Forward Momentum: Delivering Results

(For those who really don’t know, and for those who really think they know.)

By Dr. Gerald Mulenburg, PMP

We are pleased to welcome a new contributing author, Dr. Gerald Mulenburg. We are sure you will find his articles helpful.

Project management first and foremost is about creating change. If there is no change that needs to occur, there is no need for a project. For any project creating change, multiple items need to be considered, including the amount of change involved, the factors affecting the change, and a number of other things. If the change can be clearly identified, or has been done before and the method for accomplishing it clear, the project is considered “simple.” At the other end of the spectrum, where not only what is to be done is unclear but how to do it is not yet known, a project is considered “complex.” (More on complex projects at another time.) For the project manager to manage a project well, it requires not only an intellectual understanding of the task to be accomplished but also guiding (some may say leading) the project team members to accomplish their tasks in a way that helps integrate the completed work at the right time into the desired result.

So how do we create change through a project? Answering the WWWWWH questions is a good way to start. What is needed? Why is it needed? When is it needed? Who is involved in doing it? Where does it need to be done? and, How is it to be done? Although this may sound simplistic, it is often not simple. Many people working on a project find it difficult to answer all of these questions, and some may not be able to answer any. So what?

Only if everyone working on a project understands both these questions and the answers to them can they make the smart decisions necessary to achieve the project’s objectives by being both effective and efficient. Effectiveness is of course doing the right things, and efficiency is doing those things right. The WWWWWH method provides those doing the work with a means to accomplish that work with all of its necessary features and functions, ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­within the cost constraints, and on schedule. In reviewing team member’s comments for many successful projects, they frequently identify having a clear understanding of the WWWWWH factors for their projects as reasons for their project success.

Try it, you might like it!

By Craig Covello, PMP

This is part one of a two-part article.

At first glance, the title of this article might lead you to believe that the subject has something to do with the Boston Marathon or Churchill Downs.  Although I’m sure some metaphors could be made regarding the competitiveness found in both racing and business environments, today’s topic is actually about some tricks and techniques that project managers might find useful when overseeing budgets.  Let’s examine each one.

Cross Footing

This is a technique familiar to most accountants and heavy spreadsheet users.  It’s designed to find errors in spreadsheet formulas, such as summations and averages, by calculating redundant totals associated with both rows and columns.  Here’s a relatively simple spreadsheet that illustrates the concept:

Cross Footing example

In example 1, contract subtotals are added vertically in column F.  In example 2, contract subtotals are added horizontally in row 15 and the results appear separately in column G.  It might seem intuitive that these totals must always agree, and in fact, they normally would.  There are, however, exceptions to that assumption.   These numbers may disagree due to errors in cell formulas.   This is illustrated in example 3, where the contract subtotal of $70,981 is incorrect because the formula is missing taxes on equipment.

This begs the question; how are these types of formula errors introduced?  Well, typically it is the result of adding columns or rows in order to adapt the spreadsheet to ever-changing project conditions AFTER data has already been entered.  It’s a common scenario, which I’m sure we’ve all done at one time or another. Admittedly, the example given here is rather straightforward, but you can imagine the difficulty in finding this type of subtotal error in a spreadsheet containing 10 or 20 columns with hundreds of row entries.

Some spreadsheets, such as Microsoft Excel^®, attempt to flag these errors with a callout graphic resembling something akin to a traffic sign.  Unfortunately, that flag might escape your attention since the cell must be selected in order to see the warning.  Errors caught by cross footing are a little more obvious and can save you some time, sanity and embarrassment before your spreadsheet is published.

Next month we will look at run rate exhaustion to provide an early warning sign that our project may be in jeopardy of overrunning our project budget or constraints.

By Bruce Beer, PMP

This is Part 1 of a two-part series.

OK, so most Project Managers who have attended any type of project management class will have had “Quality” thrown at them with the outline of what should go into a “Quality Plan”. Knowing about the theoretical contents of a quality plan and actually preparing one can be quite different!

