It’s easy to buy a book on project management which will hand you a set of processes to follow, or rules to obey. These books have their place, and are a valuable resource for those just getting started in project management.

But what these books are providing you with are the raw tools you’ll need. These are, naturally, incredibly useful. But there is no point in having a toolbox brimming with shiny new tools if, when confronted with a problem, we don’t know which one to reach for first.

Working as a project management contractor, I have to go into projects without any prior knowledge of the people I am working with, or the organisation. Sometimes I don’t even know much about the project until I’m sat at a new desk in a new office, trying to get to grips with it!

It would be madness to try to use every single tool I have to hand on every project as soon as I arrive. Some projects need lots of big, formal, prescriptive project management procedures and methods. Thankfully, the vast majority do not - they need bits and pieces, they need the right tools in the right places.

This is what the books of procedures and methods can’t teach you - judgement. I need to look around at the situation I find myself in, at the people around me, at the project itself, and make a judgement about what needs to be in place to give the project the best chance of success.

Sometimes, that will be quite strict project management methods. Sometimes I can be more relaxed. Some people I can happily leave a task and now it will be done, while with others I will need to chase regularly for reports. All of these decisions require me to draw on my judgement - and that judgement comes from experience.

Now, all this could be quite disheartening to someone coming new to project management - but it really shouldn’t be. Experience comes to all of us, eventually, and will come to you. And you won’t go far wrong if you apply strict methods to begin with, and relax from there once you have more understanding of the project and project team.

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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Which is pretty odd, when you think about it. After all, human beings are social animals; we like to form groups. So why is it that we seem to find it so hard to form a team in our projects?

The problem isn’t really with forming a team, or a group, it’s with forming the team we want. Normally, we would form social groups with people we like, and the traits and attributes that we like in those people may not necessarily be the ones we would value in a team member.

And therein lies the problem. We select project team members based on attributes other than how well they get on with the rest of the team members. This is based on the not unreasonable expectation that they will be professional enough to work with pretty much anyone.

Much of the time, when there isn’t too much pressure on the team, this works out fine. People are professional enough to just get on with their job. But where this falls apart is when you start putting pressure on the group.

At that point, tensions rise to the surface. Little irritations explode into major problems. And people who were just getting on with their job start to feel less willing to do that.

The problem is the level of commitment, of connection to the project, that a group of individuals has is much lower than that of a team. A team is working towards a common goal, and feels a duty and responsibility to each other, and to the project.

That means that when a team is put under pressure, they work together to defeat the problem, to build the solution, to find the right path to their goal. Pressure can actually help a team be more productive, not less.

Building a team, then, requires emphasising and promoting the values and goals the members share, it involves listening to them, helping them all work together. But most importantly, it involves recognising that most of the work of building a team has to come from the team members themselves.

Yes, you can help the process, facilitate it, provide an environment which makes it more likely to happen. Ultimately, though, it is as much the responsibility of your team members as it is of the project manager. Let them know the importance of this, of them, and of the team.

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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So thanks to Steelray for sending me that link on Twitter. (Hey, don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter too!)

Don’t forget to send me your tips on building a team!

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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A team is really just a small community, a group of people who work together to achieve something. Now, a team at work is unlikely to be as close as other communities (which, as we have seen, is probably a good thing), but it is still a community.

Human beings like being in communities. We are social creatures. But it can be very hard to create a community deliberately, rather than having one gradually grow up. In a project, though, you want to ensure your team gels quickly.

This often means you, as the project manager, have to take steps to foster the growth of a team. Yes, this may mean talking about the dreaded team building activities.

One example I have is of the head of a department deciding the whole department should go and help out at a local nature reserve. Their job, when they arrived, was to use shears and secateurs to clear out some of the undergrowth within some woodland.

I can’t help but feel sending an entire department out into the wilds after arming them with sharp metal implements was a brave thing to do, especially as the senior management were out there with them…

However, it seems to have worked - though at least in part because the department bonded over the absurdity of the whole process!

This is where I throw it open to you - how do you go about creating a real team? What do you do to help them form a community? Any particular tips, techniques, even activities that you use?

