When Your Project Depends on Other Projects that are Struggling

Managing a project to a successful end is hard enough as it is. Most of the time your project is a one-time effort and it is completely standalone – other than the fact that it likely integrates with some existing technology and business practices. Those, of course, become integration points and separate tasks in the schedule as well as areas of testing concern and highlights as the project moves on towards deployment.

Now consider the scenario where your project depends on the outcome or progress of one or more other projects. Projects that you likely aren’t even leading, but must be involved with to some degree to ensure proper testing, handoff of information, timing of training and deployment, and to ensure that any solution integrations are properly aligned. If those other projects are running smoothly, then you have no issues. However, if there is a delay or an issue with one of the other projects – and most projects do experience delays and issues along the way – what do you do? How do you handle it? How does it affect your project?

In the few cases where this has either been an issue for me or appeared that it would be, these are the steps I setup to get corrective action rolling…

Discuss with the customer

As this has always been the case with interrelated projects for the same customer, that customer is an integral part of the team on each project and a key decision point for any action going forward. If that customer is not already aware of the impending critical problem, then you – and the other project manager if the struggling project is not also yours – must sit down with the customer and relay the issue to them. Keeping a significant problem from the customer will only delay the inevitable and can serve to cause trust issues should the customer discover the problem before it comes from your mouth.

Brainstorm with the other project managers and teams

You and your team must then work cohesively with the project manager and team on the struggling project to determine what their issue is, how quickly it can be resolved, what impact it has on their schedule, and then what the overall impact on your project and schedule is or will be.

Develop an action plan

Next, set about documenting possible action plan scenarios. Will more or different resources on the struggling project help solve the issue? Will more money do it? Are the struggles due to issues at the customer level? Do some requirements need to be further defined and if so, what re-work might be involved.

Once this is determined then – and only then – can you figure out the best and most cost-effective and least detrimental course of action to recommend to your leadership and to the project customer.

Circle back with the customer

Finally, return to the customer with the proposed course of action. Clearly detail to them how the struggling project is going to get back on track – and this should be presented by that project manager if it is not already your project. Then present the impact to your project – the one that was running smoothly till the issue arose – and show them a new project schedule with these effects built into the scenario. If there are any avenues for regaining lost ground on the timeline due to the issues forced on your project, outline those actions as new tasks in the project schedule and discuss those in detail with your customer.

One final step – don’t forget to get signoff/approval from your customer on the overall course or courses of action you plan to take. It may seem like a small technicality, but it can become a very valuable signoff should there be any legal concerns at the end of the engagement.

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Keeping Projects on Track Through the Holidays

Oh, the end of year holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. They’re all upon us now….we are joyfully celebrating with our family or planning for the next holiday. Vacation time is being requested, countdown calendars are beginning, and – most likely – some focus is being lost as the daily grind is giving way to hopes of some well-deserved relaxation time. Holidays are always hard on projects – but these current holidays can wreak havoc on the best of engagements.

The big question is this….during this time how do we keep our projects on track with so much anticipated – and sometimes unanticipated – down time? Our projects aren’t taking a break, but our project team members – and often our customers – are. How do we keep the forward momentum going? And also, how do we regroup after the holidays and get the project moving forward again at the same pace it was before the holiday slowdown?

Here are five key steps to follow to stay on track….

Plan way ahead

Project resources plan their vacations with their direct supervisor. Sometimes they tell their project managers and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they assume that their manager tells you – but that never happens. Ask questions, plan ahead. I once found myself with a resource who was leaving for India to get married and not returning for three months right in the middle of critical break/fix testing before a go-live. She assumed that her manager had informed me. Not only had I not been informed, there was no comparable resource available to back fill with. Never assume anything.

Onboard support staff if needed

By planning ahead, you can see if there are some key activities that have to happen during the holidays that can’t be moved. Request a replacement resource during the vacation time if you think it will help – but this will definitely require advanced planning (see #1 above).

Stagger time off if possible

It’s not likely you’ll get much say in this, but have your resources stagger their time off if it all possible. Leaving you as the only project resource available – and probably not able to take vacation time yourself – is a very bad situation to be in. If critical activities have to happen during a planned vacation, you may have no other choice but to go to the resource’s manager and request that vacation time be changed or that other accommodations be made.

