Dear PM Advisor. Nov 10, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

A low level team member on my team is the brother-in-law of the company's Managing Director. How do I treat him on my project?

Stepping on Eggshells in Bangalore

Dear Eggshells,

I guess it really depends on how much the Managing Director likes his brother-in-law and what his plans are for him. Does he plan on grooming this team member as his replacement or is he just finding a job for him as a favor to his sister? Does the Managing Director want him to succeed or fail? Does he view it as your job to make him look good or are you required to test him to see if he has what it takes to make it in this company? 

The bottom line is that the Managing Director is a major stakeholder of your project. You need to talk to him. First about the project like you would with any other stakeholder. Ask the typical stakeholder questions:

• What does he want to have the project accomplish? 
• What are some potential pitfalls?
• How often does he want communications about the project, what type and in what media? 
• Who else cares about this project? 

But add another question just for him:

• What is your goal for your brother-in-law over the course of this project?

You may not get a truthful answer so you also need to ask other high-level stakeholders the same question: 

• What is the Managing Director's goal for his brother-in-law? 

Then set out to manage his expectation just as you are trying to manage all the other stakeholder's expectations. 

Good luck,

PM Advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Oct 13, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I'm a Project Manager working for an electronics firm making laptops. My technical team says our battery is a huge risk in environmental hazards. As PM, should I recommend a change in product or battery use to ensure the company is not penalized due to this project?

Battered in Mumbai

Dear Battered,

Aha! An ethical dilemma! I love it! 

Depending on your project setup you may have somebody on your team representing regulatory or legal who should be making this call. If you do not, or you believe they are acting unethically, it is your responsibility to act ethically and ensure that the company does not violate any rules or regulations. 

As a Project Management Professional you sign a code of conduct that insists you act in an ethical manner. While doing so may hurt your career in the short term, you will always be better off in the long term. And taking short-cuts for short-term gains never pays off in the long term. 

But you don't need me to tell you that. Take any religious text or even Plato and they will agree with me. Below is my personal motto that you are free to take:

Do the right thing

Do the thing right

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. May 5, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I work at a small company where all the team members are on multiple projects and wear multiple hats. As a result people are not even showing up to status meetings and I can't seem to hold them accountable to complete tasks on time. 

Any advice?

Under-resourced in Connecticut.

Dear Under-resourced,

Cookies always help.

First of all, make sure your status meetings are well organized and take no more than 25 minutes. Check out a previous post for how to accomplish this. Never waste any team member's time.

Schedule these meetings when most team members can attend. Give them no good excuse for missing them.

For the few who still miss your meeting, corner them at their desk and ask them about their tasks and give them new ones that came out of the meeting. Make sure they are held accountable even if they miss the meeting. Pretty soon they'll realize that their best defense is to attend the meetings.

Good luck,

PM Advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Apr. 28, 2014

Dear PM Advisor

I had a real weird experience last week. I'm a consultant for a pharmaceutical company and I am managing a project where my client is outsourcing its packaging to a contract manufacturing organization (CMO). I am just taking over this project. I had a few calls with the CMO but wanted to plan the project with them face-to-face. 

I met with their director of quality who was extremely rude to me from the first moment. He said he had no respect for me because I wasn't a full-time employee of the pharma company. He told me the pharma company needs the CMO more than they need my client. He accused me of trying to intimidate him while trying to push his agenda down my throat. The meeting degenerated to a stand-off with me saying: "Well, my first impression of you was correct." (He threw me under the bus after my first phone conversation) and him saying: "Same applies to me!"

I've never been treated like that in 30 years of experience in the pharma world. I felt like walking out. How would you handle this situation? 

Flabbergasted in Philadelphia

Dear Flabbergasted,

Wow! First of all, sorry about your experience. That was indeed unfortunate and unprofessional. I'd love to know how you solved it.

Is it possible that you did anything before this meeting to antagonize this CMO before your arrival? It sounds like you did nothing to intimidate him during the meeting so you may have done so during that earlier call. Throwing you under the bus makes it sound like you were called out for some kind of bad behavior on your part. Perhaps you need to ask someone else who was at that phone call what their impression was.

