Tasks Are Not Project Management
- Hey there. Long time no see. How are you? What are you up to?
- Good to see you. It’s been a while. I got a job as an IT project manager for a big company.
- It’s cool. Scrum, TDD, Agile. Hard?
- Not really. I write technical tasks and send them between techs and customers. It’s not a big deal.
Unfortunately, such conversion still be real. It’s relevant to many people who are not part of the large vendors or integrators, where all processes are better than Swiss watches and projects are really projects. But small and medium sized companies often ignore the concept of ‘project’ and work is done as it happens. A project manager in such company is more like a supervisor who gives the programmers a task to develop functionality as quick as possible, then asks testers to verify it, and then makes sure that it all go to production and customer. He gets a list of bugs from a customer and cycle starts over again. Such manager doesn’t distinguish between the critically and importance of the required functionality and the bugs. If the customer reports even a minor problem, the developers hear ’everything is broken’. This is an extremely unhealthy situation and this is what I want to talk about in this article.
Why talk about it
Project management is everywhere. Don’t believe me? In business, everything is a process and a project. You just need to look a bit deeper.
At some point, every business face up a project. It could be launch of a new product or service, the creation of advertising campaign, the implementation of new softwar, the connection of a new product line and so on. At such moment, business owner should choose project manager (coordinator or supervisor) from among all his employees or look fir an external specialist who will do everything in the best way. However, this process is not as straightforward as it seems at a first glance. And it depends on following:
- Business doesn’t know yet what project is. In fact, it is nothing complicated: goals, objectives, budgets, risks, resource allocation, reporting. However, some of these components are constantly ignored, with the following consequences: the budget is exceeded (planning error); tasks overlap, duplicate, block each other’s work. As a result, the result is in danger of not being achieved, which is in the interest of the customer, whether external or internal.
- They forget to reassess risks, or to assess risks at all. There are risks in every project, no matter how big or small. The occurrence of any risk puts the whole project at risk. Risk assessment should be proactive - before the risk manifests itself. For long-term projects, the risk assessment should be reviewed periodically, depending on the duration of the project.
- Companies get carried away with methodology and forget the purpose of the work, wasting time on the formalities of methodology. This is a sin of both large companies and start-ups. The reasons are different for each: someone wants to comply with modern trends; someone thinks it is necessary because it makes the project look more solid and serious. Often, in the pursuit of following the standards of methodology and the correct organisation of documents, meetings, etc., the speed and quality of the work itself is lost.
- Project managers are the most insecure category of employee. In IT companies, everything is more or less fine if a person who has grown up within the company is hired for this position. But if an IT company decides to hire yesterday’s humanities graduate as a technical project manager, the chances of getting lucky are 50/50. The situation is even worse in areas where it is critical for a project manager to have relevant education, experience, etc. In this case, the selection should be extremely critical, and the best way to do it is from internal reserves.
- When working with projects, the tasks and resources of only one of the parties are taken into account. Every project has an owner (executor) and a customer who expects the results of its implementation. The project should always be focused on the customer’s interests, which must be fulfilled at all costs. Proper project management requires taking into account the interests of all project participants and coordinating their actions during its implementation.
- Fear drives a project into crisis. People may be afraid to report the realities of the situation, especially possible missed deadlines or budget overruns. This can result in a project being delivered with extremely poor quality work, or even a project being pushed into a state of hopelessness. The project manager should have the tools to monitor and control the project to avoid these situations as much as possible.
- The work of a project manager is difficult, if not impossible, to measure. Nevertheless, some people try to impose KPIs on project managers. In this case, instead of monitoring the quality and speed of the work, the project manager starts to meet the plan in order to get a bonus. This approach gradually reduces the manager’s responsibility for the result and dilutes it to the rest of the participants.
- Lack of project boundaries. A vague understanding of the scope of the project can turn it into a long construction project or take it to infinity.
- Communication problems, including internal communication. Initially, the project manager is a leader and a guide whose job is to coordinate and direct the team. But sometimes it happens that the manager thinks that the project is all his and that everything should be done his way and in his way. He starts to put himself above the whole team and ignores everything the team offers, or slips into micromanagement, or tries to do all the work himself. The team eventually learns to keep quiet. But a project is first and foremost a team that does it, not its leader. Exactly - communication within the team is the driving force of any project. Therefore, it should be transparent and informative, and all project participants should be aware of all matters related to the project in order to be prepared for all events and risks.
