How many balls can a PM juggle?

For the uneducated or the unbelievers in the value of project management, it is hard to imagine how a project manager can fill the working hours of a day.  In organizations that are replete with such beliefs, a project manager has to be able to walk the fine line between being perceived as merely a “paper pusher” or from straying too far outside the boundaries of their role.

This risk is often realized when a project is faced with a skills capacity shortfall which cannot be easily resolved.  With scope and schedule remaining fixed, in lower maturity organizations, if the project manager has past experience or has demonstrated other evidence that they can perform the under-resourced function they may come under significant pressure (if not from without then from within!) to do so.

There are risks with the PM’s acquiescing to this decision without some formality to the assessment process:

1. Past experience is not representative of future performance.  Even if the role is identical to one the PM has held in the past, they have likely not kept current with practices and standards within that field and this will likely translate into quality or productivity impacts.
2. It dilutes the PM’s focus.  Zero-cost multitasking is an illusion, and even if the PM is playing two roles on the same project, context-switching will still be required when they shift from their PM duties to their subject matter expert duties.  This impacts productivity, and worse, could cause them to ignore or procrastinate on critical (though subtle) PM activities such as stakeholder or risk management.
3. It will cause overwork and increases the potential for burnout for the PM, and may impact the “soft” benefits that a PM can provide to their team.  On successful projects, the PM acts as a stress relief valve and hurdle-remover for the team – this is hard to do if the PM is doing the work of two people.  Faced with a stressed-out PM, team members and stakeholders might feel they are not getting the attention they need which will impact their productivity and morale.
4. The down side of “Jack of all trades” is “Master of none”.  When evaluation time comes, the PM might find themselves in trouble as being a team player and “pitching in” does not carry the same tangible weight as delivering the project’s scope within established constraints.
5. Just because you CAN, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.  Frequently taking on roles that are understaffed hides the visibility of the shortfall from the organization’s resource capacity decision makers.

You may think that I am staunchly against a PM wearing more than one hat on a project – this is not the case.  Resource constraints and real world deadlines often force such necessities, but what I am advocating is the need for careful evaluation of such decisions and formal communication of the risks associated with them.

The PM should work with appropriate governance bodies to set expectations for their dual role to ensure that they are being evaluated appropriately.  This could also include an evaluation of PM practices to right-size project administration to help them better handle the heavier workload.

If a project’s sponsor and key stakeholders are aware of the compromises being made (and have signed on the “dotted line”!), they can be better engaged to support the PM to help reduce the impact of these risks.

Decision requests or just do it?

On traditional projects, a project change management plan is supposed to provide guidance to project teams on the criteria that make a change significant enough to manage through formal change control.  On agile projects, change is an inherent component of the project as opposed to an exception condition, and hence such formality is rarely required.

The same degree of certainty cannot be stated about decisions – both agile and traditional projects spawn a variety of decisions, but how does a PM go about deciding what level of formality is required to manage those?

If the project team is aware of the triggers and thresholds that may require formalizing the decision-making process, then there should be alignment in approach.  One place to start is to understand the criticality of key requirements for the project – for example, if long term viability of a project deliverable is not necessary, decisions that impact sustainability may not require the same level of formality as those that affect a more critical attribute.

Having a brainstorming session early in the project’s lifetime to identify those types of situations that may necessitate formality can help to build some “muscle memory” into the process.  Some risk identification techniques could be utilized for this purpose – for example, reviewing the project’s WBS to attempt to identify the significant decisions that could emerge related to each key deliverable.

Of course, no approach is perfect, and it should be tuned based on the feedback from key stakeholders – if the stakeholders are pushing back regularly on the necessity of a formal decision request for a given situation, perhaps the thresholds are set too low.  On the other hand, a few too many “damage control” issues might teach a PM that a greater degree of formality is called for.

It’s also important to ensure the decision making process is scalable.  Focus on who needs to be involved in the decision-making process as opposed to the specific mechanics.  A triage approach may work:

1. Decisions that are of so low impact that verbal decision making is sufficient, and informal communication to those who need to be apprised of the decision can suffice.
2. Decisions that are of moderate impact may need the formality of a verifiable audit trail – this could be an e-mail chain, or an e-mail confirmation of the decision to the key stakeholders followed by archival of the final outcome in the project control book.
3. Decisions that are of significant impact should require the use of a decision request document that is formally approved, logged and archived.

Having a peer-level support system, a mentor or a PMO could help a PM decide on a situational basis what makes sense.

The two process extremes are equally scary – a complete lack of formality increases the likelihood that critical decisions are made without involving all the right stakeholders and with insufficient analysis and communication whereas too much formality mires the project in unnecessary bureaucracy and reinforces negative perceptions about project management.

One more example of why judgment is one of the key differentiators of a great PM!

 

 

 

 

Selling the value of project management…downtime

Good project managers are usually in high demand so it can be difficult to convince senior management of the benefits of building in some downtime between project assignments.  You may also face resistance from PMs themselves if your organization tracks and evaluates staff based on utilization.

Beyond providing PMs with much needed vacation or opportunities for formal professional development, what are some of the value-add activities that you could use to convince the naysayers?

1. This downtime provides the opportunity to develop new organization knowledge assets (e.g. templates, lessons to be learned).  While conducting a lessons learned session or archiving project documentation are normal project closeout activities, it is hard to add the costs of making the output of these truly useful to the budget of the project.  Also, having a PM perform these activities immediately after a project avoids the memory loss that would occur if they were done much later.
2. If the organization does not have a staffed PMO, downtime after a project is completed could be used to enhance or refactor PM methodologies and practices.
3. Coaching is a key ingredient in cultivating good PMs.  PMs that are on the bench can be assigned to support more junior PMs by providing advice on key decisions, reviewing PM artifacts or by facilitating workshops.  This sort of “parachute” support is not a substitute for a long term mentoring relationship but it does help, especially in organizations that don’t have a formal process for supporting the development of PMs.
4. Helping sponsors exploit the benefits of their projects.  In the first few days after a project is completed, the sponsor might feel overwhelmed with operational responsibilities and while the PM’s role traditionally ends at closeout, their knowledge of the deliverables and the relationships they developed across the organization could be a valuable asset to achieving expected outcomes.

For the pessimists amongst us, the final rationale could be that creativity and enthusiasm are resources that can’t be continuously consumed without an opportunity for replenishment.  PMs are often drained physically and mentally at the end of a project, and this poses a very real risk to the next project they take on.  By building in mini-sabbaticals between assignments, the opportunity is provided to de-stress while still adding value, and the gratification the PM receives from contributing the the development of other PMs or to their organization’s assets may be more fulfilling than what could be achieved by a few days off.