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.

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

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!

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

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

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