9 March 2017
Managing your Projects as Unique
Project managers pride themselves on past successes, and rightly so. However, sometimes that causes issues – as we can’t expect all projects to deliver in the same way – we need to remember the key element of a project is its uniqueness! Just like in life, taking different paths, witnessing different stories or experiences take us to places that are new and exciting, but which can also be filled with uncertainty.
Project managers may find themselves being put forward to manage a project that is unlike anything they’ve worked on in the past. I myself have been involved in construction projects without any type of construction experience; in fact, I had a hotel events and conference background which then expanded to project management roles in advertising! A far cry from planning plans, construction, resources, materials, health & safety – yet, I worked with and learned from my team and together we rose to the challenge.
Ultimately, every project is different— that’s what makes them unique, and challenging. It adds to the unknown and uncertainty and makes each day different and exciting. That said, we may find ourselves in situations like I did, where you feel completely out of touch with the topic and struggle to visualise the goals, never mind actually achieving them. That’s when we need to consider what skills we use in our projects, and which we need to expand upon.
One thing that I found out pretty quickly is that if you don’t have technical skills, you may struggle to manage your team or gain their respect – but if you own up to your failings, but stress your capabilities (a proven history of delivering projects) and ask your team to step-up and work with you, your chances will improve greatly. I realized that communication was going to be key to us working together and doing so successfully. Using my previous project management experience, I guided my team as to what we had to focus on and which areas they needed to provide me with guidance or information. The following 9 steps were key:
- Clearly define the project goals or objectives. Every project should commence with a project business case, project charter or contract. It may even be a scope statement, but it’s the only place to start! Take time to work with the sponsor to understand what those key areas are – they should include the project goals, high-level deliverables, constraints, recorded assumptions, high-level risks, stakeholders, and who will be working with you in the project team and in what capacity.
- Gather requirements. Clients may think that they have provided well-defined goals but often they are wooly to say the least! Taking time to clarify all aspects of the project briefing document and considering what the project will look like on delivery and how it will be tested to be accepted will reap dividends as you go through the project.
- Identify the team capabilities and areas of competence required. All project managers dream of working with team of people who are fully qualified, experienced and competent. Oftentimes a contract may stipulate a particular type of working event must take place, identify if any training is required and organize or look for potential team members who have the required skills.
- Identify and engage with Stakeholders. Your project stakeholders can make or break your project. Take time to identify who they may be. Sometimes it’s easy to know who and how to engage with them, other times they will be unique to a particular project. Take to time to carry out research and understand where they sit in relation to for or against your project and how much power or influence they may have. Never ignore because you feel they’re not important, lack of communication leads to all sorts of trouble, the best way to manage potential surprises is by educating and providing communication that allows you to present your project in a positive light and makes it hard to disprove or fight against and ultimately block your project.
- Take time to manage risks and issues throughout the project. It’s a recognised fact that projects have risks, some known and almost expected, some unknown which result in issues. Pro-active project managers prepare by taking time to identify risks from a variety of sources and considering mitigation solutions where possible. This may be costly and time-consuming, but if and when issues occur, the team can focus on those because they already have many plan B’s in place with risk owners ready to respond should the risk occur. Remember, it’s more expensive to crisis manage than to risk manage! That relates to time, cost and reputation!
- Use a Work Breakdown Structure. Some people are known to jump right in and start to develop and deliver the projects without proper planning, those people usually end up with failed projects… Taking time to understand the project scope in detail allows us to identify packages of work, activities that we can plan for, estimate against and allocate to appropriate personnel, meaning that it not only helps during planning, but for monitoring & controlling too.
- Respect your Team and Develop them. Some project managers focus so much on the project and tasks at hand, that they forget to work with the project team members. Bobby may not mind you loading him with lots of work packages, and will work through them diligently, but if he is bored or feels overworked and undervalued and doesn’t feel that there is any challenge to the work carried out, you may find him “busy” when you deliver your next project. Take time to identify the strengths and interests of your team members and try to allocate work packages that will interest and develop them. Remember, you should consider Task, Team and Individuals in equal measure to have a happy, fulfilled and successful project team.
- Use appropriate tools. There is no point in creating individual tools for each project, it makes sense to have organization-wide approved tools or templates that can be used on all projects, these can range from simple spreadsheets to fully-loaded interactive templates. Think about what you need those tools to do for you, and what training personnel may need in using them. Work with your PMO if you have one, they probably deliver training.
- Track and Monitor. All projects should have been planned before they are executed. It makes sense then, that you want to meet with the plans as much as possible. The simplest way to do this is to refer to the plans consistently throughout the project and measure against them in terms of spend and progress. We wish to measure and reward success, but if we don’t measure, we may be rewarding failure!
Following those 9 steps didn’t guarantee that my project would be a success, or that I’d get the respect I so desired from my team, but the structure that I presented proved to them that I was prepared to deliver a project and to give it every opportunity of success. Guess what, we delivered in time, within budget and met all quality requirements and with a happy project team who felt valued to boot!
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