Whether you like it or not, there has been no escaping this year’s World Cup. Despite the disappointment of England’s untimely departure, the competition continues to dominate the front and back pages. Whilst he is nursing the pain of the USA’s recent exit, our resident Yank and marketing expert Dan (Editor’s note: a.k.a “Editor” heretofore) has asked me to reflect upon the “lessons learned” from Brazil 2014.
Here’s a list of 10 shameless analogies to project management from this year’s tournament:
The ticket to understanding elements of your project management potential may lie in this year’s World Cup(image courtesy Jorge in Brazil via @Flickr, re-used with permission. Changes were not made to the image.)
The twelfth man – Whether it’s been the sun, the samba or the Selecao, there’s no denying that the support for this year’s cup has been fantastic. Amid the hype, the USA’s coach Jurgen Klinsmann gave a master-class in stakeholder engagement with his letter to America’s bosses ahead of their game against Germany.
The death of tiki-taka – Methodologies come and go. As Spain’s exit shows us, the trick is to have the flexibility to choose an approach that fits the game and gets a result. This serves as a word of warning to those always following the flavour of the month.
“No tactics without technique” – The English national team have once again failed to make it far on the biggest stage. Over-drilled and under-skilled, Hodgson’s men proved that no matter how good the tactics, a team needs a fundamental level of competency before it has the capability to achieve its goals.
Beware! Underdog bites! – In a group of three former world champions, Costa Rica were the lowest risk on the register at the start of the tournament. That hasn’t stopped them becoming an issue.
Beware! Striker bites! – What struck me about Suarez’ misdemeanour was the public outrage incurred: not by the monster munch itself, but by his silence on the subject, before making an apology. Whether there’s an appeal process or not on your project’s evaluation, no communication is bad communication in times of crisis.
Home advantage – Brazil may not have been at their scintillating best so far in the tournament, but it comes as no surprise that half of the teams to reach the quarter finals are South American. Familiar working conditions, lofty aims and high expectations have undoubtedly spurred the hosts – and their neighbours – to outperform the rest of the world.
A game of two halves…and extra time and penalties – The number of games that have gone into extra time this year has probably been more popular with the fans than with the players due to the heat. Overtime has seen the levels of performance drop and the number of mistakes increase as legs tire and concentration is lost.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I wasn’t on that particular job…” – What do ‘Big Phil’ Scolari, Didier Deschamps and van Gaal have in common apart from a team in the quarters? Charisma. The value of strong leadership for team work, conflict resolution, communication and – ultimately – project success, is undoubted and immeasurable in value.
Calamity in Qatar – Whilst Brazil seems to be getting over its teething problems, Sepp and his cronies continue to baffle with their handling of plans for the World Cup in Qatar. If you want an example of how not to do a risk assessment, how not to engage stakeholders, how not to monitor compliance, or how not to run a project: look no further!
On scope, on time and on budget? – Despite its successes, criticisms that will mar the legacy of the Brazilian World Cup have all come from three classic project management perspectives. First, delivering all that entails an international tournament in a country with more pressing socio-economic and political issues was the cause of the widespread riots that threatened to kill the fever of the cup. Second, spray painted turf at Fortaleza (editor’s note: not to mention rickety structures) was a symptom of widespread under delivery. From the pitches, to the stadiums, to the transport infrastructure, Brazil did not come close to meeting requirements on schedule. Finally, the cost of the World Cup will ultimately be judged against the benefits that the tournament brings to the nation over the next few years. (editor’s note: Against the backdrop of Rio de Janiero playing host to the next edition of the Summer Olympics, the impact could face even more scrutiny. Given what has transpired in Greece in recent years, the legacy of hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics is negligible and forgotten, especially in light of losing out on so much economically without the burden of the World Cup hosting gig to boot.) Whether the impact of this World Cup demonstrated value for money in Brazil will be a question that overshadows the tournament’s place in history.
Nick Sharpe joined p3m global as a University of Exeter graduate in 2013, working in a consulting capacity to drive improvements in the Project Management methodologies of our clients. After a quick-fire induction on our Project Management Fundamentals course, and initiation into the wonders of the ‘iron triangle’, Nick was qualified in PRINCE2 and MS Project, and assessing clients project management frameworks. Nick has worked with clients in the recruitment, telecoms and energy sectors, and with HR, Business Services and IT departments.
Steve Butler PMP lays out what Project Management means to him (and PM-Partners) in conjunction with the exciting Shim Marom-inspired #pmflashblog initiative. In short, Steve feels that project management requires a lot of planning, and some common sense, too.
