Forward Momentum: Delivering Results

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 Lana Boiko, PMP

Perhaps the most common environment a typical project manager works in is a matrix organization.  Given this circumstance, a lot of project managers not only have no formal authority when it comes to our clients, but also have limited formal authority within our own company. Often the most successful project managers are the ones who develop a methodology and leadership style that allows them to effectively overcome formal authority limitations.

Typical concerns that arise from limited authority situations are: lack of decision-making power, less responsiveness from within the project team and weaker negotiation positions for potential scope and schedule change requirements, to name a few.

So, is managing without authority an art, a science or a technique?  The good news is that there are effective ways to overcome the situation with all of the above, and you can tailor your approach based on your personal management style and preferences. Of course, the process will require significant effort, continuous fine tuning and a good amount of patience and flexibility.

Established Project Processes
The first and most widely accepted way to control the project is through the project process.  The key feature of this approach is that processes provide the necessary structure for your project delivery. Controlling through the process is more likely to be effective in teams where the processes have been established for some time and have been used repeatedly and consistently through multiple projects.  In other words, when your team members understand exactly what to do and how to do it and have been through the process multiple times, your project runs a lot smoother and situations where a strong formal authority is required are few and far apart.

Another nice thing about controlling through the process is that the project manager’s authority is implicit as that of a person responsible for managing the process.  Clear project documentation will have a significant positive effect if controlling a project through process is your primary management mechanism.

Varying Processes
What if you work in an environment where projects vary significantly, driven by major differences in scope, stakeholders’ priorities and project team structures? If you are a consultant, this situation is probably what you live in. Here, controlling through the process is probably not as effective. If the processes have been developed before you joined the project, you have to learn and adopt them. If those processes are not in place yet, developing and establishing them will take some time.

Controlling your project though metrics may become a good addition to your tool kit.  It is generally accepted wisdom that you get what you measure. Carefully study objectives of a project and stakeholders’ expectations and priorities.  Most people cannot allocate appropriate focus to more than three to four measurable parameters on any particular project.  Pick three or four metrics to monitor that would have the biggest impact on the success of a project and on stakeholder’s satisfaction. Measure, review, document diligently, and publish the results in a way that is visible to the team and is easily accessible.

Leveraging Your Personal Style and Competence
The more experienced project and program managers may also rely on developing and then leveraging their personal leadership style. They sometimes control their projects through influence.  The key to using this approach effectively is competence.  Competence does not necessarily mean knowing more than our team or client. How many times have we all felt that the specialists on the team know more than we do? It is not that they know more, they just know different things.

For a project manager, competence is about being able to successfully and effectively deliver on agreed upon objectives while maintaining a positive attitude within the project team. If you are able to demonstrate competence consistently, you will be on your way to developing a reputation of a great project manager and earning the trust of stakeholders and team members.  If people trust you, they are rather likely to imply you have an informal authority, which is perhaps more powerful than any formal kind.

Every project manager finds a unique way to be successful, whether through different combinations of the above mentioned approaches or by developing their own secret sauce. It is fairly certain that at some point in our careers we find ourselves wishing we had more authority to be able to resolve some situations. So please, do share your experiences with your colleagues. Maybe our gathered experiences and lessons learned will help us collectively better manage with limited authority to deliver project success.

Let’s start here. What successful ways have you discovered to manage with little authority?

by Rob Zell

I imagine you could survey employees on any day in any company and they would tell you that meetings are the bane of their existence. Too often, meetings are conducted without an agenda or even an overarching purpose. Attendees jockey for organizational position or display blatant apathy, checking email on mobile devices or laptops.

Meeting derailers are well documented and websites abound for coping with them. One challenge is that we work in an information age in which knowledge workers spend their time gathering, analyzing and synthesizing data, rather than producing or manufacturing. In meetings we have a desire to share what we know, rather than work to completion or decision. We all have a data set that we bring to the table and we need the time to process the data that others have before we can make a decision.

One way to manage this confusion is to have “pre-meetings”: touch base sessions with participants to set the stage and gain buy-in and commitment. Of course this means that a one hour meeting turns into a series of meetings; not the way to increase productivity! I would propose that this is the best reason to integrate the technology of a social collaboration tool into your workplace.

I can already hear the groaning in some corners of your organization. “Just what we need,” the CFO will say, “Facebook for work.” The COO will argue that the organization doesn’t need people “tweeting” on the job. This is what we often think of when the topic of “social” collaboration comes up. What if we took “social” of the term and instead called it “enterprise collaboration?” Few people would argue that engaging more people in the conversation, at least more people with relevant information, improves the quality of the decision.

A collaboration tool for business might be the answer to creating productive sharing prior to the decision meeting. Inviting employees to discuss and share adds value by increasing the knowledge and awareness of the participants and giving them time to process and synthesize. Furthermore, the content and discussion becomes a shared database and with proper use of tagging and cataloging, the information is available to the organization speeding the time to productivity. In a workforce that is generationally shifting, capturing this “tribal knowledge” is critical to the organization’s long term success.

The other great advantage in using a tool like this is that it increases the commitment to the decision. Because the members had a chance to weigh in, discuss, process and be heard, the team can come to a joint decision during the dedicated time allowed without the posturing and politics that might normally occur in the formal meeting space.

And finally, for the naysayers who will argue that these kinds of tools don’t add business value, there is plenty of research out there that says otherwise. In organizations that utilize these tools, there is better alignment, better transparency, better community and better results.

I’d like to hear your thoughts: how might your organization take advantage of “enterprise collaboration” tools to support higher productivity? If you are already using a tool like this (in my organization we use Yammer) how is it paying off?