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...

Vendor Selection Tips

What's a reasonable vendor selection process?

Selecting the right vendor starts with knowing what you want and then finding the supplier that will get you what you want. Here's a breakdown of what this might entail:

Step 1) Understanding the requirement
Step 2) Generating the options
Step 3) Analyzing the options
Step 4) Selecting the best option
Step 5) Getting the decision to proceed

Informal vendor selection (Fast track)

Use this approach if you need to turn around a decision really quickly and you have the remit or necessary sponsor support to keep it informal.

Step 1) Understanding the requirement

It's pretty important that you have an idea of the desired outcome before even considering vendors. A standard gap analysis is a great approach to getting to understanding the problem. Work out where you want to be (i.e. the end state) make sure it's ecologically sound. That is to say that the outcome is beneficial in some way to all concerned! Invest the time to articulate exactly what you want in the form of a problem statement(perhaps reinforced by a statement of what you don't want). The principle being that your chances of getting what you want dramatically increases if you know what you want ;-). It helps to use the problem statement to identify your selection criteria (see Step 3 below)

Try to have the target budget identified. This may need to be challenged later depending on the criticality of the desired outcome.

Step 2) Generating the options

Use your problem statement (created in Step 1) to identify possible vendors. You may want to contact your procurement department to check whether they have any preferred suppliers to hand. (Note: You may need to be sensitive to existing supplier relationships). The next stop should be your immediate professional network followed eventually by speculative internet search. Generate the list of potentials bearing in mind that time is of the essence.

Contact them by phone at first to weed out the obvious mismatches. Once you've got a short list together send them your problem statement via email (or mail). Follow this up with a phone call explaining your time constraints and openly request their support. Be sure to share any information fairly across your vendors. (e.g. an answer to a question may need to be shared with the other vendors)

Set-up a demo day for all your vendors.

Step 3) Analysing the options

Invest in getting a few key assessors together that will balance your judgement. The pay-off will be that your selection is less likely to be overturned later on. These additional perspective will ensure that your blind spots are covered.

Create a score card with the selection criteria down one side in rows and the vendor options in the columns for assessment. The intention is to score each criteria out of five for each vendor (where 5 = 'excellent fit for purpose' and 1 = 'unfit for purpose').

Apart from the usual logistics (meeting rooms, diaries etc.) make sure you have briefed your assessors on the problem and the instructions for filling in the score cards.

Step 4) Selecting an option

Make sure the vendor demonstrations focus on addressing the problem statement. Collate the score card results. Add the scores up for each vendor and calculate the percentage of the maximum available. You can express this percentage as 'the estimated percentage match to requirement'.

Offset these percentages against the cost profile for each vendor. Try to identify the vendor with both the highest percentage match and the lowest price.

Discuss your findings with the other assessors (make sure you have consensus).

Step 5) Getting a decision to proceed

Present your findings to the decision maker(s) along with your recommendation. Make sure the next steps are agreed (i.e. what you need from them to proceed) this could be an authorising email or Purchase Order. This will depend on the Inform your vendors of the outcome and try and provide as much feedback as possible.

In part two we'll look at fast tracking this with little more formality.