Fissure Newsletter Summer ‘05

Dear Fissure Friends,

Expectations.  We know how critical they are in managing projects and leading people, but we don’t always do a good job setting them.  I wonder why?  Is it because we forget? Or don’t have enough time?  Those I believe are excuses.  I think most of the time it is a “soft” issue – we are afraid to ask people for their expectations and hold all parties to those expectations.  We are afraid we will uncover an expectation we can’t meet, or worse yet, don’t want to meet.  We are afraid we won’t be able to come to an agreement on what the expectations are.  This is true in our personal lives as well.  We don’t set expectations because without them we can’t be held accountable.  We don’t set expectations because we are afraid of conflict or disappointment. 

Like all skills, we will only get better if we practice.  If it is uncomfortable to sit down before a family vacation and ask for everyone’s (Mom and Dad too) expectations, you can choose to skip this important part of the vacation, or you can move past your discomfort and sit everyone down and collect and address their expectations.  You will get more comfortable with every success, and you will get better with every “setting expectations” challenge that you experience.  We ask for and get agreement on every student’s expectations before starting each of our workshops.  If the workshop is not designed to meet a particular expectation, we agree that the expectation will not be met.  Since starting this practice we have significantly decreased the number of “end of workshop” complaints related to expectations.  This works not only with our students, but with our buyers as well.  Don’t be afraid to ask for, share and get agreement on expectations before starting any project, including those at home.

Geof Lory deals with expectations, schedules and identifying process deliverables for a project this month.  Of course he uses his family and a classroom project to help us understand and relate to the topic.

Joel Way shares an article this month based on an experience where he was challenged to come up with the 3 most important things a company should do concerning the improvement of project management.  Of course those 3 most important things are expectation related.

Our third article in this issue has to do with “threads”, or what I like to call relationships.  It is a poem by James A. Autry.  His poem reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: “If you care it shows, and if you don’t care it shows.”

Our upcoming public workshops are in the left hand panel - our computer simulation based workshops are an effective and fun way to learn AND EARN PDUs.  Make sure you also check out what’s happening at Fissure (Fissure News). 

Thanks for reading and have a great summer,

Jesse Freese

Fissure, President

"Out of the Mouth of Babes”  a column where PM & Family intersect

Just Do It!

By Geof Lory PMP

When my daughters were in second and third grade, parents were invited to a class Poetry & Punch event a couple times a year. At Poetry & Punch, each student read their literary creation in front of about 40-50 classmates and parents. After the presentations, cookies and punch were served. In a micro-business way, I guess you could call it a product launch of sorts.

Most of the students successfully delivered their presentations without much difficulty. As I watched each nervous child present their masterpiece, and each equally nervous parent beam with joy, I thought what a wonderful job the teacher, Mrs. Kelly, had done managing this project. The entire event was well planned, from the seating and refreshments, to the timing of each presentation. But what impressed me the most was that every student produced a story or poem of similar quality. Different subjects, different characters, different story lines, but all equal length and complexity, and each delivered within the assigned specifications.

I wondered how Mrs. Kelly got 20+ undisciplined grade-schoolers to accomplish this task. She must have been reading my mind (another quality of a great project manager), because during Punch, Mrs. Kelly explained the process she had the kids follow. Posted on the wall, while not exactly a Gantt chart but pretty close, was a 10-step process for writing a story. Having a process like this is nothing new, but what she said next was particularly interesting. Since the project was a 10-step process, every day, over the two-week period, each student was expected to deliver a piece of the project. By doing the project one step at a time, no student was ever more than one day behind schedule.

It also meant no surprises for this seasoned project manager. I liked that, no surprises. And in case you think Mrs. Kelly’s schedule didn’t allow for the inevitable surprises, Poetry & Punch was always held on a Tuesday. Monday was reserved for helping those few who still needed to finish their presentations. This timetable allowed Mrs. Kelly to masterfully weave risk management and contingency into her plan.

As I thought about her requirement for each student to produce something every day, I thought about how I had written papers in high school and college. Because no incremental deadlines were given, little was done on my papers until the night before they were due. Sometimes I even begged my professors for an extension, which was just an excuse to procrastinate longer. The result of my choices: stay up all night to write.

I know I wasn’t alone in this habit, since most of my classmates who were at the bars with me just before project deadlines could also be heard typing late into the night. My only saving grace was that everyone was scrambling to finish like me, and so by comparison, my results were not too bad. I even remember taking pride in being able to crank out 25 pages eight hours before it was due. Obviously, “pulling an all-nighter” was more important than what I produced.