The other possibility is that the director is a jerk. There are indeed people like that in the world and they often gravitate to positions of responsibility where they can force people to put up with their bad behavior. I've met a few jerky quality and regulatory people.

But the CMO needs your client and it's important you tell your client the attitude of the CMO. The CMO needs to get straight the customer/provider relationship.

As to what you should have done, there's nothing like a few deep breaths to defuse a tense situation like this. Allow the other person to speak first. If they refuse, speak first but use the diplomatic approach:

1. Make a statement both of you agree with and get him to at least nod his head: "We both want to hand over this work to your CMO, right?"
2. Show how there is an obstacle in the way of reaching this mutually agreed upon goal: Planning the project.
3. Ask him what he thinks is the best way to proceed.
4. Work together to remove the obstacle

And make sure he understands that, as project manager, you will be the person he has to deal with and that's easier if you develop some sort of working relationship. 

Good luck,

PM advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Mar 3, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

When I'm generating a Work Breakdown Structure, the pattern for the completion of documents is always the same. Draft, Review, Edit, Review, Edit, Approve. Can't I just list all the documents as the one deliverable, place all the activities underneath it and I'm done with that section of the WBS? It seems a lot easier but I'm afraid I'll pay for it later?

Short-cut in Cambridge.

Dear Short-cut,

As the CarTalk denizens of your fair city are quick to point out: "It's the stingy man who pays the most!" As you suspect, there will be a payment for taking this short-cut. But it may not be as bad as you suspect.

Just remember what your next steps are after filling out the WBS. The activities need to be placed on the Responsibility Matrix and people need to volunteer for who will take responsibility for them. If they are all the same people on every document, you could be in luck. Most likely this is not the case.

Then the activities need to be placed in the schedule. If you're using MS-Project at this point, a simple cut and paste will help but you'll need to add the word describing each actual document. I'm a big proponent of activities standing alone. You shouldn't have activities named: Review. You'll have to scroll up each time to see exactly what the person is reviewing.

Next you have to add the durations and predecessors and they will vary by document.

My preference is to have each activity broken out within the WBS. You can use this as an opportunity to involve the people who have little to add to the WBS by asking them to repeat the activities you wrote under one document for all the other documents. Great opportunity for some team building.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Feb 24, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I'm having a real problem getting the documents we produce on our project approved. More people want to review the documents in the second round than who reviewed it in the first round. Any suggestions?

Runaround Sue in Cambridge, MA

Dear Runaround Sue,

A great tool for this is the Responsibility Matrix. The Cadence version takes teh activities shown on the Work Breakdown Structure and determines who will provide active contribution to the completion of each task. This visual tool can help you explain your problem to the management who can do something about this.

When they see, graphically, that rather than funneling down the review from a large number to a subset to one or two who approve the document, a broadening of reviews, they should understand your concern. If not, ask them the question: "Won't I be wasting time on the first set of edits if the whole set of reviewers doesn't look at it the first time?"

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Jan 27, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I saw your post last week about weak, balanced and strong matrix organizational structures and have a follow-up question. What's the difference between Functional and Projectized org structures. It looks like in the functional structure the projects are only being done by the V.P.'s.

Structured. Hartford, CT.

Dear Structured,

In the Functional org structure, projects are done within each department but coordination across departments for the project's sake are done at the department head level. This tends to be old-fashioned project management so we have to picture ourselves back in Henry Ford's day.

Henry Ford tells his people in 1908 that he wants to create a new car: The Model T. He asks the head of R&D to develop the new design. He asks Manufacturing to figure out how to mass-produce it. He asks Finance to figure out how to price it so that every working man can afford it. He asks Marketing to figure out how to get all these families to buy one. Each department head now has one or more projects to run and he is the Project Manager. No team member on R&D can ask a manufacturing team member a question without going through their department heads. 

Coordination BETWEEN projects is done at the department head level. So Henry Ford is the Program Manager and his direct reports are the Project Managers. This is an old-fashioned and extremely inefficient way of managing projects and is rarely seen anymore today. 

