Project Sponsors Are a Risk

Enterprise information technology (IT) applications can be difficult to implement, and often don’t deliver on their promises.  Why is this?  I believe the number one reason these projects fail to deliver on their promises is the lack of a strong, engaged, focused, and available executive sponsor.

IT customers are demanding more from their technology, and want results that help them reduce their bottom line, gain efficiencies, and do more with less.  Line managers have a justified fear of giving up control of their legacy applications because of past IT miscues and screw-ups.

A project manager’s job is to help understand and integrate departmental business processes to help ensure the technology will meet the customer’s needs.  A project manager can’t accomplish this task by themself.  Implementing an enterprise technology solution can be a daunting task and requires the skills and talents of many people.  When these projects fail, the blame falls equally between the project manager and the project sponsor.

PM FOR DUMMIES 101 - In order to successfully implement enterprise IT applications organizations first need to create the culture and climate that ensures investments in information technology contribute to a desired future outcome rather than continuing past practices.

Project Manager Tip – PLAN carefully then DO quickly.  The just “do it” culture is usually fraught with project failures and ruined careers.  Run from a project that requires the project manager to follow the failed mantra that says “Ready, Fire, Aim”!

Project Sponsor Tip - The sponsor must understand the technology being implemented, the culture where the change is taking place, and the benefits of implementing the desired solution.  He or she must be willing to “kick some ass” to get the solution implemented in a timely fashion, and ensure the solution provides the required benefits to the organization.

The sponsor articulates the project vision, objectives and goals, and drives the change to the culture, PERIOD.  NEVER forget this fact.  Also, an invisible project sponsor is your project’s biggest risk.

Don't Be a Victim of Politics (Rewind)

Politics and projects go hand in hand. Team conflict, competing agendas, stakeholder dysfunction, resource constraints, and a myriad of other challenges exist and will send your project careening out of control if not managed properly.

What is a project manager to do? Here is a list of things to keep in mind when managing projects in a highly politicized environment:

Learn to negotiate from a position of strength.

Do everything you can to educate those around you about Project Management. Stress the benefits and overcome the objections by pointing to your successes.

Master the art of influence.

Understand that masterful politicians are sometimes helpful to you and your project, but can also be detriment to your project's success.

An effective executive sponsor can help minimize political time wasting events that slow project progress and increase project budgets.

Recognize that conflict on your project is inevitable and necessary. How you respond to conflict will determine how successful you are.

Mastering the art of negotiation is a critical skill for project managers.

Negotiate up front how much power you will have as project manager, how and where it can be used, and when it applies to securing needed resources for your project.

Realize that for the most part internal politics wastes time and is usually not something that people enjoy.
Team commitment and loyalty will help to minimize project politics.

Don't fight a political system you don't understand and can't influence. Leave that to the experts. (Hint: get these experts to support your project if possible).

A good communications plan will help to lessen the politics on your project.

Every project usually has at least one "politician" in the organization that is out to either sabotage it, or will try to ensure that it isn't fully implemented.

Recognize that change (which is what projects are all about) scares some people and your project's deliverables can lead to a loss of power or influence for certain individuals or departments. Anticipate this and have a plan to deal with the behaviors that will surface.

Successful project managers need to learn to "swim with the sharks" and not get bitten. They need to be determined, focused, and act professionally and ethically. Project managers must know how to relate to people and manage relationships by being effective leaders and by applying the right balance of negotiating skills, motivational techniques, team building, and optimized communications.

Project Sponsor Responsibilities

In my experience most projects don't have a real project sponsor. A project sponsor is the senior manager or executive that champions the project in the organization. The sponsor provides support for obtaining resources, provides strategic direction, and acts as the decision point for questions outside of the project manager’s authority.

Every project that crosses functional lines of authority needs a project sponsor to remove barriers, assist in resolving conflict, and mediate negotiations. The sponsor can also act as a mentor and coach to the project manager and team members.

The project sponsor is usually chosen by senior management, but sometimes the sponsor volunteers because the project directly impacts their resources or budget the most.

Typically Project Sponsors are responsible for:

Providing project direction

Monitoring project progress

Assisting the Project Manager to define the Project Management process for the project

Approving final scope, project objectives, schedule, resource assignments, roles and responsibilities

Providing accurate, relevant and timely communications in writing when appropriate
Approve scope changes

Obtain or resolve issues surrounding resources (people, money, equipment)
Setting project priorities and removing barriers to project success

Personally responsible for project success or failure.

Your Project Sponsor is a Risk

Enterprise IT applications are supposed to help organizations with collaboration and cost reduction. Additionally, they should assist in gaining personnel efficiencies by helping to provide access to information required to make timely management decisions. As every project manager knows these enterprise applications can be difficult to implement, and often don’t deliver on their promises. Why is this? I believe the number one reason for enterprise software implementation project failure is the lack of a strong, engaged, focused, and available executive sponsor.

