What It Takes to be a Project Portfolio Manager
While there are several types of project management roles and methodologies out there, they all overlap in some way. All project management roles, including project portfolio management, require extensive organizational and time management skills, with experience in resource allocation and budget management.
The Importance of Project Management: Q&A with PMO Leader Robert Kelly
For many business professionals, project management is often in the back of their minds. Building business and ROI are two of the top priorities for executives, while project management is generally not on their radar. Most people are unaware that not having a proper work management process in place is actually costing them money. We spoke with Robert Kelly, PMO leader and Managing Partner of Kelly Project Solutions, LLC, about the value of project management and the impact it has on business. We also discussed ways to combat chronic low productivity, the evolution of PM technology, and what he predicts project management will look like in 2020. Read the full interview below: 1. Tell us a bit about yourself. I am a proud father to three wonderful children and a blessed husband to my wife Jasmin, for going on 12 years now. Professionally, I am an accidental project manager who continues to perfect the craft after 15 years. As the co-founder and host of #PMChat on Twitter, I am always collaborating with some of the best minds from around the world on leadership, project management, and other business topics. Lastly, I am a Managing Partner of Kelly Project Solutions, which is a consulting firm that focuses on Project Management and Communications Leadership for small and medium-sized businesses. 2. What are the top issues you face as a PMO leader? I believe there are several challenges facing the PMO leader, which are shared across the organization: 1. Quality Talent. The productization of project management (turn-key templates, magic-bullet methodologies, etc.) have watered down the talent pool with candidates that can really speak the jargon. It makes it difficult for general recruiters to truly find a solid project leader. 2. Investment. Too many PMOs are still viewed as a cost center, rather than a source of revenue. Regardless of your business, project management is a Service. Your project management has significantly more touchpoints with your customer (especially external) than sales or an internal executive. Research from Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) shows an engaged sales model (albeit managed IT services) has 15:1 touchpoint, compared to sales. Retention revenue and CSAT all drive up double digits, with sales cycles and customer acquisition costs driving down drastically. Companies must invest in the training of the project managers, client facing tools, and travel budgets to build the relationships. This applies to internal facing PMOs as well. 3. Identity Crisis. PMOs have long faced the challenge of choosing to be a resource pool or a governance body, and that has only become more challenging with the growth of “shadow IT.” PMOs must get clear direction from the CIO or this will continue to be a major challenge in 2016. 3. As a PMO thought leader, do you think it's imperative that companies embrace standard PM methodologies? Why? With caution and a focus on “-ies”, I would say yes. If you look across Lean Six Sigma, traditional stage gate, Agile, MS Dynamics Implementation, etc., you will be able to develop a toolkit of core processes and tools that are customized to fit your business and the common project types you deliver. With that said, keep the variations to a minimum because a core benefit of project management includes scalable, repeatable process that can be learned and implemented quickly across the organization. When there is a common methodology, associated lexicon project managers, team members, and partners can be brought up to speed quickly. Lessons learned and measurements can be baselined and compared for an environment of continuous improvement. 4. How can poor project management affect business? At the risk of sounding dramatic, your business can crumble as a result of poor project management. Poor requirements can result in a horrible product brought to market… affecting brand equity for years! If you are in a heavily regulated environment, then lack of process documentation could set you back years in penalties, loss of licenses, etc. If you consider the day-to-day, without solid project management, organizations typically see duplicate efforts, poor resource utilization, wasted dollars on change requests, wasted time on lack/poor communication, and so on. [inlinetweet prefix="" tweeter="" suffix="— @rkelly976"]"Your business can crumble as a result of poor project management"[/inlinetweet] 5. How is technology changing project management and the way people perceive it? Technology is providing project managers with tremendous tools to improve collaboration, planning, and efficiency on their projects. A single platform to plan, communicate, track budgets and time saves hours each week! For the PMO, many PPM platforms are allowing management to better track/plan resource utilization, view dashboards on project status and issues, etc. These PPM tools allow management to get out of the way of the project teams with status questions and allow them to DO the work. 6. What are 3 tips you would give someone who struggles with productivity at work? 1. Finish your day with some organization time. Review the day: do you owe anyone anything before you leave? Consider tomorrow: what does the calendar look like? What are my key action items do over the next 24-48 hours? This will reduce the "gotchas" that creep in during the day and gets you mentally prepared for the next day. 2. Leverage reminders. Regardless of whether or not you have a sophisticated project platform, almost every email platform has reminders. Set dates and times, with reminders to pop-up when things are due. 3. Get away. In today’s world of open cubicles, sometimes you just need to book a conference room for 30 minutes to catch up and stay focused and uninterrupted behind closed doors. 7. How do you think project management will change (or stay the same) in 2020? I think it will go one of two ways. If we don’t get away from the turn-key checklist approach, then PM will become a life skill that any employee within a department will leverage. As more and more technology is shifted to self-serve, cloud automation becomes an even greater risk. I know, someone has to develop the self-serve platform… just like large hosting farms only require a few engineers, those platforms won’t require as many PMs. The other way this could go is that we PM professionals get past the project charter and process to develop leadership and business skills. If we can bring more value to the table, as a profession/discipline, then we will begin to handle more business-aligned, strategic initiatives. When we start bringing more business value, then we will be tied more closely to the CIO and CEO of the organization. 