Contrast this with a Projectized org. structure:

In this structure there are no department heads, only heads of projects. The CEO recognizes that no ongoing operations are going on in this portion of the company, merely projects. Each Project Manager has at her disposal, all the functions required to run the project: R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing, Finance, QA etc. All these people are fully committed to the project. The PM can hire and fire at will to suit the needs of her project.

This structure works best in companies that have large, LONG-TERM projects. Because when the project is ending, the team member has no place to go and starts getting nervous about his job. Boeing can be run like this, Google cannot.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Dear PM Advisor. Jan 20, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I'm looking at the different organizational structures in the PMBOK and I'm having a hard time distinguishing between weak, strong and balanced matrix. They all look alike to me.

Stuck in the Matrix. Hartford, CT.

Dear stuck in the matrix,

They do look similar so let me highlight the differences for you. First you need to recognize the PMI's bias on this. That's important since they wrote the PMBOK and write the test questions pertaining to this topic. They believe that in the best possible world, every organization has a PMO, a Project Management Office staffed with fully trained Project Managers. Thus, in Matrix organizations, the best or strongest version has the PMs coming out of the PMO. Like this:

The other extreme, as far as the PMI is concerned, is when a person is in a functional department not called a PMO, like R&D or Marketing, and she doesn't even have the title of Project Manager. That they consider a Weak Matrix:

In between the two extremes is a balanced matrix structure where the person managing the project doesn't report to the PMO but at least has the title of Project Manager:

The PMI uses different terminology than I, referring to the level of authority and influence wielded by the Project Manager. But if you're trying to pass the PMP exam, my explanation might work better. 

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Spain reneges on Solar Power guarantees

Spain was once one of the bright spots (pun intended) in the solar power generating world. Generous guarantees by the goverment brought it close to 20% reliance on renewable energy. Investors big and small poured money into solar power projects. Only one thing was missing: the money to pay for all this.

When the federal goverment guaranteed men like Justo Rodriguez that it would buy the electricity he generated at a fixed price for the next 25 years, he mortgaged two houses and his workshop to buy the equipment. He, in turn, guaranteed his banks that he would return the money they lent him.

Justo Cruz Rodríguez faces ruin after investing in solar power in the Spanish town of Águilas. Samuel Aranda for The New York Time

Abruptly, the Spanish govenment told him that they would not pay anywhere near as much for the power he generates and, to add insult to injury, wants to charge him for the power he generates and uses himself.

Countries must operate on a rule of law and gurantees made by the government cannot be withdrawn when people are investing based on those guarantees. This is just one more step into anarchy that the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) countries are falling into.

Read the details in this article.

Dear PM Advisor. Dec. 23, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

Reading through your post about How to plan a project I like the way you get people to sign up for responsibility at a task level using dots and circle-dots. But what if a person owns a task but also contributes to it? Do they still get a circle-dot?

Dot in Morristown, NJ

Dear Dot,

The best way to conduct the Responsibility Matrix session is like this:

1. Place all the tasks (Activities) on the x-axis
2. Place all the Team members on the y-axis
3. Ask those present: "Who is actively contributing to this task's completion?"
4. Note those raising their hands
5. Place dots at the intersections of those people's name and that task.
6. Ask of those who contribute: "Which of you takes responsibility for the completion of this task?"
7. Place a circle around that person's dot.

Notice that, using this method, the owner of each task must be a contributor as well. 

Good luck,

PM Advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Return to sender for dog poop violators

Hah! I love it. A city in Spain is getting revenge on dog poop law scoffers by delivering their dog's poop back to them at home.

In Brunete, Spain, the mayor found that the most consistent complaint he received was about the presence of errant dog-poop so he set about to reduce this problem. His earlier program was less successful, more on that later, but this one works. All dog owners seem to be carrying plastic bags now, a rare sight in Spain and dog poop complaints have been reduced by 70%.