IT customers are demanding more from their software and want results that help them reduce their bottom line, gain efficiencies, and do more with less. Line managers have a justified fear of giving up control of their legacy applications because of past IT miscues and screw-ups (YES, ALL IT DEAPARTMENTS ARE GUILTY OF MISCUES AND SCREW-UPS). A project manager’s job is to help integrate departmental business processes across the enterprise to help ensure the software meets the customer’s needs. A project manager can’t accomplish this task on his or her own. Implementing an enterprise software application can be a daunting task and requires the skills and talents of many people. When these projects fail responsibility is shared by all stakeholders, but the blame falls equally between the project manager and the project sponsor.

PM FOR DUMMIES 101 - In order to successfully implement enterprise IT applications organizations first need to create the culture and climate that ensures investments in information technology contribute to a desired future outcome rather than continuing past practices.

Project Manager Tip – PLAN then DO Quickly. The just “do it” culture is usually a culture fraught with project failures and ruined careers. Run from a job that requires that the project manager follow the failed mantra that says “Ready, Fire, Aim”!

Many departments in today’s organizations feel they are locked into their legacy applications and are resistant or refuse to change. This legacy thinking is the main impediment to change (i.e. your project). Some people refer to these legacy applications as “code museums”. The people holding on to these legacy applications don’t have the vision of the enterprise. For this reason it is important to have a senior executive as a project sponsor when implementing an enterprise application. The sponsor articulates the vision and drives the change to the culture, PERIOD. NEVER forget this fact.

Finally, the executive sponsor must understand the technology being implemented, the culture where the change is taking place, and the benefits of implementing the desired solution. He or she must be willing to “kick some ass” to get the solution implemented in a timely fashion, and ensure the solution provides the required benefits to the organization.

Remember: An invisible project sponsor is your project’s biggest risk.

Don't Be a Victim of Politics

Politics and projects go hand in hand. Team conflict, competing agendas, stakeholder dysfunction, resource constraints, and a myriad of other challenges exist and will send your project careening out of control if not managed properly.

What is a project manager to do? Here is a list of things to keep in mind when managing projects in a highly politicized environment:

Learn to negotiate from a position of strength

Do everything you can to educate those around you about Project Management. Stress the benefits and overcome the objections by pointing to your successes.

Master the art of influence.

Understand that masterful politicians are sometimes helpful to you and your project, but can also be detriment to your project's success.

An effective executive sponsor can help minimize political time wasting events that slow project progress and increase project budgets.

Recognize that conflict on your project is inevitable and necessary. How you respond to conflict will determine how successful you are.

Mastering the art of negotiation is a critical skill for project managers.

Negotiate up front how much power you will have as project manager, how and where it can be used, and when it applies to securing needed resources for your project.

Realize that for the most part internal politics wastes time and is usually not something that people enjoy.

Team commitment and loyalty will help to minimize project politics.

Don't fight a political system you don't understand and can't influence. Leave that to the experts. (Hint: get these experts to support your project if possible).

A good communications plan will help to lessen the politics on your project.

Every project usually has at least one "politician" in the organization that is out to either sabotage it, or will try to ensure that it isn't fully implemented.

Recognize that change (which is what projects are all about) scares some people and your project's deliverables can lead to a loss of power or influence for certain individuals or departments. Anticipate this and have a plan to deal with the behaviors that will surface.

Successful project managers need to learn to "swim with the sharks" and not get bitten. They need to be determined, focused, and act professionally and ethically. Project managers must know how to relate to people and manage relationships by being effective leaders and by applying the right balance of negotiating skills, motivational techniques, team building, and optimized communications.

Project Scorecard

I found this document in my inventory of Project Management templates. I apologize that I can't credit the original author. If someone knows who created this template let me know and I will edit this post and include the author's name.

Project Scorecard Overview

1. Identify criteria for success. Review the objectives and deliverables in the Project Definition, as well as any other existing information that is relevant to the project. Based on this existing documentation, define what information is needed to show that the project was successful. This can be from two perspectives:

• Internal – These characteristics indicate that the project was managed and executed effectively and efficiently. This might include having deliverables approved with no more than two review iterations, hitting major internal milestone dates on time and having a minimum amount of errors uncovered in user acceptance testing.

• External – These characteristics indicate that your project objectives were completed successfully. Examples here include completing the project within approved budget and timeline, ensuring your deliverables meet approved quality criteria and customer satisfaction surveys.

2. Assign potential metrics. Identify potential metrics for each success criteria that provide an indication whether or not the criteria is being achieved. These can be direct, quantifiable metrics, or indirect metrics that give a sense for success criteria For each metric, briefly determine how you would collect the information, what the effort and cost of collection would be, and what value would be obtained.