If all of this reminds you of familiar behavior on your projects, you are not alone. These deadline-driven habits are unfortunately; characteristic of many of us, and it will take a lot of Mrs. Kelleys to try to change that. Planning has started to work for my girls. I am pleasantly surprised that when I ask them where they’re at on a school project, they can quickly recap the completed steps and can show me tangible outcomes of their progress. Impressive disciplines for teenagers.

So why can’t we all behave like this on our projects? Why the inevitable last minute flurry that leaves us spent and regretting our last minute start? Two things: lengthy time estimates and ill-defined deliverables. In other words, we allow a lot of time to accomplish the task and don’t focus on what is delivered. The conversation goes something like this:

PM: “How long will it take you to design the system?”

Developer:  “Two months.”

PM: “OK”

Meeting adjourned.

Not only is two months an unacceptable timeframe without a deliverable, chances are each party has a different understanding of what the deliverable will look like at completion. Even if the design is completed within the estimated time, it is likely the deliverable will have to go through some iterative process of meeting expectations. Had the task been broken down into weekly or daily deliverables, expectations could have been progressively aligned and the guarantee of success more certain.

All of this leads me back to Mrs. Kelly and her expectation of delivering something every day. Every day you go without deliverables on a project, you run the risk of not making progress, or worse, not knowing where you really stand on the project schedule.

A good rule of thumb? “Lory’s Law of Slippage.” This law states: A project will slip by the length of time of the longest task on the schedule. And by slip, I mean it will fall behind without you knowing it. Mrs. Kelly understood this. She had only one day to recover if kids were late with their assignments, so she didn’t have a single task with a defined deliverable longer than one day. This always gave her time to recover, and allowed her to know exactly, within a day, where every student was on their project.

So, when you get pushback on project estimates, shorten them and require that something be delivered every day. You will sleep easier, and your team will thank you for it.

Thank you, Mrs. Kelly.

[This article is third in a series. The previous articles – “Conscious Parenting Mindset” – and A Man with a Plan” are in our newsletter archives.. –Ed.] 

Geof Lory is a Partner for GTD Consulting, LLC, an information technology consulting and training firm based in St. Paul, Minn. Geof is a Master Trainer for the Microsoft Solutions Framework, Master Trainer for the entire CompTIA Project Management and Project + curriculum, and is a certified guide for Fissure Simulation Workshops. As a member of the beta teams for MSF, Gartner, and the Fissure Project Management Simulation products, Geof has developed specialized workshops that integrate the common principles and disciplines with organizational tools.

CPR for Projects

By Joel Way PMP

The question that we were asked by senior IT management, after they listened to a presentation of the full scope of our planned initiative to improve project management, was… “Tell us the three most important things we should do differently, right now, so we can make an impact.” 

I brought to the table 34 years of industry experience that included 16 years in management and much of that in project management.  I was a devotee of PMI and the nine knowledge areas.  I was in the training function at the IBM site in Rochester, Minnesota when we achieved the Malcolm Baldridge award.  I had been on many process improvement teams including an ISO certification readiness team.  I had managed large international projects and very messy cross-functional projects within the United States.  Three things?  What three things would be the most important?  My professional project management journey was to be summed up into three things.  I needed CPR.  Come to think of it…that was the answer…CPR.

Charter, Plan, Report…a Project Charter, a Project Plan and Performance Reporting.

The Project Charter identifies key project factors such as business need, scope and the approach that will be used on the project.  It also provides an order of magnitude estimate…an approximate view of the resources, timeline, risks and other decision factors.  As we implement it, the Project Charter requires signatures from key stakeholders.  In retrospect…just the signature page alone may have been enough to start the ball rolling toward improvement in the discipline of applying sound project practices.  The “deal” as I often refer to it…was not being made.  People were just not sitting down, face to face, and agreeing on the “deal”…let alone signing off on it.  To me it was a question of why we were not using business discipline when spending Company money?  We would never abandon such discipline when spending our own money.  Here’s an analogy…after a car accident…we take it in to get fixed…a person estimates how much it will cost…a “deal” is documented and presented to us for our signature.  The “deal” outlines the elements of the estimate, how much it will cost, when the job will be done and stipulates that we will be involved (called) if the actual cost is likely to overrun by some amount (my experience has been 10%).  We sign the deal and the project gets underway.  We would never think of handling this type of project, with our money involved, in any manner other than this.  Why then, has it become so foreign to bring this level of discipline to project investments when the company assets are in play?  A Project Charter is useful in making the “deal” formal and reasonably clear at this point in time.

