A student of Help University College in Malaysia contacted me with an interview for an assignment she was doing.

interview - by paloma.cl via Flickr

I asked her if I could share it here on the blog. Other experienced project managers out there: feel free to add your own insights in the comments!

1. What is the greatest challenge for you as a Project Manager?

The specifics depend on individual projects and their environment. In general, the greatest challenge is ensuring clarity of “what, when, who, why, and how” for everyone, including the customer, project sponsor, team members, and all external and internal stakeholders. Most project failures in my experience stem from a failure to do this. For instance, most customers don’t really know what they want….”they’ll know when they see it.” Uncovering unstated requirements is key, and so is keeping everyone very involved so that you can get constant feedback and ensure any confusion gets cleared up sooner rather than later.

2. What is the most important stage of the project, which can determine the success or failure of the project?

The most important stage is initiation. If the right project manager is not assigned, or the goals are not feasible any project can be doomed from the start. It’s the job of a good project manager during the planning phase to point out any inconsistencies and defend what her team can actually get done with the constraints involved. Again, if a competent project manager wasn’t assigned early on, the project may be doomed to failure. The same goes for senior engineers or anyone else that should be involved very early in a project.

3. How much of the work breakdown structure (WBS) and Project Network Plan are actually used in the project?

The WBS is the heart of the project. When done correctly, it is used for initial planning and then updated regularly throughout the life cycle of a project to reflect any scope changes. These changes, once approved in a decent change management process, then ripple out to all other scope-sensitive project artifacts like the basis of estimates, schedule, RAM, etc.

By Project Network Plan, I assume you mean schedule? Schedule is also used extensively throughout the entire project.

4. Please share about leadership issues in working through a project.

There is controversy over the differences between leadership and management. My outlook is that leaders have followers, while managers have subordinates. Project management consists of both. It’s a false dichotomy to say someone is a leader OR a manager. You can be both, you can be one and not the other, and you can be neither.

Leadership on a project can come from anywhere; there need be no formal organizational hierarchy involved. So one engineer could be a leader for a specific topic area or technology; people follow them because they are convincing and recognized as experts.

When people are led, they are doing so because they want to. The leader has some quality that makes people want to follow them, regardless of any title or formal authority. In general, I never use my formal title and authority over someone unless I absolutely have to. People on my team should feel as if I am a member of the team too, not just the manager of it. A lot of this has to do with leading by example, empowering people to make their own decisions, and backing them up whenever they need it.

Some people have this crazy idea that the PM should make all the big decisions, and the team is there to carry them out. That’s wrong on so many levels. I see my role as the project manager to find the right people and put them on the project in a function where they can shine. I empower people as much as I can to make decisions…I want the people who really are the smartest about a specific topic to be making the decisions for that area. I’m there to support them and help make compromises if necessary when project constraints and trade-offs come into play. To me, servant leadership is the most powerful form of leadership.

Management is necessary too. This is what you are doing when managing tasks, working through your management and project management processes, etc. When I sit down with my direct reports and do one-on-ones that is a management function. Scope/schedule/budget – these are management functions.

5. How does a Project Manager maneuver between his/her stakeholders, and the project objective?

Very carefully.

I wrote a post a long time ago on Negotiation in Project Management.

As a PM, you need to be able to play the politics of the situation you are in. Part of that means being able to understand and communicate with everyone, from the senior-level business executive who is sponsoring the project, to the non-technical customer who will be using your product, and the technical genius who dreams in code and can speak Klingon fluently. You need to be able to understand what drives all these people, get your points across to them, and translate between them.

The project objective gets set in the beginning (sometimes) but WILL change in some way during the life of the project. The “zeitgeist” of your project is the combination of everyone on it, and their collective vision of the goal will evolve, even if it’s just in minor ways. When there are real conflicts, you need to bring these up. Everyone needs to understand what the impacts to scope/schedule/budget/quality will be for any given change. This is why a good change management system is so critical. It’s also the reason why the WBS is so important; it’s the foundational link in the chain you can always refer back to and show why a change DOES impact your project, and you can’t just “fit it in” with no impact.

6. How do you use Group Development to work for you in your project?

I think you’re referring to the stages of a team (forming, storming, norming, performing). It’s more a matter of being aware of the team dynamics at play…your SPECIFIC team at the time. Generalizations like the group development model can be helpful to structure your thinking, but don’t get too dogmatic about them. I think that specific model has some validity, but there are many projects where it doesn’t. On Agile projects for example, in my experience it’s more about an initial “getting to know each other” phase followed by increased performance as they work together more. Conflicts happen anytime and are usually good if they are navigated correctly; they can be the source of creativity and innovation on your projects.

Related posts:

1. Project Manager Interview Questions
2. Project Manager Interview Series
3. Josh is Interviewed on PM411.org

It seems my initial 2 posts on this topic stirred up some discussion but it’s really dropped off. I’m guessing the series is dragging out too long by treating each attribute individually, so here’s the final 4 I had come up with.

So far we’ve had:

• Delivering Value
• Consistency
• Alignment
• Confidence

Today I’ll add 4 more.

don't screw these up - by julsatmidnight via Flickr

Sustainability

Every implementation of project management is going to score some grade on sustainability. There are a few angles on this one.

First, does the way you do projects burn people out? Do you require overtime because of the way you plan (or fail to plan well)?

Second, is your manner of doing projects sustainable from a community and environmental perspective? Are you able to incorporate long-term thinking about consequences and include stakeholders because of it?

