Project managers are the hub of all project communication and as instant communication technologies mature, there are more and more ways of distributing project information and equal numbers of methods for escalation of issues. Unfortunately, all too often the “instant” nature of communications in emergencies has lulled us into a sense of complacency about planning. Organizational culture is evolving in the direction that mass media has already gone; The timeliness of information is now considered more valuable than the quality of the communication. In other words, information that is partially correct or even wrong, delivered sooner is considered better than good, thorough and contextual stories that help us to think about problems and solutions. But these habits can breed other problems.
Take the example of a project that is experiencing a Web site outage. E-mail, text messaging, pagers and instant messaging communications can essentially indicate immediately to the team that there is a problem. For better or for worse, this typically leads to an instant response from everyone! If there is planning in place for this outage, which means that a) the team has considered before now that an outage is a possibility and b) they have planned how they will respond, then an instant response from everyone is likely to help the problem be resolved sooner. However, if the planning is absent, chaos is sure to ensue.
Everyone on the team will start to do what they do best. Technical people will likely start trouble-shooting to find solutions, project managers will think about communication damage control and the help desk will start updating the problem tickets. However, without a previously designed plan of action, it is likely that these activities will contradict each other and are more likely to lead to more problems and a longer outage.
Project managers should work to minimize their own “instant communications” addictions and instill these habits in the people on their team. For example, minimize the number of conversations and project decisions that are made via e-mail. (You may also win a prize for reducing e-mail storage capacity requirements for your company.) Provide project information in well-formated, predicable, contextual format, such as a weekly newsletter, status report or on a project Web site. Do this at a regular time each day or each week, so people will know when to look for information and will know that they can get a thorough and comprehensive view of the project when it is needed. This will avoid “getting pinged” about project information outside of regularly scheduled meetings and updates.
The more project managers learn about the successful use of different types of communication devices, the more successful projects will tend to be.

To learn more about our coaching and communication services, please visit What If Project

Overloaded managers run the risk of making bad decisions and alienating themselves from important information

Everyone has had a conversation with someone who clearly wasn’t listening. You know the signs. Maybe their eyes keep drifting toward their computer monitor or they keep making faces at people in the hall. This person probably thinks they are multi-tasking, a favorite pastime of the overbooked, but mostly they are just absorbing less information and being rude at the same time.

Running from one meeting to the next or spending lots of time responding to e-mail and voicemail actually can be a recipe for becoming more out of touch. It seems like a paradox, but using all this new technology to stay in touch, might be sending the wrong message to people who really need to speak with you. And it’s probably not giving you much time to really process the information, either.

Consider this scenario: A project manager got a funny sense yesterday that there was really something wrong with the data center. (Smoke was coming from a few of the servers, but not a lot of smoke.) But the project manager doesn’t want to alarm you, and isn’t sure whether or not smoke should be coming from the data center, so she sent you an e-mail. You didn’t respond. She thought that you lack of response meant that smoke in the data center wasn’t a big deal, so she decided to wait to see what would happen.

The next day there was even more smoke coming from the data center. Now, she was more worried. Maybe you didn’t get her e-mail, so she decided to stop by your office. You’re there, but running off to a meeting. You give her all the signs that you’re doing something that is a very high priority (lack of eye contact, shuffling things around on your desk, grabbing a cell phone, ignoring a ringing desk phone). She starts to tell you about the smoke coming from the data cemter, but you are interupted by a call on your cell phone.

The next day the data center blows up. You, the multi-tasking manager, can’t believe that this is happening. You are so accessible. You have an open-door policy. You have e-mail, a cell phone, a work phone, a Blackberry and people like YOU! How could you not have known that the data center was in so much trouble?

Well………. In spite of what you think you are doing, you are out of touch. Rushing around being really busy might make you feel like you are doing more in less time, but you’re sending the wrong signals to key people who should be telling you important information. And don’t even try to blame them! (I know you’re thinking it.) Furthermore (and this is probably the bigger problem), all that rushing around isn’t giving you any time to think. Good communication takes concentrated, conservative effort.

A single, well-constructed set of e-mails, phone calls and meetings is much more effective at communicating a set of well-constructed ideas than 100 meetings, phone calls and e-mails to see “what people think,” “brainstorm” or “get some feedback.”

