When You Need to Justify Your Project Manager Role

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Project management is often viewed as overhead, which is a typical target when cost cutting is in the air. As a result, you might find yourself in the uncomfortable position of justifying your role as project manager. Here are several approaches you can use to educate leaders about the value of project management and skilled project managers.

Dispel managers’ fears. Managers typically have two big concerns about project management: its cost and that it will take more time. Start by pointing out that most organizations assign team leaders within a department to coordinate tasks, assign roles, and review results. Then, explain that project management is essentially the same, except it works across many departments and with a variety of stakeholders.

Correct the impression that line managers can manage projects. Organizations sometimes turn to line managers to deliver projects. It rarely works. First, line managers are already too busy. They are easily distracted from project management duties by their operational leadership requirements, which are ongoing and often urgent. In addition, line managers might not be perceived as objective: they might favor their technical area and management goals in their project decisions. Finally, line managers are rarely trained in project management techniques, which is the focus of the next point.

Emphasize the importance of training and experience. Remind leaders that the organization screens job candidates based on their education and experience, calling references to verify candidates’ claims. Given the expense and business value that projects add, why not evaluate project managers in the same way? Focus on project management education and verify project delivery experience and results. Doing so increases the chance that projects are successful. 

Stress the cost of project failure. According to Projectsmart, the average cost of a failed IT project is $12,000,000 (https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-real-costs-of-failed-projects.php). And that figure doesn’t include the opportunity cost of benefits that weren’t realized. While that statistic doesn’t represent every industry, it demonstrates the substantial cost of project failure in real dollars and lost benefits. Remind leaders that its good business to invest in activities that increase the probability of success. Embracing and improving project management helps protect the money and time invested in projects and ensure that those projects deliver the outcomes they’re supposed to.

If you have had to justify project management or your role as project manager, what techniques have you used? What worked and what didn’t?

For more about the value of project management, check out the LinkedIn Learning Become a Project Manager learning path.

Coming Up

LinkedIn Office Hours Session- Communication Tips for Challenging Situations

Remote work looks like it’s here to stay and that means effective communication is more important than ever. Bonnie Biafore and Tatiana Kolovou, professor in the Indiana University Kelly School of Business, will talk about how to apply communication theory to everyday situations. Some of the topics we will cover include handling resistance to your ideas, responding when caught off guard, being a strong listener in a virtual setting, and more.

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Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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5 Ways to Amplify Project Management Benefits

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As a project manager, you know that effective project management increases project outcomes and delivers improved business results. Here are ways to strengthen the benefits your project management practices provide to your projects and your entire organization.

Deploy repeatable methods. Applying consistent project management processes across projects is a great way to beef up the benefits of project management in your organization. You save time and effort — and increase productivity –because people don’t have to learn new approaches and processes every time they work on a project. Your teams already understand the project artifacts and expectations for delivering a successful project.

That’s not to say you can use only one project methodology across the organization. Each project should use common practices for the methodology that is most appropriate to the project. For example, standard WBS structures in waterfall projects and standard sprint structures for agile projects provide iterative learning as team members apply familiar practices time and again.

Continuously improve your project management methods. On every project, make a point of reviewing your approach, whether waterfall, agile or hybrid. Monitor their effectiveness and make adjustments to enhance the benefits project management delivers. 

Measure benefits through standard project metrics. As the saying goes, “You get what you measure.” Standard metrics provide the compass heading for increasing project success within your organization. And increased project success means better business results. Look for trends in metric results: in different product areas, business divisions, and personnel. These trends can highlight areas of weakness and enable focused improvement initiatives.

Project management benefits only become evident when you apply standard metrics across your entire project portfolio. Of course, agile and waterfall projects are controlled differently, so you apply different metrics for those approaches. For example, baseline versus planned schedule and cost variances are typical project metrics used in many industries. In agile projects, sprint burndown and velocity are typical metrics.

Improve results with supportive reviews of projects, project managers, and project teams. A supportive review differs from an audit. An audit is considered successful usually when faults are identified. In contrast, reviews set out to discover what worked well, so those successful approaches can be implemented across the organization. Reviews find areas that were suboptimized and explore the source of ineffective action. In addition, you can identify and address issues that weren’t handled well – or not at all. The focus is on learning from the past rather than finding who is to blame. This focus on continual improvement not only delivers better project outcomes but also increases your team members’ confidence in delivering projects.

