Forward Momentum: Delivering Results

By Vicki Wrona, PMP

Recently, a colleague made a statement that I love and thought I would explore that with you. She tells her teams, “Don’t make the same mistakes, make new ones.” This resonated with me for several reasons.

First, she gave her team members permission to explore, be creative, and make mistakes at work. If you are never wrong, never fail, or never make a mistake, then you aren’t pushing yourself and growing personally. The same goes with work. If you have never worked on a project or initiative which has had trouble or has not succeeded 100%, then you haven’t stretched yourself. Anyone who has worked on larger initiatives or more complex projects has had problems, even failures. Not everything succeeds. What we want to do is take control where possible and avoid those issues or problems which can be properly managed, minimizing the occurrences of problems or failures that are beyond our control.

Second, this statement emphasizes the rule to avoid repeating past mistakes. How do we avoid making the mistakes that have been made before? By reviewing lessons learned and familiarizing ourselves with the problems and issues that prior similar projects have had. We can also interview our SMEs (subject matter experts), those who have been involved with similar initiatives in the past. They have a wealth of information if we make the effort to talk to them and ask the right questions. I would suggest that when you initiate a discussion with a SME that you are prepared with the right questions to gather the information you need.

Another way to avoid making the same mistakes is to involve SMEs in the project or initiative. We cannot do all of our work alone; unfortunately many managers or project managers believe they are supposed to. That is not true. Involve your team, talk to SMEs inside and outside your team as well as outside your organization where possible, use all the resources you have. If at first blush you don’t think you have many resources or help, think about it some more. With some thought, you’ll probably realize you have access to more sources of information and knowledge than you think. Be proactive. I’ll bet you know of managers or project managers who are able to gather intelligence better than others. Emulate them.

In closing, keep this phrase in mind when managing your own work as well as other people. Be the role model you need to be.

How have you helped yourself or your team stretch beyond the comfortable while avoiding making the same mistakes?

By Dr. Gerald Mulenburg, PMP

When I learned of an opportunity to sit in on a major NASA project review as a “fly on the wall,” I jumped at it. This seemed like a great way to learn about the new Kepler project. Kepler is a special purpose mission in the NASA Discovery Program, with an objective that the project’s principal investigator William Boruki says is to “explore the skies for terrestrial-like planetary systems around other stars, in order to answer one of the most enduring questions humans have asked throughout history: Are there others like us in the universe?”

Fly-on-the-wall was an experiment in knowledge sharing, offering project practitioners an opportunity to learn from observing good project-related meeting processes as they occurred in real time. This idea surfaced after several senior project managers commented that they had little, if any, training or experience in holding reviews, making presentations, holding team kick-off meetings, or in many other project management activities until they “had to do one.” A common refrain was, “I’d never even seen one!”

To participate as a fly began an interesting and revealing odyssey for me, watching and listening to peer review presentations and discussions from the Kepler-Ground Segment development team to other NASA and contractor managers. These were the key players who would decide how the project would be structured and who would establish a preliminary schedule for this portion of the project.

Now operating in space, Kepler was a joint project between two NASA Centers. Mission control and overall data management were the responsibility of the Ames Research Center, and the telescope and the launch portion were to be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The primary instrument of Kepler is a specialized one-meter diameter photometer telescope, positioned in Earth’s orbit to “stare” for four years at a small portion of the night sky, containing over 100,000 stars similar to our sun, and to capture images of Earth-like planets rotating around them. This peer review of the project’s ground segment portion emphasized that Kepler was not a large, complicated project.

