A very dear friend of mine, a British Airways pilot, once described his job as 99% boredom plus 1% sheer terror. Not much different to IT projects, I thought.
And the terror of missed deadlines and under-delivery lasts long after the post implementation review. The success rate of IT projects can only increase if the Best Project Managers share their passion, tips and experience.
This blog is all about sharing the best from the best and putting it out there for all IT Project Managers who want to grow from good to great.
After thirty years in the IT industry I am still dismayed at the frequency of spectacular failures. But optimistic I remain. Some fundamental truths cut through all the processes and qualifications and coaching and courses and …..
Here are my top Five Winning Ways:
Precision Planning: This is number one on my list of how not to stuff up a perfectly deliverable IT solution. There is a reason why the upward curve of the project life-cycle depicts a long and arduous climb towards a do-able plan. But time and again, the launch date is locked in tight, there’s a big rush to get started and then halfway down the other side, the project teams fall over themselves and land in heap at the bottom – leaving behind a trail of missed milestones, dismal deliverables and underwhelmed users.
The Best Project Managers take their time to plan with precision (and foresight, experience and flexibility).
User Understanding: Technophobes in the business have infinite capacity for misunderstanding even the simplest IT solutions. Their dismay is shortly followed by the heartfelt cry: I know it’s what we asked for, but it’s not what we wanted.
The Best Project Managers take their time to communicate the future to everyone – less pain later!
Benefit Based Business Cases: Over-optimistic Business Cases are a great way to inflate user expectation, boost pessimistic investment boards and drive a sponsor to the limits of dementia. But if it can’t be measured then it can’t be managed. Not a difficult concept but when identifying benefits for a business case, the capacity for fantasy knows no bounds.
The Best Project Managers validate their business cases – and have the courage to let their sponsors know the chance of success.
Scope Gallop: The likelihood of a project’s success is in direct proportion to the consistency and comprehension of the project’s scope. Scope creeps at the same rate as users decide they want more and technicians re-design the solution. Time spent up front nailing down the scope avoids a nervous breakdown later in the schedule.
Loving Leadership: Genuine affection for team members gets rid of all the stress, strain and anxiety of pressured projects. The other leadership skills - motivation, drive and inspiration - settle in the wake of this basic trait.
The Best Project Managers read the best books around on people skills. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People was written in the 1920s- is still popular today.
The Best Project Managers take time to plan, they are creative when communicating complex issues; they use style, pictures and plain language. They can spot an un-doable Business Case – and are brave enough to tell their sponsor.
They take the time to understand the scope and leash it in before it takes off. And they know that IT is a people business.
WHAT ARE YOUR TOP WINNING WAYS? I would love to read about your secrets of success.
Congratulation for your new blog :)
ReplyDeleteI like this structured/bullet approach where you enumerate the crucial features and I recognize all of them, and there are more for sure. I come with science/engineering background and I am just learning bits of management culture, in particular I resonate with the issues of "Precision Planning" and human factors, which seem unpredictable in learning and creative environments (very typical in software development). It's quite common for students to be frustrated with planning, especially the precision bits, because things inevitably change, thus planning seems to be pointless: it will be changed anyway, so it seems not to matter what is in the plan.
ReplyDeleteA good case for planning is at least setting the direction for the project and communicating it with others, it also provides a baseline for another feature: evaluation and (re)planning. On the other hand, in software development practice it is almost too easy to record/log the actual activities in the project with high precision (version control, hour accounting, or just plain calendar schedules), to the point that one can be swamped with information.
Which leads me to the following questions:
1) how to align evaluation with planning so that (re)planning would benefit from precision logging?
2) what aspects of the project can be planned with precision and confidence without bringing the frustration with planning?
Marius - You make some very valid points here. Frustration goes hand in hand with planning. Precision doesn't necessarily mean going down to tiny details. It is more about considering the risks around solutions, what are the time tolerances associated and factoring those in. At a higher level of detail the effort should be focused on taking the time to get it as right as you can. Yes things will change but if you fail to plan you plan to fail. I don't believe there is an avoidance strategy for frustration in planning - but enough time spent up front will reduce the re-planning effort and thus, the frustration significantly. Thank you Marius for taking the time to comment.
ReplyDelete