7 lighthouses in Project Management’s seas
The 7 ideas that have helped my projects to reach safe harbor and the 4 rules of the Project Manager.
Little nightly thoughts
by Business Exploration
Dear Fellow Innovator,
In my previous life as Project Manger, I always held strong few ideas that have helped my projects to reach safe harbor.
If you compare them to the ocean of teachings of the PMI book, they are little things, but to me, they are like lighthouses:
they bring me home.
I often found experienced PMs and Project Management Courses that miss some of them, probably because deemed obvious, so let recap them here:
1) There are 3 levels of planning:
long, medium and short term.
You must have a clear understanding of the goal of each one:
- Long Term: activities planning
- Medium term: resources activation
- Short term: people activation
2) You need 3 “dates” to define the status of a deliverable:
- As planned: is the original plan and the benchmark. It’s static
- As forecast: is the revision of the planned date. Updates change it.
- As delivered: is what was really done. It’s static.
Beware those systems that do not bear them.
3) As a minimum you need 3 delivery metrics:
- completeness,
- timeliness,
- accuracy.
If you have a clear measure of the percentage of deliverables delivered, how many have been delivered on time, and how close to planned have been delivered, you are in control.
Then ask for “S-curves” and all the rest.
4) Don’t just look at your backlog, look-ahead.
When you look at your ability to deliver, don’t just look at what was due for today (backlog) but also at what will be due in the next days (look ahead). If your rhythm of delivery is not enough… time to change
5) There are two ways to assure delivery:
- feedback control,
- redundancy
this is also called the A-Team rule: check how your Plan A is performing but be ready with your plan B.
6) You can manage risk only if you understand its 3 components: Probability, Percentage, Personal
- Probability: is your gut about tomorrow’s weather
- Percentage: is about how many bad weather days you got so far
- Personal: is about the personal taste of who will suffer the consequences (some people likes rainy days)
7) You have to monitor all the 3 kinds of information:
- system,
- formal,
- un-formal.
you must have a good understanding of where are the information needed to control your project: whether into a person’s mind, a document or a repository.
Finally let me add my last suggestion:
The 4 Rules of the Project Manager:
- Never Trust
• The Project management is a control problem. Control can not be delegated.
2) First the team’s, than your tasks
• Mobilize your team, then take care of your task, or you will end up being the bottleneck of the project
3) First talk, then write
• To avoid misunderstanding and conflicts: talk, call, meet, agree or disagree, and only then: write, to sanction what has been said.
4) Think R2L Right to Left:
• Thinking from results to processes to resources, forces your strategic and holistic approach.
I have stolen much of these concepts from Senior Planners of Nuovo Pignone — Italy. I would like to take this chance to thank them.
Give it a try and let me know how it worked for you!
Flavio
