How to Tell if Your Customer is Prepared for the Project

We would like to think that our customer – the one who is spending the money – has been diligent in their preparation for the upcoming engagement that you are about to lead for them. It only makes sense, right? If they are prepared, that means smoother sailing, possibly a shortened project window, and a decreased project budget. Cost savings for the customer! A good thing, right? One would think so, but I never cease to be amazed…..

What should your customer come to the table with? Well, at a minimum, they should have the following:

#1 - High level requirements

The customer who comes to the table with no requirements planned out is a huge red flag. Certainly you should expect to help them to some degree with requirements – and it’s absolutely necessary for you to help them flesh out more detailed requirements in the planning phase – but when they come to the project with nothing it’s time to put on the brakes.

#2 - A group of subject matter experts (SMEs)

During the engagement you’re going to need access to some end users and subject matter experts because there will be questions you’ll have for them as you try to piece together the requirements you’re working with. These people need to be identified up front and need to be prepared to be adhoc members of the customer’s project team.

#3 - An assembled core project team

If you’re dealing solely with the project stakeholder at the kickoff meeting, then you’re customer may be unprepared. They need a core team of their own to assist you and your team in putting more detail into the project, identifying issues and risks, and verifying the project schedule that you’re proposing.

#4 - Preferably a project manager or point person

Again, dealing with a stakeholder is great and that person may, indeed, be the project manager. But if not, there needs to be a primary counterpart on the customer’s side to you as the project manager. Someone you can go to to get things done on their side. Someone to enforce accountability and direct activity because there will be customer assignments.

#5 - Training or software knowledge (if applicable)

This is a tough one and the customer may push back, but if you’re dealing with a software or IT project, then in order for you and your team to get the best possible requirements documented, your customer must have an understanding of what you’re implementing. If they don’t understand the capabilities at all, then they can’t truly fully understand how much or exactly what the solution will be able to do for them. Basic training is a huge plus to the project.

How do you know they’re ready?

So, I’ve presented a list – and I would welcome any comments or additions that any of our readers might have. This list is based solely on some of the frustrations I’ve encountered on the many projects I’ve led over the years. I’m constantly surprised by how unprepared some customers are when they come to a kickoff meeting.

How doe we figure out if this customer is ready or not? It may become evident as you start to go through the statement of work (SOW) because most of the project goals and assumptions are listed there. If the SOW discussion surprises your customer and they seem uncertain of what’s expected of them, it may be time to slow things down. If you are implementing a software solution and the customer has no knowledge whatsoever of its capabilities, then there’s no way they’re really going to be ready to discuss detailed needs and requirements. You likely need to offer training. Ask about their project team because you’re going to need that information for assignments in the project schedule. If they don’t have a team, then you may want to give them a week to put the proper team together. Discuss the project schedule that you’ve drafted. If there are any major sticking points with the customer, then halt the kickoff and get those ironed out before proceeding with the engagement. The worst thing you can do is start the project before both parties are prepared to start because you’re going to find yourself behind schedule very quickly as you work with your customer to identify and fix these weaknesses.

Brought to you by www.project-drive.net.

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.

Brought to you by www.project-drive.net.

Keeping Your Team Focused on a Long-Term Project

As the project manager on a long-term project, I usually have no trouble maintaining focus. I realize that the project is mine to succeed or fail with – hopefully succeed – and I usually have several projects running at once. Focusing on the tasks at hand usually doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. Now for my team…depending on what’s going on with the project and what other projects my team members may be working on…that focus issue can sometimes be a problem.

As a result, I’ve had to ‘experiment’ with different strategies to help keep my team members focused and engaged on the project. Through logical thinking and some trial and error, I’ve come up with these five strategies for keeping my team members fully focused on some of my longer-term projects.

Engage them in all planning activity

Project team members who are heavily involved in the upfront planning activities on a project feel a greater sense of ownership for the project. Being part of that conception phase of the project leads to a greater understanding of everything involved with the project and greater ownership of the goals, mission, and tasks associated with the engagement as a whole.

