If so, this is a great opportunity to add a few new techniques to your professional tool box and/or get some of your tough questions answered (or at least ask them;)

Currently, there are still some spots available.

If this sounds like something you want to do, should do, or need to do, go ahead and click the link below to learn more and claim your spot.

Webinar:

Effective Techniques for Improving Team Communication

Thursday, October 11

To learn more and claim your spot

http://blog.adminitrack.com/teamcommunication/

Was the wheel invented because of an arbitrary deadline?

In this final part of our series on delivering projects on schedule, I will share an important and disturbing law of our projectized universe. It is a law that pre-dates the invention of the wheel, and may have played a critical role in the wheel being invented at all. But since you are reading this, I know you are one of the smart, tough-minded professionals that gets results. If that is not you, please stop reading now, because you, in particular, are not going to like what I have to say.

Tip 9 – Utilize Parkinson’s Law

In case you haven’t heard of Parkinson’s Law, the premise is that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

So what does that mean? It means that the longer someone has to complete a task, the longer it takes to complete the task. Conversely, the shorter amount of time there is for a task, the quicker it will get done.

The key to utilizing Parkinson’s law is to set an arbitrary deadline, and treat it as real. People and teams who do this, often create incredible results. It’s not necessarily fun, but it does work.

To some, it may seem counter-intuitive, crazy, or just plain wrong. The nice part is, I don’t have to waste any time trying to convince those people otherwise, because I doubt they are still reading this post. Instead, they may have found something else to fill up all that spare time they have between their real deadlines.

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.” -Rita Mae Brown

How do you manage customer expectations?

In my last post, I took a real look at the role of commitment and its affect on timely delivery of projects. Today we will look at some straight forward advice that may take a twinge of bravery, but is critical to delivering on schedule.

Tip 8 – Manage Customer Expectations

Some of you who have been reading along and paying attention to this series, you might have a couple of questions come to mind:

Do we really need to manage customer expectations if we will be delivering on time by following all of your sage advice?

Wouldn’t managing customer expectations be more useful if we were going to be late on the project?

To those questions I would answer yes and yes. Even though managing customer expectations is even more relevant if your project is late, it is still a critical part of delivering on schedule. I will let you in on some keen insight that a wise friend of mine shared with me a long time ago. I won’t reveal his name since he said he would deny it anyway. We were discussing optimizing the performance of software systems. One topic related to when a user clicks a button, how many seconds does it take for the action the button represents to finish. In the middle of discussing best practices and techniques for minimizing response times, he stopped to share some expert insight. The jist of what he said was that no matter how fast and responsive a system is, the customer will always want it to be faster, so you might not want to give them a maximally tuned system in the first release.

So how does this story relate to our topic at hand? No matter what date you commit to, the customer will nearly always want it sooner, or will want to add more features, etc. How do you counteract the natural and insidious scope creep or feature creep before it becomes a scope avalanche that takes you far away from your objective of delivering on time? In addition to having a simple and effective process for managing change requests, you have to manage the customers’ expectations. You need to help keep them and you focused on the end result of getting the current project or phase of the project done so they can start reaping some of the benefits that the project promises.

On the surface, my previous statements may feel like the beginning of a migraine headache rapidly approaching. The good news is, I have had my collective years of virtual migraines for you and distilled it down to the following key aspects managing customers expectations. Hopefully this will save you a few migraines and add a couple of years onto your life.

Keys to Managing Customer Expectations

Understand what your customers want

To do this, you have to listen. They may say a lot, but you have to listen for what they want, and sometimes that means you have to listen to what is not said. Assuming your customer wants the project to happen and wants it to be delivered on time, that is what you have to repeatedly keep you and them focused on.

Educate your customer

Most customers don’t understand the technical specifics of managing or executing a project. Thinking from their perspective and background, you have to appropriately educate them on how the project will progress from start to finish. This is a high level education, not an attempt to impress them with the details.

Keep your promises

If you simply do what you say you are going to do, that goes a long way to building trust. To do that, you can’t promise to do everything that they may ask for. You may not honestly be able to promise to do everything your organization sold them on upfront. This is where it is critical to promise only what you can promise and focus on doing everything you can to make that happen. Keep in mind, your most important promise is to deliver a quality product on schedule. Everything else is negotiable.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Communication is a continuous performance and not a one time act. Saying something once or saying it multiple times but only in one mode of communication is rarely sufficient. Keep the communication flowing, which includes plenty of listening.

“The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” -George Bernard Shaw

Stay tuned for Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 9, which will be the conclusion of the series and the most controversial advice I publicly provide on how to delivery projects on schedule.

Commitment versus Involvement

In my last post I revealed what chocolate and peanut butter have to do with delivering projects on schedule. Today I want to share some advice that may sound similar to topics you have experience with. However, if you implement my advice today, you have the opportunity to transform a current project. But wait, there’s more. You will have also discovered a new skill that can be applied to any area of your work life to produce significantly better results.