8. What's a big new trend that you see coming that people aren't paying enough attention to? PMO as a Service. Organizations have long leveraged the PM consultant, because there often isn’t enough activity to fund a full-time employee. Unfortunately, the churn associated with new consultants and getting them up to speed eats into the project benefits a company is hoping to receive. In today’s society, people only want to pay for what they consume, but they also want personalization. A PMO as a Service model accomplishes that. An organization can tap into this PMOaaS when they need it and the Service Provider can re-assign the same PM or be required to ‘onboard’ them for readiness. The company doesn’t have to spend money on certifications, level of PM, licenses for PPM software, etc. We have seen a lot of interest in this model. How has a successful project management process impacted your business? Share your before and after story in the comments. We hope everyone can learn from one another. Save your company money and improve project outcomes by starting your free trial of Wrike today! Bio: Robert Kelly has been managing projects and project teams for 15 years. His project teams and results have spanned 40+ countries and a diverse portfolio of projects; including sales, marketing, and IT initiatives across a number of industries. Robert is a Managing Partner at KPS, a project management consultancy in Raleigh, NC. He is also the Co-Founder and Host of #PMChat, a global community of project managers and business leaders that discuss best practices and lessons learned via Twitter. Follow him on Twitter @rkelly976
Three Ways to Minimize Your Project Budget Exposure
Keeping the project budget in line is one of the most difficult things in project management – and yet it is a huge factor in determining the overall success of the project when the engagement winds down. The goal is to keep it in line throughout and avoid falling into emergency mode at any point with a huge budget overrun that you have to either fix or find yourself at the brink of project shutdown. Through my experience, I've found that the following three processes are extremely helpful to me as I try to keep my project budgets in check on the multiple projects I'm usually managing at any given point in time. Project managers are busy with many things beyond managing the budget on our plate. Developing good processes and habits will help you significantly reduce the likelihood that your project budget will turn into a catastrophe. Let's review each of the three ways to minimize your project budget exposure more closely…. Review and revise the project budget at least weekly The first thing you can do to protect your project budget is probably the easiest thing you can do and it is definitely the least invasive thing you can do. All it requires is you – and the proper information provided to you on a weekly basis. Get weekly information from Accounting concerning the charges to your project and revise your information diligently every week. This may seem simple…even mundane. But it always amazes me how many project managers get lazy and let this slide for a week or two and then eventually longer. "Hey, it wasn't a problem three weeks ago and nothing significant has happened on the project so why should my budget be in jeopardy now?" Well, it's amazing how the little things build up – and they can build up fast. Stay on top of the budget – don't let a week go by without comparing forecast to actuals and re-forecasting, if necessary. It's much easier to fix a 10% budget overrun now before it gets out of control than it is to fix a 40% budget overrun a month from now after it is already out of control. And which one is management going to be more pleased about hearing? Which one will the customer be more understanding of and flexible in working with you on? Make your project budget high profile This is also a fairly easy one and it has worked extremely well for me. And if you're organization is a matrix organization with everyone working on multiple projects at once, even better. Here's the scenario…. You are a project manager running five projects at once. Each of your technical team members are on – on average – three different projects at the same time. And let's remember that – in all honesty – 80-90% of all employees calculate their project charges for the week at the last minute, usually on Friday. Very few accurately document their time during each workday or at the end of the day. And we all remember most of what we did each week … but there's always that four or five hours that we really can't pinpoint exactly what we were doing. We know we worked 50 hours this week, but can only accurately account for 45 of them. They have to go somewhere. Where do they go? They go to the project that they feel those hours will be least noticed in. And that is usually the project that those personnel know is not being monitored closely. So don't let that be your project. Make sure your team members know you're watching the project budget – and the hours that they charge to it – like a hawk. Discuss the budget with them at every weekly internal team meeting and give them a status update on how the project budget is standing up to the original forecast. Share your concerns with them. Periodically question them on charges just to keep them on their toes. Don't be accusing, just ask them questions about the charges and the work that was being performed. If they know you're that aware, it's highly unlikely that any of your projects will be recipients of the 'grey' hours at the end of each work week. Manage scope closely This is probably the hardest one to do and can have the most devastating affect on the project budget. The problem here can be two fold. You have the issue of managing the project scope from your project manager perspective and negotiating changes and change orders with the customer. But you also have the task of managing your project team members closely as they work with the customer. On at least a third of my projects I've run across potential scope issues through discussions I've had with my project team members who were in close communication with the customer. They tend to develop a relationship with the customer and then you have the ego trip issue of your developer 'knowing' they can do anything quickly and easily. The customer makes a small request, your developer thinks it will be no problem to incorporate this 'new' request quickly and you end up having a developer spend a few hours – which can mean a few thousand dollars - of your precious project budget on a customer request that is likely beyond the original scope of the project. None of this was malicious or even on purpose – they were just helping out the customer on a small request. Inform your team, warn them of these situations, and then ask them about their customer interactions and any requests that may be coming their way when you meet with them internally on a weekly basis. Call for feedback Let's hear from our readers. What budget issues have you experienced? Do you find it hard, at times, to rein your team in when trying to keep costs down. What steps do you take to keep your project budget from getting out of hand?
