Is that a project manager or a product manager you're after?

I typically do quite long stints with clients. This enables me to approach the market every 2-3 years with a clean pair of eyes and some ability to discern how it has (or has not changed).

And, I observe a dominant trend in the market for project managers. Something that while it may have been present previously, is now all but ubiquitous. 

Let me ask a couple of quick questions first - consider this a little warming up to the subject.

1. Which project management methodology requires the project manager to be a subject matter expert?
2. Which project management process requires the project manager to be a subject matter expert?
3. Which project management product requires the project manager to be a subject matter expert?
4. Which project management process, product or methodology requires the project manager to have implemented the same (or nearly the same) product before.
5. How many projects fail due to a lack of subject matter expertise on the part of the project manager?

(Please note - your project management subject matter expertise is a given)


And, the answer in all cases (as you almost certainly reasoned for yourself) is none of them. Even if you quibble the last one - it's almost a self-evident conclusion if you accept the other 4.

Now I do understand why project managers tend to operate in their chosed fields of (say) construction, accounting or (in my case) information technology. If you spend 90% of your time communicating, you can't spend 90% of the time deciphering what (for the uninitiated) is going to be opaque jargon.

But, that's not what I'm seeing. What I'm seeing is hiring managers who (for instance) are seeking a highly literate technical project manger, with (say) extensive CRM experience and (in particular) SalesForce.Com. But also (and these aren't necessarily nice to haves), Oracle, SQL, Agile, UML. Oh and not forgetting your extensive (for example) experience with off-shore oil and gas and the two CRM implementations you'll have already done.

Now a quick review of some of the chief culprits which cause projects to fail

1. Poor risk management
2. Poor stakeholder identification / engagement leading to omission of requirements
3. Estimating that corresponds in no way to what is achievable on the ground
4. Flawed business case
5. Poor scope control

So which of these are addressed by anything other than good project management practice? Yep - none of them.

So how did we get here? I can't say because I'm not a recruiter with my finger on the pulse of the concerns and imperatives of hiring managers, but I have my suspicions. 

1. Unprecedented levels of cynicism towards both project managers and the profession of project management
2. Organisations instinctively reaching for the comfort blanket of 'someone who's done it before'.

I'm somewhat fortunate in that my technical background allows me a certain discretion. But I know this. On any project where I'm forced to use my technical expertise, I'm not doing the job the client is paying me for. And worse still, neither is somebody else.

Quotation incrustation (and a little inoculation)

Francis Bacon said, 'There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction of the mind'. And where better for a wonderful obstruction of the mind than the program kick-off meeting? A slide-deck which has been over worked, with pictures of sinking boats (that will never happen here of course), some incidental shots of a medal winning track team and maybe even the odd roaring lion. And of course the quotes. Where would the slide-ware of any self-respecting change practitioner be without some well chosen quotes from a few notable luminaries?

You know the sort of thing... "I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom" or "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts".

But quotes are funny things. And, it was only when recently reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (which I can't recommend highly enough incidentally) that I realized just how potentially beguiling a quote can be.

Now even I am not going to try and distil Professor Kahneman's comprehensive insights within a paragraph or two of my blog but among the great swathes of wisdom provided, Professor Kahneman discusses something called the 'confirmation bias'. The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

So with that in mind and to underscore by point a little, I ask that you cast your eyes over the following, almost universally flawed, quote-ware; 

“Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she’s a householder” (Extraordinarily naughty)

“Better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground” (Unhelpfully playing on latent fears about more or less anything)

“Hat’s divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel” (Smirk-worthy undoubtedly, but entirely content free)

“The only fetters binding the working class today are mock-Rolex watches” (Mildly offensive and with some obvious pandering to smouldering prejudices)

“It is queer how it is always one’s virtues and not one’s vices that precipitate one into disaster.” (Stealthily seductive and quite possibly dangerous!)

“The truth is that our race survived ignorance it is our scientific genius that will do us in” (Truth? Prove it!)

“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them” (A bit of grandiose whimsy)

"A policitian’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience". (Rather insightful actually).

You might find that (in view of Professor Kahneman's run-away success) that your audience isn't quite as susceptible to an approach of "...here's a quote to back up what I'm telling you so it must be true...". You might also be less easily beguiled by a well chosen (if specious) quote should you be on the receiving end of it.

But, most importantly, you won't need roaring lions and Benjamin Franklin in your communications if you simply answer the questions; what's the point and why does it matter?

Would you be comfortable with an independent audit of your CV?

1. Go for it - you'll be lucky to find a spelling mistake
2. I'm okay about this - there's supporting evidence for most of it
3. None of the above

Some people might regard me (and many of those who share my views) as somewhat idealistic, potentially a little naive or maybe just unhelpful. I don't.

