The pulse of Alexander Interactive

1. Methodology

“It’s very important that a project manager has experience using a system or methodology of approach, and can document and communicate it to the team. People need to know what’s going to occur, when, where and how.”

My take: This is vital; I even mentioned it in my recent “Why Athletes Make Good Project Managers” post. To reiterate: As the PM of a project team you’re on the hook to ensure both the internal and external teams always know the upcoming key activities and who is responsible for each. Proactively sharing information without being asked helps guarantee success, and paying attention to your audience when communicating facilitates the information transfer.

While all PMs have their own methodologies of how to get things done, consistency between PMs within the same company is key. We all use the same templates and follow the same project lifecycle, and we’re always evolving our shared superset document with findings from recent projects. Succeeding is easier when there are no blurry lines.

2. Techniques

“With project experience we add tools and techniques to our tool belt. Those techniques are very beneficial for a project manager to share and pull out at specific times.”

My take: While this can be interpreted in many ways, here’s how I apply it: As time goes by and I accumulate more projects under my belt. I learn new ways of managing issues, risks, clients, internal resources, etc.; we all do.

At Ai, we’re encouraged to share our findings at recurring PM team meetings, and we’ve instituted mini-mortems at predetermined checkpoints throughout each project phase to capture both project-specific and company-wide findings. These mini mortems have proven extremely useful, and we share all captured information via our company wiki so we’re able to reference it later.

As we all gain experience, our tools and techniques evolve along with us, and it’s important to share our findings with each other so we can help each other grow.

3. Software

“The software that is used should enable project success. We are all familiar with the previous generation of project management software that was so complex nobody really used it, defaulting instead to paper or sticky notes. Today, project management software is very collaborative, often customizable, and widely available. Many also have social tools built-in to enable project collaboration.”

My take: At Ai we’ve definitely gone through a bunch of software to get us to where we are right now, in terms of what PMs use to run projects – We’ve narrowed it down to Basecamp, Harvest, Jira, MS Project, etc. I’ve been the guinea pig in testing out other software, with the goal of always seeking to gain further efficiencies when it comes to running our projects. The hunt is always on for something that isn’t necessarily more robust, but more applicable to the way we work here at Ai. One of the great things about Ai is that each team member has input. We’re not set in the tools we’re using now, and the exec team is always open to suggestions for improving the way we work.

4. Templates

“Developing templates that can be mobilized and quickly and effectively implemented is very simple today. The benefit to your team is that being able to reach for a template saves a lot of their time and effort. Templates also help to keep work processes more consistent and standard; your team will know what to expect and when.”

My take: It took us a little while, and we’re still always evolving our documentation, but we’re definitely in a great spot with regards to having a central place for us all to access templates that we use over and over again here at Ai. Standardizing with templates helps to (1) ensure the internal team, no matter the project, is always seeing consistency between PMs’ documentation, (2) allow one PM to step in for another PM easily in times of need without having to relearn a certain way of doing things, and (3) save time!  Most likely, every document we’re creating for our projects has already been created on another, so no need to recreate the wheel every time.

Often these four tools are underutilized or taken for granted by entry level PMs. Learning to use standardized methodologies, techniques that maximize efficiency, software that is designed for the tasks at hand and time-saving templates are among the most important lessons that have helped me grow in my project management career. I use each of these four tools everyday at Ai.

The PM Hut is a great place to learn new strategies that will help both rookie and veteran PMs.  It’s also great to read articles like these that confirm tactics you’re already using.  You can check out more of their educational articles at their site, PMHut.com.

Be a leader.  Always be prepared.  Communicate.  Stay disciplined.

These concepts have been a part of my life since I was 10 years old, when I first stepped out onto the volleyball court.  At that age coaches must simplify the game and stick to the basics, no matter the sport; a fifth grader can’t handle much more.  Almost two decades later, with four years of Division I volleyball under my belt, and a half a decade into my project management career, I can’t help but look back and realize the same rules still apply.

Be a Leader

There’s no question that the project manager (PM) is looked upon to provide direction and has the capacity to influence members of the team in the same way a sports team captain would.  In both instances, you’re a decision maker, have to be quick on your feet and always have the end goal in mind.  You lead by putting the team first, the passion you exude becomes contagious, and you know how to get the best out of others.  Enthusiasm, confidence and the ability to help facilitate points of clarity in times of uncertainty are vital both on the court and in the office.  You must have patience, understand and embrace the process and make team members understand the value behind everything the team does as a whole.