This article goes into more detail. The big question I had while reading it was: How do they know whose poop it is? Undercover volunteers, after witnessing a crime, will meet the owner and admire the dog, asking its name and breed. From there, a quick look at town records reveals the address. The poop is packaged in a white box and delivered to the door titled: Lost and Found. When the owner signs for the package, they get a lovely surprise.

Oh, and the previous failed project. A remote controlled plastic poop that would bump into people's feet to raise awareness. Both programs are shown in the video below:

Dear PM Advisor. June 17, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

I look at the way you plan projects and you have a lot of repeating activities. For every document you create you ask that the WBS read: Draft, review, edit, review edit, approve. Are you serious? 

Skeptical in Delaware

Dear Skeptical,

When you plan to drive anywhere, do you assume you'll be able to drive the speed limit the whole way, even on on-ramps and turning corners? Do you plan on leaving your driveway at full speed and hitting only green lights? If so, go ahead and plan on creating documents and having them approved immediately. The rest of us who live in a place called 'The Real World' will continue to plan our projects based on reality.

The number of rounds of review you typically require to get a document to the point of being approved is what you should place in your Work Breakdown Structure. Each of these activities must be planned for, someone must take responsibility for them and they must appear in the schedule. If not, you are left with two options, both of them bad:

1. Plan on every document being approved immediately after drafting
2. Write more general activities like: 'Complete document A'

The first option guarantees you will be delayed on your project as each activity comes in late.

The second option leaves you with fingers pointing between the drafter and reviewer of the document as to who is responsible for its delay. 

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Dear PM Advisor. May 20, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

We don't currently use sponsors in our organization but I can see their value. What process should we use in picking them?

Unsponsored in Delaware.

Dear Unsponsored,

There are some key roles for the sponsors to fill on your project:

1. Provide funding
2. Remove obstacles above the Project Manager's pay-grade
3. Mentor the Project Manager
4. Provide political information to assist the Project Manager

When people see 'Provide Funding' they assume that the Sponsor must be the President of the company and make the mistake of calling this person the Sponsor for every project. That doesn't work. If you have the same \Sponsor for every project, nobody will fight for your particular project.

Best practice is that the Sponsor be at the VP level so that they can provide that mentorship and political knowledge and remove the significant obstacles. But it is best if the Sponsor is somewhat external tot he project. By this I mean that they can remain objective about the project's goals. You don't want the VP of R&D to be the sponsor of her pet development project. Instead, pull in the VP of Regulatory Affairs to apply that objective reason to this project.

Good luck,

PM Advisor.

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Sixtieth excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

          The next day the team assembled and men started to demolish the corner of the palace where the tower was to be situated while others pulled down the rest of the palace and stacked up the stones for later use. Daylight revealed the beauty of the mosaic. Gwilym made a decision to try and rescue as much of this as possible for later use on the tower or for sale to other people. “We may need the extra money for unforeseen circumstances on this tower build.”

          Gwilym walked around with the calendar, checking off who was working and who was due to come tomorrow for laying out the foundations. He checked the way the crew were doing their jobs and made judgments on their level of various skills. Then he and Fred sat down at an easel with a blank sheet of paper and the network diagram showing all the activities and who was responsible for each and created a new document. “Let’s call this our ‘Human Resource Plan,’ Fred.”

          “We’ll list all the roles we have to fill for doing this project: Project Manager, Foreman, Sawyer, Mason, Foundation Man, Laborer, Carpenter, Quarryman, Road-builder. Then we list the names of all the men who fill those roles for us. Some can be used in two or more roles.”

          After they had done that, Gwilym took out another sheet of paper. “Some of the men were too happy day before yesterday volunteering for activities. We need to show this in a better way than just their names on activities in the network diagram. I think we’ll get some warning of their overuse if we plot the activities against the people.”

          Fred took a large sheet of paper, and wrote the names of the crew on the vertical axis. On the x axis he wrote the names of all the activities. Where they intersected he placed a letter R next to the person who volunteered to take responsibility for that activity. He placed a letter I if the person was involved with the activity. With Gwilym calling out the activities and Fred writing, they were soon finished.

