Does your company already have a project management process in place? Is that methodology inefficient, outdated, and unproductive? If you have been assigned the role of project manager, making improvements to the way things get done should be your first order of business. Being a change agent is an uphill battle at the best of times. However, there are some strategies you can use to overcome resistance from C-suite executives, managers, and other stakeholders. Here are some tips to get you started:

Talk the Talk

You are more likely to gain support from upper level management if you can speak their language. There are many aspects of project management knowledge that overlap with other disciplines. Communicating in a way that demonstrates your understanding of a peer’s area of expertise will help them trust that you know what you are doing in your sphere of specialization. So, when you speak to Accounting you might pepper your conversation with terms like short term ROI and amortization. Just be careful not to use jargon unless you really know what it means. If you don’t use terminology correctly and in context you will simply end up looking foolish.

Big Picture/Small Picture

Be aware that not everyone wants or needs to hear your grand vision for creating positive change through updated project management methodology. You should develop two spiels. One is for people who like a lot of context. Diagrams showing how project management is related to other business processes and how changes will affect the company over time are useful for these audiences.

Others want you to cut to the chase since they only care about how your suggested changes will affect them or their department directly. For these individuals, a short bullet list of what you need from them is the best tool you can use to gain support. It keeps things simple and shows that you understand the value of people’s time.

Showing Value

Besides communicating what you need from others, you also need to show specifically what you are going to do for them in return. For example, a discussion with the HR director needs to focus on human capital management. This is the time to make realistic predictions about how greater project management efficiency will translate to lower labor costs. You can also seek feedback regarding how your new way of handling projects may impact employee engagement.

For IT, you could talk about how using a particular version of project management software would relieve them of the burden of ongoing development and maintenance. When you are negotiating with stakeholders, be sure that what you are offering actually has value to them. If you aren’t sure what they want, ask. Then, you will know where you stand in negotiations.

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As a project manager, getting what you need when you need it is imperative for a successful outcome. This means you have to work closely with your company’s Procurement Department (Purchasing). If you are constantly at odds with the purchasing agents, this can hamper your ability to work effectively. Things don’t have to be this way since your departments share some of the same goals (to stay on track and under budget). Here are 4 possible areas for improvement in communication and collaboration:

Give Early Notice

If you are commencing a large project, the Purchasing Director may need to assign a buyer full time to fulfilling your requisitions. That impacts the manpower available to devote to other tasks. As a professional courtesy, you should keep the Director apprised of the scope of upcoming projects. Don’t simply send over a huge list of required items and services that will take Purchasing by surprise. When buyers have to scramble to get things done, costly mistakes are much more likely.

Plus, you might think an item is available off the shelf when it actually has a 6 week lead time. When you make assumptions, your project may experience unexpected delays. The more information the Procurement Department has up front, the more accurate your project planning will become.

Don’t Make Agreements

Unless you have the authority to spend your employer’s money, never agree to buy anything from a vendor. This applies to verbal statements and written contracts. The number one way to make your Procurement Department angry is by usurping their authority. When they have to go back and renegotiate a deal and break promises you made to a vendor, this makes their job much harder than it should be.

If you do speak with vendors directly, it may be OK to ask for initial price quotes. However, make it clear that you are only doing a preliminary investigation into costs and that a purchasing agent will be in charge of any further discussion. Don’t try to haggle about pricing – you may inadvertently disclose information that should be kept confidential. Experienced buyers know how to finesse vendors and maintain control of the conversation. It is in your best interest to leave negotiations to trained purchasing agents.

Double Check Your Specs

You and your staff members are the experts on what you need to complete your project. This means you are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the specifications for the components, equipment, or services you requisitioned are correct.

A good purchasing agent will do his or her best to become conversant in the technical terminology required to discuss your project requirements. However, buyers often handle the procurement of dozens (or hundreds) of different items in an average week. This means there is a limit to how much new knowledge they can absorb. When they buy exactly what you tell them to and it turns out to be the wrong item, you will take the blame for the mistake.

On the other hand, you need to be on the lookout for buyers who substitute a cheaper product in order to get a better price. They may be under pressure to do this to stay within budget – or simply to enhance their next performance evaluation. For critical components, always ask to see the final specs prior to order placement. Make this type of request politely in writing (email is fine) so it will be taken seriously and you will have a copy of the correspondence for your records.

Prepare to Defend Your Preferences

The Purchasing Director typically has the final say over which vendor will be awarded a contract or purchase order. If you have a preference for using one vendor over another, you must be able to clearly show how this choice benefits your company. Buyers are expected to be impartial in their decision making process and they expect the same attitude from you.