I don't fib on my CV. Never have, never will - and there's plenty like me too. Other views do exist and they always will.

To some extent, some hiring managers can afford to be somewhat relaxed about this - they either outsource the effort to validate the CVs or structure the interview to mitigate the risk.

If that was really an optimum way to work however - they'd have been no horse meat scandal. We'd accept 'mis-labelling' as a cost of doing business and move on. But then the horse meat scandal had two victims - those who (like me) might have been partial to the odd 'Shergar pie' now and again and also the legitimate farmers and retailers who's margins were either driven down or eradicated by one product masquerading as another.

And so it is in the professional arena. We have hiring managers who are being misled (examples too numerous to quote) and job seeking professionals who are being squeezed by candidates with less professional integrity. And, when an individual is prepared to concede in the national press that not only have they lied on their CV but they'd to it again - that's a problem.

For the time-being though, all I can do is help my clients sift CVs and seek to validate in interview their content. This experience has acquainted me with business analysts who can't analyse and technical specialists who aren't special at all. Which is fine up to a point. I do however reflect lamentably on all the CVs which were passed over because they didn't measure up to someone else's masquerade.

PMs probably aren't normally distributed

I probably ought to start out by suggesting that the content below isn't supported by a shred of evidence. Now, unhindered by the need for proof, let's move along.

Let's create some arbitrary boundaries namely; does not meet requirements, meets requirements, exceeds requirements.

In the illustration below I've taken the (arbitrarily selected) profession of plumbing and assumed three equally sized buckets into which professional plumbers could be slotted in.

But wouldn't all professions be similarly distributed? No - take the example below

Here we've got a safety critical role. Constant audits, training and re-examination ensures a very different distribution. I might expect the profession of pilot to be an even more rarefied example.

So what next? I'm probably least able to speak to the profession of teaching. However, it's public sector - there's more support and management for staff yet reach the standard required. There's also less emphasis (and funding) to exceed requirements.

So what's a reasonable position to take for the profession of project management? Here's my 'gut feeling' on the distribution of project managers across the capability range.

So how did we get from our nice orderly world of plumbing to the highly eccentric world of project management? 

Top tip #2 - Resource modelling in MS Project

One of the more important (and somewhat intractable) questions in project management is "How long could it take...?". Intractable because in the absence of a data driven answer, one or other existing 'compelling' dates is summoned out of air and a general preference articulated to complete the work in question by that date. Around 24 hours later (sometimes considerably less) that preference will assume the weight and authority of a board sponsored deadline.

If you're to dodge this bullet, there is a requirement for some preparation. First, you'll need to anticipate the question and the forum in which it will arise. Ideally, you control this. Next you'll want some sort of high level process or plan. The following is the sort of thing you should be able knock up in about 2 seconds and the only real requirement is for a fag packet to record it on. If you don't have the information needed to define the work to this level of detail - stay late until you do. I've included an optimistic forecast (in green), a pessimistic forecast (in red) and a median forecast in (orange).

Now in fairness, if you've got a requirement for a very large multi-hundred line project plan - that's not the sort of thing you can assemble in about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. However, don't despair - you will nevertheless be able to apply the technique of resource modelling which I'll explain in a short-while. 

Where this technique really comes into its own is for activities which comprise a cyclical process which you'll negotiate dozens, hundred or even thousands of times. This could be migrating applications, migrating services between data centers or a large volume procurement type activity. Or anything for which there is a defined process. Typical project stuff, not quite all the same and not all different - but the sort of bread and butter activity that, as a professional change practitioner, you'll be comfortable with. And what you're really asking MS Project to do is use a set amount of resource optimally - something which would be extremely challenging to do via other means

Our process above has four steps roughly defined with some outline forecasting on work and duration. It translates to 4 lines in a project plan and it hopefully isn't to difficult to see how we got from the illustration above to the the outline plan below. I've set out the three different scenarios (optimistic, median and pessimistic) in green orange and red respectively.

I've made sure I've included both the work and the duration and you can see in the excerpt below I've assigned some resources (called optimistic, median and pessimistic).

Now, for reasons which are are better explained here you'll want to change the MS Project default from fixed units to fixed duration for this sort of modelling. But there is one little gotcha. When manipulating a project plan with the setting of 'fixed units', in theory MS Project shouldn't change the work or the duration when allocating resources. But actually - it does change the work on the first allocation of resources. When this happens you'll just want to pull it back to the original values. For the purpose of this activity - you'll only have to do this once for the 12 tasks shown below.

So - you might be thinking this seems like quite a bit of faff of no obvious gain. Bear with me and take a look at the next excerpt.

What I've done is created 10 process cycles under each forecast (optimistic, median and pessimistic). If I wanted to I could create 20 or 200 quite easily (and very quickly just cutting an pasting). MS Project very handily uses 'relative' (similar to Excel) predecessors and you don't need to jiggle these - it's cut and paste to your heart's content and in practical terms your limitation first and foremost is going to be your computer's capacity to level resources on project plans of many hundreds of lines .

