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