Revise the schedule and be realistic

Take the vacation time and revise the schedule. Be as realistic as possible. It serves no good purpose to be too aggressive with the task schedules when you have no project resources available to work on them. If it’s going to cause problems with the deadline of a key project deliverable, then it’s important that everyone knows about it now rather than finding out about it later when you regroup after the holidays and watch that key date come and go. That type of failure does not make customers happy.

Kick start the project January 2^nd

Finally, be ready to hit the ground running on January 2^nd, or as soon as you can get MOST of your team back on the project. During that first meeting when everyone is back together, be sure to have some fun and discuss everyone’s holiday activities. And then with that out of the way be ready to productively move on. As the project manager, that means that you need to have everything in place including a revised project schedule that shows what the next steps and assignments are on the engagement.

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It's About More Than the Tools

Tools are great in the project management world. I dare say they’re a necessity if you want to get your tasks done in a timely manner. And doing things in a timely manner is critical if we want to stay on track and on budget.

But really, the tools we use can be anything…depending on the size of the project and the complexity of reporting. You can actually manage a project with only Excel or similar spreadsheet software as your only PM tool if you have to (though probably only on very small projects) – using it for managing tasks and timeframes in the project schedule, managing resource assignments, and definitely the budget. I use it all the time to manage the project budget – including analysis and forecasting on a weekly basis. But I’d never use it on a big project or a critical project. I’m a fan of real project scheduling software like MS Project, Project Drive, or a similar tool. They’ll get the job done faster, better, more accurately and more efficiently and they have reporting built in to the tool – which will make your executive management and customer much happier and your job much much easier.

But project management doesn’t stop with the tools, does it? In fact, it’s really not about the tools. You don’t have to spend the big project dollars on the tools – you can do it fairly inexpensively as pointed out above. But the big dollars are spent on the personnel resources and the tasks they undertake and the time they spend on the project. It’s about project skills and the actual management of the project itself as well as the leadership used in managing the project resources. It’s about project best practices.

Project management, as a whole is really about…

Consistency

Your team and your customer need consistent behavior. You need to hold project status meetings at the same time every week (yes, every week), you need to deliver weekly status reports in advance of that project status meeting with your team and your customer, and you need to be holding internal meetings with your team every week to get updates and hold them accountable. The project manager who regularly postpones or cancels meetings is not displaying consistency and will find it hard to demand consistency from his own team throughout the project.

Best practices

Using best practices – whatever you and your organization define as best practices – is the responsibility of the project manager. Doing things like using repeatable processes and templates that work, conducting formal project status meetings and reviews, planning out the project budget and reforecasting it to stay on top of it on a weekly basis, and managing project scope closely against the project requirements are all a few examples of project management best practices. These are the responsibility of the project manager and using them is a way to display good project leadership and a way to help ensure ongoing project successes.

Leadership

Finally, project management is about leadership. If a project manager can’t be a strong project leader, then he’s not bringing much to the project table. Sound, swift, and confident decision-making, efficient and effective communication and customer management, consistent behavior and delivery on project milestones and deliverables are all examples of good project management leadership and are all the responsibility of the project manager.

Summary

Tools are a necessary part of the project management process. But they don’t guarantee success and they don’t ‘make’ the project manager. If the project manager can practice consistency, utilize best practices, and show project leadership, then his days as a project manager are likely numbered. PM is much more about the soft skills than just the use of tools.

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Finding Your Niche as a Project Manager

What are you good at? At what do you excel? What areas are project team members frequently complementing you on? Do you get positive customer feedback in a particular area on a regular basis?

For me it’s communication. I once had a business analyst tell me that of all the project managers he’s ever worked with, he received by far the most email from me. He said he felt that he was included on all communications and always knew the latest status and where things stood on my projects. That made me feel good because I consider communication to be the #1 responsibility of the project manager. If you’re doing that right, then that’s half the battle.

Capitalize and accommodate

Everyone has his or her own strengths and weaknesses. No one is strong in everything. Think about those job interviews – you’re asked about your strengths and weaknesses. You know you have some weaknesses – you may even have a huge glaring weakness that you certainly can’t tell them about, but you have to tell them something during the interview because even they know that no one is perfect. But seriously, in order to be successful we absolutely must know our strengths and weaknesses – both in order to capitalize on our strengths and accommodate for our weaknesses. We have to find our niche – what we excel at – and run with it.