Now, you have fair degree of flexibility in what you do next. You can plan for 2 resources or say 8 resources. (Just bump up the Max Units of the resource to 200% or 800% for instance). You can (if you must) put in constraints to that each process cycle must finish sequentially but as far as possible let MS Project do it's job of using the resources to the best possible degree. 

And, what I usually present to stakeholders is something that looks a bit like this. This is simply the timeline in MS Project with the appropriate summary tasks added to it. 

If I'm asked - I'll also supply the very first bit of network diagramming too. 

Note that one of the things I've done is tied in the time-lines with resourcing right from the get go. That's crucial as it starts to set in place the expectation (and dependency) that if I don't get the resources - I won't hit the dates.

What I'll do in a future post is put forward some fairly re-usable approaches using Excel and SharePoint for how you can prop up a workflow and have it generate rudimentary dashboards in real time to record and track the actual work being done.

Problems with unrealistic objectives

A while back I wrote a post entitled "Fail less with project management" I remain broadly happy with the sentiments I expressed. Perhaps the most succinct summary I can relay is via the metaphor of an aircraft flight in which a plane, encountering stronger headwinds than expected, will burn a bit more fuel and take a bit more time. It will however ultimately touchdown safely at its intended destination. A success in aviation terms. Not quite such a clear cut case in project delivery terms.

I only found out recently that the Association for Project Management has a vision of "...a world in which all projects succeed".

Does this mean that collectively we cease to embark upon projects that are deemed risky? Does this mean that project managers who do not succeed in delivering projects have failed?

And now for a bit of multi-choice.

There is often a tension between two competing imperatives for the project manager. The delivery of a successful project and the successful delivery of the client's strategy. As an experienced and seasoned project manager is it your job to;

1. Deliver a successful project whether or not it is the strategy of your client
2. Deliver the strategy of your client whether or not it results in project success
3. Neither option

For me and my blog, the answer is option 2. In a client facing scenario, what I'm actually going to say is that as a professional change practitioner my job (and that of the team) is to reduce risk, add value and accelerate delivery. 

For those of you who went  for option 1 - best of luck - I recommend you keep the phone number of your professional indemnity provider handy.

For those of you who went for option 3 - with some sort of managed approach to influencing the sponsor away from his or her chosen strategy (assuming you have good reason for doing so) I would offer the following. First, the most effective way to do this may well be to fail quickly and conspicuously in any attempt to deliver it. Secondly and more importantly, as an "experienced and seasoned project manager" that isn't your job. Is it? (If you can't live with this, fear not. A successful career in project assurance may be beckoning).

But I said 'problems' with unrealistic objectives. Not 'problem'. Personally (though it may yet limit my career) I don't have any problems in telling the client that we've burnt a bit more fuel and we're going to take a bit more time because the headwinds we encountered were a little greater than we forecast 6 (12, 18, 24+?) months ago. One of the reasons I don't mind is that my job is to add value, reduce risk and accelerate delivery first and to deliver successful projects second.

If you don't adopt this sort of credo, you might find yourself overusing words like "contextualised success", "positioning" or possibly even "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage".
 
So, if your client has opted for an approach to change that you're not altogether convinced about, I'd recommend helping the client develop the necessary information assets as quickly and cheaply as possible so that you can back-up, rethink, re-plan and take a second swing at it.

Other views undoubtedly exist.

A cow, an Alderney and a raging bull...

Apologies for the gratuitous blog title. Google's decision to withdraw their excellent Reader tool has quite scythed my readership statistics with a corresponding impact to my moral.

I'm minded to start up such cheap tactics as including the names of minor celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus simply to catch some incidental drive by traffic.

As a jobbing project manager, one of course does get a reasonable level of exposure to the catalogue of general (and often dubious) apocrypha that accompanies the day to day cut and thrust of managing change.

An example of such apocrypha would be "...all projects succeed and all projects fail. Just to varying degrees of both..." which is possibly a little trite, but I quite like it all the same.

One such example which I don't like is "...you pay a project manager to worry so you don't have to...". I've never liked this terribly much because in theory a very talented worrier is suddenly a sought after commodity and I'm not one of those.

And then there's this little gem "...you pay a project manager to communicate..". Simple, undisputed fact. I like it.