I was impressed that the meetings started on time, stayed on time, and even finished a little ahead of schedule, despite a lot of active discussion about the control and management techniques to be employed in the project and who had what responsibility. No fewer than eight separate functional organizations with integral roles in the project attended the meeting, from across three continents including North America. And this was said to not be a complex mission! My hat went off to the Kepler project team for their thoroughness, professionalism and ability to stick to the purpose of the meeting. Some useful tips that I picked up as an observing fly for future use in meetings include:

1. INTRODUCTIONS: Not introducing everyone in the room; only the key players at the main table. Other important contributors, who gave parts of the presentation or contributed to the discussions when appropriate, introduced themselves. Some of these people were high-level representatives who did not seem to mind their secondary roles in the meeting.
2. PURPOSE: Clearly stating the purpose of the meeting at the beginning and, even more important, clearly stating what the meeting “was not” about. This set the stage for efficiency and minimized distracting comments. A facilitator kept the meeting moving along but never “squashed” anyone who had a relevant comment or contribution.
3. OMBUDSMAN: Assigning a key member at the table as an ombudsman with a strong enough personality to cut off discussion when it would be part of a later presentation (not relevant now), or to end comments that contributed little (those who love their own voice) or when it would be more appropriate for an off-line conversation (those who can’t let go but just-might have something important to say). This process worked well and was conducted in a polite, professional manner.
4. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: A particularly useful chart on one wall, referred to often during the meeting, showed a roles and responsibilities matrix with the key organizations involved in the project, listed across the top as column headings, and the project functional elements as role headings down the left-most column. The row-column intersections in the matrix clearly identified the organization responsible for each of the functions, removing much confusion that might otherwise have occurred.

I believe fly-on-the-wall is an extremely simple but valuable knowledge-sharing technique, easily duplicated in any organization. Tips from observers in well-run meetings can be shared with project managers and teams, and have high potential for encouraging an outcome of project success.

In what ways do you think the  fly-on-the-wall technique can help your projects?

By Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP

Subject matter experts (SMEs) are generally a very valuable asset to a project manager (PM). However, as a PM, you must be prudent in how much authority and control is given to or taken by a SME. Additionally, you must be aware that a SME can slowly erode your authority, even without a direct confrontation.  When a PM begins to have the authority slowly taken away by a SME, it is called “SME creep.”

I’ve been there. You have been assigned a project to manage and you don’t have experience in the area that you’re about to manage; a project that could make or break your career.  As Frank, the boss, gives you your assignment, you’re wondering if he is speaking English. He is throwing acronyms and technical jargon at you so fast that your head is swimming. However, as if to wish you lots of luck, he reassures you by saying, “Now I am asking Bob, our SME in this area, to give you support and be there to help, if you should need him. Of course, he has his full time job, and so he may be a little slow in responding to you.”

Just great. You’re responsible for the project – assuming you can untangle the jargon into plain English – and someone else has all the knowledge. Your team is looking to you for guidance and direction. Bob is working a 50 hour work week, just trying to keep his head above water. You want to set up a meeting with Bob.

You send Bob an email and say, “What is a good time for us to meet to talk about this project?” You’re trying to be understanding and cooperative. That is a nice consideration. However, you are sending the wrong message to start the project. What you are subliminally saying is, “I recognize your time is more valuable than mine, so I will let you take the lead.”

Some may disagree with my interpretation of this situation, and that is OK. I realize there are SMEs out there that would not take it that way and would be thankful that you where being considerate. Then there are others that would, perhaps subconsciously, take it just the way I presented it. Bob sends you back an email stating that he will be able to squeeze you in tomorrow at 5:30 PM, knowing that the standard working hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at his office. You realize that you are a salaried “professional” and sometimes (most of the time) you have to work a “professional day” (which means no overtime), so you agree. Strike two for you. By letting Bob set the location, you once again are giving him the upper hand and implying that you must go to Bob instead of him coming to you.

You show up at his office two minutes early. He is on the phone talking “technical speak.” He motions for you to come in. He raises up one finger, indicating that he will just be a minute. So you sit there looking around the room at all the technical posters and books that have multi-syllable words in the title. You glance at your watch and that one finger minute has turned into ten minutes and Bob’s conversation shows no sign of slowing down.

Strike three. Bob obviously does not respect your time or he would have ended the conversation when you walked into the room. You haven’t spoken a word about the project and you have already lost control.