- In project work, there is almost always a place for the ubiquitous Pareto principle. That is, 20% of the team does 80% of the work, or worse, 20% of the work does 80% of the team. This can be tolerated, but it is better to give the team the right incentives to make it truly effective.
The mistakes listed above are terribly trivial. But it is worth remembering that the more negative factors that come together, the harder it is to bring the project to a successful conclusion. This is why project management should rely on automation tools rather than trust and project magic.
The Three Pillars of Project Management
Project management in an organisation of any size rests on three pillars: time, budget, project boundaries, and the project manager’s ability to balance these in the face of constant interference from senior management.
Time - the period of time in which the project is to be completed, usually divided into smaller periods. Meeting deadlines is an indicator of the team’s ability, but not an end in itself. If the quality of execution is likely to suffer, deadlines should be pushed back in a motivated way. In order to meet deadlines, it is necessary to plan the progress of work and resources.
Cost (budget) - is a parameter that requires special attention. Its complexity lies in the fact that the cost of the project should be calculated and announced in advance, and that unforeseen circumstances and risks should not have a significant impact on the cost. During implementation, cash flow needs to be monitored and income and expenditure recorded. A careful approach to project economics removes many problems and eliminates business disputes.
Project boundaries - are an assessment of the scope of the project and strict adherence to: customer requirements, terms of reference, project sheet. The TOR is the contractor’s armour, as it explains the scope of work and constraints. For a successful TOR it is necessary to gather requirements, allocate them to project phases and agree the requirements with the client. Ideally, the TOR should specify not only what will be done, but also what will not be done.
How do you manage the project?
It is impossible to cover the whole subject of project management in one article. However, it is possible to highlight some of the rules that apply not only to large companies, but also to small and medium-sized enterprises:
- Pay attention to the triangle of project management constraints: deadlines, costs, boundaries. This will help to manage the business (and the team) more efficiently and transparently.
- Don’t be afraid to start multiple projects in parallel - if you allocate tasks and resources properly, you’ll save time and end up working faster and with higher quality.
- If the project starts to fall apart - deadlines have long been missed, boundaries have blurred, stop. Analyse the causes and problems. Restart the tasks. Problems can lurk within the scope of project tasks. But if large tasks are broken down into smaller ones, things will go better.
- Collect reports, do retrospectives and analyse problems and successes. This will help you avoid future problems. When a solution is successful, don’t celebrate the success immediately, understand the reasons for the success and then celebrate and implement the result.
- Don’t make a mistake when choosing a project manager. Remember that this is not a person with a certain education and not a public speaker, but a person who understands the subject of the project and should build a well-functioning system that will eventually give impetus to the next process. However, communication, delegation and teamwork skills are essential.
- Manage change. When something new comes into the project, deal with it. Do not dismiss or reject the change. But stay within the boundaries of the triangle: deadlines, costs, boundaries.
- Project objectives should be realistic and set based on an assessment of all available resources.
- Determine the economics and feasibility of the project. The inability or unwillingness to assess efficiency has led to the death of many start-ups. Of course, it is possible to produce an electric car made of wood or to develop an application that counts the number of mosquitoes killed. But these are projects for the sake of the project, there is neither efficiency nor utility. Evaluate the customer or market before starting a project. This also applies to non-profit organisations.
- Plan your workload with an eye to the future. This will help you understand who is doing what, and what resources are being used now and in the future.
- Work on project documentation. All project documents should be collected in one place and contain comprehensive information about what happened in the project.
- Don’t delve too deeply into methodologies. It is best to choose the best methodology for each project. The methodology should work for you, not you for it.
- Don’t forget to finish the project. It seems ridiculous, but a project should be completed in its entirety. Do not allow partially completed projects, long projects, pauses that are one step away from completion. Although it can be quite difficult to close a project.
A project is not a way to keep an employee busy or a tool for self-realisation. It is the work and life of a team of people who must work together with coherence and professionalism to achieve success. Building a company on the basis of project management is profitable, convenient and promising. The main thing is not to turn project work into a formality, endless meetings and imitation of activities.