Plan to succeed on projects (Part 2)

Now that you've planned the flight... Fly the plan.

If you've taken the advice given in Part 1 you should be set up to drive your projects by result rather than activity... you'll find your team responds best to this approach...

I posed a question on LinkedIn recently to see what advice the professionals would give a budding PM:

"What are the top 5 tips you would give a PM to improve their luck on projects?"

I chose a couple of these answers as they sum up the basic principles of flying the plan nicely:

Here's the answer offered by Gianluca Bacca:

1) Define the scope of you project as clear and as soon as possible and formalize it … a project doesn’t exists without a Project Charter and a WBS!

2) Be realistic and pragmatic, don’t forget that generally available resources are limited … a request or change coming from a stakeholder, generally, involves a trade-off between different elements of the “triple constraint” (time, cost & quality) … think always in terms of trade off between the elements of the “triple constraint”.

3) Manage ALL your stakeholders with care being proactive: to do this you need to identify ALL of them and constantly communicate with ALL of them

4) Identify all risk of your project and constantly looking for their evolution along the entire lifecycle of your project … don’t forget risk! In Project Management luck and bad luck doesn’t exist (more or less) … there are mainly identified and unidentified risks! Identifying risks you can build your luck by yourself ;)

5) Don’t forget to collect lessons learned after each project … you cannot improve your ability to manage your future projects without lessons learned from your past projects ;)


This is my favourite answer from an old colleague, Gunveer Mahandru:

1. Show leadership (strong vision, direction. take risks, manage them)
2. Develop a backbone (back up what you say, don't wilt and wimp)
3. Work the team dynamic (manage the form/storm/norm/perform phases)
4. Engage stakeholders and keep buy-in (politics with a small 'p')
5. Inject entrepreneurship (excite, motivate, innovate)

Short, sharp and very effective...

Here are a few more useful little project tips:

Derive a burndown chart and use it to generate momentum and track progress.
- use Mike Cohn's estimation technique, planning poker.
- derive the ordered stack and begin plotting this over the time line.
- You may want to include checkpoints (or iterations) in the plan. (Step towards Agile)
- use these checkpoints as opportunities to deliver value (no matter how small) and plot your position on the burndown chart.
- Remove products from the stack when considered 'done'.
- 'Done' = when someone other than the developer (preferably the recipient) says it is... i.e. it meets the predetermined acceptance criteria.

In fact, I'd heartily recommend you watch Mike's YouTube clips on Agile Estimation: Part 1 and Part 2

A short note on lightweight reporting:
Agree a '5 minute emergency channel' with the sponsor... As you become aware of an issue which significantly affects the project, present what you know to the sponsor (no interpretation) along with a few proposed next steps. Aim to present and get a decision within 5 minutes... Even if the next step is to have a longer meeting. This way you keep your sponsor in touch.

Good luck!!

Plan to succeed on projects! (Part 1)

You've heard the old saying: "Plan the flight then fly the plan..." well I'd like to apply this approach to project management in this article and offer an formula that will ensure you're driving the project by result rather than activity.




Here we go:


Step 1) Find a sponsor. Note: If you haven't got a sponsor... get one... don't give in to the temptation to implement your own vision. If you're the sponsor then ideally get someone else to deliver your vision ;-)
Step 2) Talk to the sponsor about their dream... replay your interpretation at every opportunity. Especially the benefits they expect.
Step 3) Once you've gained a bit of rapport start talking about: scope, success criteria, time scales.
Step 4) Go away and think about the objectives and resources you'll need.
Step 5) Propose the set of highlevel project objectives and negotiate for resources.
Step 6) Develop a product breakdown structure... Derive the Product Flow Chart that follows.
Step 7) Market this to the team and sponsor as the delivery roadmap, make sure the roadmap attacks the highest risk/reward items first.
Step 8) In closing, make sure you're set up to drive the project by result not activities!

By this stage, you should have enough to get a green light to proceed. So there you have it... the flight plan.

In part 2 we'll look more closely at flying the plan...

Make your mistakes early and cheap!

Take too long to deliver and you've missed that crucial window of opportunity!
Someone else gets to market with a competing product and again you've missed the boat!

This is where we can learn from today's entrepreneurs...

*** Make your mistakes early and cheap ***

(Featuring: Five easy steps to consider when planning your next deliverable ;-)

Last year we had a brand spanking new product to launch for a rather large internet start-up that sought to combine three major technologies; Mobile, IM and VOIP. The sheer volume of assumptions we were relying on made management very nervous. Their (quite natural) response was to consider extending the deadlines and increase quality control. Luckily, we managed to convince them to support our, seemingly counter intuitive, approach...
By thinking like a garage start-up we aimed to capture the essence of the business model in a cheaper and simpler solution. We found we were able to gain faster access to the revenue, drastically reduce the time to deliver and minimize the associated risk exposure. We planned several incremental releases that would respond to the feedback captured on the fly. This enabled us to maximize the revenue streams and easily ramp up the complexity. Working closely with these entrepreneurs gave me the idea for this post:

Here are five easy steps to applying the entrepreneur's lesson to your next project:

Step 1) Analyze the core requirement that your deliverable is addressing.
This is very much about WHAT your deliverable is trying to achieve as oppose to HOW. The answer will give you greater flexibility when generating pilot options.

Step 2) Conceptualize a Pilot version of your deliverable that meets this requirement.
As a rule of thumb, aim to scale the solution down to about 25% of the original budget.

Step 3) Plan to pilot this release to a select set of target users.
Identify and engage your customers early. Prepare them for the release and how they can best help out. Make sure you establish several ways for them to communicate with your team.

Step 4) Set-up your development resources to respond quickly to feedback.
Make sure your own team is setup to capture and manage the changes in the following releases.

Step 5) Start planning a series of releases as required.
Be ambitious with your delivery dates. Constantly re-prioritize the tasks to maintain alignment with the overall requirement. Think Triage! Follow this up with a schedule of release dates and commit to them publicly.