How do you continue to grow as a Project Manager?

So you are a PM and have been for years right?  You have your PMP certification and you are always on the lookout for PDUs, right?  Then maybe you obtained a Six Sigma certification or some other certifications …  now what is next?!?

If you find yourself in this rut here are my tips:

Start up a PM Knowledge Book.  It can be a binder or an electronic means to capture information.  Save interesting articles, links, how to’s or even fun games you have tried out in some of your classes you have attended.  Another possible way to do this is start a blog.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone back to my blog to review something I wrote up after someone asks me a question on a certain aspect of project management (all of those links to other good pieces of information are also very helpful).

Get more training.  Look for different classes in things like communication, finance, business and taking a refresher course in Microsoft Project every couple of years cannot hurt!

Read blogs, books, magazines, listen to podcasts, and try out new trial versions of PM management tools.  This will help you to keep up on the ongoing trends in project management. But when will you have time to do this?  Schedule time for yourself and pick a couple of  blogs or podcasts to review every week.  After you do it for awhile you will start to get use to your new routine.  And you may surprise yourself as your thoughts flow out into the comments of blogs you’re reading (see you are now really getting involved).

Network with other PMs, ask them how they manage their projects. You can learn a lot of things from seasoned PMs.

Review profiles of PMs on linkedin and see if you can find new ways to build your profile (or resume), or you may find out about classes others have taken or purpose a question to the community for feedback.

Finally, give back. Whether it is mentoring a PM, working with your local PMI chapter, or donating your time to manage a community project.  Once you get to this stage that PM Knowledge Book you have been keeping will really pay off!

Notable quote:

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
-Benjamin Franklin 

Mentoring Project Managers

Over my career I’ve had several opportunities to mentor project managers and recently my local PMI chapter put together a mentor/mentee program.  I decided to toss my hat in the ring as a mentor and shortly after that they matched me up with Joe.

My first meeting with Joe was super informal.  It was a meet and greet where we went over our backgrounds, what was going on in our lives and what we were expecting out of this program.  Like any good meeting we both left with a “to do” list for our next meeting.

At our next meeting we started with a little show and tell with what was on our “to do” lists, came up with some things for next time and ended with a little coaching on how to persuade the deciders on doing things a new way (new PM process).

I do truly enjoy the opportunity to work with others to see how their organizations are running projects and hopefully I can learn something and they can too.

My tips for mentoring PMs:

Feedback!  Ask them to request feedback from their team members and information on how the project management process is going in their organizations.

Roll play!  All PMs have team members that will be confrontational on an issue.  My suggestion to help them is to find someone to roll play with so you can practice on how the decision will go down.

Crisis!  When the big issue comes up in your project, take a deep breath and then get the right people in the room (on the phone) to discuss it.

Communication!  You need to be a master of communication and if your team is not aware of what is happening in your project you need to come up with new way to communicate project details.

Training!  If you are new to project management or you already have your PMP or other project management related certifications you need to keep building your knowledge and keeping it fresh!  There are a ton of classes, books, podcasts and blogs out there to help you with this.  Many times scheduling a class for a PM will keep them focused on building their career with their current organization.

Note able quote:

"Be the change you want to see in the world." -  Gandhi

 

Too many projects … not enough resources

Over the past couple of months I have had several discussions with companies and groups about their list of ongoing projects.  Some of the questions I asked them are:

 

1. Do you have a list of all of your projects (you would be surprised how many said no …)?
2. Do you rank your projects, and if so how are you ranking them?
3. Do you really have enough resources for all of your projects?  If not, why are you trying to do them all at the same time?
4. Do you review your projects, let’s say, quarterly to make sure you are focused on the right ones and to cut the ones where the market place has changed?
5. Do you have this list in a common location for all to see (again, you would be surprised how many said no to this … really?)?

The key to making this ranking system work is having the correct ranking criteria for your organization prior to sitting down with the ‘deciders’.  The ranking criteria will include things like project performance indicators, business value indicators, looking at the resources needed and finally things that are deemed important by your organization.  Here is a short presentation that I put together using some of the concepts from a presentation by Barbara Schrage.

