Is Your Sponsor Ready for Agile?

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Photo by Parabol on Unsplash

A critical factor for using agile methods successfully is the mindset of the sponsor. With the wrong attitude about how agile works, you might as well forget about using an agile approach. A sponsor who is ready for agile must:

  • Support a “learning organization.”  Learning organizations spend some time on activities that don’t directly create business outcomes. That time is used to develop capabilities within the organization that produce better outcomes in the future. This learning organization philosophy is pivotal for agile. The agile approach is itself a learning philosophy. With agile, you learn, adjust what you produce, and reprioritize features based on the knowledge you’ve gained. You learn about the product as it’s built.

Sponsors must embrace a learning mindset to support agile initiatives. In many instances, agile teams don’t do well at the start, because agile is so different from traditional project methodologies. A supportive sponsor will give teams the time and opportunity on a couple of agile projects to get into the agile flow. 

  • Be open to new metrics. Sponsors with traditional PM leanings depend on Gantt chart schedules, pre-determined risk management plans, and specific milestones to measure progress. They might struggle with agile, because Gantt chart representations and fixed milestones aren’t very relevant to agile projects. Features are produced in a sequence that can change with each sprint. Agile uses measurement techniques like burndown charts and traditional budget management to provide schedule and cost status. Embedded testing and feature validation addresses the need to reduce risk. So, agile is a managed methodology — but it requires a sponsor who is open to different ways to assess progress.
  • Focus on what’s needed, not how to achieve it. Agile is not the ideal approach when you have a fixed set of requirements and details for how the solution will be constructed. In an agile project, you define an objective, and then explore ways to achieve it. It’s typical for direction and approach to change along the way. Sponsors who are uncomfortable with the speculative and explorative nature of agile will struggle with its methods.
  • Be willing to dedicate resources. Agile teams need to make decisions quickly and flexibly to be…well…agile! To do that, knowledgeable senior staff members need to be dedicated to agile teams. Sponsors need to assign the proper team members to agile projects and take other business activities off their plates. If junior staff members lead agile projects, teams might jump to inappropriate conclusions. This can create rework and reduce the team’s velocity. 

If you have experience with agile Projects, share your tips about sponsors in the comments section!

For more about agile approaches, check out Doug Rose’s Agile Foundations course.

Coming Up

My updated Project Management Foundations course is live! This version includes info about PMBOK7, clarifications to confusing items from past versions, a few corrections, more templates, and a new look.

The Benefits of Keeping Project Scope Small

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Project success is more likely when stakeholders hash out scope early in the project lifecycle. Here are the benefits of discussing (and debating) project scope to make it as small as possible:

  • Focus on what is important. Stakeholder discussions about scope reveal which elements of scope are most important. That helps you prioritize scope, which is crucial when you face budget constraints. This debate can also build consensus among your stakeholders. They’re more likely to fight for the right project team members or obtain funds if they have a unified belief in the project’s scope.
  • Smaller projects. Designing a project around only the most important requirements will reduce the size of the project. There are many benefits to smaller projects:
  • You are more likely to keep critical staff members. The smaller the project, the shorter the timeframe, which reduces the chance of other business priorities taking team members away from your project
  • Project benefits can be deployed earlier.
  • The project team is more confident that they can make a positive contribution.
  • Less complexity. Smaller scope means shorter timeframes and fewer required team members. The benefits of reducing complexity include:
  • The number of resources with required skills decreases, so it is easier to staff the project.
  • Scope remains relevant. The longer it takes to produce project outcomes, the more likely business needs will change. With shorter projects, the project scope remains relevant, and the project delivers outcomes that still meet business needs.
  • Solution design and deployment remain manageable. Complexity can make a solution harder for stakeholders to use, because they have to comprehend the complexity. Technical issues often arise in complex systems. Reducing complexity reduces the project timeframe and increases stakeholder confidence. 
  • You learn as you go. Delivering scope in smaller chunks helps the project team learn how to efficiently produce project outcomes. Additional scope can be tackled via another small project (or projects). Each of these smaller projects increases the knowledge and ability of the team. This is the premise of agile, where scope is delivered in repeated, small features for the business to deploy. This same learning outcome can come from running a series of small waterfall projects.

Save time and money. With less complexity and shorter schedules, projects with limited scope can save significant time and funding.

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

Coming Up:

My updated Project Management Foundations course was released recently.

LinkedIn Office Hours on October 27, 2022

Sometimes, the hardest part of innovation isn’t coming up with the great idea. It’s implementing it. Across the organization.

