Don't forget.....we have moved!!

Yes, we have moved to a brand new site full of downloads and new blog posts.

You will find us here or on www.ronrosenhead.co.uk

See you there!!

Yes, we have moved our blog site.....

I mentioned in a previous blog that we would be moving....Ahead of schedule we have moved. You can now catch me blogging at:

www.ronrosenhead.co.uk where there is lots of free stuff - downloads and a list of services.

So, over to you. Click here or go to www.ronrosenhead.co.uk. See you there and thaks for reading and all the emails.

Olympics - another tale...

Today's Guardian newspaper has a story that Designs for the London 2012 Olympic aquatic centre broke its original budget of £73m more than three years before games organisers admitted that the true cost had tripled to £242m.


Cost of the games are a real political hot potato. We must not forget that the games are clearly linked to a massive regeneration programme however I wonder how many stories like this will appear before the games start in just over 4 years time.

You can read all about the story here

Look out; we are on the move soon

Please note that this Blog will soon be on the move.

The Gantt chart says it will be delivered by no later than 29 May 2008. There you are, a public commitment!

I will point you to the new site soon!

The story that simply will not go away.

Yes, it’s back: the Olympic story.

Headlines in today’s papers and on the TV and radio are the comments from the Department of Culture Media and Sport: who suggested that the organisers of the 2012 Olympics are “willing to spend money like water”, as costs for the event soar.

A very important statement is shown on the BBC web site: “But the government insists it has rigid cost control measures in place”.

Now, look at your projects: what cost control measures do you have in place to ensure that projects do not go over time, over budget and that they are delivering the right results?

This is a very high profile project. Look at high profile projects in your company and examine what monitoring and control processes are in place. The Olympic project is like a beacon; it shows what you should be doing in your projects. In this instance, monitoring and control; make them essential and an integral part of your projects.

Project Management Roles - let's get them right

I was watching a police ‘soap’ TV recently and during the programme great play was made of organising the structure for the enquiry. An investigating officer was appointed and a team established. While this was a TV programme it showed that the roles and responsibilities were clearly of importance, worthy of taking time to identify and develop.

This led me to think about project management roles which people tell us are often unclear. This they tell us leads to problems of decisions making, governance and obtaining the right resources at the right time among many other issues.

On project management events we ask people to look at the role they play in a project. It is interesting that a lot of people find this activity difficult. Why? Because the person carrying out the activity is not clear who does what.

It is even more interesting for those that think project roles are clear. Some people have sat back and smiled saying all is well; until I ask a series of questions such as:

1. Do the named individuals know that the role you have given them is theirs for that project?

2. What do they actually do in the project?

3. Do they carry out the role of (say project manager) effectively?

4. What authority do these people have within the project?

I usually end up suggesting that people go back and start to ask some questions about roles and do this quickly. The questions are not easy to ask and the answers sometimes really difficult to come by.

If you are not clear about your role in a project how likely is it that the project will be delivered on time and to budget with the right results? Spend time up front identifying the role you play, make life easier for those trying to deliver projects and if you are one of those who is faced with not knowing what your role is then I suggest you raise your head above the parapet and ask some tough questions, and keep on asking until roles are clear AND documented.

Those Olympic estimates will not go away

The row about the cost of the 2012 Olympic Games goes on. Today a report by the Public Accounts Committee (click here for the full 40 page report) criticises the government for the escalating costs of the games.

Costs have risen from a bid price of just over £4 billion to a revised estimate (March 2008) of £9.325 billion! Now my guess is that the arguments around the true cost of the games will continue for many years up to and beyond the games themselves.

I am not going to try and argue which side is correct or who made big errors, if any have been made, I want to use this as an example of what can happen if your estimates are wrong - time, money or resources.

We work with many professional staff who in their words estimate poorly or use guestimates. So what can be done to ensure you have more accurate estimates?

*break it down - on our courses we stress the need to break down the overall project into manageable chunks. We encourage people to use work breakdown or product breakdown techniques. If you are going to put estimates against an activity the activity needs to be small enough to put an estimate against e.g. if you are carrying out all of the administration for a conference it is easier to estimate how long it will take to hire 4 projectors compared to organising the whole conference.

*who has the skills to provide you with the knowledge of what is involved in the project and how long each task will take. Use financial experts to help you identify the financial estimates.

*you are not alone - sometimes you are working on a project which someone within your organisation has worked on before. Ask them how long the project took. Ask them for the work breakdown; look at the cost estimates and actuals.

*documentation - the above point highlights the need for project documentation. Keep up to date records

*post project review and project meetings including lessons learned reports - these should include the level of accuracy of your estimates (of all your estimates - money, time, resources), what you have learned while working on the project. Share this information with others.

