. Why use agile project management?Have you tried managing your projects with agile methods? What tools were you using? Can you name any other trends that influenced the appearance of Project Management 2.0? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments.
Recently, I read an interesting book by Peter Sims, “Little Bets,” which brings up a really important question: can failure, in fact, take us further than success? The answer is: yes, if we know how to deal with it. While interviewing the executives at Amazon, General Motors and Google, as well as successful musicians, architects and comedians, Sims discovered one thing they had in common. All of them used the same approach of relentlessly “making little bets” to test their new ideas, even if they were not sure about their success. Most of these bets ended up as failures, but five or six out of 100 turned out to be the breakthroughs. According to Sims, in most cases, there’s no mysterious genius behind the great achievement, but perseverance and the willingness to take small risks. In this series of posts, I’ll analyze how failures nurture success and describe how learning through failures can help you develop your business into a real innovation machine. Through hardship to the stars! Low-cost experimentation The idea of “successful failure” is familiar to many successful software entrepreneurs. For instance, Randy Komisar names “the culture of constructive failure” as the main reason that Silicon Valley became the world’s innovation center. In his “Getting to plan B” framework, Komisar suggests including in the business plan the ability to quickly adjust it. All plans have assumptions, and Komisar’s idea is to focus on the most risky assumptions first and devise your work in a way to test your risky hypothesis in the market as soon as physically possible. Businesses can hardly afford big failures financially, so the key is finding a way to minimize the cost of experimentation. Getting feedback as fast as possible can save you a lot of time and money you could otherwise lose by going in the wrong direction. That sounds obvious, so obvious that you might be tricked into thinking that you are already doing your best job there. Sometimes it’s the case, but oftentimes some thinking out of the box can help you save a lot of effort and money. For example, in the software business, a traditional approach is to develop the software and then try to sell it. An approach in the spirit of Komisar’s ideas would be to create a quick prototype, a mock demo, or a simple “slideware” and sell a contract with an advance delivery date. That’s, of course, if your biggest risk is market adoption. If you can’t sell it because nobody needs it, well, you’ve just saved a lot of money on developing software that nobody needs. Some people are defensive and want to buy more time to tweak their solutions before presenting those solutions to the real world. This big bet works for a selected few visionaries, and the media is always quick to highlight those stories. But the truth of the world (at least in the eyes of Peters Sims, Randy Komisar and yours sincerely) is that in most cases, you’ll get much further with small bets, fast feedback and applying your boldness to facing a failure, rather than to doubling the failing bets. To be continued…
I was invited to give a speech at the Project 2.0 panel of the Office 2.0 Conference, which will take place in San Francisco on September 5-7. The conference is established by Ismael Ghalimi, author of the popular IT|Redix blog. He together with a group of other bloggers managed to make the conference a significant event for the IT world.This conference will be focused on product demonstrations, adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise and mobile productivity arenas. Presentations, discussions and debates aim to improve companies’ comprehension of how apply Office 2.0 in their activity. Another goal is to make organizations realize the benefits they get even at the early stage of new-generation technologies adoption. The Office 2.0 conference is announced to be a collective experiment aimed at discovering the future of online productivity and collaboration. That’s why all of the participants are so excited to be there, debate and finally see the results of the event. This conference also will most likely be a source of inspiration for many people connected with the next-generation office productivity tools and enterprise solutions. I’m definitely looking forward to panel discussions where I will share my point of view on the project management 2.0 approach. Hope to see you there.