3 Project Manager Headaches and How to Cure Them
Project management is a highly complex and complicated job. Because there are so many factors that come into play during every single project, project managers must be extremely versatile and skilled. Unlike developers, engineers, or architects that work on the technical side of projects, project managers, in addition to being familiar with all the technical details, also need to deal with the social and corporate aspects. On top of all that, they are often juggling several projects at once. In addition to all this, project managers need to ensure that lines of communication between different departments stay open so that teams coordinate with each other and any potential risks that can sideline the project don’t go unnoticed. Naturally, all this complexity is a fertile breeding ground for a myriad of problems. Here are three major headaches almost every project manager faces, along with some practical solutions. Headache #1: Project Schedule Updates It goes without saying that every project needs a schedule, so that everyone involved can keep track of their progress and responsibilities, including milestones. It is up to the project manager to monitor all the activities of the team, update the project status, and act as the link between the team and any stakeholders, including upper management. However, all of this is an incredibly time-consuming activity for project managers, when their skills and expertise could be put to better use by having them do actual work on the project, instead of administrative tasks. Solution: Automate schedule updates whenever possible, so that you don't have to waste time collecting them manually. Meeting with your team and asking each member for task status is time-consuming, especially when there are project management and collaboration tools available that allow your team to simply mark a task or milestone as finished and provide real-time status updates and reports. By saving time on administrative busywork, you can focus your efforts and expertise where it really matters. Headache #2: Multitasking With so much on your plate, multitasking may seem unavoidable. But it turns out that it actually impedes your productivity, negatively affects the quality of your work, and can create massive delays. A setback in one area will inevitably cause problems for any dependent tasks, which can't begin until the first task has finished, and so on. It quickly compounds and creates further delays. Solution: Do what you can to limit the number of projects that are in progress at the same time. Try to keep no more than 25 to 50% of your projects running simultaneously to result in fewer delays and a higher quality of work. As a project manager, you will have a much easier job with fewer projects demanding your time and attention at once. You should also take advantage of the many online tools that can help you shoulder some of the burden. An instant message app like Slack allows for real-time communication, message archiving, and easy search, in case you need to recall specific conversation details. Headache #3: Project Duration Estimates Unless you have a working crystal ball on hand, (in which case, can we borrow it?) you simply cannot know how much time it will take to complete a particular task. However, you will need provide an estimated project duration to stakeholders and clients, based on all the relevant information you have at your disposal. And you will be held accountable to that estimated completion date. There are several different methods you can use to estimate how much time it will take your team to complete a project. But even if you assign proposed durations for each task, you may come up short with your estimate—which means your team will have to pick up the slack and make up for lost time. And aside from the stress, that can mean sacrificing quality, going over budget, or potentially slipping deadlines. Solution: Instead of asking your team members to provide a single estimated deadline for their individual tasks, try a two-point estimation method. The advantage of a two-point method is that it allows you to miss your estimate, while providing enough of a buffer that you can still deliver the project before the final deadline. Note that this method still doesn't guarantee that you’ll be able to deliver every project on time, but it's still a safety net of sorts. With these helpful strategies and tools, you’ll be able to plan and execute your projects better, and allow yourself and your team to function more productively, under less stress, and still meet (or exceed!) your client's expectations. Author Bio: Diana Clark is a Digital Marketing Expert and Marketing Operations Project Manager works with her talented marketing team at Aussiewriter. She loves guiding people though their business practice and shares her ideas as a blogger.