See (and hear) me speak at the BPPM Summitt in London

I was on the telephone with a client recently and mentioned to her that I was speaking at a conference. She replied:

“You should tell everyone about this…”

Duly done!

I am speaking (in collaboration with Team Animation) at the BPPM Summit on 24 April (London Heathrow Marriott Hotel). The topic of the participate workshop is:

"How to adopt and make best use of project management in your organisation."

I will be addressing the key issue of project management culture and I look forward to seeing one or two of you there.

You can find out more information by clicking on this link http://www.bppmsummit.com/bppmsummit07/project_agency.html. Do contact me if you want more information. Click here to send an email.

I need more resources

A common cry from people we work with the lack of resources available to them. One aspect we mention on our courses is the need to use every method you can to obtain not only skilled resources but skilled recourses that are available to support you in your project.

But how can you do this?

I was amazed when working in one organisation when Nick, one of my colleagues was able to orchestrate extra resources simply because he knew the organisation far better than I did! I leant a lot from this; mainly that Nick had (and still has) excellent networking skills. My network was so slim as to be size zero!

Networking is a real skills and it is something rarely mentioned as a tool for resourcing projects. Partnership arrangements are becoming much more common – especially among our public sector readers. These arrangements commonly mean the involvement of members of community groups, or a partner organisation. These often become really valuable resources for some of the people involved in projects however…..the key is to tease out those recourses which Nick seemed to be able to pull in so easily.

So how can you develop a strategy for networking? Why not visit another blog by an expert? Have a look at Andy Lopata’s blog – click on this link http://networkingandreferrals.blogspot.com/ and read how to set up your networking strategy. Read from a real expert.

Happy networking

Project management survey 2007

I come across many articles and surveys in the course of my trawl of the internet. Here’s one that is really good!!

Themes from the survey include:

• more and more project management professionals are gaining accreditation - but which qualifications?


• people who took place in the survey felt there were too many accreditation bodies


• contractors are generally in the older age bracket


• 2006 was a challenging year in the remuneration stakes where only 38% saw an increase in their earnings.
  

Why not read the whole report which you can download here

Lots of projects but how well delivered?

You will see below the awful statistics which came out of the Heritage Lottery Fund. The figures are in line with other statistics which you can find on the internet.

To support companies and individuals to deliver more effectively we have written a White Paper called:

From Ready- Fire - Aim to Ready- Aim- Fire

How to improve project delivery, on time, to budget, every time.

Read all about it here......

Lottery Funded Projects - late and overbudget

An article in The Times (Friday March 16) points to:

• a quarter of the projects were completed late
  
• one in six projects overspent by an average of £293,000

The report quotes Sir John Bourn, head of National Audit Office which scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament concluded that the main cause of delays was “poor planning, and lack of project management skills by some of the applicants”, as well as “unanticipated events” during construction.

So why doesn’t the Heritage Lottery Fund train its applicants to manage projects more effectively…..??

You can read all about it by clicking here

Project Sponsorship.....time to improve?

I was looking at my web site recently – doing a bit of tidying up and came across an article I posted in March 2005 called Project management Screw Up 5 – We didn’t have the right sponsorship by Lonnie Pacelli.

He goes into some detail about the need for there to be a project sponsor. He says the following:

“…..every successful project always had an engaged project sponsor.”

Over the years Project Agency has worked with many organisations saying effectively the same thing to many of our clients.

Why not read the article? Click here or go to www.projectagency.co.uk/downloads.htm. It is the article headed: Poor Project Sponsorship.

Posted on the web site in 2005 and the issue is as current as ever i.e. we need more senior managers to play their role as project sponsors.

Free conference!!

I mentioned in my previous Blog a conference I went to. Well here is a free one.

You can go to PROJECT CHALLENGE. It is being held on 14 and 15 March. It has more than 50 organisations exhibiting and free seminars to attend.

You can find out more by going to www.projectchallenge.com

Enjoy the conference.

Old Blog!!

This is my second Blog site. I lost the other one - clumsy management of my password. In establishing the Blog I came across my old one and I still cannot get into it!

There is one postings which is worth listing again. Here is is.

I recently attended a conference and look what the speaker said:

• Focus on the values rather than the process e.g. PRINCE. For us this is important as we see people hanging on grimly to the project management process forgetting what it is trying to achieve
• 
  PRINCE is the framework, not the solution
• 
  Identify how much corrective action you need to take - measure this and measure again at the end of the project. How much corrective action has been saved? Identify the cost and time saved
• 
  Communicate, communicate communicate. If you are trying to put in a project management culture you need to recognise the changes required. Some of these will be supported by excellent communications
• 
  To develop the project management culture have a number of project champions from within the organisation
• 
  Developing a project assurance check sheet really helped to put quality onto the agenda
  Having formal project management roles (set out in documents) really helped (these were full time project managers)
• 
  For ALL projects, hold post project reviews identifying lessons learned. A new project is not started until the all relevant reports have been read!
• 
  Project sponsors were more active - through training and education
• 
  Developing a prioritisation process asked a lot of questions of us

This was written almost 2 years ago. Makes you think!

