Rethinking Project Management
(I apologize ahead of time if this is scattered in thought. I want to make my newsletters stream of thought and not spend too much time editing them so people can get my raw thoughts. I seem to work best that way and it keeps me moving forward. Some might call it a written jam, and by some I mean me.)
When you hear the term “project management,” you have many different feelings about it. Some positive, some negative.
Some negatives:
-It’s just another process.
-What is it exactly? What does it do? What is its purpose?
-I just want to do my job. Hurry up and tell me what I need to know so I can get it done.
Some positives:
-You need it to be organized.
-You need it to save money and time on projects.
-You need it to help people see the long term vision and stay focused.
These are some basics.
The Project Management Institute defines “project management” as, “The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.” On their “What is Project Management?” webpage, they list the five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. There’s also the 10 knowledge areas: integration, scope, time, cost, quality, procurement, human resources, communications, risk management, and stakeholder management.
What I mean by “rethinking project management” is that while it is necessary for me to know the process groups and knowledge areas in order to study for and pass the PMP, it isn't really necessary for me to know how to approach a project (it does provide a nice starting point/baseline, though). Sure, we need guidelines, but how can we make project management more practical?
To start, let’s redefine project management.
To me, project management is (as I told to Jowanza Joseph) getting excited about an idea in spurts, collecting those thoughts, and organizing them to get shit done. At its core, project management exists to help people save time and money because projects are consistently over budget and behind schedule. We need to stop looking at project management as something that will prevent this.
Projects with project managers/leaders and CEOs still fail all the time because we are human. It might be better to think of projects like a batter in baseball does when he steps up to the plate, where batting .300 is considered successful. You’re chartering into unknown territories by taking on a new project, or you’re copying something someone else is doing and trying to implement it yourself. Some will work and a lot will fail, or you will change your mind all the time as time goes on (also known as “scope creep” aka doing something outside of the intended work). People will still get tired of working on the same project for a long time.
I cannot find the exact quote at the moment, but I read something from Ariana Huffington recently where she said something along the lines of how she has a bunch of ideas that she writes down, and they always weigh on her. It isn’t until she deletes them from her notes that she can finally move on from them because otherwise, they linger in the back of her head and she feels guilty for not working on them. I think we all know that feeling. I certainly do.
Project management should be the same way. We should not stick to one thought and see it all the way through because we’ve spent so much time and money on it and our egos won't allow us to fail. There’s always going to be something else that comes up for us to work on. We should freely abandon ideas to allow room for newer, better things to come to life. The metrics of success and need to prove our role at work are important to keep our jobs, and this holds us back at organizations. If in a year, we were only successful at 3 projects and didn't finish 7, our boss would look down on us and asked us why we failed and how we could make it 7 successful and 3 unfinished.
Does that mean we should abandon every project? Well, obviously not. We should just be motivated to be creative. One idea might seem great one day and seem bad the next. It could be that the novelty has worn off and we realize it’s bad, or it could act as a launching pad for realizing a bigger idea.
The point of project management is to increase the probability of success for implementing this bigger idea. You manage different egos to remind everyone of a larger goal and get them to do their tasks so the team can be more efficient in the long run. If we are successful at accomplishing the bigger goals and failing at the smaller ones, then so be it. Those are easier to learn from and improve upon. The larger projects hold more weight and have little room for error because they potentially impact many people.
In terms of running a successful project with many different people, you’ll likely need (at the minimum) a project plan, a stakeholder register, a project schedule/work breakdown structure, a risk register and issue log, organized communication (storing things like notes from meetings somewhere so someone new could easily catch up), a lessons learned, and a set time for weekly/monthly team/committee meetings.
That all sounds like a lot. Let me put it in easier terms and tell you what to do.
Step 1 – Get out a poster paper and some post-it notes.
Step 2 - On the top, write the name of this project.
Step 3 – On one sticky note, write down where you currently are. Put it on the far left hand side of the poster paper.
Step 4 – On another sticky note, write down where you want to be. Put it on the far right hand side of the poster paper.
Step 5 – Brainstorm and write down single tasks you need to complete on individual post-it notes. Don’t do anything with these yet, just think/talk it out and write down.
Step 6 – On the sticky note for a task, write down how long it will take to complete each task and include time for testing/editing.
Step 7 – Now that you have all your tasks written down, sequence them in the order they need to get done.
Step 8 – Separate the tasks into groups. (maybe like initiating tasks, planning tasks, execution tasks, monitoring tasks, or closing tasks)
Step 9 - Draw lines on the poster paper like it was an excel spreadsheet and title the groups on the rows/columns accordingly (leave space for notes).
Step 10 – Put the post-it notes on the poster paper.
Step 11 – Calculate how long it will take to finish all of the tasks in a group and write it next to/under the group name. Give yourself extra time to account for anything that might come up. If it’s a short term project, maybe like an extra week or two. If it’s a long term project, maybe like an extra month or two.
Step 12 – Put your tasks in some management tool like Microsoft Project, ServiceNow, Asana, etc. for sharing/storage purposes.
Step 13 – Now that you have an organized plan, present it to anyone who might need to see it or who you would consider adding to your committee to work with you.
That’s it! Project management doesn’t need to be difficult. It just needs to give you a path to follow. To be successful on that path, don’t try to hit a home run/grand slam every time you step up to the plate. Try to hit singles and doubles, and you’ll eventually score some runs.
I’ll close by sharing this scene from Silicon Valley that sums it all up perfectly: https://youtu.be/oyVksFviJVE