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Renowned business expert Rita Mulcahy died May 15, 2010 following a long battle with breast cancer. She was the founder of RMC Project Management, starting that company in 1991. It was at this time that Rita discovered the need for additional training to be able to grow their career. The certification process was intense and without the proper guidance, many people would fail. Ms. Mulcahy subsequently wrote a PMP Exam Prep Study guide for those persons who wanted to become Certified Project Managers. It received national and international acclaim, with most experts this to be the industry standard.

She was also recognized around the world on such business topics as project management techniques, risk management and project management certification. With more than fifteen years of experience working directly with business leaders, Rita had over 2.5 billion dollars of experience to her credit. Her company became a leader in the business industry, renowned for the ability to both teach people and allow them to enjoy it as well.

Ms. Mulcahy was also a guest speaker at thousand of seminars and business conventions every year. Her firm continues to be involved with this type of risk management work, offering help and guidance to many people training in this field. This includes e-books, online courses, kits, and self-help books. It has continued to grow, even in her absence, with expansion into other areas, including publishing, internet technology and even real estate.

Rita Mulcahy was a true pioneer in this industry, helping thousands of people along the way. Her company continues with the vision she began almost 20 years ago of assisting those most in need.

The company continues to grow with divisions in publishing, warehousing, distribution, online books, and real estate. Rita had a love for the outdoors, the arts, theater, and skiing.

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This is rather old news, but given that more and more people understand the importance of being certified by either the PMI or the IPMA, this should still be mentioned. In 2008 already, the Project Management Institute and the International Project Management Association signed an agreement that they will join forces in order to boost the project management profession. As a consequence, the PMI certification Project Management Professional and the IPMA certification Level C will be accepted by both parties as being equivalent. This is a huge step, given that both organisations were perceived as being two different religions that were not compatible to each other, despite the fact that some project managers have certifications from both.

Furthermore, the Project Management Institute and the International Project Management Association will work together building university programs and doing research. The agreement has been signed for three years so that we should see the outcome soon.

At the end of the day, there is no alternative than working together for the two big organisations. The project management profession is still very young, and too often project management is done by people who may have experience but lack a professional education. Compare this to the dentist profession: centuries ago, the barber was also the dentist. Obviously, there was not too much education available so that most barbers relied on experience which must not have been a bad thing in all cases. There was no alternative. Project Management in the early days was done by the “barbers”, and while more and more professional project managers are available, too many projects are still being managed by “barbers” because businesses have not seen the importance of professional project management by now; project management seems to be doable by everyone who has enough experience in another profession. The blame must not be put on these businesses: The PMI and the IPMA have failed to prove the value of professional project management by now, and they MUST work together in order to make sure project management is perceived as the art of improving the bottom line.

And while the barber comparison may sound odd: Centuries ago, a tooth was just pulled out by the barber, there was no way to save a tooth from being extracted. At the same time, teeth did not have the aesthetic value as they have today. Compared to today, often enough there is no alternative to loosing money due to unprofessional project management, and people believe that this may just be the way it is. It is not. It is time the attitude towards project management is changed. And this is the challenge the PMI and the IPMA must face together.

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There are a variety of open source project management tools available for free online. Despite being developed and distributed for free, these programs are high quality software, and many are used for massive important projects done by various government and private agencies. We will look at these different tools and their strengths and weaknesses in a series of blog posts.

For hunting down bugs in a larger group of developers, Trac is the right solution. It is a web based project management tool specifically designed for linking with a programming bug database, viki content, and the revision control information. Trac allows a group to collaborate on finding and fixing glitches and bugs in any type of software.

Collabtive is a web based software that is a great open source alternative to BaseCamp. It allows all the members of a group working on a project to chart and track their goals, publish regular progress reports, share documents and other files securely, and has a built in private messaging system. It’s flexible and powerful enough to work for any project, and allows unlimited user accounts on one project.
eGroupWare is another program that allows group project workers to collaborate and connect. eGroupWare is mainly web based, but can also be used with certain compatible clients, such as Microsoft Outlook. It allows all of the users on one project to share and manage contacts, to-do lists and progress reports, track dates and timelines, and share project information.
For editing and presenting information and documents over the internet, Feng Office is a great choice. Not only does it allow for document and data management within the software, it keeps your team on top of time management with it’s built in tools. It’s also one of the few open source product management programs to allow online editing and multi-user presentations, eliminating the needs for regular video or in person meetings. No matter what the project is you need to manage, there is a perfect open source software solution for your team.

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If you use PM standards such as the PMBOK standard of the Project Management Institute (PMI), does this warrant  that your project will be successful? Unfortunately, the answer is no. For me, the PMBOK is a toolbox, and depending on the requirements of the project, I use some tools, and some tools stay in the toolbox. It is comparable to the real toolbox that you might have in your house: You carry this toolbox with you if you have to repair the water tap and if you have to repair the car, but you will most probably not use the same tools out of the toolbox in both situations.

