The A-Z of Project Management Survival

Not everyone can be a star, and there are many people who do just fine not being a star. They don't crave the limelight, they don't particularly want the attention, they just do a good, solid job and are happy that you thank them for doing just that.

These kind of people are essentially your grunts, the engine-house of your team. These are the guys that deliver stuff for you, day-in, day-out. You need them on your team.

If you have a team full of experts and stars; let's call them Prima-Donnas, you will spend all your time massaging their egos, making up for their shortcomings, apologising to people they've annoyed or upset and stopping fights between them. They'll take up a lot of your valuable time.

While you absolutely do need both in your team, you need to watch out. If you want your team to deliver, and not just postulate and come up with whizzy ideas, you would be well placed to make sure you have a high Grunt to Prima-Donna ratio.

Labels: G, Grunt

The railroader is the kind of person that will use his personality and blind determination to force his ideas through, regardless of other popular, or learned opinion.

You'll easily be able to classify a Railroader when you encounter one, they typically talk over other people, usually starting when the have a grasp of an idea and think they can run with it. At this point, they genuinely think they know better than everyone else in the room, including the person who was talking.

You can try to go toe-to-toe with a Railroader, and keep talking over them but unless you have the presence or seniority to carry it off and they stop, it can quickly degenerate into a babble-fest where the rest of the assembled group will be wondering what's going on.

One strategy is to use distraction to shut them up, like the magicians do. I don't suggest the, "Look, an eagle!", approach. More the open handed-stop signal, holding up your finger or pen as a blocker, hand on the shoulder, other ways to knock them off their stride. But be aware when they've sussed what you've done, they'll just start off again.

The best strategy is to let them talk themselves out first. Then pitch in with the real solution, as it's highly probable they have not grasped the whole situation and have gone off half-cocked.

That way you end up looking like the one that knows what they are talking about, which is about right.

Labels: People, R, Railroader

To offshore or not to offshore: that is the question.

If you've worked any length of time in IT and/or worked for any of the larger companies, the subject of offshore will have undoubtedly come up. The bean-counters love the idea of offshore. Usually with the disheartening cry, "It's so cheap. The rates are less than half that of our guys. We can't lose."

Well, let us tell you here, loud and clear, yes you can. Big time.

We at the A-Z are not Xenophobic, far from it, we like to think of ourselves more as stupophobic. We are firm believers that there is no golden arrow, no global, one-size-fits-all solution to any and every IT problem. Lots of things need to be considered on the path to successfully delivering IT soluions.

Whether it's India, Malaysia, Russia, Israel or any of many other locations where extremely unit-cost resource are waiting to do your bidding, the deal is the same: use them only if it's the right thing to do, and do it under the proper conditions.

You wouldn't recruit a someone off the street who showed you an impressive CV and let him loose on your most complicated, business critical code, in the same way you wouldn't hand your car keys to the first person you met at the shops.

So treat it the same way you would any other recruitment-for-purpose task. Define the roles, review the CVs, interview the best candidates; test them if appropriate, locally if necessary. Only when you are sure you have people capable of doing what you need them to do should you consider taking them on.

Like you would with any newbie, define clearly what you want them to do and monitor their progress closely. If they are delivering successfully, give them a bit more responsibility. You should be able to reasonably quickly gauge the calibre of your new recruits. If they're no good, then get rid and replace.

Don't underestimate the management overhead of having a separate offshore team. That's your, or your team-lead's, time we're talking about so it's important time.

In summary, don't immediately discount the idea of offshoring, but if you are going to do it, do it right, under the right conditions and with the right expectations set beforehand.

Labels: X, Xenophobia

"Surely" is a word that should not be in the vocabulary of the vigilant Project Manager. Uttering phrases like, "Surely the customer knew we would..." or, "Surely the software is able to..." or even, "Surely they don't expect...", means you have made assumptions.

When you make assumptions you are leaving yourself open to all sorts of problems down the line that will, of course, materialise at the worst possible time.

Assumptions are a bad thing and are best left to the amateurs. Since you're a good PM you will be keen to be across everything in your project and you will have thought throught the 'What-if' scenarios, giving you time to put any mitigation plans into action.

So, do your homework, make sure you know what is going on and don't get caught with your pants down. But surely you knew that...

Labels: S, Surely

Here's a game. You'll like this. Listen carefully.

In any organisation there are essentially two groups of people. People who know stuff. People who don't really know all that much.

In many, many cases the people who don't know stuff try to find stuff out by getting the people who know stuff to fill in forms or spreadsheets. It makes them feel useful. It makes it look like they are doing work. But in the end, they still don't know much stuff and they've just wasted a lot of time.

"Fill this form in so I can approve..." - does that mean they understand?

So, here's the game. When you are in work, just walking round the office, or in a meeting maybe, decide which of the two groups people are in. You'll be surprised by how many people fall into the "gaining information via the medium of forms" gang.

And if you spend all your day getting people to fill in forms then... better not finish that.

Labels: F, Forms

Management By Walking About (MBWA) is a much underrated mechanism to keep an eye on what is going on in your project.

As things have evolved technically over the years is becomes all too easy to orchestrate, or attempt to orchestrate, your project form the comfort of your adjustable office-chair. Using eMail, Instant Messaging, Text Messaging, etc. to deliver your guidance and expert opinion.

However, while you may like to think you are some kind of techno-mastermind of all you survey, the chances are you're missing out on a lot of the crucial information you really should have a firm grasp on.

If you're only reading the written word, and worse, only spouting it too, you are missing a huge percentage of the other parts that make up that thing we call human communication.

Without getting the real 'word on the street', complete with intonation, attitude and accompanying body-language, you've only got part of the picture.

Have you ever said to yourself, "I didn't realise it was that bad" or, "They should have said there was a problem", then maybe you need a bit more 'face time' with your team, customers or co-workers.

So, If you want to keep on top of what's going on, get off your arse and walk about!

Labels: M, MBWA

We've all seen them, the guys that work all hours, they are always first in and last to leave, they seem to always be in the thick of it, people are always waiting for them to do something before they can move on, they're always on-call, if they're not still on-shift.

There's no doubt that out there there are some of these types, and they will be genuinely good, valuable people who do some really good stuff. Yay them, keep it up guys. You're keeping it all hanging together, thanks! Just be careful when you're crossing the road please.

However, there is another side to this genre though, and you'd be well advised in learning to spot them. These are the self-made heroes. They're not really heroes, they just play a clever game to make people think they are heroes. Really, they are manufacturing a need for themselves, they are making themselves indespensible because no-one eles could possibly do all the stuff they do, know all the things they know or sort all the problems they sort.

Watch out for them, they avoid passing on their knowledge, the learn new stuff and keep it to themselves and, best of all, the real pro's in this area will manufacture problems that only they can fix. Allowing the yet another opportunity to ride in on the big white charger and save the day.

Labels: H, Heroes