PMO Creation - Week 8

Great week! We finally prioritized all our projects. Here's how we did it:

Sarah collected all the project names from the functional managers. They knew that if their project was not listed, it would not be worked on next week. She categorized them into five groups:

1. New Product Development: We invest money in the hopes that some customer will buy the product or service when we're done.
2. Customer Order: Some customer has promised to buy the product or service when it's finished and may even be paying for the development.
3. Process Improvement: Invest to improve the current processes, reducing cost and increasing profits that way. 
4. Regulatory Mandate: Make this investment because we're told to by some regulatory agency. Do it or we cannot stay in a particular business. 
5. Facilities/Infrastructure: Invest in real estate, buildings or electronics to get into new or more  business. 

Sarah wrote these on large flip-chart pages and pasted these on the walls of the room we were using. Then the steering committee arrived. I had representatives from IT, Marketing, Ops, IT QA, and QA. Finance was unavailable but we had a quorum.

Once we had reached agreement on where each project fit in the categories, we prioritized within each. Armed with post-its bearing numbers from 1 - 20, I facilitated the team deciding which Process Improvement project was most important to company business. 

Lots of interesting discussions developed. "What constitutes company importance?" Was it time to complete, investment, number or types of resources, how many other projects are affected by this one? All mattered but, through discussion, we were able to achieve a forced ranking of every project within each category.

Then the tough job arrived. We now had five #1 projects. We had to decide which of these five was most important to the future of the company. Once that was picked we had four #1 and one #2 to pick from. This continued until one category was exhausted and then we had only four to choose from.

Lots more great discussions until all 45 projects were force ranked. 

Next up, we need to resource the top projects until we run out of resources. 

Dear PM Advisor. Oct 21, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

My project was just cancelled even though I was ahead of schedule and under budget. My management says it's not my fault and they cancelled it for business reasons. But I still feel like a loser and find myself having to justify the project cancellation to my friends and co-workers. Any words of consolation?

Failure in Washington, D.C.

Dear Failure,

When I audit companies for adherence to Good Project Management Practices, I take the cancellation of the occasional project as a sign of good health. Bad ideas that are pushed through to completion just because we've already spent a lot of money and time on them is a sign of bad health.

Project are cancelled for any number of reasons, not all to do with the performance of the team. Your project might have been cancelled because your competitor came out with a product that made your project obsolete. Or there may have been two competing projects in your organization and the other one looked more promising at this point. Or there may not be enough resources to staff all the projects and there was another project added to the list that has a better payback than yours.

Often it is the job of a Project Manager to recommend the cancellation of their own project. Perhaps a technical obstacle proves to be too expensive to resolve.

None of these reasons are any reflection on the skill of the Project Manager. You did the best job you could shepherding the project to this point and you will be rewarded (punished) with annother challenging project.

Chin up!

PM Advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. July 29, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

We have a priority list for all our projects. We have thirteen active projects, five in the scarcity zone and a bunch below the line, waiting for other projects to finish up. But now my project, number eight on the list, is missing a specific resource due to a maternity leave. Does this mean we have to move it down below number thirteen into the scarcity zone? 

Scared in Maryland

Dear Scared,

Don't confuse priority with lack of resources. Your project was ranked number eight in importance because that was what the result of this project was worth for the company. Losing resources doesn't lower this priority. 

But you still have a problem. You lost a resource and need to resolve this. I suggest you make an immediate appeal to your company's steering committee. Reinforce the importance of the project to your company. Show them the impact of the loss of this resource to your project's timeline. Ask that they provide a replacement resource immediately. This resource can be a new employee, a temporary employee for the duration of the maternity leave or a consultant. Outline the cost of this resource but be sure you indicate that this is not an additional cost since the company is not paying the lost resource during this time. Allow the steering committee to make the decision and adjust the project plan accordingly. 

If teh steering committee refuses to provide the resource, limp along the best you can but don't lower the project's priority. That is not your job.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to BFieggen@gmail.com

Dear PM Advisor. July 9, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

We are organizing our projects in an effort to start prioritizing them all and staffing up the most important. We are collecting existing projects and resources available to work on projects. The head of R&D seems to be playing the system by not listing his projects as cross-functional and withholding all his resources to work on these 'Internal' projects. Any ideas on how to deal with this?

Resource Hog in Oakland, NJ

Dear Resource Hog,

First of all, congratulations on reaching the PM maturity level where you are actually prioritizing projects. Many companies don't ever get there.

You describe a pretty common problem when companies get to that point. V.P.s and Directors get nervous that this process will slow down their pet projects. Why? Because they are probably not that important to the overall business. They are draining resources away from more important projects. You have to be tough.

The key champion of his prioritization process needs to firmly state the following:

1. This company does two things:
• Ongoing Operations which provides the money to bring profits to the organization.
• Projects which represent an investment in the future so that the company will make even more profits when these projects are complete
2. Projects only show their profits when they are finished
3. The company prospers when 5 projects finish, not when 20 projects start
4. Projects will be prioritized so that we are only working on the most important projects
5. These projects will be fully staffed from the top down
6. People not working on Ongoing Operations full time will be placed into the resource pool that will staff these projects
7. When we run out of resources, we no longer work on less important projects until those projects we are working on complete and resources are freed up
8. This process will result in more projects finishing per year and more profits for the company
9. There will be no exceptions to step # 6

Then you need to ensure there is no cheating. Anyone working on a project must record their time as such and only on AUTHORIZED projects stemming from the prioritization process. Stealth projects are fair game for anyone to weed out. Make the offending V.P. or Director defend the Ongoing Operations work his hidden resources are doing. The most effective method will be peer pressure from the other members of the Project Steering Committee running this Prioritization Process.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Dear PM Advisor. April 1st, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

We currently don't budget our internal projects. We keep track of neither dollars of internal resources or even hours. I brought this up to management and their response is that there is no need to since we are already paid. What's wrong with this argument? 

Free in Florida.

Dear Free,

Of course there's no need to account for your hours. Since the company pays you for your time already, you work for free. And that way they can give you thousands of projects because your time is free and you have infinite hours available.

April Fools!

This error is pretty common in many companies that have a low level of Project Management maturity. By not accounting for at a minimum the number of hours you work, your company is not accounting for the opportunity cost of you working on the new project. By piling more and more projects on top of your existing work the current projects fall further and further behind.

Start by accounting for the hours you are required to work for your project. Then account for the hours required by the other projects and the hours required by your ongoing operations. This should not add up to more than about 45 hours per week. If it does, you have no time for your family. And a proper work-life balance is the most important thing to have.

If it does add up to more than 45 hours per week, you need to prioritize your work so that you do the most important work first and the rest in order. Multitasking is not the answer. If your company does not prioritize your work, you need to do it yourself.

You are doing no-one any favors starting ten projects a year. You only add value to the company by finishing three projects a year.


Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com