Always be Prepared

Ask any collegiate volleyball coach or player why he or she is successful and some portion of accomplishment will likely be attributed to preparation.  Before every volleyball match in college we reviewed game tape of our opponents and ourselves.  We’d write down and submit notes on what we saw, practiced daily, studied our tendencies and consistently worked on our mechanics to see what worked and what didn’t before the next match.  Different combinations of actions led to different results; the ones that worked were recorded and repeated, and the ones that didn’t were adjusted until they became the former.

Years later (not to say that I’m no longer active – enter: Crossfit) I’ve replaced my daily collision with a wood gym floor with a daily coffee, a keyboard and a process I follow that is always evolving based on the same concepts above.  Every client, project, and project team is different.  What worked for one client or project may not work for the next, but setting aside time to review lessons learned from previous engagements prior to starting a new project is a valuable exercise that is often overlooked.  Documenting wins and losses upon completion and referencing back to them is critical for future success, and no PM, coach, or player can argue that.

Communicate

On the volleyball court communication is fundamental. Whether it’s calling out hitters on the opponent’s side, non-verbally sharing play signals with teammates, or even engaging in self-talk to get you through to the next point, no one should ever have to guess what your next move is. The same holds true for me now.

As the PM of a project team you’re on the hook to ensure both the internal and external teams always know the upcoming key activities and who is responsible for what.  Proactively sharing information without being asked helps guarantee success, and paying attention to your audience when communicating facilitates the information transfer.

Stay Disciplined

Being a collegiate athlete demands sacrifice and therefore balance.  You’re juggling daily practice, traveling, classes, schoolwork and social time.  You must have the discipline to get things done within a given timeframe without sacrificing quality, and holding yourself and your teammates accountable.  Being a PM demands the same attention to detail and self-control. Between tracking multiple work streams, attending meetings, producing your own deliverables, and helping the team stay motivated you’re forced to constantly prioritize and hold yourself and the team accountable.

Being part of a team with a common goal is where I thrive.  By surrounding myself with people who are smart and driven will only help me grow, both on the court and in the office.  While many non-athletes are successful PMs, having the background in sport has helped develop my leadership and communication skills while teaching me to always be prepared and keep myself disciplined.  And I must admit high fiving coworkers and clients can go a long way too.

Last week David Ow, Director of Project Management, took the PM team out to our annual holiday dinner, a time to get out of the office and change the scenery for a few hours while reminiscing on the past year.  And while we definitely spoke about things other than project plans, budget updates and weekly status reports, it was hard not to reflect on what we’ve learned since the same time last year.

Although the PM team at Ai is comprised of people with diverse backgrounds and experience, as a team, we can all say we’ve learned to keep the following top of mind –

• Be fact-based.
• Espouse numbers as a means of supporting your position but remember that the numbers aren’t your position (in and of themselves). That is, critical analysis of what numbers, metrics, etc. are telling you is equally if not more important than the numbers themselves.
• Provide options and implications to those options in order to (a.) make a decision and/or (b.) help facilitate the making of a decision.
• Planning has to be realistic.  You can’t succeed if it can’t be accomplished.
• Champion “reasonable” and “realistic”, but remember it’s your job to figure out creative approaches to getting to the finish line.
• Think like it’s all on your shoulders, but remember that it’s not.
• You are a facilitator; a guide; a remover of obstacles; a creative problem solver; a generalist who people will come to for all of the answers – even if you’re not the right person… but you are not The Boss.
• You’re responsible for bringing the right people in at the right time and setting them up to do what they do best.
• Be flexible / nimble.  Even the best-laid plans go awry.  Even the most proven processes will go off-the-rails for a variety of reasons.  The true test of your mettle as a PM will be how you respond, react, and adjust in a timely manner.
• Celebrate success. Since projects are finite, they will have an end…no matter how far off that might seem at present.

Cheers to my fellow PM team members, and to our fearless team captain, David, who continues to guide us to the finish line time and time again.

Happy Holidays!

If you aren’t already familiar with Google Wave, check out some basic info, and a very in-depth video here. Wave is a new project from Google that reinvents email communication. Forget everything you know about email, it was invented back in the 70′s, things have changed; technology is faster, we have cloud computing, web apps look fancier, and for a while, a large portion of email users are moving (back) to web based clients.