The reality is that we are often getting too much feedback. Without the time to stop and consider what it all means, we’re not really communicating at all. We’re just throwing words at each other. So, stop reading this article and stare at the wall for 15 minutes. You just might learn something.

Determining the right rate for your services is difficult and sometimes an arbitrary process. A survey of the rates negotiated by IT service providers for the State of Colorado shows a very wide range of rates with the highest rates sometimes three times larger than the lowest rate listed.

With the current expansion — after almost 5 years of contraction — of IT services, experienced consultants and service providers should expect to be able to negotiate within the higher end of the band. However, this will be limited by their ability to offer newer technologies or solid experience in particular methodologies or industries. More than ever, it is becoming important to specialize, as most recruiters won’t consider candidates that don’t have experience in particular industries or with particular sets of tools.

Average hourly rate using data from 39 IT services companies serving the State of Colorado in 2005-2006.

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What If Project LLC offers leadership and project management coaching and consulting for small and medium-sized technology companies. To learn more about how to market your consulting services or receive a complete copy of the survey contact us via What If Project.

Seemingly erratic behavior by customers or managers cannot be understood without considering their beliefs and circumstances.

I had worked in technology consulting for less than a year when I started to realize that all of our clients were “crazy.” At least that’s what most of my co-workers thought, and I was starting to agree with them.

For a while, I wondered if it was us. Was there something special that our company offered that seemed to attract the biggest loons? So, I changed jobs to work with different clients and different co-workers. But those clients were crazy, too. (Even crazier, actually.)

By that time, I had a large enough sample size that I needed to start re-thinking my hypothesis. It wasn’t statistically possible that everyone in our organization was sane while everyone in their organization was nuts. This re-considering also happend to coincide with moving to a more senior position within my new company.

In spite of what my former peers might have thought, I hadn’t joined the dark side or become a bubblehead after sticking an upper management title on my business card. I had simply acquired more context, because I had more access to the beliefs and constraints that were driving the clients’ decisions. And although I was able to confirm that a few of them were really, truly nuts, most of them weren’t.

Instead of wondering why we were suddenly trashing a component of a product that seemed to be central to its appeal in the middle of the project (leading me to conclude once again, that the client was crazy), I saw it as a rational decision made under budget or competitor duress. I also started to get the sense that the client might think we were crazy, too. Maybe we were.

I have since come to the conclusion that most people are almost always acting rationally IF (and that’s a really big “if”), you take into consideration both their circumstances and their beliefs. And that is where the rub is. Most people don’t go around spouting what their beliefs are. In fact, some people aren’t always aware of what their beliefs are. Further complicating the issue is that most of us also assume that our beliefs are the same as others.

Let’s say, for example, that I’m a manager and I believe that technology is the same as magic. So, as your boss, I would like you to invent a perpetual motion machine. You, the proud owner of an undergraduate degree in physics, explain to me that it will not be possible. Because, according to important laws of the universe, eventually our machine would come to a grinding halt.

“But why?” I ask.

“Because of laws that have to do with friction and thermodynamics,” you say.

“I think those are just excuses,” I say.

This could go on forever, until, ideally one day you uncover the fact that I believe in magic, and I actually believe that you are really a magician, even though your job title says technical developer. Making this discovery is unlikely to make you change my belief, but at least now you have a better understanding of my point-of-view. This is crucial to your communication with me (and my communication with you, incidentally).

So, next time, you think someone is just crazy, poke around and try to find out why they might be acting that way. Consider who they are and what circumstances they’re in. If you can get outside your own crazy ideas, they might just seem a little more sane after all.
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What If Project LLC offers leadership and project management coaching and consulting for small and medium-sized technology companies. To learn more about how we can help you communicate with the crazy people, visit What If Project or contact us for a free consultation.

Don’t use lame excuses as a reason to avoid improving your business practices.

Small businesses — even one-person companies — need to learn and integrate the best practices of project management because in small companies project failure is more likely and other project risks are higher. A project that is behind or over budget in a large company is often cushioned by access to more resources in the form of more money and more or better people. Small businesses don’t have this safety net. A project that goes off the rails for a small company can mean the difference between keeping the doors open and returning to a “real job” in Dilbertland. But many of these agile, innovative groups of entrepreneurs are the most resistent to picking up and trying out many of the best project management tools.

Why?

Excuse No 1: Project management methodologies are too bureaucratic.

