Category: Leadership & Skills

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Project Scope and Business Environment Impact

The project’s business environment can be the most important factor affecting project scope. This impact is agnostic to your project’s development approach (plan driven, agile, hybrid). Each development approach has ways to respond to these changes. It is the project manager’s responsibility along with team leaders, team members, sponsors, and other stakeholders to identify business environment changes early, prepare adequately and adjust to them.

Business Environment Influence on Scope

  1. Business Environment Influence on Scope
  2. What Causes Business Environment Change?
  3. Project Manager Business Environment Changes
  4. Ways to Engage Stakeholders
  5. Tips to Understand the Business Environment Impact

What Causes Business Environment Changes?

As a project leader, it is important to understand the organization’s strategic and operational objectives as well as the specific objectives of the project. It is equally important to understand the external business environment that can impact and introduce change to the project.

Common causes of internal and external business environment change include:

  • Competition / market
  • Regulatory / compliance
  • Technology
  • Politics

A project leader must continuously observe and respond to the business environment. Start by asking good questions. In addition, you must anticipate environmentally caused risks throughout your project.  The following are some strategies for anticipating environmentally caused changes.

Project Manager Business Environment Considerations

There are several actions you can take to sharpen your business environment acumen and prepare for project scope impacts:

Inform Yourself: Expand your organizational knowledge and awareness. Consider the strategic objectives. Who are the key decision makers? What happens if the project fails? What is happening in the industry? Find new influences (e.g. How static is the regulatory or compliance environment?, Will technology change?, Is the competitive landscape changing?). Understand and make connections.

Watch for Changes: Be observant as to what is happening in the marketplace as well as internally in your organization. Look for the ripple effects that can impact your project scope. What is learned?  What is new?

Analyze the Organization: Determine if your organization has the maturity and structures to support environmental changes that may occur during or from the project, how the project can adjust to them and how it can prepare the organization for the change.

Create Processes and Procedures: Look for opportunities to get additional help and support. For example, having a way to identify and escalate a business environment change to appropriate stakeholders is beneficial to dealing with the situation efficiently. By having a clear process it makes it easier for all project stakeholders to escalate concerns.

Monitor the Environment: By monitoring the known environmental factors and our current state we can see trends developing or identify changes to the project environment early to proactively respond during project work.

Identify Obstacles: Explore obstacles as they happen and facilitate ways to help the project more forward.

Continuous Improvement: What are you learning along the way that could help to do better or more efficient work?

Ways to Engage Stakeholders

Ask your stakeholders for assistance in identifying internal and external business environment factors that need to be considered. You’ll want to hear what they think might be influencing the business environment. Ask for their help in evaluating any risks to the project. Encourage stakeholders to help you develop ideas, create processes and evaluation measures to keep the project on track.

Engaging stakeholders is also about sharing relevant project information. For example, you will want to communicate the cost of failing to anticipate business environment changes and impacts to your project. Provide updates on the successes and managing the project within the broader organizational environment. Give your project leadership the right information. Share your reasons for doing this and demonstrate through actions how it’s relevant, appropriate, and important.

Tips to Understand the Business Environment Impact

Here are three tips you can use to evaluate, prepare, and address business environment of your project and be prepared to manage its potential impact on scope.

  1. Clarify the Current State

Clearly define the current state of your business environment. Consider the following to document your understanding:

  • Engage with stakeholders
  • Identify external business environment influencers
  • Don’t forget internal influencers and attitudes
  • Group influencers using an affinity diagram
  • Analyze for missing groups
  • Analyze the impact
  • Prioritize for focus
  1. Create a Register for Business Environment Influencers

Use a register as a repository of the influencers and the relevant data. It should include the name and description of current concerns and include other information. Here is a more detailed list:

  • Name of influencers and a description
  • Category
  • Type (internal / external)
  • Action required
  • Risks
  • Timing
  • Measures
  • Owner
  • Level of influence on project
  1. Perform Check Ups – Did You Get It Right?