It just goes downhill from here. After you have waited for 15 minutes, Bob finally gets off the call and apologizes profusely. Don’t let that fool you. You begin the conversation by giving him a little background on yourself. He stops you after about two minutes into your opening and says, “Frank,” (your boss), “tells me you’re a little ‘weak on experience’ on this project.” He clears his throat. “Don’t worry, I know enough about this project for both of us.” This is another bad sign. He does not want to listen to you because he thinks he knows everything, and the boss has confided in him that you are “weak” on the subject.

I could go on with this scenario, but that would be just more to read and you wouldn’t get much out it except more ways of identifying that you were in trouble.

Consider this approach: Interrupt Bob and say that you are glad he is on the team. This is very subtle way of telling him he is a team member, not the team leader. Secondly, say, “This meeting has run over the time I had allotted. Do this for me,” (in a friendly tone), “put together a list of the deliverables. Do you know how to do a WBS? After drafting a WBS, would you put together resource requirements with roles and responsibilities, and then a time estimate, based upon your suggested resource requirements, and show me a time line and the critical path? You’re probably the best choice to do this since you are so familiar with the project requirements.”

Wow, what did you just do?! By him making the statement that he knew enough for the both of you about the project, he just said, “I am the only person that knows what to do.” So you loaded him up with enough work to “choke a horse”!

If he is all “techie,” he won’t know how to do those tasks, so he will have to refer back to you for guidance and it will be clear that you have taken back the leadership role. If he does know how to do all those assignments, that’s great; you can grade his papers. In either case, you are clearly the one in charge. Be fair with your evaluation of his work, but make it obvious that you are supervising him, not just taking everything he does as gospel. This will reinforce your authority. If you can, get together a committee that you obviously run and put his work in front of a committee, reinforcing the point that he is part of a team.

As with most everything in project management, this is a “situational” scenario. You must adapt to the personally of the SME and the operational process assets of your organization. I hope you are never put in this situation. However, if you are, you might consider this approach.

Good Luck.

By Karey Rees

I don’t know about you, but one of my biggest frustrations in the workplace is meetings that go on long past their scheduled time allotment or those that finish within their scheduled time, took a crazy turn, went completely off topic and seemed to accomplish nothing related to the original meeting subject.  I’m sure most of you can relate, so I’d like to share my experience about a recent meeting I was in and how it influenced me to improve the ways I’ve conducted all my meetings since.

Not so long ago I was invited to attend a meeting via conference call. The meeting was scheduled for 30 minutes and was to cover quite a bit of material and training. I automatically blocked out 60 minutes on my calendar as past experience has told me, many times over, the meeting would last quite a bit longer than the scheduled 30 minutes. I dialed in, connected to the assigned WebEx screen and introduced myself to the other attendees. The meeting sponsor started the meeting immediately and explained there was only 30 minutes and all topics to be discussed had to be completed in those 30 minutes, no exceptions. Guess what? It got done – really. As I sat in amazement during this meeting about how much was discussed and accomplished in a very short period of time, I made sure to listen as closely as I could to learn this meeting magic.

After several meetings with this meeting sponsor, I’ve learned and now use the following to lead all my group meetings:

• Schedule your meeting for the time you truly think you can accomplish what needs to be done and stick to that time frame.
• Throughout the meeting, remind attendees of the topics at hand and how much time is left to discuss the topics.
• Be sure to speak up and let someone know if they are off topic. Make sure to let them know you will follow up with them to discuss what they would like to talk about and also include any other people who may be needed. Most of the time, the off-topic items can be discussed and resolved very briefly after the meeting.
• If the meeting topics truly do not fit in the allotted time, schedule a follow up meeting instead of going over time and creating conflicts in others’ schedules.
• Be diligent in moving along the topics of the meeting, keeping careful watch of the time.

I hope these points are as helpful to you as they have been to me. What are some of the things you’ve done to successfully keep meetings within their scheduled time allotment?