Project Ranking

More PowerPoint presentations from Ryan Endres

Once you have your rankings in, the debate is on to see if everyone agrees.  The key is you want to have a balanced score card for your organization.  Glen Alleman recently posted an excellent presentation on this topic:

The key to making this work is having something in place to rank your projects and a reason why they are ranked the way they are.  Otherwise the top projects in your company will be someone’s pet project which may not help the strategic vision of your organization (I like to call these the chest thumper projects or the, whoever is the loudest has the highest ranking project).

How to do you measure the maturity of a SharePoint implementation?

So your organization is thinking about taking the leap, or already has, into launching SharePoint.  When you started on this adventure you treated this as a project, right?  Or did you just turn it on and send out an email stating, “SharePoint is now available”.

If you don’t treat it as a project you are headed for an early disaster and users won’t want to use it. 

Five most common mistakes when rolling out SharePoint:

1. Lack of proper planning

2. Showcasing Features; not building solutions

3. Undefined business case

4. Poor understanding of SharePoint

5. Unrealistic Staffing

The key to adoption of SharePoint is to start out small with one department and bring in those team members that are typically the early adopters.  As you build up the first site you will also need to build your training documents and start to train the people that will use the site.  Then you need to continue training, re-training, start to add articles to your company’s newsletter or blog about SharePoint and finally if it is a requirement to move away from the old paper way, monitor your staff to make sure they made the switch.

Once you get to the point that your company is making the switch over to SharePoint we need some metrics to determine how SharePoint is maturing within your organization.  About a year ago some of the big name advocates of SharePoint started this discussion.  And recently Sadie Van Buren has been giving talks about how she determines the maturity of a SharePoint system in an organization.  Below is her template to determine the maturity of a SharePoint system.

And here is her presentation that shows some examples of 100 and 500 level SharePoint sites, and she also gives an overview of each area and what she thinks is a 100-500 level of maturity. 

The SharePoint Maturity Model - as presented 1 March 2011 for Nothing But SharePoint

View more presentations from Sadalit Van Buren

Also, recently Dux Raymond Sy brought together 4 SharePoint advocates (including Sadie) to discuss “Understanding the SharePoint Maturity Model” 

SPBizChat Ep2: Understanding SharePoint Maturity Model from Dux Raymond Sy on Vimeo.

In my own organization I’ve seen our SharePoint sites go from only a couple hundred clicks a month to now over 130,000 clicks per month.  That is a pretty impressive jump and we are only at about the 300 level of maturity. 

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."  -  Alvin Toffler

 

Captain Kirk reviews his ship's status on a dashboard made in SharePoint

Project Management is about the People not the Tools

This past week I attended my local PMI monthly chapter meeting where Bob Baim gave a talk titled, “Predictive Project Management, Strategies for Avoiding the OS Phase” (Bob also has a book with the same title).

Bob (a very energetic speaker) gave us many examples of big name projects that hit the OS phase, and in many cases, they hit it again and again.  One of his take home messages was that projects do not fail, processes do, and if you do not fix them you will fail, again and again.

The following slide sums this up nicely:

You see it is not all about the tools.  To be a truly effective PM you need to be a people person and you need to be an expert in all types of communication.  Reading the PMBOK and being able to quote the page number where they talk about the WBS doesn’t mean you are an effective PM.

Josh Nankivel, from the PM Student, had a recent quote that I think sums it up nicely,

“I think many project managers tend to focus on tools and techniques far too much, and not enough on the people aspects of managing projects. By far these relational aspects of project management are the most important ones.”

Final thought on this.  Please keep in mind the people in your projects are what make your PM tools useful.  If you spend all your time with your tools you will probably be headed to the OS phase …

Project Planning Poker

Last week I attended a meeting with the group Agile Madison where our topic of discussion was determining the duration for each sprint item.  My input on this was that a plan is a strategy for the successful completion of the project and a schedule will tell us when things will be completed.  I also reviewed some ways to determine the schedule (or duration) for tasks in a project (Agile or any other type of project management methodology).  The classic PMI ones are: historical information, 3-point analysis and Monte Carlo analysis.  

The one that was introduced to the group was Planning Poker.  Here is how it works.