As the project work is being done, schedule a periodic re-evaluation of the current state. In this evaluation, review:

  • What is new?
  • What has changed?
  • Could the efforts produce unintended positive or negative results?
  • What should be adjusted?
  • What must be avoided?

RMC’s Got the Support You Need

If you are planning to take the PMP exam, you will need to know about the business environment and the broader impacts that environment has on your projects.  Rita Mulcahy’s Exam Prep materials can help you prepare for this and other exam topics.  We offer PMP Exam Prep instructor-led courses and PMP Exam Prep eLearning. Prep on your own time with Rita’s Exam Prep book, PM FASTrack Exam simulator or our complete PMP Exam Prep System.

If you already have your PMP certification, earn 1 FREE PDU when you listen to our webinar Bursting the Scope Bubble: Business Environment and Its Influence on Your Project.

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Contract Issues in Agile Development

Two business people review signing a contract

There has been a significant amount of discussion regarding the tension between development and agile contracts. Many see this conflict as irreconcilable, citing provisions in the Agile Manifesto favoring “working software over comprehensive documentation” and “customer collaboration over contract negotiation.”

Those who see the conflict this way claim that lawyers are operating in an outmoded mindset and need to be educated about the agile method of doing business. These same people claim that lawyers perceive many agile practitioners as unrealistic and naive.

In my view, this so-called tension is the result of a misconception of the lawyer’s role and of his or her duty to the client.

Contracts and Agile Development

  1. The Role of the Lawyer
  2. Implementing the Parties’ Intentions through Form Contracts
  3. Similarities in Agile and Other Development Contracts
  4. Agile-Dependent Provisions
  5. Similarities between Agile and R&D Contracts
  6. What Would an Agile Contract Look Like?

The Role of the Lawyer

The lawyer’s duty is to protect the interests of his or her client. What does that mean, exactly? To those in the “lawyer as dinosaur” camp, it means that a negotiation is perceived as a zero-sum game, with success being defined as winning the maximum number of business points and shifting as much business risk as possible onto the other party. In fairness, I have seen negotiations go that way and, at times, lawyers take a leading role in those types of adversarial negotiations.

In my experience such types of negotiations are ultimately unsuccessful because the relationship and the business objective underlying the agreement usually fail. That doesn’t do anyone any good, and it can’t be viewed as truly protecting the interest of the client.

A lawyer’s job is to assist their client in reaching their business objective. Part of that responsibility includes reducing risk to the client. The definition of risk, however, cannot be compartmentalized into individual business points or contract provisions, and must include the overall goal of the contract.

In the end, the object of the contract is to document the intentions of the parties and to create a mechanism to implement those intentions.

Implementing the Parties’ Intentions through Form Contracts

Much has been written about the need for new and specialized modalities surrounding contracts intended to implement agile methodologies. For example, in 2008 the Norwegian University of Science and Technology conducted a detailed study of problems associated with contracts in agile development projects. This ultimately led the Norwegian Computer Society to adopt a standard form contract to be used for agile software development, maintenance, and service operations.  There are many other form contracts purporting to be agile friendly. For example, see the Draft/Contract for use in DSDM Projects (DSDM refers to dynamic systems development method, an agile methodology).

Although these form contracts can be useful, there are already existing procurement methodologies that can accommodate the iterative approach used in agile software development.

Similarities in Agile and Other Development Contracts

One reason existing form contracts can be used for agile is because agile development shares many of the same needs of other types of development. For starters, you need to identify the parties to the contract. You need to have an effective date and a start date. You need to state when and how the vendor will be paid.

In addition, as with other software contracts, there must be warranties from the vendor, such as one warranting that it owns the rights to the code it will be developing and selling to the purchaser. There should also be some software escrow provision allowing the purchaser to gain access to the code should the vendor file for bankruptcy or go out of business. These are just a couple of examples. There are many others.