I’ll come back to the Project Plan since the other anchor to these three required practices is really the Performance Reporting.  As stated on our internal web site… “The Project Performance Report is a way to provide the project stakeholders with information about how resources are being used to achieve project objectives.  The report provides status information (where we are), progress information (accomplishments since the last report), and forecast information (projections for the next “period”). The Project Performance report is a vehicle for sitting down face-to-face with the project stakeholders and determining the essential question…. “How’s it going?”  It also is essential as a means for keeping communication lines open with everyone involved.

As is the case with a Project Charter…so it is with Project Performance reporting…the level of detail is conditional based on the particular characteristics of the project.  Each should contain the level of detail necessary to optimize the outcome.  Note, I did not say guarantee success.  The project management investment component of an ROI for guaranteeing success can quickly get out of whack with the overall project budget.  The wise project manager will apply the right amount of project process discipline that will get the best and most tolerable bang for the buck.

Again, as stated on our web site… “The Project Plan is the result of the detailed planning effort.  Whereas the Project Charter provides conceptual information, the Project Plan provides detailed information about the project and product scope, schedule, costs, staff, risks, assumptions, and more. Management plans are also included that identify how changes to scope, quality, schedule, cost and risk will be managed.   When approved, the Project Plan guides both the execution and control of the project.”

But…how much detail and in what form?  Again, the wise project manager gives a metered response that is appropriate to the characteristics of the project at hand.  A contrasting experience comes to mind.  I was the Project Manager on a multimillion dollar project for an overseas customer.  The level of detailed planning and the planning artifacts (documents of all types) were numerous and necessary.  The customer also paid handsomely for a full time Project Manager, Project Leader, Database Administrator, Software Integrator, Project Engineer and also paid for a part-time Project Scheduler.  The question as to how much detail and in what form the project management artifacts would be in was not in doubt.  On the other hand, shortly after leading this project, I “inherited” a messy state-side project which grew out of a larger contract that had failed miserably.  Regardless of the history of the predecessor project, the customer paid for approximately 20% of a Project Manager.  Given the state of affairs and the customer relations at the time I got involved, the temptation was to over manage this project.  Just because I could was no reason to do so.  I did meet with the customer and simply laid it out to them that they paid for a part-time Project Manager and as such they could expect certain things from me.  The customer was delighted with that.  Delighted?  Yes, as it turns out, no one had properly set expectations with them on the larger project and the mismatch between their expectations and what they got was a major source of their past unhappiness. 

I believe it was President Truman who said something along the lines of “the least common commodity is common sense.”  When it comes to Project Management it often isn’t how much you know but knowing when to selectively apply what you know to the project situation you’re faced with…using project management common sense.

Applying the appropriate amount of CPR will free up your project “triage” staff to leverage their skills in the most optimum manner.

Joel is a certified PMP Project Manager with a 20-year professional background specializing in the improvement of project, technical and business operation functions. One of Joel’s passions is to assist others in their pursuit of excellence in project management.  Joel is a “certified Fissure guide” for their simulation workshops.

Threads

 By James A. Autry

Sometimes you just connect, like that,

no big thing maybe but something beyond the usual business stuff.

It comes and goes quickly so you have to pay attention,

a change in the eyes when you ask about the family,

a pain flickering behind the statistics about a boy or girl in school,

or about seeing them every other Sunday.

An older guy talks about his bride, a little affection after twenty-five years.

A hot-eyed achiever laughs before you want him to.

Someone tells about his wife’s job or why she quit working to stay home.

An old joker needs another laugh on the way to retirement.

A woman says she spends a lot of her salary on an au pair and a good one is hard to find, but worth it because there’s nothing more important than the baby.

Listen.

In every office you hear threads of love and joy and fear and guilt,

the cries for celebration and reassurance,

and somehow you know that connecting those threads is what you are supposed to do and business takes care of itself.

From the book, Love & Profit: the Art of Caring Leadership, Copyright 1991.

Fissure News 

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has asked Fissure to offer our Advanced Project Management Simulation Workshop at its upcoming Global Conference. The conference will be held September 10-13 in Toronto, Canada. This is the fourth year in a row that Fissure simulation workshops have been featured at the conference. If you would like to learn more about the conference click here PMI North American Congress

Risk and the 5 Key Project Variables is the topic of a seminar being presented by Fissure President Jesse Freese at PMI Minnesota’s annual Professional Development Days. For more information on the event click here PMI-MN PDD

One of America’s largest insurance companies has selected Fissure’s Change Management Leadership Simulation Workshop to train 250 of their top managers. The training is in preparation for a major change initiative.

Ed Tilford, founder and partner in Fissure, underwent successful knee surgery two months ago.

Fissure Associate Mike Wold and his wife Pam became grandparents for the third time a few months ago; all are healthy, happy and busy!