When I first tried to do a plan, my first question was “Where can I find one that has already been done so I can use it as a starting point?”, and the answer was generally a blank stare. They were difficult things to get hold of because most people know about them, know what should go into them, but have never quite managed the final step of trying to produce one. Once the realization has hit you that these things are as rare as rocking horse droppings, you then need to go and create a plan based on the theory you learned in your last PM class.

Later on in my PM career, I was working in a very large PMO based in Germany, and I was asked to become the quality manager for a global desktop refresh rollout. Another level of mystery altogether! I worked with the customer’s quality manager to produce a unified quality plan for the PMO and introduce quality measures into the program. Daunting stuff!

The Customer’s quality manager and I sat down to outline the quality elements that would go into the quality plan. Bear in mind that the quality plan is there to define what quality measures there should be, what measurements need to be taken, when, how, how often, by whom, what format the results should take, and what constitutes the pot of gold under the rainbow of “achieving quality”. 

The program was extremely diverse, incorporating areas such as some software development, some facility reconstruction, purchasing, delivery of desk tops around the world, installation, support, SLAs, etc., and the quality plan had to account for all these different types of projects. In creating the quality plan we focused on the project deliverables. This is where we could apply quality metrics, success criteria, acceptance, etc. Viewing it from this deliverables aspect also allowed us to break the plan down into the different types of projects and deliverables, defining quality metrics and success criteria for each.

In Part 2, we will discuss the overall objectives and components of a quality plan.

By Vicki Wrona, PMP

Have you ever had a humorous misunderstanding arise because two people were approaching a conversation from different angles and were not understanding each other correctly? Let me give you a recent humorous example that happened to me.

I was recently teaching a virtual PMP Exam Prep course and had made an offhand comment about people working in my facility to fix the air conditioning. The next morning, when class resumed, one attendee asked me how the AC was. It’s a straightforward question which right now is very obvious. However, when we ended class the day before, I was teaching earned value, and one of the earned value components is Actual Cost, AC. Since I was about to begin class and review what we discussed yesterday, earned value was at the top of my mind. When I got the question, I was dumbfounded on how to answer, because I took the question as, “How is your actual cost?” At this point, I didn’t even remember making the comment, so “air conditioning” was nowhere in my brain. After pausing speechless for a moment (which doesn’t happen too often), it clicked. Actually, it took a couple minutes and some clarification, but it did eventually click. What a funny, and harmless, misunderstanding.

This misunderstanding was harmless, but not all are. We come to a conversation with a simple statement or question. We see it as straightforward. And it often would be, except that the other person has other thoughts, experiences, and recent events in their minds which may take your simple statement in an unintended direction. And when they don’t get what we mean right away, we can get frustrated or think they are not smart or paying attention.

Sometimes we don’t know that two people are talking about different things until it has been happening for a while. That is the problem with assuming that others are approaching our discussion with a “clean slate” or freed mind. Once we realize that our minds are not on the same track or thinking the same way, we have to work harder to get everyone back on the same message. It can be hard to switch once you begin thinking a certain way, i.e. “going down the wrong track.”

If, instead, we approached every conversation with the assumption that others can and probably are approaching our topic from different perspectives, experiences, backgrounds, examples, analogies, etc., we might find ourselves experiencing fewer misunderstandings and exhibiting more patience. We have to remember to work hard to be clear. Well, we already work hard, right? Then it means we should work harder. Question the other person’s understanding, especially if they pause or look confused. Too often in a discussion, we just keep talking or moving when a person pauses rather than stop to verify. Even when they are agreeing with you and understanding SEEMS to be aligned, it may or may not be, especially when (but not always) we are working with people from different cultures or languages.

This takes effort. It’s hard to do this all day, every day. It takes energy. Even if we don’t always get it right, at least if we try, we’ll avoid some misunderstandings. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than it could have been. And little improvements made over time will grow to bigger ones and make a difference. That’s what I count on.

What do you do to avoid “different track” thinking?