3. Look for a balance. The potential list of metrics should be placed into categories to make sure that they provide a balanced view of the project. For instance, you do not want to end up with only a set of financial metrics, even though they might be easiest to obtain. In general, look for metrics that provide information in the areas such as:

• Cost
• Effort
• Duration
• Productivity
• Quality of deliverables
• Customer satisfaction with the deliverables produced
• Project team performance
• Business value delivered

4. Prioritize the balanced list of metrics: Depending on how many metrics you have identified, prioritize the list to include only those that have the least cost to collect and provide the most value to the project. There can certainly be as many metrics collected as make sense for the project, but there may end up being no more than one or two per category. In general, look to provide the most information with the least amount of work.

5. Set targets: The raw metric may be of some interest, but the measure of success comes from comparing your actuals against a predefined target. The target may be a single value you are trying to achieve, or it may be a range. For instance, you may need to complete your project by a certain fixed date, but your actual cost might need to be +/- 10% of approved budget.

6. Add workplan detail: For each metric that remains, determine the specific information necessary to add the appropriate activities to the project workplan. This will include:

• What specific data is needed for the metrics?
• Who is responsible for collecting the metric?
• When will the metric be collected and reported?
• How will the metrics be reported (status reports, quarterly meetings, metrics reports)?

Note: Define your success criteria upfront and get project sponsor sign-off.

Why Is My Project Late?

Design Changes – Design changes during project execution almost always cause delays and impacts to your budget. Once the Scope document has been signed, any changes to the design need to go through your Scope Change Request Process.

Skill Sets – When planning, assumptions are made regarding people's skills. Sometimes these assumptions turn out to be wrong. Also, you will usually have people on your team who are new or are less experienced. These new or lower skilled workers won't be as productive or effective as higher skilled workers. Make sure your project plan has accounted for skill levels.

Unplanned Work or Workarounds – Many times changes must be made to the sequence of planned work. These changes can impact time, cost, budget, and quality. Think about these risks up front and discuss what if any workarounds will be used.

Rework – Rework happens; it is part of project management. Ensure your project plan accounts for rework.

Team Morale – Turnover, project conflict, sick time, vacations all can wreak havoc with your schedule and budget; plan for these things. A happy team is a productive team. Ensure your team is working towards a common goal and not working against each other. Remove disruptive team members from your project if their behavior can't be changed.

Schedules – Trying to do too much in too little time will result in delays. Once you get behind it is very difficult to catch up. Your project will have delays. You need to have contingency plans to get back on track quickly.

Work Environment – Ensure that your team has a proper workspace. Cramming people into poorly designed work spaces will lower productivity.

Tools – Ensure your team has the right tools to do the job. Having the right tool, but not getting into the teams hands at the right time will cause delays in your schedule.

Project Manager Overload – Too many people on a project team without the proper management oversight can cause major problems for the project manager.

Overtime – Adding hours to people's schedules in order to make a deadline will usually do nothing but increase your budget. Adding overtime rarely results in getting a late project back on track.

Executive – Executive apathy can kill your project. People are usually not going to make your project a priority if their boss isn't willing to tell them it is important.

Plan for the above "risks" and you will start to bring your projects in faster, cheaper, with higher quality.

Wimps are Killing Your Large Project!

Do your organization's senior managers and executives understand the benefits of project management? How do you know?

Do your organization's senior managers and executives have formal training in project management?

Are large projects sponsored by and continually reviewed by senior management and /or executives? What is reviewed, and how often?

Do your senior managers and executives have their business processes mapped for their areas of responsibility?

It is a fact that good, proven, measurable business processes are critical to running an efficient organization, and also assist the project manager to deliver beneficial project results. It is also a sad fact that most senior managers and executives don't want to deal with things like business processes, yet it is the business processes that make or break organizations and projects, and bad business processes can cause an organization to waste time and money.

EMOTIONAL OUTBURST - If senior management isn't involved in reviewing their business processes to ensure they are delivering efficient results then they are either lazy or incompetent.
END OF EMOTIONAL OUTBURST

We can all agree that if senior managers and executives aren't regularly reviewing the performance of their organization (including the effectiveness of their business processes) they are not acting as responsible leaders. We have all heard them say that they just want somebody to figure out the problems and fix them, but many times that is where their participation ends. There is often no follow-up and no personal accountability for results. While problems need to be found and fixed, the "find them and fix them" mentality doesn't work for large projects. In fact, it can prove disastrous.

Project management is about delivering change. Executives and senior management have to drive the change, monitor the change, and ensure the change takes place. Change that isn't driven and monitored by senior management won't be accepted by the organization.

Don't get me wrong, we all need to have a "get it done" mindset, however on its own a get it done attitude isn't effective when dealing with today's enterprise problems and projects. Large projects create large change. Many times change creates, fear, panic, and chaos. Project managers can't implement change or change organizations alone. In fact, I would argue that for the most part they can't change organizations at all.