Before I start digging into project management transformation due to Web 2.0 technologies, I would like to share some thoughts on the basic impacts of Enterprise 2.0 on companies’ structure and corporate culture. One of the most important impacts of Enterprise 2.0, as I mentioned in my previous post is changing the management pattern inside an organization. Professor Andrew MacAfee of the Harvard Business School, who coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” in 2006, believes that new generation technologies, while penetrating into companies, will be able to empower employees and decentralize decisions, thus liberalizing management. This means hierarchical structures, employed in many organizations, will eventually be modified into flatter management patterns.Pros and cons of the two types of organization structures Hierarchy is indeed a long-criticized management pattern. Experts believe, it prevents companies from fast development and rapid response to market changes due to bureaucracy. Another reason - horizontal communication can be poor, which leads to misunderstanding between different departments within a company and causes deterioration of the common work results. On the contrary, flat organizations are favored for a number of advantages for enterprises. Flat structure makes communication between management and workers more efficient and improves team spirit in the company. At the same time, it reduces bureaucracy and facilitates decision-making. Flat organization structure has fewer levels of management, which also implies benefits, such as lower payroll costs, as managers are generally paid more than workers. Enterprise 2.0 software allows building different structures However, flat organizations can turn into chaos without appropriate corporate culture and successful management. Enterprise 2.0 technologies help to control this chaos by applying emergent structures. These structures are based on people’s interactions and are more agile than traditional imposed hierarchies. They are less sluggish and provide a more flexible and productive working environment. The question is whether Enterprise 2.0 technologies can change hierarchy in organizations into more efficient structure. And what the final result would be? Analysts agree on the fact that the great changes won’t be immediate. There are several reasons for that. One of them is that a considerable part of the staff in any company is composed of people who prefer to be lead and choose to be given instructions, instead of being proactive. They prefer to “delegate upwards” and are comfortable with hierarchy. However, some “smaller” changes, brought by Enterprise 2.0 technologies already affect the work of companies. I’ll try to give you an example. There is a construction company with, say, 5 offices in different countries, so teams are separated by thousands of miles, but they are doing similar job in different environments. Let’s say Team 1 is situated in London and has already tried the new technique of building offices. Team 2 placed in Los Angeles is getting ready to do it. But to avoid possible mistakes while employing the new technique they need to get some information from the Team 1. There are two ways of doing that: First, the Team 2 leader goes to his manager and asks for connections in the London office. The manager doesn’t have them, so he has to go to his chief, and ask if he has a peer in the UK. This will go on until they find the right person who will be able to connect them to somebody in London. What happens next? This London representative has to descend the hierarchical stairs to look for the very team the L.A. office needed. The whole process takes a lot of time and effort, and with no direct incentives, good will is always buried in red tape. That means, not everyone will be willing to help; many people will consider the matter to be of low importance. Another way is the use of Enterprise 2.0 social software, which can to connect two teams separated by huge distances by navigating in tags and user profiles. Two team leaders will quickly find each other, and it will be done in less than 15 minutes. Then London team leader will plug L.A. team leader into his wiki so they can share their knowledge. He will also use a collaborative planning application to share their typical construction plan. There will be no need to scramble through the hierarchical pyramid and bother upper management. The new-generation technologies are advantageous for the middle management and the company as a whole, as people become more productive thanks to efficient communication. And this is only one of Enterprise 2.0 impacts on an organization. The reason why more and more organizations embrace Enterprise 2.0 is that it’s capable of increasing productivity and efficiency based on social networking. Toyota is a well-known example of such networking within a huge corporation. Introduction of technologies that improved communication was most certainly one of the reasons Toyota has recently become the No.1 automotive manufacturer in the world. It started to use Enterprise 2.0 in 2002 in both sales and development, and the solution increased the productivity of dealers by nearly 70%, according to InformationWeek. So, my conclusion would be that hierarchy in organizations is not threatened by Enterprise 2.0. Rather, hierarchy is gradually modified into a more agile structure, with new connections. Collective intelligence empowered by software helps to keep it under control. Collaboration is a key part in this trend. The transformation becomes easy and cheap with Enterprise 2.0.
You’ve read and heard it so many times: “Efficient project planning is vital for your project’s success.” However, when you’re dealing with a complex project, building an effective project schedule may be really hard, to say the least. You have to first create a long list of tasks that should be completed to deliver the project, then assign team members to these tasks and also make sure you pay special attention to tasks that are critical for project success. Very often, identifying the tasks that need special attention turns out to be the trickiest part of the planning job. Another big challenge may be to differentiate between the tasks that should be completed first and assignments that can be delayed without delaying the whole project. Are you familiar with this problem? If yes, then you should be familiar with its consequences. When you cannot identify the most important tasks, you’ll end up focusing on the wrong parts of your project work. While you’re busy with things that are less important, critical tasks will be missed, and your project will be late. Project delays may need budget extensions. Your stakeholders may be unhappy about that. I have met many project managers who have faced these difficulties, so if you’re finding it tough to tell what’s important on a project, you’re not alone. I also have heard a lot of stories of how project leaders managed to overcome such problems. This is the first post in a series that consolidates what I learned from my colleagues and my own experience in project planning. Diagnosis: See the Warning Signs To cure a disease, you should first analyze the patient’s current condition. The problem of telling what’s important on a project has distinct symptoms. Here are some of them: • You’re not confident in determining which tasks should be completed first and which can wait a little longer. • You don’t know which tasks you need to prioritize, and you keep changing priorities on the go. • Your team is unsure about what tasks they should be working on and complete first, so they try to do everything simultaneously. This leads to unproductive multitasking and a lot of stress in the group. • You don't know the external dependencies that affect work on your project. • Parts of your project get delayed, and this jeopardizes your project’s success. Cure: Mix Standard Methods with Unconventional Approaches There are standard project management methodologies to define the most important tasks. One of them, critical path analysis (CPA), is a popular method and a powerful tool that helps you schedule and manage complex projects. Building a critical path will help you identify the tasks that should be completed on time and the ones that you can delay without jeopardizing or delaying the whole project. CPA also allows you to identify the minimum length of time needed to complete a project. The path acts as the basis for schedule preparation and resource planning. When managing a project, it allows you to monitor the progress toward meeting the deadlines. It helps you to see where remedial action needs to be taken to get a project back on course. Another benefit of using CPA within the planning process is to help you develop and better understand the constraints and dependencies in your project. Critical Path Analysis usually is used together with a Gantt chart, as this chart clearly visualizes your project schedule. To simplify and energize the planning process, you can leverage the latest project management technologies that will help you build your critical path and create a structured plan. Software applications that have Gantt charts with task dependencies can be extremely useful in defining clear task sequences. They also will save you time when you need to adjust your schedule due to changes in the project. However helpful the traditional critical path method may be in theory, applying it in practice may involve quite a few challenges. These can be only dealt with when you employ your creative thinking and use some unconventional approaches. Read my next post to find out how this can be done on your project. Meanwhile, if you have interesting stories of how you managed to overcome your difficulties in planning a project, I encourage you to share them in the comments below.