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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There is a danger that a team will stop being a team, and move over into being a clique. In a business context, a team is a group of people who come together to achieve a specific goal for the benefit of the business. A clique, however, is a group of people who work together for the benefit of the group, regardless of the effect on other groups in the business, or the business as a whole.

In other words, in case 1 the team uses the group as a tool to achieve success. In case 2, the group’s existence is seen as important.

This leads to problems because the clique begins to set themselves apart from the rest of the environment they are in. They start to see the group as special, as more important than outside, as something to be defended and fought for - regardless of the wider consequences.

Now, all of this is often subconscious, but I’m sure you can recognise some of the signs - teams start to get more cliquey, they begin to disparage other areas of the business, even other people in the same area not on the same team. An adversarial and antagonistic relationship with the rest of the business develops, leading to an inevitable loss of trust on both sides of that relationship.

This is, suffice to say, not a good thing.

Yes, encourage a team to form. But be careful it doesn’t become a clique.

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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In this video, Alain de Botton talks about a different way of looking at success. It’s a good video, Alain is a witty and amusing speaker. He got me thinking about this blog, and whether it has been successful.

It’s been eight months since I started this blog, and seven since I really threw myself into it at the start of the year. Over that time, I’ve produced almost 100 posts. But has the whole process been a success?

As project managers, it’s too easy for us to get bogged down in one definition of success - the same we use when we are dealing with projects. Did it deliver to requirements, was it on time, and so on.

But, of course, this blog isn’t really a project - for a start, it doesn’t have an end-date! I also didn’t set myself goals when I started it, other than writing about project management.

So when it comes to deciding whether it has been a success, it has to be a personal and relative judgement, not an objective one. And looked at that way, I’m pretty happy. I have indeed been writing about project management, and I like to think my writing has been getting better. There are now a considerable number of people who read the blog, and I thank each of you.

More importantly than the numbers and the writing, though, is that working on the blog has forced me to take the time and give myself the space to think more deeply about project management, and about what it means to be a project manager. I’ve clarified my own feelings on what is important, how we should handle teams and managers, and how to be more successful in our projects.

I’ve also had my eyes opened to new ways of sharing my passion for and knowledge about project management. I’m currently working on another project (this one really is a project!) to help me do this, and will be able to talk about this more soon.

I’ve also been lucky enough to share in a whole world of online project management blogging, tips, advice, podcasts, information and community. Project management can sometimes get lonely, and it’s good to remember we are all part of a global community of professionals.

So has it been a success? Personally, yes, it has. I’ve got a lot out of it, and I hope you have got something out of it too!

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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John Burke says:
“Having someone trying to manage a project alongside the day job has never worked successfully wherever I’ve seen it tried. The individuals, when stretched with ever increasing workloads, have always reverted to completing day job tasks first at the expense of the project”

Dveirel Kovalsky says:
“Project managers contribute to the Knowledge Management and ‘wisdom’ of the company as an asset.”

Mahesh Subramaniam says:
“It is only the project manager whose sole aim is to keep an eye on the deliverables and align the individual objectives towards the common goal of delivering the business product that represents more or less the vision of all interested parties on the project.”

Karl Geppert says:
“The project manager is the valve between the business and the project team. They are needed to focus the whole project team on the business outcome ensure that this is planned, scheduled and delivered on targeted date and content.”

Tom Andries says:
“What’s the point of an architect? What’s the point of a clown? What’s the point of a designer?
With each profession are associated a set of skills that an individual tries to embody and practice.”

Mark Parrish says:
“Since most people got into PM as a SME, I think that they could do it. If people had the time and training.”

As for me, in common with many of these comments, I believe that a full-time project manager provides much more value above a part-time one than he costs. Yes, as Mark Parrish says, with training, the tools we use, the processes we follow, these can be learned, but that doesn’t make you a project manager.

Ultimately, a project manager needs to manage the project well, and for most of us this means, wherever possible, making sure the project is completed in a successful manner. And that takes more than pieces of paper.

Imagine the all too familiar situation that one of the project tasks is stalled, because the person working on it needs information from someone else in the organisation – information that just isn’t forthcoming. The monitoring of the project you have been doing means you have become aware of this problem, and that means you need to take steps to solve it. So what do you do? Well, you go to where the information is supposed to be coming from, and you talk to them, you smooth things over, you negotiate with them to get the information the project needs delivered as soon as possible.