          “Let’s add the role of the crew below their names so we can see which roles are overloaded,” said Gwilym. On doing so they saw that the foundation men seemed overloaded at first, then the masons, then the carpenters. That made some sense based on the nature of the work. 

To read the entire first draft in one shot, click here:

Real people or Screen people

I just recently read two excellent books that dealt with the trend of people spending time on the Internet or texting in preference to real conversations with people.

The first one, Feed, took a fictional approach to the topic with teenagers having the Internet literally fed into their brains at all times and how their lives differed from ours, especially when the feed malfunctioned and they were back to 'normal.'

Lots of great teen speak that the author picked up by eavesdropping on kids in the mall and extrapolating into the future.

The second one, 'Alone Together' was a non-fiction book written by an MIT Artificial Intelligence professor and it showed the types of experiments being performed that showed the trend towards people preferring robot company and moving away from face to face or even phone conversations in preference of texting and other 'controlled' conversations.

In this one the author answered the question I've always struggled with: Why do teenagers prefer to text than call? It always seemed a step backward in technology to the time of the telegraph before the telephone was invented. Her explanation is that teenagers are intimidated by the immediacy and lack of control found in a phone call and prefer to be able to massage their words before sending them. 

The books got me thinking, what should we do, if anything, about these trends? Should we try to head them off? I'm all in favor of the increased efficiency brought to us by mobile technology and the Internet. Being able to complete a business deal while driving to another customer. Finding the restaurant where you want to eat and read reviews by other diners while someone else is driving to town. Then clicking on directions and the menu. These are all great advantages. 

I know there are all kinds of rules about Internet safety and not texting while driving. This post won't deal with those issues. I'm just going to concentrate on social interactions with the presence of screens. What is polite and what is not. I'm thinking about rules we've imposed at home and what rules we should perhaps add to this list. 

The rules are not designed to impose my old-fashioned set of norms on my children. Instead, I am keenly interested in raising my children to fit into future society. If they don’t learn how to have a phone or face-to-face conversation as children, what are they going to do when they go for an interview, try to sell their product to a customer, meet their future in-laws?

Multitasking is a skill that can work in certain situations like when you are using different parts of your brain to accomplish different tasks. All of us can walk while having a conversation, eat while listening to music, even play simple video games like Brickbreaker while listening to a book on tape. But young people think they can multitask with the same area of the brain. This has been tested repeatedly and found to be a fallacy. You cannot effectively text someone while having a conversation with another person. You can’t do your homework efficiently and correctly while maintaining seven different chat sessions and listening to loud music. If you think you are one of these rare exceptions who can do that, submit yourself to testing and you’ll be surprised.

What follows is my first draft of a set of rules. Please comment with your impressions of these rules and any additions you would make.

Screen rules

1.  Live people are more important than people communicating to you via screens.
2. No screens at the dinner table unless your family allowed TV there 20 years ago.
3. If  something comes up in a conversation where the answer can be found by checking a screen, ask permission first.
4. When spending time one-on-one with someone and your phone interrupts, answering demotes the real person in importance to the one on the screen. (That’s OK if it’s your mother or your boss, not OK if it’s just another friend.)
5. If you’re in a group and the conversation can go on without you while you check the screen, that may be OK but be subtle.
6. No screens while attending religious services, a concert, a show or a movie.  You can always tell people ‘gtg’ for a couple of hours and get back to them when you leave the area.
7. No screens while attending a lecture unless the lecturer asks you to look something up as part of the class.
8. Enjoy your time when in a special event. No need to look at it through your camera.

This last one is a personal pet peeve. Remember the opening ceremony of the Olympics? All these athletes were at the pinnacle of their career. They march into the stadium in front of billions of people and what are they mostly doing? Rather than enjoying themselves, they are recording the crowd and fellow athletes on their cell-phone cameras! People! Have your buddy at home record the show and post it on your Facebook page. Enjoy the moment! You deserve it!

What are your thoughts? I'd love to see some additions to this and we can come up with the '10 communication commandments.'