Make sure you spend more time estimating. Avoid the poor publicity or the consequences of spending too much money, delivering late with the wrong results.

Have a look at your...project leadership

So, just how good a project leader are you? I came across a great Blog site called Project Steps - Stephen Seay who writes this blog asked a number of pertinent questions about project leadership. Try and get a more rounded view of yourself, give the questionnaire to others...here are the questions:


RATING SCALE - 1 – Strongly Disagree, 2 – Disagree, 3 – Neither Agree or Disagree4 – Agree, 5 – Strongly Agree

1. Effectively engages others to improve service delivery and follow-through on problem resolution. (Service Delivery)
2. Positively influences the team to translate customer needs into valued deliverables (i.e. work products and services. (Action Focus)
3. Ensures that agreed-upon commitments to internal and external customers are fulfilled. (Customer commitment)
4. Develops strong partnerships throughout the enterprise that foster positive customer relationships. (Organizational Relationships)
5. Stays calm and even-tempered when handling crises, stressful situations, or unexpected developments; does not become cynical, moody, or hostile when times are tough. (Composure)
6. Brings conflict into the open by encouraging constructive two-way communication, focusing on solutions and maintaining positive working relationship with those who disagree. (Conflict Resolution)
7. Builds effective teams by modeling open communication, providing constructive feedback, and encouraging different viewpoints. (Building Effective Teams)
8. Effectively facilitates group discussion by helping groups to define objectives, staying on task, soliciting diverse input, summarizing accomplishments and outlining next steps. (Group Facilitation)
9. Encourages a sense of job ownership by routinely soliciting input from team members, incorporating ideas into actions and holding the team accountable for results. (Empowering Teams)
10. Listens attentively and actively to both what is said and to non-verbal cues; has the patience to hear people out; accurately restates the opinions of others even when he/she disagrees. (Listening)
11. Demonstrates integrity in difficult situations by maintaining a balance between constructively identifying concerns, being upfront and honest, and maintaining respectful work relations. (Acting with Integrity)
12. Consistently acts in line with the best interest of the organization as well as in accordance with organizational policies during both good and tough times. (Ethics)
13. Builds and maintains trusting work relationships by being candid and upfront in a respectful and helpful manner, keeping confidences, following through on commitments, and practicing what is preached. (Building Trust)14. Listens to complaints, suggestions, concerns, or requests; demonstrates consistency, impartiality, and even-handedness in making decisions. (Fairness)
15. Seeks opportunities to learn and actively works to continuously improve him/herself. Stays up-to-date on current practices and trends in his/her field. (Self Development)
16. Regularly solicits feedback on opportunities to improve oneself or delivery of products and services; implements ideas and suggestions to improve results. (Continual improvement)
17. Manages projects by breaking the work into process steps, establishing appropriate project teams, measuring performance against goals, and evaluating results. (Project Management)
18. Builds individual capacity by providing stretch tasks and assignments. Encourages others to learn and grow. Developing Others)
19. Creates focus by establishing priorities based on business needs; quickly zeros in on the critical few. (Prioritizing)
20. Seeks out and optimizes all available resources to achieve the best results efficiently, consistent with organization objectives. Knows who to involve and when. (Resourcefulness)
21. Effectively aligns fiscal resources to support strategic and business plans. (Fiscal Planning)
22. Effectively aligns technology resources to support strategic and business plans. (Technological planning)
23. Originates new and unique ideas; moves beyond the status quo and looks for better ways of doing things. (Innovation/Creativity)
24. Identifies obstacles and generates potential solutions to achieve challenges. (Problem-Solving)
25. Willing to try unconventional methods and/or to take personal risks to achieve desired outcomes that are consistent with organization objectives. (Risk Taking)
26. Accurately anticipates future trends and consequences. Sees the long-range implications of tactical decisions made today. Has broad knowledge and perspective. Can create competitive and breakthrough strategies and plans. (Strategic Thinking)
27. Considers various resources, obstacles, risks, perspectives, adverse reactions and financial impact when making recommendations and committing to action. (Critical Thinking)
28. Addresses performance issues by providing current, direct, complete, actionable, and developmental feedback to others; lets people know where they stand and supports others with ideas for continual improvement. (Coaching) 29. Takes responsibility and tackles difficult situations without passing them off to someone else; after making a mistake, admits it and either personally makes corrections or seeks assistance from others. (Ownership)
30. Drives for results; pushes ahead and maintains focus when confronted with obstacles. (Results Oriented)

So go on, have a look at yourself and your leadership style....