Tip 7 – Make a Commitment to On-Time Delivery

Obviously, stating a commitment is separate and different from making a commitment. Commitment is a word that we hear a lot, but it can mean many different things depending on the context. What I would ask is that as you read the rest of this post, do your best to set aside what you already know, believe, or have experienced related to the concept of commitment.

So what do I mean by making a commitment to on-time delivery? There are two parts:

1. Making a choice and making a mental shift that you are committed to having your project be completed on time. This act alone will sharpen your focus. You will instantly be able to make better decisions between critical things to do versus very good things to do. For a project to be on-time, decisions have to be made that lead the project to come in on-time.
2. Letting others known of your commitment. You don’t have to stand up and make a formal proclamation of such. In fact, I would discourage that approach in most situations. What I would suggest instead is lettings others know through your actions and informal conversations. As others understand your commitment and importance of bringing the project in on-time, most will jump on board to your winning team, which your commitment helps create.

What commitment is not

• Commitment is not about trying hard, or doing your part. Commitment is about doing what it takes to produce the result. In this case, the result is on-time delivery.

• Commitment is not about being worried or frantic. If you are focused on the objective at hand, you don’t have time for worrying. Postpone that until after the project is complete.

• You cannot make others be committed. Don’t get mad if others don’t have your same level of commitment as you do. Some will be committed and others will not. Either way, the only thing that matters is your commitment level. You may need to ask a lot from others in support of your commitment to on-time delivery, but don’t ask for their commitment.

“Bacon and eggs requires involvement from the chicken and commitment from the pig.”

Continue on to  Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 8, in which I will reveal a tip that requires surprising little skill, but a fair amount of guts to make work.

Trust and Verify goes together like...

In the previous post in this series, we discussed the simple way to leverage the experience and talents of others to keep your project on schedule. This week we will take a look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of project management best practices. Before someone figured out that chocolate and peanut butter tastes great together, I imagine that the combination didn’t seem to go together well. The advice below is like that combination. Trusting and verifying may not seem to go together, but after you try it, you may think differently.

After graduating college in 1991, I accepted a position with a fast growing consulting company called Broadway & Seymour. My first assignment was working on a large project to develop an updated insurance system for an international insurance company. One of the practices we had on that project was to do regular code reviews. These peer reviews accelerated everyone’s knowledge and skills and improved the quality of the overall system being developed. One reason this practice actually worked so well, was because we all trusted each other and openly shared the details of our work with each other. Later in my career, I realized that my first experience being on that type of professional team was not the same as many other people’s experience of being on a team. That is a story for another day.

Tip 6 – Trust and Verify

I believe that mutual trust among team members is one of the basic requirements for a highly effective team. Without it, too much time can be easily burned on CYA activities. As every experienced project manager knows, exercising political astuteness is needed on the vast majority of projects. However, for a team to have a reasonable chance to deliver a project on schedule, politics within the team cannot be tolerated or allowed. One subtlety to recognize is that trusting someone is not the same as liking someone. Team members may or may not like each other. The important thing is they can depend on each other and have confidence in what to expect from others on the team.

The Other Half of the Battle

Having a team made up of individuals that trust each other is an important half of the battle. The other half of the battle is verifying the details of each team member’s assignments. Wait a minute! If I trust my team members, why do I need to check over their shoulder?” The short answer is, we are all human. And when you are dealing with humans, two or more human brains are better than one. Have you experienced a problem you couldn’t seem to figure out, but as soon as you asked someone else to take a look at it, you instantly figure out a solution? I think you get the point. But in case you are still a little fuzzy on the concept, try micro-managing your team without sufficient trust and you will understand.

“You don’t get what you expect, you get what you inspect.”

Continue on to Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 7, for some timeless advice for producing on-time project results.

Many professionals have the tendency to try to figure out everything themselves. This can be though of as an admirable, but limiting tendency. Many time, the professionals that seem to stand out and achieve the best results, are the people who leverage the knowledge and experience of others.

All this sounds great in theory, unfortunately we do not work in an perfect world. Thus, you may need to make some slight adjustments to my advice to take into account any specific political or other factors in your specific work environment. The main point is, there are people you can trust near by that have the information, knowledge, and connections to speed things along for your project. You just need to take 30 seconds to take a deep breath and notice who can help you achieve your mission on schedule.

Tip 5 – Solicit Help from Others

• Don’t try to do everything yourself. Just because you can do something better or faster than someone else doesn’t mean you should. There are things only you can do, and those are the most important for your to be spending your time on.

• Where can you get help to deliver on time? Take a few minutes to open your eyes and your mind to the resources available to you. You may be surprised.

• Keep focus on making progress. Regardless of everything else, keep things moving forward. Ask for help, but don’t wait for it.

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” -Ken Blanchard

Continue on to Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 6, which fuses two concepts that most would never consider.

Tip 4 – Streamline Processes

Wait a minute. If we are working to deliver a project on time, do we really have time to analyze, re-engineer, and streamline business or project management processes? Of course not silly rabbit. This trick is only for the brave champions of “Git R Done,” not the business analysts, management consultants, or the like. What I mean is, our goal is to complete the project on time with the appropriate level of quality. We will temporarily not be focused on the betterment of the organization as a whole. For now, we need to be focused on delivering on time only. With that perspective in mind, I would suggest it is critical to put a ruthless focus on doing the following:

Suggestions for streamlining processes:

• Question anything and everything that takes up time and doesn’t make sense.