Agile-Dependent Provisions

The tricky issue with contracts and agile development stems from the iterative process and the intentional lack of documentation regarding the scope of work or the performance characteristics of the product being purchased.

In a traditional procurement, there is normally a detailed specification or statement of work that sets the standard against which vendor performance will be measured and allows for a firm price. This approach won’t generally work in agile development. But there are other contract methodologies, such as those used in research and development (R&D), designed to deal with situations where detailed specifications are impossible. Such contracts may be adapted to fit into the iterative approach called for by agile.

Similarities between Agile and R&D Contracts

In many agile agreements the requirements, by design, are not well documented. The same can be said for R&D contracts. Parties often enter into R&D contracts without knowing whether the object of the agreement is even doable. One area where these contracts may differ is in the iterative methodology used in agile; however, this is not critical, and the iterative methodology can be documented.

What Would an Agile Contract Look Like?

As far as scope is concerned, both an agile and R&D contract would probably have a simple statement, not necessarily of work, but of goals. There would be provisions allowing for a re-scoping after every iteration, a process for identifying what was done and what was not done. With respect to those items that were not done, the contract would also document a decision process governing whether those pieces of work would be put into the next iteration, mothballed, or discarded. There would probably also be provisions for the re-scoping of work for the next iteration.

Payment would most likely be either on a cost-plus basis (with a fee or profit component) or for time and materials. Given the uncertainties of the project, a firm fixed price would most likely be impossible, but there could be a budget target or cost estimate that might go in at the front end, against which the project progress could be measured.

In this respect, an agile project would differ from R&D in that the end of the project would be defined as when the purchaser runs out of money, not when the goals of the project have been reached. Honestly, this would most likely be extremely dissatisfying to a purchaser, especially one that did not have a business history with the vendor.

There would also need to be provisions governing testing and acceptance, at the end of each iteration and at project completion. One issue is the criteria governing acceptance. If requirements are not defined up front, how do you determine what success looks like at the end? It could be defined by requirements set forth at the beginning of each iteration; the contract would require each successive set of requirements to be met for the project to be deemed successful. With this approach, one concern is the situation where all the pieces work, but the final product is unsatisfactory. In my view this is the largest problem with agile contracts, but in many respects it’s no different than an R&D contract where the parties have goals but no real knowledge of whether those goals can be achieved.

As long as the parties’ expectations regarding the final product are understood and documented up front, with the understanding that if the purchaser’s expectations are not achieved, the purchaser would only have limited recourse, then an agile-based contract would work.

Boilerplate provisions would be similar to those found in other contracts. IP warranties and indemnifications would be the same, as would severability, governing law, notifications, modification, confidentiality, and competition.

RMC is Here to Get You Started

In looking at agile contracts, the documentation requirements are not all that unique and can be fit into other more traditional procurement methodologies. There is no need to completely reinvent the wheel. Rather, the lawyer and practitioner need to keep in mind that they are creating an agreement in an environment of uncertainty, not unlike that found in an R&D contract.

In response to the growing relevance of Agile methodology for all Project Managers, the Project Management Institute (PMI®) has begun offering the Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®) certification exam. RMC Project Management offers comprehensive exam preparation products, eLearning and classroom training options to help you earn PMI-ACP certification

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Identify and Analyze Risk in Project Management

Business woman working on managing project risks

One of the most important steps when coming up with a plan for your next project is identifying and analyzing risks. Whether you’re new to project management or you want to become a better project manager, understanding how to accurately determine where the risks lie on your projects can help ensure you’ll meet your goals with fewer, if any, setbacks along the way.  We encourage you to find out how your lack of risk knowledge could be hurting your projects.

Identify and Analyze Risk in Projects

  1. What are Risks in Project Management?
  2. What Is Risk Management?
  3. The Benefits of Risk Management
  4. A Guide to Risk Identification and Analysis
  5. