What Senior Leader’s Really Want

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Project management has a clear goal: to deliver business value. As a project manager, what can you do to support senior leaders on that value journey.

  • Be predictable. Project methodologies create a pathway from idea to the realization of benefits. A powerful element of a methodology is predictability — for senior leaders and the team. Everyone in a project should know what steps they’re taking and what’s expected of them. Surprising senior leaders isn’t good for your project or your career. So, establish the methodology for delivering each project and follow it. It’s OK if you need to change it. But be sure to collaborate to make the change and communicate the result to all affected stakeholders so there are no surprises.

  • Provide information proactively. Project managers need to be forward-thinking. Status reports that detail what just happened aren’t enough. Proactive reporting helps leaders stay ahead of the game instead of scrambling when things go wrong. Use risk triggers for early warnings when risks may come to fruition. Use earned value concepts to forecast project outcomes. Dive into your organization’s project history to compare past project performance to current situations.

  • Reassure leaders with tangible data. Senior managers have a lot riding on project outcomes, and a project by its unique nature might make them anxious. To reassure senior leaders, provide them with frequent, accurate, and timely status information, customized to address their concerns.

  • Discuss options with pros and cons. To determine how to deliver project outcomes, you have to explore different approaches. Most of the time, there will be more than one way to address project goals and objectives. That means researching the options, identifying their pros and cons, and making a recommendation to senior leaders. That way, management will feel confident they are making solid, well-thought-out decisions, boosting confidence in the project.

  • Represent the sponsor when necessary. Project managers must represent the sponsor in many situations (with confidence and capability). Doing this (with the sponsor’s endorsement) boosts management’s confidence that the project is in good hands.

  • Support organizational strategy. Projects are often part of an extensive portfolio intended to implement organizational strategy. It’s good practice for project managers to ensure that both the project outcomes and delivery process move the organization toward strategic goals. For example, a project may take a less than ideal approach by providing extensive technical training to team members. That training might not be vital for this project, but it is essential to the organization’s longer-term strategic goals. So, in delivering the project, the PM satisfies the project’s objectives and helps set up the successful delivery of future projects in the strategic portfolio.

No surprises, relevant information, crises avoided, and organizational goals supported. All things that make senior leaders happy!

New Course Available

Project Management: Choosing the Right Online Too. Check out my updated course on LinkedIn Learning! In this new version, I review 11 online project mgt software tools.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 78,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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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Top Diagnostics for Team Peer Reviews

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A team peer review helps ensure project integrity and provides learning moments for project managers and reviewers. After confirming the existence of critical control documents like a schedule, risk management plan, and resource plan, the reviewers can search for these points. If they are missing, project management improvements might be needed.

  • All risks describe the event that will cause the risk to come to fruition. In addition, risk triggers (early indicators of a risk occurring) should be documented. For example, stating that a product delivery might be late isn’t specific enough. If the delivery is due to a truck breakdown, that could be addressed. But the truck drivers going on strike is a different event with a different response. Ensure events and responses are appropriately detailed. An example of an early risk indicator is a stakeholder group not attending meetings, which indicates they might withdraw their support for the project.

  • Task lengths in the project schedule are appropriate based on where the tasks occur in the timeline. For example, early in a year-long project, tasks with 2-week duration are reasonable. However, during the last month of a project, 2-week tasks are problematic, because an issue with one of these tasks could delay the project by 2 weeks when these is little time to recover.

  • Resource availability is built into the schedule. Operational personnel rarely dedicate 100% of their time to a project. Resources should have allocations built into the schedule. For example, if Resource A is available to the project 25% of the time, the allocation of time to tasks is 25% so task duration is calculated correctly.

  • Stakeholder meetings reflect the communication requirements stated in the stakeholder management plan. As a project progresses, the focus on stakeholder updates can wane. Ensure stakeholder meetings are being held as recommended in the project’s plans.

  • Decision logs are included in the project documentation. A decision register is a good idea. Understanding the rationale and data used to make decisions during the project can avoid later debates about why a specific direction was taken, especially if the results of that decision were undesirable.

  • Project plans include both quality control and quality assurance tasks. Quality assurance tasks are project activities to ensure the product quality will meet standards. Quality control refers to inspection or testing tasks to ensure the project’s products are suitable before being turned over to stakeholders. Many projects focus only on quality control tasks and discover errors that could have been avoided if quality assurance tasks were included in project plans.