Dear PM Advisor December 18, 2012

Dear PM Adivsor,

I use the Cadence methodology to determine responsibility and contribution level on each activity. When it's time to enter the people's level of effort into the Gantt chart, how do I enter different levels of effort for the different people involved? Especially with the Project Manager who gets a dot on every task but may spend only five minutes on the task when others are spending twenty hours. 

Cadence man in Latrobe, PA.

Dear Cadence,

I like the Cadence Methodology and use it to plan all my projects. Then I go further and enter all the people's effort into the Gantt chart and it is certainly difficult. See this post for entering level of effort into Gantt charts in general and then I'll show you how to modify this method for the case when you have several people working on a task at different levels of effort.

First of all, I only enter the PM as a resource on a task if they are the responsible party or their effort is more than just monitoring the task for completeness.

When the remaining people on the task are working around about the same level of effort, just combine the hours and type in the duration and MS-Project will calculate the %Complete roughly correctly.

Then you are left with those tasks where you have wildly different amounts of effort: One person working 20 hours, one working 10 and one working 5 for example. What you do is double click on the task and then open the resource tab. Calculate in your head what 20 hours over the duration is in terms of percentage. Let's say it is a week long task so the % of time spent on the task is 50%.

• Type 50% next to the person who is working the 20 hours. 
• Then type 25% for the person working 10 hours. 
• Finally type 13% next to the one working 5 hours. 
• Then add up the total hours and type 35 hours in the work column.
• Type one week in the duration column. 

In my experience MS-Project won't calculate the percentages perfectly but it will be close. If you need better performance from your Project Management software, better choose some other program like Primavera for this.


Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Dear PM Advisor October 8th, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

Our company doesn't have an official prioritized list of active projects. People are working on too many projects. How do I motivate team members to work on my projects?

Entertainer in Massachusetts

Dear Entertainer,

You have the right idea. Keep them entertained and they will work on your projects. The problem, as you have figured out, resides above your pay grade with senior staff. They are the people who need to own the PM process and need to prioritize projects and fully resource the top priorities.

In the absence of this priority list, people will prioritize their work however they see fit. Some do work on a First In, First Out (FIFO) basis, some FILO. Some will prioritize alphabetically, some will refuse to work on projects sponsored by those who root for a different football team. Most will follow the squeaky wheel syndrome and will work on activities that they are being bugged about by vocal project managers.

You ask how to motivate your team members. That's easy. Get to know your team members. Take them out to lunch, do a 'beers and peers' session after work. Find out what motivates them. It will be different based on their personality type, their interests, their ambition. Then set out to keep them motivated in an individual way.

Try 'Reward' Power:
You have power as a Project Manager to motivate them with reward power by asking management for a certain percentage of the project budget to be doled out at your discretion for this purpose. Determine your team member's interests and get them gift certificates at their favorite restaurant, gallery openings or sporting events tickets that make them feel like you really know them. Then give these out when they "Go beyond the call of duty." Do this every couple of weeks or on a monthly basis for a long project. They word will get out that you care about your team members.

Try 'Expert' Power:
You were put in charge of this project because you were recognized as a competent manager. Share your knowledge with those team members who want to get ahead in the world. Mentor them, share books and advise on great courses you have attended. Share political knowledge about upper management.

Look at Maslow's needs pyramid:
Look at the below pyramid and decide where your team members are. If they are barely surviving, money will motivate. If they are beyond this, they may be better motivated with a challenge.

Be the squeaky wheel:
If you keep asking about the progress on a certain task, the easiest way for the team member to get you out of their office is to complete the activity. Do this sparingly where all other methods shown above have failed.

Don't use 'Coercive' Power:
Some PMs have authority to punish those who work on your project. This can be done with poor reviews, withholding project bonuses, even reprimands and firings. That may work on your current project but you'll have a hard time finding team members for your next project.

Any other ideas, readers?

Good luck!

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Dear PM Advisor September 10, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

What do you do when your project changes dramatically during execution and it becomes obvious that you need to change the objective?

Jim Lovell, 3/4 of the way to the moon

Dear Jim,

Haha! I was watching Apollo 13 Saturday night also. Lots of great Project Management stories in there. I'll have to do an analysis of this movie one day. But your question allows me to address one aspect of the case.