• Determine what can be eliminated without adverse affects.

• Notice where is time getting wasted.

• Are you or your team getting caught up in tools or templates instead of focusing on the content the tools or templates are intended to capture and organize.

Be forewarned! It will require you to have sufficient tolerance for risk to take meaningful action, based on my advice above. In most corporate or government environments, you should expect to be met with obvious resistance. Your job will be to be stay professional, avoid bureaucratic road blocks, and keep driving the project over the speed limit to completion

For some related reading on distinguishing between good and bad complexity, you may want to check out some of IBM’s research on The many facets of complexity.  Here is an short excerpt:

“If a company’s employees can’t provide a reason for each task that they do; the value it brings to the business or customers; or how it connects with their jobs, then the organization is probably beset with needless complexity. And there’s no doubt that the business will suffer because of it.”

Continue on to Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 5, which may be the most useful, but underutilized technique in this series.

Tip 3 – Define Clear Responsibilities

• Make sure team members know what they are responsible for.

If you want to maximize your team, make sure everyone on the team is clear on what their responsibilities are. Most people will work much more efficiently when they are clear on their responsibilities and feel empowered to take action.

• Avoid the “I did my part” syndrome.

Our objective here is to complete the project on-time. It’s important for everyone on the team to understand their responsibility. In addition, it is equally important that everyone understands that everyone has to get their part of the project done for the team to win.

• Build a team culture of making sure everyone is successful in delivering their part.

For a project team (or any team) to work effectively, each team member needs to focus on getting their job done, but also be ready and willing to assist other team members when needed. Do whatever it takes to make sure everyone wins.

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” -Babe Ruth

Continue on to Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 4, which will be the second most controversial post of this series.

In Part 1, we looked at some factors that affect the probability of delivering on schedule. Part 1 also included Tip 1, which was to Divide and Conquer. Specific advice included breaking down large projects into smaller releases.

Most would agree that communication is critical in most areas of business and life. For a project to be delivered on time, it is important to communicate effectively. There is, however, an additional adjustment to project communication that can make all the difference.

Tip 2 – Speed Up Communication

Have you ever worked on a project and thought, “…If we would have discovered that earlier, we could have easily done something about it…”

The earlier in a project you can uncover important details and issues, the easier it is to make adjustments. One way to uncover the hidden gotchas in a project is to increase the speed of communication. Following are a few ideas for speeding up communication on your project, which will make delivering on time much more likely.

Suggestions for increasing the speed of communication:

1. Schedule shorter and more frequent meetings
2. Co-locate team members if possible
3. Be conscious of communication methods

If the phone can get the job done in 2 minutes as opposed to taking 10 minutes to draft an email, use the phone. I am not saying one mode of communication is better in every situation. What I am saying is to put some thought into how you are communicating. Try it out and see what kind of positive difference it will make.

“The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” -George Bernard Shaw

Continue to Part 3 for another tip to help you along your path to on-time delivery.

If you have been around technology projects for any amount of time, you have probably come across some statistic related to how some large percentage of IT and software development projects are not successful.

We may not be able to solve all the technology world’s project delivery issues here in this blog post, but if you are involved in a challenging project, I want to share some valuable tips from my experience, that will greatly increase the chances of your project coming in on schedule.  Before we get to the heart of the matter, let’s take a quick look at some factors that can significantly decrease the probability of a project coming in on schedule.

Factors that affect the probability of delivering on schedule:

1. The larger the project, the higher the chances of the project being late.
2. Projects in non-profit organizations have a higher chance of being delivered late than in for-profit organizations.
3. There is less of a chance of delivering on schedule if you do not have a schedule.

If you meet any of the criteria above, don’t despair. This may be your opportunity to turn things around and get some well deserved credit for turning the project around. Following is the first tip you can get started on right now to get things back on track.

Tip 1 – Divide and Conquer

Break down large projects into smaller releases. Some program managers argue for minimizing the number of releases in order to reduce the overall overhead, since there is some level of overhead that is incurred with each release. That is a theoretically valid argument. The only problem is the application of theory to the real world. In the vast majority of projects, I would assert that breaking down a project into smaller releases significantly increases the chances of delivery and reduces the risk associated with Requirements Decay and requirements management over time.

In breaking down a project into smaller releases, consider what can be delivered soonest that would provide appreciable value for the project sponsor or key project stakeholders. Let’s say you have five high level, prioritized features the project will deliver. Some might say that the highest priority feature should be in the first release. The problem is that the highest priority feature will take the most time to deliver or cannot be delivered in a stand-alone fashion. If our objective is to deliver value as soon as possible, it may be that the feature which is third on the priority list, can be delivered relatively quickly and can be delivered independent of the other features. If that is the case, that feature would be a good candidate to target for an initial release.

Continue to Delivering Projects on Schedule – Part 2 and find out the most important thing that needs to happen with project communication to promote on-time delivery.