Have team members peer review all deliverables

Another way to increase ownership and focus is to have all of your team members perform peer reviews on every deliverable that goes to the customer. This serves another valuable purpose as well – it keeps more eyes on each deliverable and can significantly decrease your chances of delivering an error-filled document or product that only serves to damage customer confidence and satisfaction. Trust me, I know. I trusted a business analyst when he said a functional design document was ready to go to the customer…not once but twice! Since then I have my team peer review everything. It took far too long to make that customer feel comfortable with me and my team again.

Keep task assignment steady throughout

When possible, spread your assignments for your project resources out over the life of the project. Too much downtime for a project resource can cause them to lose focus or worse…can lead to them being completely lost to another project. By keeping them responsible for tasks and engaged throughout with steady work will keep them feeling like they are constantly contributing and will help keep them continually focused.

Look to team members to interface with the client regularly

Putting your project team members in significant roles in the project – especially putting them in roles where they must regularly interface with the customer – can have very positive affects on their ability to stay focused. Knowing their role is key to customer satisfaction and interaction will keep them on their toes and increase their overall participation level on the project.

Have team members periodically lead key meetings

Taking the previous item a step further – have members of your project team periodically lead customer meetings or weekly status calls if you’re comfortable with it. Make an excuse periodically to not be available and assign leadership to someone on the team – rotating the leadership responsibility, of course. Being in a temporary PM leadership role in front of the customer or on the other end of the phone will further induce the focus aspect you desire throughout the engagement from your team members.

Summary

Project team members will lose focus periodically throughout an engagement. It’s your job as the project manager to do everything you can to minimize those instances through continuous interaction, engagement, and assignments. Utilizing team collaboration helps promote ownership that also helps to keep those team members focused and engaged throughout a long project. Your project team members are likely as busy as you are and working multiple projects so being aware of that and utilizing them where they provide the most strategic advantage helps you, helps them, and helps the project.

Project Management for Startups

I’ve worked with several startups in both capacities - as an employee and as a consultant. Frankly, I enjoyed the consulting role more, but that’s just me. One thing is for sure - I definitely like working with and for startups. It’s energetic, you own your own role, you often make your own rules…the project is really really really yours because everyone else is so busy and trying to figure out what they need to do next. Take it and run with it is usually the mentality of a startup. Exciting and trailblazing.

Now let’s focus solely on project management. Is it needed in a startup? Is it feasible to have a structured project management process in a startup? If both of those are yes, how do you do it? What does it take to set it up? Lots of structure…a little structure? Let’s consider…

Do startups need PM?

I’m going to answer with a resounding ‘YES!’ to this one. Why? Because they are new, they are trying to establish sound business practices, and they are trying to obtain and retain customers. If a startup embarks on projects without one or more experienced project managers and some defined processes, the only thing that will get them success is luck and you can’t really build a successful business on luck…not for the long-term anyway.

Is it feasible to have a structured PM process in a startup?

Again, my answer is yes. I’ve done it. I was asked to come in to a startup and salvage their first three projects that were failing miserably. I wrapped PM processes around it, brought customers in for presentations on how things were going to be done, and we ended up with three successful implementations AND the makings of a PM practices at the same time.

How do you set up a PM practice in a startup?

In my case, you come with your own tools. They literally had nothing. Well, they owned MS Project, but this was a few years ago. Today a startup would be far better off with a cost-effective web-based solution like Project Drive or a similar tool. MS Project is just too expensive for most startups if they need licenses for multiple users and it’s just not necessary.

You need some templates in hand…project schedule shells from past projects, plan documents that you’ve pulled from other successful engagements, a budget planning and forecasting tool or spreadsheet that has served you well in the past. They likely won’t have anything…so you either need to have it with you or search the internet for something to download. I offer several templates and sample documents for free download on my website at bradegeland.com.

And finally you need to assess how much staff you need. Most startups, when their business is ramping up, should be able to make do with one or two consulting project managers. Hiring permanent staff right out of the gate is probably a risky idea. Adding experienced consulting PMs can get you started down the right path and they can then be used to help you in the hiring and training of more junior level project managers who can eventually take over the reins.

Brought to you by www.project-drive.net.

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.

Brought to you by www.project-drive.net.