  • Lessons learned documentation are captured throughout the project. Many projects don’t capture lessons learned, while others do only as a close-of-project exercise. Capturing lessons learned at the end of a project inevitably results in many forgotten lessons forgotten. Capture and document lessons learned regularly during the project.

This is not a comprehensive list! But these shortcomings are common and easy to discover and rectify. Be sure to include them in every team peer review.

Let’s make the comment section a reference for what to look for in team peer reviews! Add your favorite diagnostic to the list.

For more about peer review, search the LinkedIn Learning library using keywords “peer review.”

 

New Course Available

Project Management: Choosing the Right Online Too. Check out my updated course on LinkedIn Learning! In this new version, I review 11 online project mgt software tools.

_______________________________________

This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 78,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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.

_______________________________________

What About Timeboxing a Waterfall Project?

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Timeboxing is a powerful feature of agile. Rather than make scope static, you fix time and resources and modify scope to get the maximum value in the minimum amount of time and cost. Instead of estimating task duration, you use fixed time periods and adjust the scope accordingly. Here are the principles you can follow to achieve benefits of timeboxing in waterfall projects:

  • Principle 1: Break down phases into smaller chunks. Instead of treating each waterfall phase as one large block, divide it into smaller, manageable timeboxed chunks. For example, collect requirements for one area of the business in a two-week timebox, a second area in the next two-week timebox, etc. Within each timebox, prioritize areas for requirements collection using parameters such as importance and complexity. 
  • Principle 2: Add a buffer between timeboxes. Include small buffer timeboxes in the project schedule. This provides time to reflect, learn, and plan the scope to address in upcoming timeboxes. In addition, focusing on smaller task areas and taking time to learn and prioritize between them ensures you are working on the most important phase elements. (In this example, the most important requirements.)
  • Principle 3: Adjust scope, not time. If a task or set of tasks isn’t completed within their timebox, adjust the scope or move lower-priority items to a later timebox instead of extending the time. For example, during detailed planning, focus first on the areas deemed most important by project stakeholders and shift detailed planning for less important items to later timeboxes. If the planning phase schedule gets too long, stop planning and move forward with the project with a reduced scope (the most important ones).
  • Principle 4:Multiple sub teams work in parallel, each with a pre-determined timebox duration. Once team members get accustomed to working in timeboxes, multiple teams can work in parallel on their own tasks until the waterfall phase is considered complete. This is where timeboxes differ from sprints in agile. Timeboxes don’t have to yield a usable product, like sprints. Because waterfall projects often involve bigger scope than agile, many project sub teams can work in parallel. The need for frequent validation from management, vital for agile, might not be needed. In a waterfall environment, multiple teams can progress without that constraint, because they aren’t making frequent business-vital decisions. Yet, they still take advantage of the focused scope and periodic short reflection and learning buffer periods.

Take advantage of the timebox approach through each waterfall phase. Requirements and planning can be broken down and allocated to sub teams working within timeboxes. The build stage is also ideal for this concept: working on business processes, various tools, and documentation can be assigned to teams working in parallel. Testing can work the same way, with sub teams testing various areas or sub-products before a final testing session to validate the entire project deliverable set.

Look at one of your past projects or your current one and think about how you could handle it with timeboxes. Consider how you might need to change other processes like communication and reporting when you have sub teams working simultaneously,

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

Coming Up

Office Hours Live – What’s wrong with project management these days? October 3, 2024  5PM MT Several aspects of project management don’t get much attention from management, project managers, and project teams. In turn, project management software sometimes ignores those areas as well. Bob McGannon and Bonnie Biafore will discuss these topics, so you don’t skip important duties. And they will talk about what to do if your software doesn’t cover them. Topics include: The 40-hour work breakdown rule (myth?) Estimating Cost management Project management versus work management Choosing the correct project management methodology Scheduling in waterfall and iterative projects Prioritizing project work versus operational work. To sign up, here

Office Hours Live – Learning Microsoft Project: Ask Me Anything October 8, 2024 1PM MT My updated version of Learning Microsoft Project is now available in the LinkedIn Learning library. To celebrate, I’m holding an Ask Me Anything (AMA) Office Hours on October 8, 2024, at 1pm MT. Whether you take this updated course now or you’re an experienced Project user, this hour is for getting answers to questions you have about MS Project. (If there is a wild outpouring of questions, I will host another event in November.) To sign up, click here.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 78,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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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