Good luck

Sorry, in a meeting

I was trying to get hold of the project manager. Or rather he was trying to get hold of me. However, I had tried 3 times already so I sent him an email knowing it would sink to the bottom of the pile.

I got to thinking that it wasn’t just this project manager who always seemed to be in meetings. Several people I have been trying to get hold of always seem to be in back to back meetings.

Project Agency has been collecting statistics for several years. Some 1,120 people have completed our questionnaire and one of the questions is quite revealing:

‘Project meetings are collaborative events which look at achievements not past failures’. The percentages are shown below:

Strongly agree: 1.3% (15 people)

Agree: 5.6% (289 people)

Disagree: 57.3% (648 people)

Strongly Disagree 12.6% (143 people)

Don’t know 3.2% (36 people)

Not very good stats are they? Interesting that 36 people do not know how effective their meetings are!!

So, what can be done? Well, here are some golden rules for project management meetings (and meetings in general):

Rule 1: Ensure you have the right people there. May seem obvious but how many meetings go ahead with the wrong people there and the right people ‘on the way’ or a key stakeholder not even invited?

Rule 2: Have an agenda for each meeting and against each item put a time (the length of time the item will take). Ensure you stick to the stated time.

Continue reading this article here…..

Project over-runs….again

My earlier blog about Terminal 5 showed a real lack of planning, training and co-ordination. But, at least the terminal was completed on time!

What about other transport projects? My thanks to Donnie MacNicol who pointed to a recent report published in the Financial Times. This report suggested that Europe’s 30 most important transport projects will cost far more than first thought. The report queries how some financially strapped governments will find the necessary funds.

An independent study by PwC, blames the €40bn ($63bn) cost overrun on poor project management, planning difficulties, changes in project specifications, lawsuits and lack of funding.

Bear in mind this is public money - the UK’s cost forecast according to the article is
€26.7bn.

Now we all finish up paying for these over- runs in one way or the other - money or delays in the transport system. What is being done to ensure that large scale projects are delivered on time and to budget and of course to customer quality standards? Not a lot it would seem.

There are many examples of past projects failing to deliver on time and to budget and it looks as though we have not learned from these; lessons learned seems to be lost and forgotten.

Read the article here - it makes chilling reading with high costs and poor delivery.

Me compartmentalise - no, not me!

I work with a wide range of professional people. This work involves a wide variety of activity and I have observed an interesting phenomenon. They seem to compartmentalise what they do ignoring the links with other aspects of their work. What do I mean by this?

Here is an example. A group of people regularly review the risks within their professional work. They spend quite a large amount of time thinking through what could possibly go wrong. Now, when asked whether they do the same thing with projects i.e. identify what could go wrong in their projects (identifying risks) the answer always comes back in the negative. They seem somewhat shame faced!

Let’s stop compartmentalising and start to look much wider at the application of the right tool for the right job. PID’s can be used in meeting by simply asking why we are here in this meeting. Stakeholders do not simply exist in projects, they exist in ALL the work we do. Plans are across the board, we need to develop them when working on business as usual and we always need to monitor and deliver!

So, what walls do you need to break down? Make the links and deliver - projects AND business as usual

Come on you senior managers. Play your project roles effectively.

Running training events is often a dumping ground for people's frustrations. I guess we have all done it thinking this guru will help us solve all our problems. However, some of our problems are deeply ingrained and take a lot of shifting.

One such problem is the role that senior manager’s play or should play in projects. The terminology does get in the way however we believe that all projects need a sponsor someone who gives executive support to the project manager and project. This is a person who among other things:

* Commissions (asks, tells, informs discusses) others to undertake the project
* Briefs the project manager about the project, its history and any ‘political issues’ surrounding it
* Agrees the level of accountability and responsibility the project manager will have
* Signs off the business case and other project management documents
* Actively reviews the project with the project manager at agreed dates ensuring it is ‘on track’

We have surveyed over a 1000 people who have been on our project management events and the report makes poor reading.

To continue reading this article click here

Free Tips Booklet

Have you heard of Issu? I had not until I read Graham Jones Blog (www.grahamjones.co.uk )- my thanks Graham. It is really so simple - it really does what it says on the tin. See below

To get your free Tips Book click here or on the side bar with your name and email address

Keep it simple..........please!

Yes, too often project management structures are complex and do not support the project manager in their delivery. Look at the diagram below.

This shows a simple linear structure with the project board at the top and the project team at the bottom of the tree. At first site this look fine until you realise there are 15 members on the Project Board! Before anyone tells me this is impossible I have to say we frequently find this number on Boards This is far too many and people say to us that the large numbers are stopping a key activity of the board i.e. making decisions.

