PMBoK7 Perspectives: Exploiting Opportunities

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PMBoK7 places more emphasis on managing positive risks, called opportunities (situations that improve project outcomes.) In the past, this project approach was underutilized, because the tendency is to focus on negative risks (called threats.) Here are PMI’s five approaches to making the most of project opportunities. 

  • Exploit. To exploit opportunity, you can take definitive action to ensure that an opportunity occurs. For example, you could purchase a more capable technical component that increases the business value delivered by the project. Or I could respond to a clear-cut customer demand by adding a remote-control feature to a ceiling fan. This would generate customer satisfaction and greater sales by fulfilling a specific need. 
  • Enhance. Enhancing an opportunity means taking an action to increase the probability of the opportunity occurring and/or increasing the positive impact it has on your project if it does occur. This is the equivalent of mitigating a negative risk. For example, to increase the reliability of a product, you decide to install a redundant part within the product, so if one fails the other automatically takes over. The outcome is a better product that you can charge more for, increasing the probability that your profit will improve due to the increased sales and higher customer satisfaction.
  • Escalate. A project team might discover ways to improve project outcomes that are outside the project team’s sphere of influence, for example, dealing with transactions involving foreign currencies. Changing the payment schedule or requesting a payment could mean big differences in currency exchange rates. Senior managers or the finance organization would make the decision on this financial schedule change. In this case, the project manager escalates the opportunity to the people who have the authority for the decision. 
  • Share. This strategy means you allocate full or partial ownership of an opportunity to a third party who is best able to capture the benefit of that opportunity. For example, a customer offers a bonus payment for early project completion. To increase the chances of finishing early, you hire an expert firm to perform parts of your project and share the bonus payment with them if you finish early.
  • Accept. Finally, just like with threats, you can accept the existence of an opportunity as-is.  You do nothing, and hope the opportunity comes to fruition. This is suitable for low probability or low impact opportunities.

If you have techniques you have used to take advantage of opportunities, share with us in the comments section.

For more about risk management, check out Bob McGannon’s Project Management Foundations: Risk course.

PMBoK7 Perspectives: Build Quality into Processes and Deliverables

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PMBoK7 talks about maintaining focus on deliverable quality and the processes used to create those deliverables. Here’s an overview of what the Project Management Institute (PMI) refers to as the “dimensions of quality” that PMs must manage. 

Performance/Conformity. The products we produce need to perform in a way that meets specifications. They also need to conform to accepted norms and the expectations of stakeholders who capitalize on the delivered products. This means the project outcomes are achieved in a way that stakeholders expect and can handle without excessive education or unnecessary changes to existing business processes.

Reliability/Resilience. Project deliverables need to produce consistent outcomes. If it’s a product or hardware component, it needs to deliver consistent results and be resilient enough to recover from unexpected situations like power outages. If your deliverable is process-based, it should deliver the intended results in a wide array of circumstances where it might be applied — without requiring workarounds or instance-by-instance judgment from stakeholders. In short, you get the outcome you intended, first time and every time.

Satisfaction/Uniformity. Your products should get positive feedback from stakeholders who use it or are affected by it. This means you need to understand the needs and expectations of every stakeholder group impacted by the project’s product. Satisfaction also needs to meet your stakeholders usual standards. For example, if you produce an IT system that has a drastically different interface than other products, the system will fail the uniformity test even if it works. The stakeholders won’t want to learn a whole new interface to use your product, even if it meets their specifications.

Efficiency/Sustainability. This means producing high-quality products that create desired outcomes efficiently, without requiring work for the stakeholders who use the product. The project outcomes should consistently reduce the work required to generate business value. The way the project’s products are built and used should also be kind to the environment, and not use excessive amounts of power, create undue waste, or rely on people to perform dangerous tasks such as exposing themselves to chemicals or radiation that could be harmful over time.

Have any tips for focusing on deliverable and process quality? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about quality management, check out Daniel Stanton’s Project Management Foundations: Quality course.

Coming Up

Watch for my latest course, Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Client Essential Training.  Publication day is coming up!

PMBoK7 Perspectives: More Systems Thinking

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The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK7) talks about recognizing, evaluating, and responding to system interactions, which means project managers must engage in systems thinking to drive positive project performance. Adding to last week’s list, here are more ways that systems thinking can boost project performance. 

Turn up the empathy. The best project managers empathize with business stakeholders. In fact, their empathy is so well-tuned, they think like their business stakeholders. They can anticipate the concerns stakeholders might raise and understand what approaches will reduce those concerns. They understand business stakeholder goals and tailor the project to help bring them to fruition. They FEEL as well as see what is happening. That feeling is a form of intuition, where they listen to the words stakeholders use to determine whether they are comfortable (or not).

Assumptions get you started but not to the finish! Systems thinking involves understanding the role of assumptions. Projects usually require assumptions prior to launch. Clever and reasonable assumptions can support projects that otherwise might not be approved. However, all assumptions are risks! If the assumptions are incorrect, the business case can easily become invalid. So, start by making assumptions, launching your project, and then work to validate those assumptions. As you validate your assumptions, your risk decreases. With sound systems thinking, most, if not all, elements within an assumption can be validated. These validated facts allow you to finish your project with minimal risk!