Project management is all about change. Strip out all the latest fads, standards and gimmicks and at its heart all project management really boils down to is a risk mitigation exercise when you are trying to effect change – be it deliver a product or a service or an update. Keep that thought at the front of your mind when managing a project, and everything becomes common sense. You are changing something, and you want to get it right. So what do you need to consider? Well, you need to make sure “it” is the right thing…so some sort of requirements gathering exercise and scoping exercise is needed so you can hit the target. To do that you need to make sure you are talking to the right people to find out the right information, and to make sure you are keeping the right people up to speed with what you are doing – so some sort of communications management and stakeholder happiness plan needs to be in place. Obviously when you gather the requirements and define the scope, a budget and a timeline needs to be defined and managed, and how they progress needs to be communicated (hence having a communications plan). Within the timeline will be milestones and deliverables and some sort of mechanism for delivering them and reviewing the milestones. Part of making sure you hit the target is making sure the quality of what you are doing is acceptable, so some sort of plan to manage that is necessary. You can think about assembling the team, and keeping them happy and efficient. If you’re not sure exactly what you’re doing, maybe deliver in bits and make sure you are heading in the right direction by regularly reviewing with someone who knows what is required. Maybe regularly review with the team to make sure they are doing the right thing and have no blockers you don’t know about. We could call that basic concept, oh I don’t know, Agile? A concept that has been around for decades, but now has a name! Project Management – an exercise in common sense.
Estimating is undoubtedly one of the most complex tasks in project management. There are various, damning statistics published on the failure of projects to deliver within time and/or cost and suffice to say they don’t look good. This fact remains despite the various tools and techniques at the project manager’s disposal. The list of pitfalls below is neither exhaustive nor a panacea to answering all of your estimating challenges; rather, it’s a checklist that you should keep in mind when planning and estimating. One scenario that cannot be reconciled by the advice below is where a high level guess is made by management and expected to be adhered to without more detailed scoping and activity planning. This top-down approach can often be aligned to the “just do it” (JDI) approach – “here’s your budget, JDI”. You reply, “But what about, but what about, but what about…” At this point you receive some great advice: “work harder, work smarter, work faster” Sorry, but I can’t help you there. Just remember: if any of your constraints are not balanced, then something’s gotta give. Pitfall 1: Uninformed or partially informed Guessing or Ball parking. How much will it cost to build a five-bedroom house? The answer is, it depends:
What is in scope?
What size does the house need to be?
Does it include landscaping the garden?
Does the project include decorating and light fittings and, and…?”
Whilst all of this may seem obvious, accurate estimates are reliant upon sufficient understanding of the requirements. Be especially careful when you hear the words, “give me a ballpark now, I won’t hold you to it” – get this in writing!!! I must admit to having asked for ballparks on many occasions both for projects and in home life. I recently asked several builders how much it would cost to build a 2-storey extension of X square feet. However, when I ask for a ballpark, I accept that this is based on a very loose specification but at least it provides me with a range of figures to enable me to make an initial decision on whether to investigate further. Let’s be honest, it is also not easy to hold a builder to an estimate.
Pitfall 2: Failure to help the customer define what they want and how much they are willing to spend. Many customers have a high level understanding of what they want but are not always able to articulate the detail of what they want or more precisely what they need. It is one of the project manager’s responsibilities to help the customer to define what they want/need. The definition of requirements needs to be coupled with how much the customer is willing to spend. It would be nice to hear, “money is no object” but this is extremely rare if not non-existent. Therefore, there is no point defining the building of an ocean liner when the customer is only willing to pay for a dinghy. I have seen the results of a detailed tender which took many man hours, only to discover that the customer’s budget was a fraction of what the scope covered by the tender would have cost.
Pitfall 3: Misunderstanding quotes and estimates. A quote is a fixed price whereas an estimate is an approximation. Where a customer asks for a quote, it is essential to ensure that you fully understand what you are quoting for. In the example of the five-bedroom house above, we would need to know, amongst many, many other things, if the quote should include the decorating, landscaping of the garden and much more. So often, fixed-price contracts are agreed without sufficient investigation and definition of the requirements. Significant caution should be applied especially where you or your organisation are keen to win business. In this instance it is imperative you spend a little more time detailing and agreeing the scope at the start. The additional time spent up front could save you from a loss making project later. I have been involved in projects where the scope was not sufficiently defined and ended up costing us considerably more than it should have.