Project Boards should be around 5 people. So who are these other 10? We have investigated this with a number of project managers and discovered:

*they are stakeholders who represent key groups either in the business or are in partner organisations

*they are people who want to be involved but actually are hindering project progress - in actual fact they have no interest and will not be impacted by the project. Our questions here to project managers is why are these people involved?

Can the person who represents the function or group make decisions? Our researches (questioning of people who talk about this) suggest not! What they tell us that the person says something like:

*I will need to go back and check with my Director we can do this. Or maybe...

*I am unsure how we can deal with this. Let me get back to you once we have consulted in our organisation

In both cases, this does not help in the management of the project. These people are actually stopping project progress by having to go back to the various bodies they come from; say the internal finance or marketing department or the partner organisation providing say a design service.

So, what should be done! Have a simpler project management structure. Something that takes out from the project board people who are clearly stakeholders. When working with project teams we have identified around 4 or 5 stakeholder groups and suggested these people liaise directly with the project manager.

The results? Much quicker decision making by the project board which is based on input from the key stakeholders. Plus, continuity. Project managers reported a huge issue with project boards never having the same 15 people - "I cannot go to this meeting so I want you to go" was quoted several times.

So, keep it simple...please!

Terminal 5 shambles brings holiday chaos

Not a great headline from The Times newspaper here in the UK this morning. Who would be a BA or a BAA executive?

For those that do not know after 19 years of planning and building (much of this was in getting planning permission to build the terminal) the 5th Terminal at Heathrow opened yesterday and by the end of the day:

10,00 passengers were affected by a series of cancellations
33 flights were cancelled
4 hours delay for luggage on incoming flights
188 departures planned for terminal 5 yesterday
31,000 passengers due to be handled yesterday

The debate will go on for a while to establish EXACTLY what went wrong however some issues have already surfaced:

* signage in the new terminal is not very clear
* staff handling baggage etc were delayed by security checks
* security workers could not park
* baggage handlers were unable to log on to computers

So, what are the lessons for all of us involved in the running of projects (as big as Terminal 5)?

a)trial, trial and trial again. This week there was TV programme showing how they built and tested the new airport. Obviously not enough

b) how about one persons suggestion in the papers "have a a gradual move across to terminal 5 rather than a big bang… "

c)training: when things go wrong, you need well trained staff to cope! The papers are full of quotes from unhappy passengers however one quote from a staff member (if its true) does little to inspire confidence “this is what happens with a new terminal”. Train, train and train again. If you do this the chances of the problems and issues happening are reduced and if something does go wrong well trained staff do try and inspire confidence in its customers...somehow

d)put in robust quality checking processes. These quality checks would have identified potential problems and potential risks

e)PR - what a disaster for BAA, BA and for the UK. Many of the post from on-line newspapers were incredibly scathing about this countries poor project management record.

As I type this note, there are calls for heads to roll (sackings)- I wonder....

No doubt there will be further information coming from the sad experience of those who tried to travel in yesterday.

Help needed for research project - read on...

I was contacted recently by an undergraduate student who is doing some research into project management. After Stuart interviewed me, I had an email asking me for help in widening the numbers involved in the research.

Let Stuart take up the story:

My name is Stuart Murray and I am a 4th year undergraduate student doing research into Project Management as part of my degree dissertation. I have been conducting interviews with some top project professionals and have developed a survey to use in a second phase of research to get a wider set of results. The survey is online, has 5 short questions and will explore a new area of thinking concerning project managers and their development. It will take no more than 5 mins to do but your contribution will be of great value to this piece of work and to future research and all those who take part will be able to receive a copy of the results. Thank you very much for your help and your time. The link to the questionnaire is:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DjfjOBJNcbvtgkqhatzpdA_3d_3d

I hope that many of you reading this will help take part in this valuable piece of research

It's all in the head!!

FREE TEMPLATES - GO TO THE END TO FIND OUT HOW TO DOWNLOAD THEM!!

Why do we use so many templates in project management? Great question isn't it? You can name many project templates:

business case
risk log
lessons learned log
communications chart
PID
etc, etc

But why oh why do I say it’s all in the head? On two recent project management programmes participants have said that this is where they keep information! They try and manage large complex projects without writing anything down, A few people said they had very little in terms of project files - on line or in hard copy. This is a risk; a huge risk for project managers and their sponsors.