If you have a project with a group of developers (or testers, or data engineers) each developer is given a stack of cards that have the following on them: ?, 0, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, infinity.  The PM (or scrum master) reads off the sprint item and then the  developers pull out their cards on how long it should take and then they flip them over at the same time.  You may see instances where they all closely agree and other times one person is way off.  This will help them to open the channels to discuss why they picked there duration (maybe one of them had a similar task in the past and knew it was a lot more work then it was first predicted).

Why does this work?

It works because it allows you to bring together a group of experts to discuss each task and in many cases you may end up averaging the numbers to come up with your best guess as to what the reality may be.

So the next time you find yourself in a situation like this, think about pulling planning poker out of your PM toolbox.

Five tips for managing worldwide project teams

Recently I attended a talk titled: How to Create and Manage Remote Project Teams by Wayne Turmel and I thought I would write up my top 5 things to keep in mind when you come into this situation.

1.    Use Web 2.0 technologies

 

In order for your team to use these web based technologies they need the right equipment to do their jobs (high speed access, laptop, cell phone …).  Without the right tools they will not be able to complete their job.

Pick the right technology for managing web meetings, documents, communication, timelines and if necessary timesheet tracking.  Not only is it important to have the right technology you need to train your team members and make sure they are using it correctly.

 

2.    Pick the right team members

 

Granted, many times you don’t get to pick your team, but if you do, focus on people that are self motivated, have good communication skills and are result driven.  By picking people that are open go-getters it will help increase the chance of having a smooth project.

 

3.    Determine your team's purpose

 

With team members all over the place you need to define your team’s purpose and set the ground rules.  You can do this with a Team Charter.  The Team Charter is a document that defines the purpose of the team, how it will work, and what the communication expectations will be (maybe each team member needs to update the project site daily on what they are working on).

 

4.    Reward Performance and give feedback

 

Have you ever been on a team and feel that they forgot about you?  Multiply that by 10 when you have offsite team members.  To help combat this, you the PM, need to set up regular reviews of your team members and if possible try to call them up once a week to chat.

If your budget allows it, setup a rewards system, but make sure it is fair for all team members.  Many times these rewards are setup for project goals and it will help keep the project on track.

 

5.    Incorporate some team bonding

 

If you have the budget the best way to do this is to have a several day face-2 face meeting that includes some offsite fun.  If there is no budget, then it could be something as simple as having a page within your project site with photographs of the team members (maybe you mix it up and ask them to include a photo from grade school), a bio, and links to things like their pages on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter or even YouTube.  

 

Agile Will Be Seen for What It Is…and Isn’t

A new year is here and one of the top trends for 2011 will continue to be where Agile project management is going.

In a recent blog post by Bernardo Tirado his top trends in project management for 2011 includes a statement about Agile software development:

Project management organizations embracing Agile software and product development approaches will continue to grow while being faced with the challenge of demonstrating ROI through Agile adoption. In addition, they will need to disabuse their stakeholders and executives of the expectations set by IT consultants, the media and the vendor community that Agile is the next “silver bullet.” Organizations that do it right – including selecting the right projects for Agile – will reap significant rewards.


The key is selecting the right projects for Agile project management … but how?  

Recently, I attended the Madison PMO Manager forum where we discussed this topic.  One member mentioned that his organization completes a risk assessment on the project to determine if it is the right fit for Agile project management.  Others indicated that it works well for small projects (making a web app) with small teams that are co-located.


You selected a project but how to you measure it?

This is where it gets interesting.  A PMO has many metrics it tracks its projects for, but with Agile project management you typically only have a burndown chart that is really nothing more than a chart showing 100% down to 0% complete.  


We want more, right? 

One way to make measurements is to use the Agility Measurement Index which scores developments against five dimensions of a software project (duration, risk, novelty, effort, and interaction).

A second way to is track the goals that are set for the project.  Without objective measurements you are just guessing!


Why does Agile project management work?

1.     The stand-up meetings holds your team accountable.

2.     Rapid development of semi-functional software allows you to keep the project going in the right direction and there is less of a chance of it going down the wrong path.

3.     Having experienced developers that have coded similar items and expert users as your primary stakeholders will help to keep the project focused.

4.     Do the right things!  If the post-it notes methodology works and is appropriate for your project stick with it.  If you are developing software that is regulated and you need some or a lot of documentation, make sure you create the necessary documentation.  You cannot have a one-size-fits-all Agile process.