Communication

In some implementations of project management, communication is very poor. These don’t last long unless they are being artificially propped up or covered up in some way. A common perception seems to be that in large complex projects the communication is very one-way and top-down, but I can tell you from my experience that it doesn’t have to be that way. The best projects are able to draw upon the intellect of people who are in the know; namely the people on the project team and key stakeholders.

Even on small projects this can be a big problem area. Many years ago I was doing small projects and it changed my life when I started using a communication management plan. When I got purposeful about communication with my team and stakeholders a new world opened up, and I was able to start seeing the deficiencies in my own ways to improve them.

Measurability

Many of the attributes I’ve already brought up are impossible to assess objectively unless you have some way to measure performance. Whether you use EVM, a burn-down chart, etc. the best project management I’ve seen always makes sure that results are measurable.

Continuous Improvement

If you are not improving, you are standing still. I’m not saying that methodologies should seek to overturn the fundamentals that make them great. I am saying that by incorporating lessons learned into formal practice (doing critical sprint reviews, milestone reviews, etc.) you can not only make the product better, but your project management processes too.

Sure, there is a level of bureaucracy on large, complex projects. And I can also tell you that I’ve seen continuous improvement initiatives work well on large aerospace contracts for the federal government (US). Everyone from the small business to the largest projects should be doing this.

Related posts:

1. It’s great; unless you screw it up
2. Don’t screw this up: Delivering Value
3. Don’t Screw this Up: Alignment

Just finished reading Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges

My review in two words: Excellent book!

Whether you are an expert in the Enterprise 2.0 world or just a beginner, this book has something for you. Whether you believe in Enterprise 2.0 or not, this book has some excellent concepts that can be used to help bring social tools into the enterprise.

The book is split into two parts with the Part 1 covering the tools of Enterprise 2.0 and Part 2 discussing how to successfully utilize social tools within the enterprise.

Part 1 provides a very good overview of the tools and techniques of Enterprise 2.0 as well as some real-world case studies of companies that have implemented Web 2.0 platforms. These companies are extremely diverse running the gamut from government agencies to start-ups and the information provided by McAfee shows real-world usage of Web 2.0 within enterprises.

Part 2 is where the really good stuff happens. This is where McAfee shines. This is the stuff that every CEO, COO, CIO and CMO should read and digest. This is the place where you get to see some strategies for using social tools within the enterprise. When you read this book make, sure you pay attention to the Six Organizational Strategies starting on page 179. Good stuff.

Will this book give you the recipe for successful use of Enterprise 2.0? No. Will this book make your Enterprise 2.0 project(s) successful? Maybe. Maybe not. What this book will do is give you some ideas on how to introduce Enterprise 2.0 into your organization and give you some tips on make it successful.

So…let’s take a step away from the book for a minute and look at the topic itself. Enterprise 2.0. Great name but one that has been much maligned. The topic has caused a lot of debate since being introduced. For some examples, go read Dennis Howlett’s article titled “Enterprise 2.0 – the non-debate” and then read Mark Fidelman’s response on CloudAve titled “Enterprise 2.0 Caffeine: Let’s debunk the non-debate” to get some flavor of the various debate’s happening out there on the topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 in the comments.

With all of this debate, or non-debates as some would say, let’s look at McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals.

McAfee continues with his definition when he writes:

Enterprise 2.0, then, is about how organizations use the newly available ESSP’s [emergent social software platforms] to do their work better

With those definitions in mind, let’s revisit one of the main arguments against Enterprise 2.0 –> The value of Social Media / Enterprise 2.0 cannot be determined. In fact, there are many (Howlett included) that say social media tools are worthless to the organization.

My response to this argument is a simple one:

How valuable is the knowledge of an employee? How valuable is the knowledge of 10, 100 or 1000 employees? Can you place value on that knowledge? Maybe. Maybe not. That doesn’t mean that trying to harness that knowledge is worthless. So why would using tools to harness that knowledge be worthless?

I can understand some of the arguments of folks out there against Enterprise 2.0. There are a lot of buzzwords floating about and a lot of hype around the subject, but if you take the lessons from this book to heart, you’ll do more than buy into the hype…you’ll give your organization an opportunity to succeed by really harnessing the expertise, experiences and value of your organizational knowledge.

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• Enterprise 2.0 – Limits of Social Media in the Organization (ehealth.johnwsharp.com)
• Simple Definition of Enterprise 2.0 (fastforwardblog.com)
• Enterprise 2.0: the Week in Review (cloudave.com)
• Resetting the Enterprise With 2.0 Collaborative Tools: KM World Session Notes (fastforwardblog.com)
• Exploring Early Enterprise 2.0 Methodologies | Enterprise 2.0 Conference West 2009 (slideshare.net)
• McKinsey’s Michael Chui: “Allow your employees to expose their thoughts.” (siliconangle.net)

Karen Armstrong has dedicated the remaining years of her life to spreading one simple idea. This “golden rule”¹ transcends race, culture, social standing and religion. It can be applied by you, by me, by anyone. It requires little time and even less money. All that’s needed is (1) knowledge of what it is and (2) desire to do it.

You may or may not agree with everything she says, but your peace of mind and quality of life will definitely improve to the degree that you implement the golden rule. Take a few minutes to watch, “Let’s revive the golden rule”. It’s a good use of your time. You can also access it here.

Karen won a prize at Ted in 2008 enabling her to establish the Charter for Compassion. I for one am willing to stand up and commit to living the Golden Rule to the best of my ability. How about you?

Modern Day Hero – Karen Armstrong – Let’s Revive the Golden Rule is a post from: Alec Satin on People, Projects and Process

1. Golden Rule on Wikipedia.