Now, using this picture, if someone does not possess the PMI toolbox, does it mean he does not have the tools to work on a project successfully? No. Actually, some of the PMI approaches are common ground with respect to other disciplines, even if they are labeled differently. Using a project log, for example, is not a PMI-exclusive approach, and it may be called differently in other domains. Managing stakeholders may also be the outcome of common sense. In other word, you can be successful in project management if you don’t have any knowledge of the standards. However, having the knowledge will not hurt you; in fact, your work might be easier if you are aware of best practices and available tools; if not, everything may look like a nail because you just know the hammer.

On the contrary, if you can be successful without the PM standards knowledge, this does not mean you will always be successful just by using PM standards. Just because you know that there is such a concept of managing stakeholders, this does not mean that you will do this successfully. Your communication strategy may be suboptimal, politically-based actions from others may ruin your project plan: There is more than just the PM standard that should be followed, and this is the non-reproducable part of project management success: The project manager and his soft skills that are not standardizable. Still, an untalented project manager may be more likely to be successful with a PM standard since he is using best practices, but it will not be a guaranty.

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Earlier this year, I had reported that the new version of the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the fourth edition, could not be opened on Macintosh computers. I had written an email to the local PMI EMEA office in order to ask when this would be solved but never got an answer. This is probably not the behaviour you would expect from the PMI

Nevertheless, in May I received an official mail by the PMI that these issues should be resolved. I had not time by now to test this in detail, but at least I managed to open the new download. I guess some stakeholders had been forgotten at the beginning of the project…

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The times, they have become tough, and more and more companies are required to reduce the number of employees in order to survive or to keep the figures nice. Often enough, these means that less people are required to manage the same amount of work as before the reorganisation. In other words, resources need to be used more efficiently.

If there is one vital advantage of project management, then it is the effective use of resources. By managing scope and planning the resources that are needed in order to get the work done, project managers make a attractive promise to senior management: For budget “x”, you will get “y”, and provided that the project manager has been involved in ROI calculations during project initiation, the project manager can make sure that the scope of the project will reflect the needed means in order to deliver the ROI.

However, project managers are not always positioned to “sell” this advantage. Now, even more than in other times, it is important for project managers to evangalize organisations about the value of organisations, not because the project manager wants to survive but because project management does add value to an organisations bottomline if resources are used more efficiently.

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As a project manager you have probably encountered a few projects that you just don’t like working on. Perhaps it’s the nature of the impending project or it could be your mood or maybe even the time of year. When faced with a project you just don’t find interesting, it’s easy to put things off by making excuses, but procrastination is not the answer.

The more the tasks before us are delayed, the more difficult and daunting they become. In addition, these delays can create much more work in the long run. So the question is, how does a project manager get past this tendency to procrastinate?

One way is to set up a reward for yourself once the project is complete. Make a list of tasks that need to be accomplished then assign an appropriate reward for each one. Just be sure to actually reward yourself once the task has been finished.

It also helps to psyche yourself up to start working. Avoid postponing tasks and take action immediately when a new job arises. There may not be a right time to do it, so you sometimes have to create that right time in your own mind.

Once a task has been completed it’s important to quickly move on to the next one. Small breaks help with refocusing but they can also be a distraction. If you are easily distracted, it might pay to move on to the next job quickly.

In project management it is easy to over-commit yourself, compounding the problem. It’s not an easy thing to do, but sometimes you just have to say “no”. It is much easier to disappoint someone by not committing than to disappoint them by not delivering.

So if you find yourself putting off work that needs to be done, try some of these techniques and the next project you manage is sure to be more productive.

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Leadership skills are the key to becoming an effective project manager. One part of leadership is the ability to delegate work to the people on your project management team. However, unless a certain amount of respect is not present, delegation can be a difficult task to accomplish.

There are several ways to earn the respect of those working for you. First of all you must demonstrate an ability and willingness to do the task at hand yourself. It shouldn’t appear that you are just dumping work that you don’t want to do onto someone else.

Next, let the person know what the overall plan is and explain its importance to the project as a whole. If they understand the task is important to the completion of the project, it is likely they will have a better perspective and will take the job more seriously. The work, however, should assist them in meeting their own goals. Base your delegation on what is important to them, not on what is important to you.

The task should present a challenge and it should be offered in that way. No one likes to have busy work thrown at them, especially if they believe you don’t think they have the ability necessary to take on challenging tasks.
Communicate expectations clearly and solicit feedback.

A project manager should also be likeable. By getting to know the other people on the team it becomes easier to be sincerely interested and sensitive to each individual’s unique qualities. In addition, really knowing those who work for you helps to utilize their strengths and avoid assigning tasks where they might not excel.

Finally, you should be willing to give public credit to project management team members once tasks have been completed successfully. A little praise can go a long way, but be sure you are sincere in what you say.

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