Demonstrate benefits with cumulative project results. Metrics such as estimation accuracy, customer satisfaction with project outcomes, and actual ROI against plan are telling when examined across many projects within your business. These metrics are powerful indicators of the impact of project management on your organization. Ongoing improvement in these performance indicators leads to improved organizational health and increased agility because projects are delivered faster and with better outcomes. (Keep in mind, these metrics require diligence and effort to collect, so you need to encourage management to support their consistent use.)

What project management benefits have you seen in your organization? What actions have you taken to enhance and promote those benefits?

For more about project management metrics, check out my LinkedIn Learning Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up

Tatiana Kolovou and I will talk about communication techniques in a LinkedIn Office Hours broadcast on September 30 at 1pm MT.

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Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

Is Your Project a Good Candidate for Agile?

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Photo by Leon at Unsplash

Don’t force agile onto every project you run just because agile and iterative methodologies are “in.” To succeed with agile, make sure your projects are good agile candidates. Here are questions to ask before choosing an agile approach for a project:   

  • Is the project important enough to get the right people dedicated to it? Agile produces results quickly so it’s time-intensive for your team members. Agile teams are made up of business and technical folks who are vital to your business operations. Make sure they have enough time to contribute to your project. This often requires difficult tradeoffs between project work and operations.
  • Do your team members have sufficient depth and breadth of knowledge? What makes agile methodologies agile is responsiveness to evolving needs. Business experts work closely with expert technical team members to deliver what’s needed — fast. For that, your team needs in-depth knowledge of the business and technical areas touched by the project. The team consistently reassesses the project’s product, macro and micro-level business needs, and function priority.
  • Does your sponsor have an agile mindset? Agile responsiveness to changing business conditions and its learning environment are very different from traditional project methods. Your sponsor must be comfortable with changing business needs and priorities, willing to participate in frequent reviews of the evolving product, and ready to step in to get the project the agile resources it needs.
  • Can your team be co-located or virtually co-located? Agile involves deep, interactive, and often challenging dialog, which requires the richest environment you can create. Co-locate your project team members if possible. If you can’t, simulate co-location with the best video and audio tools you can obtain.
  • Is there synergy between your business and technical team member? Agile requires dedication from business and technical experts who are open to new ideas and supporting each other. You need an agile coach who understands and can manage human dynamics, and who can foster an environment where team members readily share their ideas and concerns. An agile team has to get along well to be successful. 
  • Can the product be built iteratively? Agile’s best qualities come from delivering solutions in pieces while learning from each iteration. Although it’s most common with software products, other products can be produced this way, too. With a bit of creativity, facility moves, process implementations, and even some construction projects can be produced in iterative steps.

For more about agile methodolgies, check out the Become an Agile Project Manager learning path in the LinkedIn learning library.

Coming Up

Tatiana Kolovou and I will host a LinkedIn Office Hours session about communication on September 30 at 1pm MT.  Watch for more details in my LinkedIn feed.

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Want to learn more about topics like these? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

The Top Tool for Developing Your Influence as a Project Manager

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Photo by Leon on Unsplash

Stakeholder management is crucial to project management. And influencing others is crucial to stakeholder management. Don’t count on charisma or positional power for influence. Experienced project managers use project information as their go-to influence tool. Here are ways project information can turn you into an expert influencer.

Keep people informed about the project schedule. How many days have you had when someone hasn’t asked, “When will the project be done?” or “When will you need my resources?” or “Can we change the schedule?” A detailed project schedule answers all these questions. It can show the impact on important tasks if you change the schedule or alter the date a critical resource becomes available. Let your project schedule do the heavy lifting when it comes to influencing stakeholders.

Address risks and costs. Stakeholders, reacting without thinking, might request changes or actions that add scope, reduce testing, or deliver sooner. Address the risks and potential costs of such actions — in advance — by including them in risk, scope, and cost management plans. That way, you have ready-made arguments for sticking to agreed-upon plans. 

Highlight trade-offs. In other instances, stakeholders request changes to plans based on wise business decisions.  Show the trade-offs within these decisions. Fast-tracking a schedule adds risk. Crashing the project schedule adds cost. Presenting trade-offs is powerful: you either underscore the impact of change or end the discussion if the impact is deemed unacceptable. Either way, stakeholders move forward understanding the impact of their decisions.

Leverage experts. Building project deliverables with the help of technical experts strengthens your project planning. Use the influence of your team’s experience to confirm your approach. If you don’t have experts in-house, reach out to contractors or other project managers and technicians who have delivered projects like yours. Real-world experience boosts your ability to influence stakeholders.

For more about stakeholder management, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s Managing Project Stakeholders course.