Pitfall 4: Not identifying the activities/tasks. Larger projects are very difficult to plan in detail at the start. Where this is the case it is important for all parties to understand that the margins for error are greater and therefore, the more change control and wiggle-room or tolerance that is required. Remember, the more you can break down the activities the more accurate your estimates will be. One of the biggest mistakes made is in failing to identify project management activities required to deliver the project. This includes not only the Project Managers activities but those of the teams such as reporting progress, meetings, phone calls and emails. Consider researching Maximum Available Productivity (MAP) to get a better understanding of how much of a day is spent on project work and how much on other tasks. I was involved in a project where the customer was a global organisations and the business we did with them very important to the company. Prior to joining the project a fixed-price had been agreed. The deliverables had not been sufficiently defined and so what may have been initially envisaged and what the customer wanted were a little out of sync. In addition, whilst the key stakeholder was great to deal with, they were very particular and would ask for multiple minor changes after the initial review rounds. Some would only take an hour or so but when you add in the emails, phone calls, meetings, reformatting and other activities, it adds up to quite a significant number of days.
Pitfall 5: Good Padding and Bad Padding. Before you shout, “no, padding should be allowed, it is always bad”, let me clarify what I mean. Good padding is taking into account activities that do not easily sit on a projects schedule and that these need to be allowed for when estimating. Bad padding is where a PM automatically adds time so as to come under budget knowing that the quote is excessively padded. Whilst this may work on one or two projects you will eventually get caught out. I am usually a cautious PM as previous experience has shown me that to immediately agree to time and cost estimates without fully understanding each deliverable and the tasks, is at best poor and for experienced project manager’s, dare I say it, unprofessional. This pitfall should be considered with almost all of the other pitfalls in this post.
Pitfall 6: Failure to learn lessons. I think it is fair to say that there are many project managers that research lessons from similar past projects. However, in my experience, sadly these are in the minority. It is imperative that you look to lessons learned from similar past projects to ensure that you learn not only estimating errors but other issues that you may be able to avoid and that will save you time and money. Learning lessons is equally important during your project, especially if it is a long and/or a multi-staged project. Lessons from earlier work can be applied to estimating future tasks to ensure improved accuracy. I have worked for companies that make the same mistake time after time and wonder why there projects are always over time and budget.
Pitfall 7: Not knowing a reasonable cost. There may be elements of work on the project hat are unfamiliar to you and your team and that require the services of an external supplier. Where this is the case, you need to ensure you do your homework and know what a fair rate is. I was looking on eBay recently for fuel containers, and was amazed at how the price differed for precisely the same container. The lowest price was £9.99 and the highest £29.99. I am serious, this was for exactly the same product.
Pitfall 8: Failing to include the subject matter expert (SME). It is essential to include the SME when estimating. After all, they will be the ones that know the work or managing the work and therefore, their invaluable experience is a crucial input when planning and preparing estimates. I have experienced both the good and the bad. In one organisation I worked for, bids from sales would include input from the experienced project manager and SMEs to ensure an accurate quote was provided. In other organisations, the sales and other management have decided on a time and cost without full consultation with the SME. This actually resulted in the deliverables taking longer and ultimately costing the supplier more money. One reason for this may be that their ego dictates that they should know. Why should they know? A manger will not always understand the minutia to create a deliverable and should make the use of the experience of their team. Good managers and leaders understand that no one has a monopoly on ideas and utilises and publicises ideas from within their team.
Pitfall 9: Failing to allow for bias, pessimistic and optimistic. The project manager needs to be aware of their own bias and that of management and the project team. Pessimistic bias is where an individual tends to add additional time as they always consider it will take more time or something will go wrong. Let’s not malign this character too readily. They often have valid reasons for this approach, most likely gained form the experience of the JDI approach mentioned above or they can see vast chasms in the detailing of the scope. This needs to be balanced against the Optimistic bias or “rose coloured spectacles”. This happy-go-lucky character tends to believe that everything is easy or simple and that more can be achieved than is realistic. An example is where an SME is asked how long it will take to perform a number of activities. They quote based on them performing the task and in perfect conditions, without considering the experience of the individual(s) involved in performing the task. The most dangerous of the optimists are those that want to be seen to have a “can do attitude”. A “can do attitude” is essential for a project manager, but as with many of these thrown-around terms, it needs to be balanced with realism. I recall one particular colleague that would always say, “Oh, I can knock that up in a couple of days”. Whilst this was occasionally achieved, it was rare for the original estimate to be met. They also had a high sick rate without having any specific medical condition. There is also the poor soul who wants to impress and so underquotes with the intention of working almost 24/7. Invariably, this person will burn out and again watch their sick record.
In conclusion, estimating is a tough challenge. This post is not intended to cover all potential estimating pitfalls, but does provide you with a list of what I have found to be some of the main problems in estimating. Keep these in mind and with the use of this advice and the right estimating techniques and tools, I am convinced your estimating will improve.