Notable Quote:
“The agile processes that are successful have players that "know" what to do from skill and experience.” -Glenn Alleman

Even with a 3 ton elephant in the room we can still be Agile ...

Several weeks ago I was contacted by Jason Hoffman, a Scrum master, to see if I would be interested in meeting up with others in the Madison area that run Agile projects, work on Agile projects or folks who are just interested in hearing more about Agile.  Previously Jason use to attend meetings like this when he lived in the Twin Cities and he wanted to start something up like it in Madison, WI.

This past week we had our first meet-up with 5 people in attendance.  We spent the first 90 minutes with each person talking about their backgrounds, how they are using Agile in their organizations and what some of their frustrations were.

Some of the discussions we had were:

1.      How do you pull out traditional project management metrics to feed the PMO?

2.       How do you get buy-in to start your first Agile project.

3.       How you can blend the SDLC process along with using Agile techniques.

Okay, so let’s take #3 for a spin …  One of the attendees Brice Ruth is a contractor at American Family Insurance.  Brice indicated that AmFam has an internal website dedicated to Agile SDLC software development projects.  It is great to see an organization that is willing to blend the two together.  

Brice stated, “if you are worried about all the documentation that is needed for SDLC process, you can still have all the documents you want.  You just need to add a backlog item to your last sprint which is to create all the necessary SDLC documentation.”

In the last 30 minutes of our meeting we brainstormed some topic ideas for future meetings.  The next topic will be “Tools you use when managing Agile projects”.  Meeting date is 11Jan2011.

If you are interested in attending these meetings and receiving updates on them please join our Linkedin group:  Agile Madison

Help! My team members are in multiple locations!

1Dec2011: Please click above if you want the most recent Blog posts^.

Recently I had a short discussion with Kara Rose the current President of the PMI of south central/ Madison Wisconsin chapter about issues the board members were having with document reviews,  and having a place to have online discussions.  

She indicated to me that they were currently using yahoo groups and it was clunky and not user friendly.  She also mentioned that they were looking into setting up a SharePoint site, but was not sure who would host it.

After this I mentioned to her a few online applications that exist, and that I would think a bit about their issues to see if there is a good cheap product out there on the interweb to fit their needs.

What will work...

     I checked my notes on online PM applications and I think that an application from Teamworks may fit their needs.

    

Getting users in the system...

This was very easy to do and you can use an outside email address (any email address will work). 

Then you can determine if you want the system to send them a generated password or create one for them (the user, when they log in, can then change their password).

Next you can set up their permissions (sorta like SharePoint):

Overview...

You would then create a project (I’ll review that at in another post), and below is what you would see from the top level of a project.  The key tabs for this discussion are: Files and Messages (also, I noticed that there is a news type feed that shows all the recent updates and a section to set up a RSS Feed).

Messages...

Within the Message section it is a normal message forum with one twist.  It will allow you to indicate who you would like an email sent off to let them know that you posted a comment (much like you can in SharePoint).

File review...

Easy to upload, determine who can see it, add notes to the file.  Version history.  If someone downloads the file, edits it and uploads it in the same spot it creates a new version of it.  Comments section for each file (again with a notification feature), which is nice to see.

The Cons to the file review section is that 2 people could take the file out at the same time so your versioning won’t be correct.  No file review workflow with a must be completed by date followed by automated emails to the users that have not completed the task (all things that SharePoint has).

Pricing...

This is the most competitive pricing structure I’ve seen, because they base their prices on the number of projects and gigs of data with unlimited users.  Now for the PMI board their best option may be the one in the small print.  2 projects and 5mb of storage.  One project for PDD and one for general items.  Hey, you cannot beat free, but if you need a bit more space and a few more projects $12/month is not that bad either.  So for basic needs of a small committee of people TeamWorksPM.net may fit your needs (I’ll find out more in the next month if it truly has many of the common items we need to help us communicate out the on-goings of our projects).

Review of Project Centeral 2.0

Recently I had a chance to check out Project Central 2.0, a SharePoint plug-in From Bamboo Solutions.  Bamboo offers many project management related plug-ins for SharePoint. 