These are the kind of soft skills you must have. You have to be a manager, laying down the law to team members who aren’t pulling their weight – and supporting them to solve whatever is stopping them. You have to be a negotiator, making sure suppliers, internal and external, deliver what the project needs when it needs it. You have to be a politician, talking to senior managers to make sure the staff the project needs are available at the right time. You need to be an advisor, giving the Executive the information he needs to make decisions about the project.

In short, you need to be a problem solver. You need to be able to handle any of the situations project management can throw at you. Some of this can be improved by training. A lot more of it can be improved through experience. But a lot of it is down to your own personal inclinations. Regardless of the type of projects you do, regardless of the industry area, you are going to have to be good at dealing with people. You could be working on the most high-tech space-age wonder gadgets, but it will still be people that will cause your biggest problems – and give you your greatest successes.

To be this kind of person usually takes: time, to gain the bitter experience; effort, to learn the tools, techniques and processes; and the right personality, one that enjoys solving these types of problems.

Now, that’s not to say that a member of the team couldn’t do these things, and be good at them. But the skills that make someone, say, a good programmer, aren’t necessarily the same skills that would make a good project manager. And besides, wouldn’t you rather have your good programmers spending their time actually programming, instead of project managing?

I’ll leave you with the most poetic of the comments received, from Eugenio Magnone:
“Scattered bright and colorful pebbles do not create a mosaic.”

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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Think about it. What if you just gave, for example, your lead programmer enough time to do some project management as well as coding? Wouldn’t that work just as well? After all, he’d be closer to the work, he’d have a good idea of how well it was progressing, and he’d know exactly what technical difficulties are cropping up - and how tough they are to solve.

Or what about an infrastructure upgrade. Why not trust the ICT manager to handle the negotiations with suppliers, and chase them up to ensure delivery? Couldn’t she better allocate work to her team than a project manager?

There’s actually a lot of sense in this view. Detailed knowledge of the subject of the project can be a great advantage, and naturally the people doing the work have a lot of this knowledge! If they can be given the time and training in project management, why not do this?

Now, naturally as a project manager I am not fully convinced by this argument! But this means I believe project managers provide benefits above and beyond what a subject matter expert could. I can think of a few, but I’m interested to hear what you think. So, how about it? What do full-time project managers provide to a project that a part-timer can’t?

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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• Clear objective - to send a man to the moon, and bring him back again
• Clear quality requirements - keep them alive
• Strong support from senior stakeholders - Presidential support
• Extensive funding - between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (or approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars)

But, of course, the project had an awful lot of difficulties too. Not only were they trying to do something never done before, but they also had a clear and public deadline - the end of the decade. It took determination, hard work, acts of genius and even a bit of luck to get there. And, of course, good project management!

The other thing the project had going for it, though, was a healthy attitude to risk. The project was trying to do something incredible, and the people involved, most especially the astronauts, accepted that there was a genuine risk they could lose their lives. But they believed that the risk was low enough, and the prize was great enough, that it was a risk worth taking.

As we look back at the achievements of the Apollo programme, it’s also worth looking forward, to see where we want to get to now, and how we want to do it. There is talk of establishing a permanent base on the moon. This presents all sorts of engineering challenges, and is an interesting proposition.

But to me, the real excitement comes at the thought of sending a man to another planet, of getting completely out of our little Earth-Moon gravity well. Putting humans on Mars would be a herculean task, a task to truly challenge the science and technology of our era. The biggest challenge, though, seems to be cultivating a mindset that accepts the ultimate risk, that helps all of us again believe that some things are worth risking everything for.

I hope you’ll forgive my self-indulgence in writing this post, but sending humans to another planet is important to me. Yes, for the scientific knowledge we would gain. Yes, for the chance of spreading humanity that little bit wider in this universe. But most of all, for the adventure, because I believe seeking out this kind of adventure is part of what it means to be human. Here’s hoping it’s not another 40 years before we make another giant leap for mankind.

(Image courtesy of dcysurfer. Some rights reserved.)

©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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©2010 Project Management Guide. All Rights Reserved.

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