Derek Bland is Project Management Consultant & Trainer at p3m global. His experience includes consultancy on design and delivery of bespoke Project Management methods, conducting Project Audits and advising PMs on best practice improvements. As a trainer, Derek has worked in PRINCE2 and MSP environments and delivered on a variety of project management courses.
I’d like to focus on four tasks from the start of a project that are often neglected or performed superficially, but done well can make a key difference to the smooth running of the project.
1. Risk identification and analysis
Getting a project started is rarely as easy as it appears – especially when your appreciation for the four taks discussed at let is, at best, cosmetic. Image courtesy Todd Dailey (twid) @Flickr, re-used with permission.
Early risk identification is key to project success. The high level risks should be identified as part of the bid response process, along with their potential impacts on the project scope, timescales and costs. This information can then be used to update the business case for the project and to tailor the bid response appropriately. The project risks may significantly impact the business case; in extreme cases the risk identification may cause the project bid to be cancelled. In planning, a full risk identification exercise should be carried out with the project team and input also sought from the project stakeholders. This provides early visibility of potential risks and their impacts. The project manager then has the information to run the project in a way that reduces the likelihood of their occurrence and mitigates their impact.
2. Stakeholder identification and analysis A key measure of project success is the satisfaction of the project stakeholders. The project can deliver the required deliverables, on time and in budget, yet still be considered a failure if the stakeholders are unhappy with the outcome. Equally, projects that were late and over budget can still be perceived as successful if the stakeholders are satisfied. It is therefore vitally important to identify all the project stakeholders when initiating the project and to document their interests, impact and communication needs. The stakeholders can then be appropriately engaged during the project life-cycle, maximising their satisfaction with the project. 3. Complexity analysis A project complexity level can be obtained by analysing criteria such as the project price, technical complexity and clarity of the scope. Defining a complexity level for a project enables selection of a suitably experienced project manager and appropriate internal governance. The complexity level also determines the project management effort and documentation to be specified, included in the contract and communicated to the customer. This communication is vital. Project management effort and documentation are often poorly defined, yet where the customer clearly understands what they will receive then the potential for conflict over the scope is considerably reduced. 4. Quality planning Checking that the project deliverables have appropriate acceptance testing is highly important, but this testing by itself should nor form the entirety of the project quality management. There is a significant omission; the quality of the project management must also be planned, monitored and controlled. The quality of the project management can be determined through actions such as reviews of the project by the steering committee and customer satisfaction surveys. Quality processes appropriate to the project should be defined during project planning, and included in the project schedule to ensure that they are carried out. The quality of the whole project is then measured, understood, and if necessary, can be corrected and lessons learned documented for future projects. Katharine Thornber is a Project Management Consultant for PM-Partners. Her track record has allowed Katharine to develop particular expertise in matters related to product management, project management, programme management and engineering. Katharine is PRINCE2 certified and has worked previously in the telecommunications industry. For more on her blog posts and other posts from the P3M Blog, be sure to connect with our group on LinkedIn.
PRINCE2® is the de facto standard for project management developed by the UK government, used in the UK and across the world. Developed by project management specialists and a review panel of public and private sector organisations (whilst taking into account user based improvements), it has grown into a tailorable best practice tool that is suitable for use on any project.
As the PRINCE2: 2009 update approaches its 5th Anniversary, AXELOS want your feedback on making it better.
Photo courtesy giulia.forsythe @Flickr, and reused with permission.
The last edition was published in 2009 which represented an evolution of the previous manuals. The basic method remained the same, but by building on feedback from users, the 2009 edition aimed to be more accessible and easier to tailor. For project sponsors or directors, this represented a revolution in that the guidance was divided into two;
- Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 for project managers and; - Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 to give project board members a role-specific guide targeted for their needs.
Now after five years the guidance is due for a revision.
AXELOS, the new joint venture between the UK Government’s Cabinet Office and Capita plc, are currently hosting a survey on PRINCE2®, from which they will analyse the results and validate with the user community. They will then seek to involve Accredited Training Organizations (like us) and User Communities in the process to formulate plans around the need and nature of any revisions to the guidance.
If you have not as yet completed the survey, you may do so at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HGQT27N. The survey should take about 40 minutes to complete, depending on how many comments that are left.
Mike Austin is the Lead Trainer for p3m global. His track record is that of a highly motivated Project Management Trainer who has an outstanding understanding of the PRINCE2® methodology and M_o_R® management of risk methodology and the ability to successfully communicate it to others. Get in touch with Mike via email today.