I use NASA when I describe the need for every project to have an official objective that everyone agrees to. I don't know the objective of Apollo 13 project but the objective of the Apollo program was: 'To achieve a manned lunar landing and safe return of the astronaut by the end of 1970 within a cost of $40 Billion.' From that program objective, I can only assume that a major part of the Apollo 13 project objective concerned landing on the moon and returning the astronauts safely.

When the explosion occured and the spacecraft started losing oxygen, the powers that be had to make a decision. What do we do with the project at this point? They had a two-part objective. But with that significant an oxygen loss, which could only be stopped by shutting down two fuel cells, they could only accomplish one of the two parts: Land on the moon or return the astronauts safely.

Who gets to make that decision?

Not the project manager, not the team. We're talking about the steering committee at this point. The same people who signed off on the project in the first place. The steering committee or whoever provided the budget for this project in the first place. I don't think that person showed up in the movie. The movie shows flight command making that decision.

I'm sure that the decision was ratified at the right level, we all knew that they had to get the crew back to earth. When it's an emergency, the Project Manager or the man on the spot, (that's you, Jim,) can also make the right decision but get approval as soon as the emergency is over.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Dear PM Advisor September 3, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

How do I know when to do something versus delegate the activity to someone else? What is the best way to track those delegated tasks?

Overwhelmed in New York.

Dear Overwhelmed,

Care to guess the most frequent complaint of new Project Managers? "I have all this responsibility and no authority so I have to do everything myself since no-one listens to me when I try to delegate." I had the same problem myself when I first became a PM. All of a sudden I was put in charge of a project full of my peers but they wouldn't do what I asked so I ended up doing extra work to keep the project on track.

The problem is that Project Managers do not have the power to delegate. There is a big difference between a Functional Manager and a Project Manager. People report to the same Functional Manager for many years and he writes their review at the end of the year. Only a Functional Manager can delegate.

What a Project Manager can do is determine responsibility for an activity when planning the project with a full team. See this post for all the details but it comes down to the team members taking responsibility on an activity by activity basis for everything on the Work Breakdown Structure. As a team you break down the project into every activity required. Then you ask team members: 'Who is involved in the completion of this activity?' After you mark those volunteers on the responsibility matrix you ask the second question: 'Which of you will take responsibility for completing this task on schedule and budget?' One of the team members will take this responsibility. If the activity falls within your functional responsibility or you feel like doing it yourself, you will volunteer. Since the Responsibility Matrix is large and graphical, it quickly becomes clear to the whole team who is working hard on this project and who isn't. Volunteering becomes easier as the session goes on.

It takes some doing to get people into the mode of volunteering for work but two things work in your favor here:

1. They have already been committed to this project by their functional managers (for a certain percentage of their time).
2. They are normally responsible for this activity since it fits within their functional responsibilities.

New activities will appear during the execution of the project and these will also require a responsible person. Instead of returning to the Responsibility Matrix, you simply bring up the activity during a status meeting and ask the same two questions. 'Who will work on the task and who will take responsibility?'

Once you have gotten the team member's commitments to do this work, you need to keep this commitment visible. Post that Responsibility Matrix in a prime location. Ensure that the responsible person's name appears on that activity in the Gantt chart.

Your second question was about how you track those tasks. I answered that above with the Gantt chart but I'm guessing you wanted to know more. 'How do I get people to live up to those commitments?' By having team members commit to activities in front of their peers, your job is made a lot easier. Commitments made in front of others are more lasting. (That's why marriages, inductions to office etc. are made publicly.) These commitments are more lasting than those made one on one with the Project Manager. And infinitely better than commitments made by others on their behalf. So you need to change your method from delegation to personal commitments to personal commitments made publicly. Then, when an activity is about to start, remind the team member that they committed to completing that task and ask them to clear their desk and get that activity done when scheduled. People will respond to this.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

How to plan a project

Here's an article I wrote a few years back showing how to plan a computer systems validation project. The methodology works for any project and it's the way I've been successfully planning projects for twenty years.