Email is the current method of communication and collaboration when working on a project. You usually have a folder for that project in Outlook, some rules to filter project related messages into that folder, and an email chain for each issue. People reply to messages inside that chain somewhere, the thread gets continued, people get added to the thread, people drop off. You don’t know where you are in the chain when you check in a few hours later, and you get bombarded by… STOP!

Wave is very early in its adoption, it’s invite only, but it has the strong potential to fix a lot of these problems. It can clean up a lot of the clutter of project communication and throw it on the cloud so you can get to it anywhere. Wave does need some more security built in for the corporate settings, but that is in the pipeline. Right now waves can only be private or public, but once inside a private wave, that user can invite anyone.

Some notes on how Wave can help a project:

• Each Project would get its own folder in wave
• Anyone working on the project would have access to this folder
• Every issue or conversation would get its own wave and everyone who needs to be involved in the issue is added to the wave.
• At this point every project related message is confined to the projects folder. No Outlook rules or message dragging will ever be needed. If a new person needs to be involved in the discussion, they are just added to the wave, no forwarding or reply-all.
• The conversation can continue similar to email, with individual replies, but it can be so much more. In line replies with related topics can appear right with the original topic, not hidden down 6 replies in an email chain
• You can show only new replies on the wave and get caught back up in the discussion quickly
• You can do a playback of all or part of the discussion and see who chimed in and when
• Need to share documents? You will eventually be able to drag them right out of your file system into the browser and into the wave. (This is currently only supported for pictures)

As I said, Wave is very early in its adoption, but after more people join, and more developer plugins come out, I think it will be a very valuable tool both in the workplace and at home.

Cheap. Fast. Good. Pick two. That’s the classic project triangle. As best as I can tell its an immutable law of the universe. No matter how much you try, you can only control 2 points at any given time. At Ai (driven by Wertheimer) we incorporate these points into a statement of priority from the clients, called a Faceted Feature Analysis. (Link will take you to the full story). Different clients are sensitive to some points on the triangle more than others, so we move the project priorities around in order to accommodate them.

This triangle is a source of confusion, however. That’s because there is (or at least seems to be) more than one triangle in play. In fact there are three, making a triangle of triangles.

The second triangle is the Faceted Feature Analysis (FFA) triangle.

The mapping between the first two triangles is mind-bending, but legit. What we’re saying here is:

• If Cost is the most important factor to a client, then Business Value is paramount.
• If Time is the most important factor to a client, then Technical Ease (how easy it is to build) is paramount.
• If Quality is the most important factor, then User Value (or usability) is paramount.

The FFA triangle is about prioritization. It is implied by the classic project triangle, but it serves a somewhat different purpose. This is all about trying to figure out which features are the most (or least) important.

Which leads us to this triangle – the bad news triangle. This is the one that gets pulled out when hard decisions have to be made, the one that people most want to deny. (Deny it all you want – this is like the Law of Conservation of Energy at work here…). At a certain point, something has to give – it can be that the schedule might not happen exactly on the target date, or it might be that the budget might be a bit different than originally anticipated or that the features delivered might be a bit different than originally anticipated. Maybe this should be called the Honesty Triangle.

UPDATE: Some people (who didn’t bother to leave a comment) feel that the last paragraph is too negative, that it implies that projects always ride off the rails, and that drastic scope needs to be cut, or drastic schedule slippage must occur or that massive budget adjustments must be made. Sorry if you got that impression – that’s not what I’m trying to say.

The point is that there MUST be a flexible point on the triangle. The triangle is viewable through various perspectives, depending on the condition of the project, which can be influenced by many, many factors. No one wants to be in the Honesty Triangle, which is the point at which you must make hard decisions. And most of the time, you don’t have to be there. But, should you, for whatever reason, find yourself with a project where the schedule is slipping, then its time to look at the honesty triangle. Honesty hurts, remember.

A while back I posted about how to survive crunch periods (How to Crunch). Tom Sullivan, a journalist writing for PM Network magazine (put out by the Project Management Institute) decided to interview me for an article he was writing on the same topic for this month’s issue.

Unfortunately it looks like the crunch article isn’t one of the ones that are offered as PDFs on the site, but if you or someone you know is a PMI member you should be able to grab it. If I find a way to access the article directly (or if someone wants to tell me how) I’ll post a link here.

(Not sure if I love that photo….oh well)