(IMF). My major impression from these presentations is that more and more managers today are interested in innovating their project management practices. Some managers have already tried applying various new-generation technologies to manage their projects and are ready to share their experiences, while some are still watching and listening, figuring out what will be the best way to initiate innovations in their company. Project Management 2.0 is getting a lot of buzz today, though it’s still a very vague notion for many project managers. That’s why there’s a huge demand for reliable information on this emerging trend. I hope my presentations are playing a significant role in satisfying this demand. If you were in my audience at UTD or during the IMF webinar, thank you for being there, for listening and asking questions. Those of you who didn’t get a chance to see my presentation live are welcome to check out the slide deck that I was using. Project Management 2.0 I’ll be happy to read your feedback in the comments.
Working for PMI since 2007, Brian brings more than 18 years of his product management, marketing and consulting experience to this global organization. Together with his team, Brian is focused on the ongoing engagement of PMI members, certification holders and volunteers, and leads a number of PMI's fundamental programs. As a person who constantly interacts with a community of more than 500,000 people who are somewhat involved into project management, Brian always keeps abreast of the latest trends in the field. Check out the transcript of the podcast below to read Brian's insights into such prominent topics as the expansion of virtual collaboration and virtual team collaboration tools, the rise of social media, the challenges and opportunities of project management in a creative economy, and more. Transcript below: Brian, it's a pleasure to have you on this podcast! First of all, could you please tell us a couple of words about your career in PMI? I've just celebrated my 4th anniversary with PMI. Previously, as VP for Product Management, I was responsible for various products and services we produced for practitioners and organizations looking to embrace project management. Earlier this year, we reorganized around our market focus, and now I serve as the VP of Practitioner Markets. I'm focused on the individuals, whether be it one of 20 million people who are somehow involved in project management (those who are leading or directing teams, as well as team members), 450,000 people credentialed by PMI, 350,000 PMI members, members of chapters, volunteer leaders, and more. I know that a few weeks ago PMI held its Global Congress in Dublin, and it was a big success. Can you give a short summary of the most popular topics and project management trends that were discussed at the event? We had almost a thousand attendants who came to share their knowledge and experience, as well as professional speakers. There were all the things you could imagine at a world-class project management conference! The content of the program followed the trends going on in the field. For instance, we're now launching a new course on agile. This was the primary focus of one of the tracks. An interesting thing – we picked social media as a keynote. Among the thousands of individuals in 180+ countries that are part of the PMI family, not everyone is necessarily working, sitting right next to you and getting information from traditional sources. So social media as a keynote topic was a strong theme at the congress. PMI is a global organization, so you're very well aware of the recent expansion of virtual collaboration. Do you see it as a challenge or an opportunity for project managers? Among the practitioners who turn to PMI, how many deal with virtual teams on a regular basis? I'm not sure we have an exact number of stakeholders dealing with virtual teams. But seeing that they work for the largest and most influential companies, down to startups from 180+ countries, you can imagine that in some way or another, a large proportion of them is dealing with a virtual work and collaborating with people who are not co-located with them. It's the same exact environment that we're working in. There are a lot of advantages organizations are reaping from working with a virtual or dispersed workforce. Some people typically point to such tangible ones as cost savings. I can set up my operation where the cost of labor is less. But most organizations have migrated beyond that, and they're looking at productivity and competitive advantages they can get from what I'd call a “follow the sun” workforce. When employees in one part of the world finish their workday, in another one they're only starting it, so work doesn't stop. On one level, you can produce more. As you're producing things more quickly, we call it schedule compression. From the point of competitive advantage, it's speed to market, i.e., you can get to the market quicker than your competitor. Working with virtual teams also allows organizations to take advantage of products and services they create in one environment and then localize them. If you take a look at consumer goods manufacturers, they try to make them work in different locations. It's not about changing the labels or making sure the colors are right. It's about understanding the tastes, culture, laws and regulations of the new market. They need local teams. Here's the main reason that I see behind dispersed teams: I've never been to any location on the planet that has all the smart, creative and talented people in one spot. To tap into global