Like I said, for me it’s communication. I’m also pretty good at organizing, but I’m best served having a strong business analyst along side me on a technical project who can serve as that person to document the customer need well and ensure that we continue that process as the skilled technical team takes over and creates technical specs from functional requirements. I’m technical – I used to be a developer and an application development manager and have led developers on projects for years as well as being able to estimate development efforts with the best of them – but I’m best left to coordinate, communicate, assign and delegate and leave the detailed documentation to the skilled project team resources.

Why projects fail

More projects fail than succeed. I’ve always stated that more than 50% of all projects fail. A recent number I saw in a Project Management Institute LinkedIn group study showed that approximately 76% of all projects fail to some degree. That number is huge. Some just will fail because they’re poorly defined or never should have happened. Some will fail because funding will run out. Others will fail because of senior management or the customer brings it crashing to the ground because of ever-changing requirements. It’s hard to say what will cause a project to fail until you’re in the middle of it.

Project manager failure points

We must also admit that many projects will fail because the project manager was not equipped to handle the project. Either they didn’t understand what their limitations were, couldn’t communicate with their team or manage the customer well, or weren’t good leaders or decision makers, or we’re very organized. It could be one of a hundred things.

The key for a project manager is to understand how they think and work professionally and what they’re good at and what they must admit that they are not good at. Most importantly, they must recognize those weaknesses and filter those responsibilities to the team whenever possible. Then, and only then, will they give their projects and team members their greatest chance at overall project success.

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Getting the Right Information to the Right People

As the purveyor of good, sound, efficient, and effective communication, the project manager must ensure that he’s not just tossing whatever status info into the air that he feels like to see what sticks to what individuals. After all, giving a C-level customer information on what scripts you ran today while testing the latest bug fix is not an example of good, sound, efficient, and effective communication, is it?

I’ve even gone so far as to create what I would consider a very detailed, yet high-level status report for the client project sponsor of an organization I was consulting for only to have him wave his hands in the air and say, “I don’t want to see this level of detail.” I was astonished, because I thought it was exactly what he would want to see. Next I gave him a detailed issues list with dates, assignments, and status updates and he exclaimed something like, “I’m in heaven, you get it!” You never know who wants what till you try, I guess.

It all depends on the individual – that end user of your information. As the project manager you can spend hours putting together great detail every week but if it’s the wrong information for the wrong individual – even if it’s great info – you still failed.

Set and get expectations early

As the project manager you want your status information to be seen by the masses – for your career, for your reputation, and for the visibility of your project. But you also want to make sure that the status information you send out means something to the receiving parties. In my example above, what I originally prepared was going to be totally ignored by my customer and he wasn’t going to be very happy in the long run.

Go into project kickoff with your customer with an example of what information you intend to disseminate on a weekly basis. Use that as a starting point to work from. This is the best time to get their input and to fine-tune the details that you provide them with. You may even need to create a higher-level summary report for their senior management. And, of course, meet with your senior management and identify key data that they would like to see on an ongoing basis. They aren’t likely going to want your detailed issues list, but they probably will want your budget analysis and forecast every week – that means a lot to them especially if you’re managing a large, high-dollar and profitable project.

Refine as needed

Finally, refine what you provide each party as needed throughout the engagement. Rarely do I find that my first status reports on a project are identical in format and content to my last. Things change, needs change, priorities change – and all this affects who wants what from the ongoing status information on your engagements. One solution is providing a customized project management dashboard like the one offered in Project Drive, the effective web-based project management software product.

Summary

Project managers must be rigid at times and follow best practices in order to help ensure project success. But project status reporting is one area that where it’s ok for the project manager to show flexibility. After all, it is the project manager’s responsibility to be effective and efficient communicators and the foundation of that is getting the right information to the right people at the right time so that good and timely decisions can be made for the project.