The PM's Role in Project Profitability – Part 2

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we established what should be obvious to all experienced project personnel – that overall responsibility for the profitability of any project is ultimately the project manager’s. I also began to look at what I consider to be the key actionable steps that the project manager can take to help ensure project profitability. Part 1 covered the first two of my top five. Those first two actions were:

• Meticulously manage scope
• Frequent and purposeful revision of the project schedule

In this final segment, we’ll examine three more steps: careful management of project resources, involving the team in managing the budget, and reviewing the budget with management and the client. Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Manage resources carefully

A good team of project resources may very well be your key to project success. Indeed, finding – and keeping engaged – the best and most relevant skill sets for the project solution at hand can mean the difference between a successful deployment and a project gone horribly wrong. But the project manager who can’t skillfully manage those talented and high-priced resources and keep them focused on the assigned tasks is destined to deliver a final solution that is neither profitable nor on time.

See, talented technical resources have egos. They know they can do this or they’re certain they can do that. And they are certain the can do it fast. When working with client project team members closely on key functionality of the project, they may be inclined to gold plate functionality or even add new functionality that “shouldn’t take much time” even though it’s not part of the agreed upon scope of the project. Those ‘small details’ add up and in the end you can find yourself giving away a pile of extra hours (dollars) of development time that you never counted on.

The key for the project manager is to use project management software and keep the project schedule in front of the team members, remind them weekly – daily if necessary – what key tasks they are to be focused on and remind them not to add functionality. Educate them in the change order process and make sure they come to you if the customer is asking for more than we’re supposed to provide. That’s called extra functionality and if you work it right, it’s also called project profitability.

Engage the team in budget management activities

The project manager who sits down regularly with the project resources to review the budget status and budget forecast is much more likely to keep the project budget on track than the project manager who does not make his team aware of the financial aspects of the engagement.

Project resources are required to account for their time and charge their time to the projects they are working on. That’s how your project gets hours charged to it. All project resources have ‘grey hours’. Those are the hours that they know they worked in a given week but can’t remember specifically what they did or which project they did it for. It’s often about 10% of their time, maybe more. If they overcharge hours to your project – meaning if they add their ‘grey hours’ to the engagement you’re managing – that can mean your project is getting 10% extra hours….and dollars….charged to it each week by each resource. Don’t be the project manager who is perceived as the one who doesn’t watch the project budget closely and you won’t be on the receiving end of those ‘grey hours.’

Review the budget with senior management and the client

Finally, regularly review the project budget with your senior management and with the client. This is helpful for two reasons:

• Educating the allies. The onus is still on you as the project manager to deliver a profitable project. However, by educating your senior leadership and your client along the way in the health of the project budget you’ve now gained two allies interested in helping right the project budget should it start to go wrong. Both of these parties are stakeholders in the success of the project. Keeping them informed early and often means they’ll be aware along with you when the project budget starts to become unhealthy – and not just when it’s already too late to fix.
• Forcing accountability. If you have educated the client and your senior management as to the status of the project then there’s really no undoing that. You’ve now forced accountability of yourself to them and there’s no turning back. This can be a good thing. Managing multiple projects isn’t that easy, but it’s usually a fact of life for most project managers. Keeping yourself accountable for key areas of the project - like the budget in this case - is helpful and will keep you focused and not inclined to cut corners.

Brought to you by www.project-drive.net.

The PM's Role in Project Profitability - Part 1

Who has overall responsibility for the profitability of a project? Sales? The VP of Marketing? The CEO? The project manager? The project team? Sales is responsible for making a deal on the project that is targeted to make money for the company. The VP of Marketing is responsible for staffing sales and account managers and business development to go out and find new sales opportunities and to create new business for the organization. The CEO has overall responsibility for the organization and it’s profitability. If it flounders for an extended period of time, it will be the CEO who resigns. But in terms of overall responsibility for the budget and profitability of the project….that’s the project manager.

So we’ve established that it’s the PM’s role to maintain the project budget and guard the overall profitability of the engagement. How does that happen? What can the project manager do to ensure project profitability? What actions can he take to help guide the project to an on budget delivery that means it met its financial goals and ultimately ended on a profitable note?