talents, companies need individuals who can help tie it all together. Project managers come to the forefront because they lead and direct dispersed teams in this complex environment. This is a great comment, and I absolutely agree with you. As a professional with extensive experience in product management and marketing, you are part of growing information and creative industries, where the profile of the worker and the project is different from the industrial economy. In your opinion, which project management practices are the most and the least helpful in that environment? How should project managers adjust their behavior, tools and processes? Recently, PMI completed its multi-year “Value of Project Management” research that produced 60-70 case studies on how different organizations can get ROI out of project management. The primary thing we found in the research is that there is no one way to do it. Project management needs to fit your organization's culture, its DNA, the way you do work, your maturity level, etc. To give companies the basis to figure out the way to do it, sort of a framework – that's where our standards come into play. Produced by global experts, they provide common practices for individuals that they can evaluate and figure out how to adapt the practices to their own company. This becomes even more critical as we move from an industrialized world, where there was a very systematic way of work, to the type of environment you're talking about, where work can be done anywhere at any time. People need to tap into our standards and flexibly adapt the common practices to their environment. Another critical thing in this type of environment – while there is no one way, if you figure out your way and standardize your process of work, good things happen to you. Our research shows that organizations which achieved that alleviate themselves from many typical problems of our profession. Now let's get back to another interesting trend we started our conversation with – the social media in the consumer and business world. What are your thoughts on the recent rise of the “social” as in “social networks,” “social media,” “enterprise social software” and “social project management”? I think it's great that our industry is embracing this powerful trend. It's a tool that enables individuals to be more informed. Our profession has the exact same challenges as any other profession has with regard to social media; “instant expert” is what I call it. If you can have a site, blog or any other ability to communicate with the masses, people tend to put more credibility and relevance into that than they previously did with traditional sources of information. It's changed our paradigm for where we turn to get insights into information. Yes, there's a risk with that, but with every risk comes an opportunity: it opens a door for lots more people to collaborate and generate knowledge. All the smart people don't live in one location. As I've already said, they are spread around the word. They get a tool for collaborating and sharing information like never before. It's a good thing as long as we look at it wisely, understand our sources and place the right sort of validation and credibility upon them. A great point! Recently, Gartner released a research note where, for the first time, it analyzed collaboration as an essential component of project portfolio management. How big do you think the input of collaboration is for the overall success of a project? You can never ignore organizational context. In my job, I'm responsible for the largest community of project management practitioners, and according to their feedback, collaboration and networking is where they get the most value of PMI. I'm a strong proponent of allowing individuals to gather and network, whether virtually or in person. Organizations have different styles. Some are asking their employees to be more collaborative, and some are more directive. Different cultures obviously have different perspectives. We can't ignore that. But, in my role, I come with a very strong emphasis on networking and collaboration between individuals. Again, I keep going back to my point on global workforce. When organizations really want to tap into the best talents, they're not going to do it in one location. When individuals want to gain knowledge and insights on this, they can refer to PMI standards as a starting point. Then they need to interact in order to figure out the best way to work in the context of their environment. Brian, this has been a very insightful conversation. Before we wrap it up, I'd like to ask you for advice that you would give to the listeners of the podcast, to project managers who are still looking for tools and techniques to make their work more efficient? The advice that I would give is based on what we hear from our 600,000 global practitioners. The No. 1 thing is getting connected to an organization like PMI that gives them access to knowledge resources and networking opportunities. Within our environment, you get the right references to templates and tools when you're interacting with people. With the support that PMI gives, you'll find a myriad of tools and techniques that were already tested by other people that you can learn from. Also, you can give your feedback and let other people know about your experience. Thank you for the interesting updates on project management trends and the great advice you shared, Brian! Our profession is growing and penetrating more industries and more verticals within companies. I wish you the best of luck in growing the PMI community even bigger.