Bureacracies are a characteristic of organizational culture and always exist because someone benefits from slowing things down or bungling things up. It is highly likely that this same someone created the metholodology that is being used. In other words, project management methodologies only create bureacracy if the leadership or members of the project team have the intention of mucking up the project. (Or at least lack the motivation to fix it.) But if the company (your company!) has the intention of creating higher quality and cost effective projects, then project management methodologies will help not hurt you.

Excuse No 2: We’re so small we don’t need a metholodology.

Do you tie your shoe a different way every day? Would you ask your employees to do the same? Without having a methodology, this is what small companies are asking themselves and their employees to do — re-invent the wheel for every project. This way of doing things can be very tempting, especially if you’re creative, innovative or just a freaking cool person. However, this also makes you really annoying to work with, more expensive to hire and less likely to deliver the quality product your customers have asked for. There is absolutely room for creativity and innovation on every project, and by definition, this is what a project is. However, if you plan to do everything a different way every time, you will undoubtably do something worse or much worse than you did it last time. Having a methodology allows you to keep the good stuff from the last project and re-invent the bad stuff. Try it. You’ll like it.

Excuse No 3: (My favorite) Our customers are special, and they have unique needs. We can’t serve them using traditional project management practices.

Well, well, well. Now the truth comes out. You are so good that you are above exhibiting basic human behaviors and possibly the laws of the universe. Now close your eyes and picture one of your customers or a member of your team. Is this individual a person? (I know, sometimes it’s hard to tell.) Traditional project management practices are designed to help real people and real projects succeed. They are designed to help you ferret out places where things could go terrible wrong (making you look really stupid). They are designed to help you make important, universe-alterating decisions (chocolate sprinkles or no chocolate sprinkles). And they can even make you more popular. Using good project management processes makes you a more knowledgeable, consistent and organized leader. People on your team will like this, and your customers will love it. It might even make you younger and better looking, too.

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What If Project offers leadership and project management coaching and consulting for small and medium-sized technology companies. For more information visit What If Project or contact us for a free consultation.

The Secret Handshake: Mastering the Politics of Business in the Inner Circle by Kathleen Reardon
This book is more evidence that success in social relationships is important to career success and meeting your personal and professional goals. Reardon does a nice job of breaking down this otherwise complex and cloudy subject into digestable chunks, and throws in a few self-assessment quizes to boot.

In the first part of book, she discusses the gradients of politics at work, which can be very helpful in allowing the reader to discover what type of political animal they are, and also shedding light on seemingly “crazy” behavior at work. It’s validating to learn that there are more “pathologically political” organizations than the company you may have had the misfortune of working for.

More importantly, Reardon goes on to outline how honing your observation, interaction and acting skills can contribute to your ability to move up within an organization. She is right about the in-group, out-group dynamics of the workplace, but people in the out-group often make the mistaken assumption that the in-group has conspired to create the social, cultural and organization norms that exist, when, in fact, the in-group has usually just evolved in response to various social, organizational and business pressures and personalities.

The most important lesson of this book is the idea that observing and emulating leaders, leadership culture and political norms is of critical importance in finding your place at the top of the org chart. Immitation is not only the sincerest form of flatery, it also demonstrates, through your actions, that you believe in the company.

The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun

Finally, there is a project management book that manages to capture all the major skills and activities needed to complete successful projects, while not ignoring the real world. The reason that this book is so good is Berkun understands and articulates the real paradoxes of project management. For example, project managers are expected to tolerate abiguity but pursue perfection. We are also required to be both believers and skeptics, autocrats and delegators, leaders and managers. We must also know when to be which.

Using succinct concepts and even laughably simple diagrams, the author leads readers through three major areas: Plans, Skills and Management. There is a lot of straight talk about what things will and won’t work, why project managers are so busy and how navigating politics and relationships can sometimes be the most difficult part of the job. Two sections that should be recommended reading for anyone who works with other humans (which is pretty much all of us) are: How to make good decisions and How not to annoy people.

This book is especially helpful if you work on projects with creative or technical people. Berkun gives some excellent advice for dealing with the abiguity of simultaneously designing and building innovative products.

If you need an meaningful and entertaining book about project management, this is the one. Every word is worthwhile, even the footnotes.

For more about Scott Berkum and this book see http://www.scottberkun.com/