If you want organizational change and you want large project results at the same time then your organization's executives and senior management must be involved from the start, they must be continuously engaged, and the must be out front and visibly leading the change. Additionally, they need to be able to clearly and effectively communicate the value of the enterprise project's deliverables to their organizations. If they are unwilling to do these things, then your large project may need to be altered, deferred, or killed.

PERSONAL RANT: It is unacceptable for an organization to spend large sums of money on a project if senior management isn't prepared to roll up their sleeves and understand what is being delivered, understand the benefits of the deliverables, willing to hold others accountable for results, have an enthusiastic attitude, and have personal accountability tied to the project's success.

Project managers and team members can't afford to work on projects where ignorance and indifference is prevalent. Also, project teams can't afford to have "Teflon" managers" managing resources on the external resource teams, or in the positions of power or influence over their projects. Teflon" managers are never personally accountable for any project results because they choose ignorance over engagement. Shame on them, and guess what, the project manager and the project team pays the price of failure.
END OF PERSONAL RANT

What happens when senior management isn't involved with projects from the beginning to the end? Things like those below, which if left unchecked will ensure you project is a failure or delivers less than desirable results.

There is no organizational commitment to the project's objectives (you have project objectives that were created by senior management, right?)

Project teams are left with the job of trying to change the organization's bad habits and culture (not possible without senior management buy-in and support)

Divisions and departments fight the change the project is creating

Mid-level managers, supervisors, and line workers refuse to get involved and often work to sabotage the project

To summarize, large projects require senior management commitment, involvement, and follow through. Without senior management involvement your large project is almost certain to fail. Project managers and project teams can't be successful, nor will project management deliver results in organizations where fear is pervasive. Senior management can do more to create fear and remove fear than any project manager ever could.

Finally, I will say what most of us know, many senior managers and executives are wimps, however, this doesn't need to be the case when it comes to large projects. They can speak out up front while the project is being initiated and demand to see a business case. They can and must be involved in setting the project's measurable objectives. Once they have bought-in to the project they can and must insist that their direct reports support the project and keep them appraised of project progress. Finally, they can and must hold their staff accountable for project results.

When it comes to large projects senior managers and executives can be engaged, involved, and act as leaders, or they can be wimps.

Project Roles and Responsibilities

Happy New Year!

Hopefully, you can use this list to educate your team members about the various roles on a project team.

Executive Steering Committee
Sets the strategic vision and objectives for a given program or project. The team leads efforts to build consensus through the organization to support the project or program’s objectives.

Governance Board
Formal team of executives from across the organization that ensure projects will meet/are meeting enterprise goals.

Project Sponsor
Provides clarity of the project vision, and directs the activities of the project team. Allocates funding and resources to the project. Provides executive authority necessary to overcome organizational obstacles and barriers. The guardian of the business case, and ultimately responsible for project success.

Performing Organization
The organization whose personnel are most directly involved in doing the work of the project. This organization usually provides sponsorship for the project.

Project Management Office
An organizational body or entity assigned various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those programs/projects under its domain.

Project Stakeholders
Persons or organizations (customers, sponsors, performers, public) that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively impacted by executing or implementation of the project.

Program Manager
Person responsible for the centralized, coordinated management of a program (group of related projects) to achieve the program’s strategic objectives and benefits.

Project Manager
The person assigned by the performing organization to achieve the project objectives. The project manager is responsible for coordinating and integrating activities across multiple functional lines, and managing stakeholder communications. The project manager accomplishes the above by managing project scope, time, cost, and quality. Finally, the project manager applies project management, general management and technical skills, as well as team management, negotiation, financial and business acumen, combined with an understanding of organizational politics to meet project objectives and to meet or exceed stakeholder expectations.

Project Team
All the project team members, including the project management team, the project manager, and for some projects, the project sponsor.

Functional Manager
On projects, the person responsible for ensuring agreed-upon project tasks are completed using pre-defined resources under the manager’s control within scope, time, budget and quality constraints.

Project Team Leader
Responsible for ensuring that agreed-upon project tasks and assignments are completed on time, on budget, and within quality standards for personnel under their realm of control or influence. The team leader should be knowledgeable of the principles and practices of project management and understand the business unit’s strategic and operational issues.

Technical Manager/Liaison
Responsible for the technical implementation of the project as measured against the project requirements, quality targets, and budgetary constraints, and timelines. Ensures technical deliverables are consistent with the overall technical strategy of the enterprise.

Business Analyst
Primary interface between projects and business partners. Responsible for understanding current and future processes, including processes for the entire enterprise. Documents business requirements, generate business cases, assists in defining project benefits/ costs, and participates in project reviews