If you are trying to lead your organization in thinking (or doing) differently, you need to balance inspiration and operations. In this engaging and interactive conversation, LinkedIn Instructors Bonnie Biafore (Project Management Foundations) and Robbie Kellman Baxter (Become an Entrepreneur Inside a Company) will share best practices in scaling your great idea throughout your organization.

https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6978746469797244928/

How to Be a Sponsor Whisperer

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Ever notice that some project managers always seem to have sponsor support? Project managers who successfully manage sponsors use a handful of techniques. Here are the go-to tools for “executive whisperer” project managers.

  • Get to the point in status reports. Status reports should be short and concise . Talk with your sponsor to understand their main concerns. Highlight information related to those concerns in your status report. While you still compile detailed information such as the status of individual tasks or the hours worked versus planned, it’s best to leave that detail in the background. Include links to the data in your reports so the sponsor can access it.
  • For longer discussions, prepare a short intro and let the sponsor lead the discussion. Senior leaders want to process information in the sequence most meaningful to them. Avoid pushing your agenda of what to share and when. Sponsors might not hear what you’re saying until they get the information they want. Deliver a short introduction – 30 to 60 seconds– to set the stage. After that, let the sponsor lead the discussion. Have data available that you can reference to answer questions. If you don’t have an answer, share where you can get it and follow up after the meeting. If information you want to share hasn’t been discussed, bring it up at the end of the meeting.
  • Know your stakeholders’ points of view. Project sponsors might not interact with other stakeholders on a regular basis. If stakeholders raise concerns, talk with them to understand their issues. Don’t assume your sponsor has this information. Your sponsor has a greater span of responsibilities than you, as a project manager. So, do the legwork on stakeholder issues to offload the sponsor. If you need your sponsor’s help talking with a stakeholder, brief them on the data they need. Share your recommendation and a clear goal for what you want from the discussion. Follow up on any actions that may result from the discussion with the stakeholder.
  • Make clear recommendations. The most frequent complaint from project sponsors is that project managers dump problems on them. Even worse, the problem might not be well-defined. To become a sponsor favorite, analyze the problems and come up with potential solutions. List the pros and cons for each potential solution and recommend a solution. That way, the sponsor can consider different business options, which improves sponsor confidence and helps them decide more quickly.
  • Be calm. Your mood rubs off on your project team and your sponsor. If you demonstrate confidence by being calm and diligently performing your role, your sponsor will be more confident. In turn, you avoid extra reporting and questions because you have your sponsor’s trust. Being calm doesn’t mean holding back bad news. If something is wrong, share it calmly, along with how you’ll address the problem. Follow up in whatever way your sponsor prefers.

Remember that sponsors are individuals with their own preferences. Take time to understand your sponsor’s expectations to improve your chances of success.

Do you have any tips for dealing with project sponsors – or questions about how to deal with them? Join the discussion by posting in the comments section.

For more about project sponsors, check out Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez’s How to Be an Effective Project Sponsor course.

Coming up:

October 2022 will be a busy month. My updated Project Management Foundations course is due to go live. And you can see me in several LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

 

October 12, 2022  11AM MT- Project Baselines: Basics and Best Practices

Once management approves a project, the project manager baselines the project. What is a baseline? What do you capture in a baseline? What happens when you create a baseline in Project? What are best practices for making baselines more helpful to managing projects effectively?

In this interactive Office Hours presentation, Bonnie Biafore and Ira Brown will share best practices at all stages of baselining.

Link to the event- https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6978438578267664385/

 

Oct 17, 2022  11AM MT- Leading with Curiosity

Questions and answers are inputs into any system or project, and they drive the output — whether the system is making dinner or launching a new product. The more diverse the inputs, the more innovative the output! Asking the right questions from the outset is crucial to setting up a system or project for success and achieving the best outcomes. To turbocharge results, you need to go beyond the usual questions like “What is the goal for the endeavor?” and “What is the best strategy for achieving that goal?” You and your team need to be curious and creative throughout the endeavor. In this Office Hours session, Natalie Nixon and Bonnie Biafore will explore what it means for a cognitively and experientially diverse team to be curious and creative and what you, as a leader can do to support that effort.

Link to the event- https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6979155332908400640/

 

Oct 27, 2022- Sometimes, the hardest part of innovation isn’t coming up with the great idea. It’s implementing it. Across the organization.

If you are trying to lead your organization in thinking (or doing) differently, you need to balance inspiration and operations. In this engaging and interactive conversation, LinkedIn Instructors Bonnie Biafore (Project Management Foundations) and Robbie Kellman Baxter (Become an Entrepreneur Inside a Company) will share best practices in scaling your great idea throughout your organization.