Resources, resources, resources

I am often asked where can I can find certain items of interest or have you got an any articles on a particular topic.

I have a downloads page which contains lots of free information. Why not go here or to http://www.projectagency.co.uk/downloads.htm to find out more? There are articles, copies of PowerPoint presentations and access to our free on line e-course.

Happy hunting

Project estimates, why are they so wrong? London Olympics 2012

There is a lot of press space being given to the 2012 Olympics here in London – saying that the estimates for the games “has quadrupled”.

Now I am NOT going to enter into the debate as to whether the costs have increased or even by how much. However, what I will say is that we are generally really poor at estimating.

Research shows we suffer from OPB….optimistic planning bias. What does this mean? We think we can deliver a project of 40 weeks for example in 20 weeks. (For those that want to get hold of the paper see ‘Exploring the “Planning Fallacy”; Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times; Buehler, Griffin and Ross. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 1994 Vol 67 No 3, 366-381)

So what can you do about it? Here are a few brief ideas. Do let us know of ones you may have

1) if you are a senior manager avoid giving out end dates for projects (or even business as usual activities) until someone has worked through how long an activity will take. We have seen too many times deadlines given which are not only unachievable but completely de-motivating. Once worked out, you may well recognise that more resources (money?) will be needed

2) spend time thinking through and discussing estimates. Sound crazy? Look at the Delphi Technique used in industry today. More realistic estimates are produced by discussing in groups the estimates for the whole project, stages or even individual tasks. To find out more, type Delphi Technique into your web browser.

3) ask yourself how confident you are of hitting the end date or the budget, or both. During some recent project management training events we asked participants how confident they were of achieving both the end date and the budget. There were some who gave appalling figures – quite a few said 10% confident, some around the 20%-25% mark with the majority in the 50%-60% bracket. Of the 35 people we asked, I would say there were only around 5 who said they were over 80% confident. If you are not confident of hitting the end date or budget (aim for 80% level of confidence) then what are you going to do about it?

4) find out who else has done this type of project before and get estimates from them (after asking them how realistic they were)

5) end of project reports – scour them for some feedback on estimates, how accurate were they?

6) Think about estimating as a skill. Don't forget that in the building trade they employ estimators!

There is no doubt the Olympic estimates issue will rumble on. Make sure that your projects do not suffer the same fate

Project communications....why are they so poor and what can be done about this?

Project Agency has surveyed around 2,500 people. One of the results of this survey has been the large percentage of people who suggest that project communications are really poor. 71% of the 2,550 people (1,775) suggested that project communications are really poor.

NOT a good result!

Many people on courses (outside the sample survey) suggested that the results mirror general communications in the business. This suggests that people are simply accepting that this is the status quo. This is a hardly the best solution to the problem.

So, what can you do to ensure that communications in projects helps deliver the actual outcomes? Here a re a few suggestions:

1) if you are involved in a major organisational change then appoint someone who will manage this important element of the project

2) identify all the activities you need to carry out and put them on your planning charts – milestone, Gantt

3) think communications – sounds silly but if you are involved in a project you will need to take people along with you. This can only be done by thinking about how this can be done. The activity comes from the thinking…

4) use a simple template. Project Agency has developed a communications chart which may be of help. You can find this here or at www.projectagency.co.uk/CChart.pdf

5) at your project meetings review communications

6) ensure there is a link with your stakeholder management plans

You of course will have your own ideas so why not join in the debate?

Business Balls

Excuse the title of this posting but I did want to give you a valuable web site to go to – www.businessballs.com It is a really great web site which gives you great insights into management topics.

I saw loads of information and the site is growing daily.

You will even see reference to our Project Management Tips booklet and Templates in the Project Management section. You can get hold of them at www.businessballs.com alternatively, upu can get the free e-course with Tips Booklet and tempaltes at http://www.projectagency.co.uk/downloads.htm

Its cold out there.

I have discovered just how cold it is outside. Now you may say this is strange, maybe he does not go out at all or even, what is this guy taking about? Well, after many many years of sporting facial hair, I decided a change was necessary.

I spent 20 minutes chopping and cutting and shaving and felt a new man! I was and I am and I have the photos to prove it. It really is cold out there...

Now I do not want to go into the intracacies of shaving but it is a drag and it reminds me of the main reason all those years ago why I grew a beard. Blood. I used to cut myself so often and decided I simply had to grow a beard. I have had it for many many years and when it was shaved off, my wife never even noticed. My daughter did and then all hell broke loose with my daughter sending my picture to her sister 200 miles away via her mobile. It was a jolly half an hour I can tell you.

Look at my picture at the top and compare it with the one in this blog....

As I say, it is certainly cold out there at the moment....

Now that is not the end of the matter of course. I need to:

• change my driving licence


• get up at least 30 minutes earler to shave (look at all that sleep I gained)
  
• convince people who I am

So, if you do see me in the street and want to stop me for a chat, no problem. Simply do so. I had one person who had been on one of my project management courses and we exchanged emails a couple of times and he couldn't beleive the change. Nor can I.

It is certainly cold out there.