Hold methodologies loosely. With standard methodologies, you establish a pattern of behavior and share standard tracking reports that stakeholders are familiar with. That is a significant benefit but doesn’t guarantee that the methodology is the best approach to project delivery. With systems thinking, you can identify the value that each step and deliverable provides to your project and business. If a deliverable doesn’t provide value, skip it, or change or minimize it. Create a customized methodology for your project with only the steps and deliverables that add value and share the methodology with stakeholders. It shouldn’t be changed so much it becomes unrecognizable but should be better positioned to meet the needs of the project and its stakeholders.

Be as agile as possible. Being agile isn’t the same as using an agile methodology. Being agile means that you strive to learn as much as you can as early as you can in the project lifecycle. Develop prototypes ASAP – a whiteboard and post-it notes may be all that’s required. Test your products as early as possible. Recognize when your business is changing quickly or that stakeholders are figuring out what they need as they go, so you can be ready for changes to hit your project. Allocate contingency budget for changes if you are working in a waterfall model and be prepared to change plans quickly to respond to business needs.

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

Coming Up

Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Client Essential Training will be published in a few months.

LinkedIn Office Hours April 13, 2022, 1:00PM MT- Prerequisites for a Project Management Entrepreneur

Have you thought about going out on your own as a project manager, instead of being an employee? Seyi Kukoyi, PMP, and Bonnie Biafore, PMP, provide guidance for that journey in the course Become a Project Management Entrepreneur. But being your own boss isn’t for everyone. In this LinkedIn Office Hours event, Seyi and Bonnie welcome John Riopel and Oliver Yarbrough to a panel discussion about what you need to know before diving into the deep end of the PM entrepreneur pool. We will cover how to tell if you’re cut out for entrepreneurship; the difference between being a contractor and a business owner; skills and tools you need to be a PM Entrepreneur, and steps to take before you quit your job.

PMBoK7 Perspectives: Systems Thinking

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The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK7) talks about recognizing, evaluating, and responding to system interactions, which means project managers must engage in systems thinking to drive positive project performance. Here are a few significant systems thinking perspectives that boost project performance. 

Business change is the goal (not just project completion). Smart organizations close projects when they have achieved the desired business outcomes, not when the project deliverables are completed. In a project world, integrating business analysis, project management and organizational change is at the heart of systems thinking. For example, a new business process or product description should lead to a plan for producing deliverables. That plan will describe the business value that is desired. As the deliverables are produced, stakeholders need guidance through organizational change management initiatives to ensure the products and business changes generate that value. 

Build on the past. Project deliverables can be more effective when they leverage what’s already in place via other projects. Agile project approaches do this well and quickly. Because deliverables are deployed in short sprints, the agile process consistently builds upon the past by improving features that aren’t as effective as they could be and expanding features that already add business value. However, you don’t need agile to build on the past. Projects in well-organized portfolios often represent steps to a strategic set of changes. Along the way, new requirements and business needs create obstacles or opportunities that must be managed.  You can enhance project performance by understanding the objectives for each project in the portfolio and the value they provide to the business. Then, you can determine how to incorporate newly discovered business objectives into a series of projects.

Understand the “dominoes.” Change is a constant in the business world. Business changes, personnel changes and new requirements can create a cascade of items to address. For example, a change in a construction project alters the triple constraints of scope, cost, and schedule. But it can also change contractor agreements, suppliers’ processes, financing, and inspection requirements. Understanding the cascading changes that arise during a project and addressing them proactively is a fundamental way that systems thinking boosts project performance.

Integration is a PEOPLE process. Product integration is challenging, as products don’t always come together as intended. This can lead to project delays and ballooning budgets. An example is the Mars probe that was lost due to a simple integration failure, when one module used imperial measurements and another used metric. The best systems thinking approach to integration is to work on people, ability, and team integration. Your product integrations will go smoothly  when you ensure the skills you deploy have positive relationships and show respect for each other and the contribution each can yield. Those relationships increase the effectiveness of communication and the sense of a shared goal. Better products, with fewer instances of integration elements being missed, is the result when teams work together more effectively.

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

Coming Up

Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Client Essential Training will be published in a few months.

LinkedIn Office Hours April 6, 2022, 1:00PM MT- Embracing an Entrepreneurial Mindset in an AI-Driven World

Yesterday’s future is today’s reality. In order to fully take advantage of that reality, professionals need to think entrepreneurially while leveraging the latest technological advancements such as AI.
In this Office Hours session, Oliver Yarbrough and Bonnie Biafore will discuss how you can grow you career by –
– Harnessing an entrepreneurial mindset
– Leveraging AI to deliver successful projects
– Adjusting your outlook and approach to delivering value
– …and so much more
The world is changing. Ask yourself, “How will I adapt to these changes, so I can advance?”

LinkedIn Office Hours April 13, 2022, 1:00PM MT- Prerequisites for a Project Management Entrepreneur

Have you thought about going out on your own as a project manager, instead of being an employee? Seyi Kukoyi, PMP, and Bonnie Biafore, PMP, provide guidance for that journey in the course Become a Project Management Entrepreneur. But being your own boss isn’t for everyone. In this LinkedIn Office Hours event, Seyi and Bonnie welcome John Riopel and Oliver Yarbrough to a panel discussion about what you need to know before diving into the deep end of the PM entrepreneur pool. We will cover how to tell if you’re cut out for entrepreneurship; the difference between being a contractor and a business owner; skills and tools you need to be a PM Entrepreneur, and steps to take before you quit your job.