Link to the event- https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6978746469797244928/

The Business Case Lifecycle

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The project lifecycle is well-known, but did you know there are other lifecycles within it? Well-managed projects include a business case, which has a lifecycle as well. Here are common stages in the lifecycle of a business case and the information they contain.

Overview of the business case lifecycle

The first draft of the business case aligns with the project charter. It matches the project charter assumptions and initial cost estimates; and supports the rationale for the project. It spells out high-level costs and benefits. In most cases, you make assumptions that will need to be confirmed later as you learn more about the project.  In the early stages of the project, the range of accuracy or confidence of the business case is broad, typically +/- 50% or more. Don’t make the mistake of omitting this accuracy range from your business case. Without an accuracy range, stakeholders usually assume that the business case is more accurate than it is.

As the project proceeds, you continue to enhance the business case. During planning, when your team members plan their parts of the project, you get more information on approach, potential costs, and risks. During execution, cost and time actuals help make the business case more accurate.

  • The business case and project planning. During planning, project approaches, costs, and benefits become clearer. You estimate the resources you need to deliver business value and refine the value that deliverables will provide to the business. Also, you refine the risks and the costs to manage them.  You incorporate this additional knowledge into the business case. If the business case looks sound at the end of planning, you baseline the project. By doing so, you baseline the business case as well. You guessed it. That means that any change request affecting the business case requires approval.

Project status changes also go into the business case. Status is a significant indicator of the ongoing health of the project. Your business case should be accurate to +/- 25% at the end of project planning.

  • Pre-determined business case updates. Experienced project managers will schedule regular updates to their business cases. These updates correspond to events that detail specific costs. For example, you may have to negotiate for external resources. Or you must buy specific equipment. When initial cost estimates become known costs, it’s time to update the business case and share it with stakeholders. You should strive for +/-10% accuracy.
  • Project execution and change order updates. During project execution, you update the business case regularly, particularly to reflect actual costs that vary from estimates and whenever a change request is approved. Actual costs incurred during project execution can generate surprises, which is why regular updates are so important. Frequent updates help set expectations and help trigger remedial action when necessary. 
  • Closeout. The final step in the business case lifecycle goes hand in hand with the closeout of the project. Like every other closeout activity, you should complete it in detail. A finalized business case can be used as a template for other cases. Also, detailed cost information can be useful when estimating future projects. Closeout your business case, and the value of the case can live well beyond the project it supports!

Do you build and maintain business cases for your projects? Do you have questions about how to keep your project and business case aligned? If so, post your questions or recommendations in the comments section.

For more about business cases, check out Mike Figliuolo’s course Writing a Business Case.

Coming up:

October 2022 will be a busy month. My updated Project Management Foundations course is due to go live. And you can see me in several LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

 

October 12, 2022  11AM MT- Project Baselines: Basics and Best Practices

Once management approves a project, the project manager baselines the project. What is a baseline? What do you capture in a baseline? What happens when you create a baseline in Project? What are best practices for making baselines more helpful to managing projects effectively?

In this interactive Office Hours presentation, Bonnie Biafore and Ira Brown will share best practices at all stages of baselining.

Link to the event- https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6978438578267664385/

 

Oct 17, 2022  11AM MT- Leading with Curiosity

Questions and answers are inputs into any system or project, and they drive the output — whether the system is making dinner or launching a new product. The more diverse the inputs, the more innovative the output! Asking the right questions from the outset is crucial to setting up a system or project for success and achieving the best outcomes. To turbocharge results, you need to go beyond the usual questions like “What is the goal for the endeavor?” and “What is the best strategy for achieving that goal?” You and your team need to be curious and creative throughout the endeavor. In this Office Hours session, Natalie Nixon and Bonnie Biafore will explore what it means for a cognitively and experientially diverse team to be curious and creative and what you, as a leader can do to support that effort.

Link to the event- https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6979155332908400640/

 

Oct 27, 2022- Sometimes, the hardest part of innovation isn’t coming up with the great idea. It’s implementing it. Across the organization.

If you are trying to lead your organization in thinking (or doing) differently, you need to balance inspiration and operations. In this engaging and interactive conversation, LinkedIn Instructors Bonnie Biafore (Project Management Foundations) and Robbie Kellman Baxter (Become an Entrepreneur Inside a Company) will share best practices in scaling your great idea throughout your organization.

Link to the event- https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6978746469797244928/