So let’s come back to the question; why do we use so many templates in project management? There are many reasons; the list is extensive. Let’s take a look at some of these:

* its a record of what you are doing. Ever needed to go back and check that what you are doing is what you should be doing? It’s a reference point for you

* a key group of people in projects are your stakeholders (those with an interest or who will be affected by the project). These can be the trade unions, maybe a key customer group or maybe an internal department such as marketing and accounting. They will certainly be interested in your project and the forms will help in the overall communications process

* the forms can be used to measure project progress. For example; the business case should be checked regularly by the project sponsor (the person who has ultimate responsibility for its successful delivery) to ensure it is still meeting its original rational. The risk log should be checked regularly by the project manager and the team, the same with the communications chart

* version control; my admin manager tells me that I need to tighten up on my version control; and you know what, she is correct. Each time you complete or amend a template you need to check that the version of the form is updated. Too many times people are working on old versions of templates. Version control can help in the smooth management of the project.

* milestones; many projects are managed by milestones. Use of project management templates can help the team know where they should be; where they are.

* monitoring: a key part of the project management life cycle is to ensure that the project is delivering what it set out to deliver. The forms can help enormously to pin point where the project is; whether it is on schedule or off it. Use of the highlight report can actually save time as you only report on key highlights of the project since you last reported and the report is only 1 or 2 pages long

* approval: one of the issues project managers face is not knowing who is responsible for signing off (agreeing) some of the documents. This person (or maybe it is a project board) receives the document and approves it or otherwise. Use of these documents helps cement the approvals process

*communications; I mentioned earlier on that use of these forms can aid communications in projects. Use of the communications template or the PID can really smooth the path for your project

There are of more reasons however I hope that this has convinced you of the need for using written documents.

If you want to get some FREE project management templates then click here or go to www.projectagency.co.uk/word/templates.pdf

Don't forget; put what's in your head onto paper and it can contribute greatly to project success

When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn*

How many times do we read that we must learn from our mistakes (I would also add from our successes!)? We encourage all of our clients to:

1. use lessons learned reports or learning logs throughout projects
2. hold end of project reviews where learning is at the centre of the meeting

However, our experience shows that few projects use both of the above with some using learning logs - though very loosely.

I came across an interesting article in Computer Weekly headed “Litany of errors plagued Housing Corp IT project” The article goes into some detail about the errors and gives information published from firm of Consultants - click here for details of the report. The key findings are shown below:

*The Corporation lacked the the expertise to manage the project. As a result managers relied too heavily on technical advice from a single freelance IT consultant, despite warnings that this posed a risk

*The business case was "inconsistent" and "incomplete". It contained misleading assumptions and contradictory data

*Managers did not challenge the technical solution, despite reservations from independent advisors

*Executives gave repeated but mistaken assurances that the project was under control, despite difficult pilots

*Business users had little input into the design of the system, which suffered from technical problems and did not meet their needs

Now, an important point. I do not write this to embarrass The Housing Corporation: far from it! I write this to see what we can all learn from it

How does your organisation go about identifying and sharing learning - both positive and not so positive? How many times must the same mistakes be made before senior managers realise there is a pattern going on? Do you hold meetings where real learning is identified and acted upon? If no, you should and you need to action this now!

Do you need really bad PR/publicity before your organisation takes measures to deal with learning and project management generally

BEWARE: You don’t want to be the next headline.

* words to a song http://www.volcano.net/~jackmearl/songs/wsongs/where_have_all_the_flowers_gone.html by Pete Seeger

Let the train take the strain

I set off in really good heart - off to Project Challenge at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.

I was early for my train so I planned to have a cup of tea and then wonder onto the train. But I had not accounted for the really strong winds that cancelled my train. The next one was 30 minutes later but a group of us were told that "we do not know how long the train will take; we are estimating two and a half hours....." There were may people like me who simply abandoned their trips and returned home or to work.

I was left wondering the cost of this to the economy; the loss of learning for me and for others within Project Agency as I could not pass on any learning from the conference.

Today I woke up to a report from the National Audit Office (go to this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7295682.stm for more details). The basic facts are:

*14 million minutes were lost by late running trains
* it cost the public £1bn in lost time

Alarming stuff!!

I travel by train to keep my car off the road and MOSTLY it is convenient but when it goes wrong we simply add it to the above figures. Had I gone by car I may well have been delayed by the road works (south part of the M1 near Luton) - so what do I do next time??

I wrote to the organiser apologising and suggesting next year they add a session on risk management!

Quote, quote quote..

I was on the motorway yesterday on the way to a meeting and one of the BBC stations (Fivelive) gave out quotes from listeners. here are two that relate to project management (and time management)


"a lack of planning on your part does not make it an emergency...."

"I don't have a plan, so nothing can go wrong" This was a quote attributed to the late Spike Milligan the British comedian.

Two good quotes.....