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Strategies for Onboarding New Project Resources

There are several reasons why new resources would be onboarded mid-stream on a project:

• A project resources moves to another project
• A project resource has left the company
• A project resource is performing poorly
• A new skill set is needed on the project
• Additional resources are needed to get the job done

The list can probably go on and on. The reasons can vary, but what can't change is the fact that onboarding a new resource must be done as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible. It needs to be performed as seamlessly as possible so that the project doesn't skip a beat. It needs to seem to the customer as though it never really happened - it should go that smoothly. Ideally, it's as smooth as changing the name in the your project management software tool to the new resource. Because anything less and your project is in danger as well as the confidence that you have built up in your customer in the ability of you and your project team to deliver on the engagement. If a changing of the guard on the project causes bumps, then your customer is going to feel them and that is never good.

First, you must assess the situation in terms of the outgoing resource and their status on the project. Consider these questions when assessing this...

• How key is this person's role on the project?
• How critical is their expertise specifically for this customer's requirements?
• How involved have they been so far with the customer?
• How can we get a new person engaged quickly on the same knowledge level?

Understanding these issues can help you get the right person in the role and transition to the best of your ability in order to minimize the affects on the project and the customer.

So, let's look at key strategies or processes for bringing on new resources to your project in mid-stream.

Provide all project materials

The first step of the process is to get a new resource anything and everything that you possibly can on the project. Of course, this works best if they have some time to get up to speed and aren't immediately thrown into the fire on the project. If the outgoing resource isn't already gone, but has an exit date set, then this entire process - including the next steps below - will be much smoother and it will likely affect the customer to a far lesser degree.

Provide the incoming new team member with everything that was put together for project kickoff including the statement of work for the project. Also, get them the current and recent versions of the project schedule produced from the project management software tool, weekly status reports for the past two months at a minimum, the current versions of the issue lists and risks lists, copies of all deliverables produced and delivered to date, and resource forecasting and budget information - if applicable - for the project.

Direct contact knowledge transfer

If possible, the incoming resource needs knowledge transfer time from the outgoing resource. If the outgoing resource has left the company or was an utter failure on the project, then this step is either not possible or not necessary. But in the case where they are leaving for another assignment, then secure time away from the team and the customer for the two resources to discuss the role, the project, and the customer and to transfer key project knowledge and status. Ideally, the new resource would shadow the outgoing resource on the weekly status customer call for one to two weeks before actually participating.

Team knowledge transfer

Following, or during, the one on one knowledge transfer activities, conduct a series of unofficial team meetings for the purpose of getting the new resource up to speed and offloading knowledge to the knew resource from all team members. How long this takes will probably depend on the urgency of the situation and the number of team members on the project, but one or two meetings should be enough in most cases.

Customer introduction and transition

Finally, conduct an introductory meeting with the customer where your new resource is introduced and can discuss his or her background and what their role will be on the project. Ideally this will be a separate call from the regular weekly status meeting and would also include the outgoing resource. However, that's not possible in all scenarios and it may have to happen as part of the formal weekly status meeting.

Advantages of Software as a Service

Web based project management software such as Project Drive can also be described as software as a service, or SaaS. Basically, what this means is the software is hosted on the providers servers instead of being downloaded and residing on individual computers.

There are several distinct advantages to using a hosted service, the most important to businesses related to costs. Most software applications are sold on an individual license basis necessitating a separate license, and the associated costs, for each computer on which the software resides.

Then there are the additional costs of having an employee install and maintain the software, including updates which can be frequent in many cases, backing up the data, purchasing hardware, etc.

With SaaS, since it is web based and housed elsewhere, the users pay a small monthly or annual fee based on number of users that is considerably less than purchasing individual licenses. If more users are required, such as may be the case with project management software, they can be added later and be up and running within minutes. The scalability of such software is essentially unlimited.

Another major advantage of web based project management software is that it is accessible anywhere in the world from any computer. All that is needed is access to the Internet.

Communicating with Team Members in Different Time Zones

In today’s shrinking world, many companies are doing business all over the globe. Team members based in different time zones working on the same projects can create problems for those responsible for managing the projects. It can be extremely difficult to share information and communicate with all team members in a timely manner.

However, web based project management software, such as Project Drive, provides the solution. All team members, regardless of their location, receive real-time updates on the project with the automated communication functions included in the software. Not only does it allow team members to send and exchange comments, but will also distribute emails on major actions. The email function allows:

• Selection of fields to trigger notifications and which users will receive them.
• Notifications to be sent to one or multiple users
• Notifications to be sent users when tasks are assigned
• Notification of users of important new information which requires their attention and converts these issues into tasks