Project management techniques are universal. The proven, time-honored disciplines that make up project management can be effectively utilized and applied by virtually any manager, leader, or team member—regardless of industry, profession, or job title. The same skills I have used to develop and bring medical devices to market I have used to remodel my home and, most recently, validate pharmaceutical systems.

As Vice President of Project Management at QPharma, I train my project managers in a system I have developed over the years called Progressix^SM. The word is derived from three concepts central to my teaching:

1. Progressive elaboration. The concept that a project needs to be elaborated progressively as we move from Idea^*, to Purpose^*, to Objective^*, to Work Breakdown Structure*, to Responsibility Matrix^*, to Schedule^*, to Budget^*, to Risk Analysis^* to full Project Plan^*. The project continues to be elaborated through execution and into closeout. (I first learned this order of project elaboration 9 years ago through a class I took from Cadence Management Corporation and have used it successfully since.)
2. Six honest serving men. I use a poem from Rudyard Kipling to illustrate the key things that need to be known about a project to ensure a good, manageable plan.

I keep six honest serving men

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are WHAT and WHY and WHEN

And HOW and WHERE and WHO

3. Progress. Using the Tuckman Model, progress is made when the team moves from an awareness phase (which Tuckman refers to as FORMING*) through a conflict / control phase (STORMING*), a cooperation phase (NORMING*), and, finally, a productivity phase (PERFORMING*). This concept is evident with any group and is particularly useful in project teams.

So how do I go about this progressive elaboration? Let me use the example of a computer system validation we recently planned for a client. I became involved in a project that was already underway, because it was in trouble and the client had seen the success I had at projects in other departments.

The project was a corrective action tracking system. I was present at a very contentious meeting where two sides, the Clinical and the Information Services departments, were pointing fingers about how the project should progress. The meeting was very acrimonious, with little likelihood of any work being accomplished in the future.

Someone suggested I intervene, so I asked a simple question: “Who is the project manager?” Two hands rose, and I nodded, expecting them to glare at one another. But they had a different problem. One said she was the project manager from the programming group, and the other claimed to be the project manager from the users’ group. They added that they loved working together. I announced, however, that there can be only one project manager, and they needed to decide who it would be. The programmer was decided upon.

I requested that all the project participants, including the users and heads of the clinical and IS^* departments, be present the following week at an all-day project kick-off session, which I would facilitate. They all agreed and, when the meeting time was decided, I sent out an agenda as shown below:

AGENDA

Time	Item	Led by..
9:00 – 9:05	Check in at room, Introductions	Bruce
9:05 – 9:15	Icebreaker exercise	Bruce
9:15 – 9:30	Project Background	IS & clinical heads
9:30 – 10:00	Project Objective	Bruce
10:00 – 10:30	List of Deliverables	Bruce
10:30 – 10:45	Break
10:45 – 12:00	Work Breakdown Structure	Bruce
12:00 – 1:00	Working Lunch
12:00 – 2:00	Responsibility Matrix	Bruce
2:00 – 2:15	Break
2:15– 4:30	Schedule	Bruce

I arrived early, and posted my responsibility matrix and schedule charts on all the walls. People were slow to arrive (is this an IT thing or is it just me?), but they were all present just before 9:30. I scanned the room and, sure enough, Clinical was on one side, IT on the other.

I started with introductions and then we went into a quick icebreaker exercise, which melted rather than broke the ice in that room. The one I chose was participant bingo, where I had a 5 x 5 matrix filled out with things like: “Drives a red car; Has more than three children; Loves the show Survivor,” etc. People tried to achieve Bingo by taking it around and getting people to sign their names in the appropriate box.

Next, I entered the six serving men scenario by answering the first question: WHY? Both department heads were able to speak their piece. Why are we doing this project? Why is it important to the company? Why is it important to the various departments and participants?

During this project background session, the location of the project, WHERE, was easily answered as only the US offices, nowhere else in the worldwide offices of this company

Then I took over. The room was clearly in a FORMING mode,