Meticulously manage scope

Most any project manager would tell you that a project’s financial health begins and ends with scope management. And the project manager who performs scope management the best wins…period. Much is said about scope creep, requirements definition and documentation, and ongoing management of new work on the project. But unless that line in the sand is drawn and the project manager adheres to it and gets his team to adhere to it, profits will be lost, unplanned work will happen to make a customer happy, and the project will mysteriously pull into the finish line 20% over budget.

It’s easy when our very skilled developers are working closely with subject matter experts on the customer side for them to incorporate ‘nice-to-haves’ that come up during meetings. The problem is, these ‘nice-to-haves’ aren’t actually part of the documented project requirements that the end solution is being built against. It is the project manager’s responsibility to educate his project team about the dangers of such activity. Five extra hours here, ten extra hours there, more testing time and suddenly you find the project several thousand dollars off the mark budget wise.

Only perform work that is documented by requirements and ensure that all other requested work is turned into change orders that are priced for the customer to review and decide whether or not to pay for. Change orders make the project more profitable by allowing the delivery organization to get paid for that work and they make the customer happy by getting work that they want added on actually documented, completed, tested, and part of the final solution.

Frequent and purposeful revision of the project schedule

If the project gets out of hand, profitability will likely go with it. Many project managers in matrix environments are managing several projects at once. With so much going on, it’s very easy to lose track of what tasks are happening when – also making it very difficult to keep the project team in check and hold them accountable to their project tasks that they are responsible for.

It’s definitely not enough to put the project schedule together and leave it alone. On some projects, PMs start with a detailed schedule produced from project management software and then they put it on a shelf. That can’t happen - it must be a living, breathing part of the project and it – along with the weekly status report – should drive the weekly formal project status meeting with the customer. A regularly distributed, up-to-date project schedule lets each team member know what tasks they should be working on and keeps the team focused on the work that should be happening. Meaning your time, effort and dollars are being spent on the important work – and helping to keep the project profitable.

In Part 2 of this two-part series, we’ll examine three more ways the project manager can help keep the project on track and profitable throughout it’s lifecycle.

Brought to you by www.project-drive.net.

Unique Features Added to Project Drive, Leading Web-based Project Management Software.

Quebec, Canada, April 1st, 2009 - TGMT Systems Inc, today announced the launch of an update for its web-based business solution, Project Drive (www.project-drive.net). Project Drive is a fully customizable, web-based project management solution.

In line with its philosophy of continuous innovation, TGMT Systems has launched an update for the popular web-based project management software, which includes a market-unique Timesheet Module and enhancements to the interface and to user productivity features.

Project Drive's Timesheet Module provides companies with detailed and real-time insight into the costs and return on investment of their projects. The Module was also developed with service providers and consultants in mind, allowing companies to set both resource's cost and billing rates, for normal, overtime and company-specified type of operations. The Module offers flexible features to manage time and costs at the task, project and company level, while providing reporting functions allowing managers to view costs, billing and employee information for a specific project or task or for all company projects with an additional variable of day, week and month summaries.

Additionally, users can now easily create a new project based on an existing project, allowing the selection of project's tasks, links between tasks, recurring tasks, default queries and security settings. Project managers can now quickly create new projects based on existing ones and benefit from copying methodologies, proven successful for the company.

Focused on user friendliness, the updates also include enhancements to Project Drive's interface, with user selection of interface mode, such as Quick Help Mode, which provides users with a guided experience, complete with icons and in-context descriptions and quick tips.

"Project Drive is the result of our commitment to innovation and our openness to client comments and market needs," said Thierry Tremblay, CEO of TGMT Systems. "Project Drive is unique in the industry because of its level of adaptability and flexibility. We continuously develop new features, taking into account all possible users and our client's experience with the software. The Timesheet Module is a unique and valuable add-on to a project management software, which will help any company achieve control over project costs and billing, no matter their business model".

ABOUT PROJECT DRIVE

Founded in 1998 by a small group of seasoned developers and graphic designers, TGMT Systems Inc, based in Quebec, Canada, is the creator of popular web-based business solutions, such as Bug-Track.com and Project-Drive.net. TGMT Systems provides advanced business management solutions within intuitive, easy to implement environments, focusing on customer-driven innovation. TGMT Systems supports its web-based solutions with a sophisticated data center and has implemented best-of-breed security and redundancy protocols.

http://www.project-drive.net