When you log in there is a nice dashboard of information of all the projects in your portfolio.  My only issue with this first screen is that you have to scroll to the right to see all the information.  Within this view you will find all the common tabs you would need to quickly jump to.

Setting up a project

When setting up a project there is a great summary screen for the project, where you can define your team, see upcoming tasks, announcements, recently updated documents, and so on.  These are typical things you would expect to see when developing a dashboard within SharePoint.  I do like the idea of an icon that you click that will send out an email to all on the project (no need to bother IS admin to set up a universal mailing list within Outlook).

Updating the GANTT chart

You can enter the items into your project timeline.  Each new item has a ton of information that you can enter that will feed the other parts of the application.  I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t see a button to import a Microsoft Project document into the system (you have to purchase an additional add-on for this). 

They do offer different views, and an option to baseline the project, but I didn’t see anything for viewing the critical path.

Resource management

There is a section on resource management, it is nice to have this option so you can easily see if a person is over allocated and when you add a person to a project you can put in what percentage of time they will have on the project.

Risks

There is a full section on risks, and each risk you enter has all the key pieces of information you would normally collect, which is used to determine its spot on the impact and probability chart.

  

Summary

Pros:

Easy to use if you are familiar with SharePoint

Excellent dashboard views

Easy to input data, add more data views, and easy to get data out if you want to build offline reports

Easy to lock down using SharePoint’s built in security rules

Easy to track risks, issues, resources and costs

The ability to add a percentage of time a person will be assigned to the project

Standardized way to seeing a project site (stops PMs from making up their own sites)

One time fee

Cons:

Have to purchase an additional plug-in to import Microsoft Project documents

Discussion board is just a plain old discussion board with no tie into a task within the project

No project news feed type of feature (i.e.: task was completed, new discussion added, new document added)

No place for a team member that are assigned a task can give an update on the task that is tied back into the task

No templates, it would be nice if they had a section on Agile management with burn down item logger and a burn down chart.

Possible issue if you have outside team members, possible security concerns

Overall I think it is a great application at a fair price.  Could you ask your companies programmers to build an application like this?  Sure.  But it is much more cost effective to purchase this one so you have all the key items you need to help capture the needs and the plan of the project.

iPad in the Enterprise

Several weeks ago I attended a presentation titled: iPad in the Enterprise presented by Jake Scherrer of Centare.  Link to his presentation.

In the presentation Jake went over Apple’s mobile devices and where the future may lead too. 

Apple’s 3 main mobile devices are the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad.  Currently there are many new companies that are popping up to help you create apps that work with mobile technology to help you access your data basically anywhere.  There are many professions today that this will be huge help to speed up workflows and getting data to the masses quicker.

One of the first hurdles will be the enterprise concerns with security (if I lose my iPhone will the finder now have access to my email and custom built apps?).  Apple seems to have this locked down pretty well with the ability to lock and format and push new updates to the iPhone remotely).

Another hurdle is, how the heck do you get Apple to okay your custom made application for your client.  Apple is getting much less restrictive of this and their review process.

What is the future?

Any type of data you have access to on your PC you should be able to have access to on your mobile device.

 An example they gave was an app for collecting names of interested clients at a trade show (you know, you have a booth and folks drop off their business cards in a fish bowl which is replaced with an iPad app).

Rewards for service.  Remember the days when you were with an organization for 5 years you received a tie tack, and 20 years you received a watch?  How about after 2 years you receive an iPad with some custom apps for your company to help you keep track of what is going on in the office from the road or at home.

Some others I’ve thought about recently are:

• 1.       Realtor app so they can look things up and take notes.
• 2.       Project app so you can see project details or look at shared documents (like box.net has).
• 3.       Trade show booth, to show videos about your organization, or give the user hands on access.
• 4.       Doctors, who can re-view images from anywhere to give input on diagnoses.
• 5.       Police reports, with dictation ability.

This could be so much more than just email!  Think about the data you capture and how you could use it to help your organization work more efficiently!

http://www.cio.com.au/article/366255/ipad_enterprise_invasion_security_risks/?fp=4&fpid=51241

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/28/report-ipad-infiltrating-enterprise-it/

http://gigaom.com/mobile/the-ipad-as-enterprise-tool/

http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-for-business-2010-10