Perhaps because I'm a little left of centre about these things, I've always thought that Alex Alexander Milne's "The King's Breakfast" contains many allegories useful for the project manager. There's some stakeholder management, some requirements management, setting of expectations and supplier management all in a few simple lines intended to amuse children. There's even some remarkable insights into value management. (Okay - that last one is a bit of stretch

So perhaps now is an opportune time to elaborate a little on the title of this post. One of the challenges faced by the PM is summoning the language, the agility, wit, poise and timing to communicate effectively. Don't get me wrong, the PM isn't unique in having these challenges but the PM is certainly likely to be in the room when;

1. The sponsor asks for dairy products from the cow;
2. The supplier questions whether it is an Alderney or a Friesian from which the afore mentioned dairy products should be derived and;
3. The site foreman explains that no amount of coaxing is going to persuade an angry bull to give up a pint of the white stuff.

Yes, yes - I know, all part of the usual carry on a project management. But for our purposes here, we're talking about milk, Friesian's and bulls. And, you won't be. You'll be talking about change and, likely as not changes to an existing landscape many years in the making. You won't be talking to the king, the queen and the dairymaid, you'll be talking to real people with real skin in the game each of which is likely to have different needs and agendas, some of which will undoubtedly conflict. The information they want will be put to different purposes and will need to be presented in a range of different formats and mediums. Sometimes it's a one off and sometimes it'll be a repeating and up-to-date feed potentially updated in real time.

If this isn't delivered or can't be delivered it's likely to be the PM's phone that starts ringing.

So what useful steps can taken up front to guard against the prospect that either you can't or don't communicate as required. And, to understand the expectations and, where necessary to inform them.

1. Process and procedure. I'm not going to labour this one, I hope rather that it is self-evident. If you don't have process and procedures, make sure you can report on whatever alternative is in place. And by the way, I'm not altogether sure what that alternative is Semantics aside, there's usually a way to navigate around aspects of work that are inherently not susceptible to process. Wrap process and reporting around them and 'go up the stack' to ensure that the entry and exit points are understood within an overarching 'flow of process'. Acknowledge that there may be elements of the overall flow of process which are able to be more accurately and more precisely reported upon than others.
2. Validation and verification. Make sure you're doing the right thing. And make sure that thing is done right.
3. Nomenclature and language. Make sure that you're all singing from the same hymn sheet. Make sure your inputs are capable of supporting the required reporting outputs. Do not make assumptions that the data will just join up. Define it to the required level of detail and perform the requisite static testing and prototyping to ensure that it all stacks up.
4. Create standards, generate and publish a configuration management policy which is aligned and supports your overall reporting aims.
5. And perhaps most importantly make sure you, as PM ,are in the room to inform the discussions to make sure these steps are taken and that the necessary resources are allocated to the tasks.

 So, as it turns out, the phrase  "...you pay a project manager to worry so you don't have to..." might not be so much dubious apocrypha but rather something to say three times a day before you go to work to ensure that not for one minute do you ever forget it.

People are objects with attributes too.

Statements like "...soft skills are an essential and often overlooked aspect of project management..." and "...the importance of getting the right people for your project team cannot be understated..." are the sorts of thing that make me want to swear off the canon of generalist project management literature for good.

Not, you understand, because it's not true. But, because it's self evident and this sort of nonsense makes the job of project management look like the job of professionalising common sense.

I was addressed by a senior member of public sector management some years ago who offered (and I paraphrase here) that "... in the 1990's we hired people for their skills, in the 2000's we hired people for their knowledge and in the 2010's we'll hire people for their behaviour." I hope this worked out okay for those people adopting such an approach.

Quite how you hire someone (or even assess someone in interview objectively) on the basis their behaviour I'm unsure. For all I know, it might not even be lawful.

I do remember thinking at the time that I would continue to hire people on the basis of their talents, track record and ability. I offer it's served me satisfactorily in almost all instances. And, as often as not, supremely well.

Whatever organisational hiring framework you're faced with (challenged by...?), you can adopt and overlay the following approach to determine what you need and help you go and get it.

Someone may offer something supplemental to this appraisal but for the purposes of employment I seek to assess initially what I need someone to know, what I need someone to do and what I need someone to be. Hence the term, "know, do, be framework".

For, let us say, a prospective defect co-ordinator we might define the following know do be framework. I've made the file accessible here if anyone's interested.

So we've taken something somewhat nebulous and intangible, put some structure around it and quantified it. This is I hope well understood to be my general preference for most things. I don't know about you, but I'm already feeling a lot happier about my ability to define and articulate what it is I want.

If you're lucky, you'll be solely responsible for the hiring and you can now formulate some interview questions (or other assessment) via which you can assess a candidates alignment with the know, do, be framework.

Even if you're simply a passive invitee to an interview you can assess a candidate's suitability against your identified criteria and express your preferences accordingly. 

One other point worth noting. You can reverse engineer most job descriptions with this approach. Pick out the key requirements and define some key points in line with what you know, what you are, and what you do that support those requirements. This can be very helpful if you're filling an application form (who still uses those?) but can perhaps more usefully equip you with some very strong responses to likely interview questions.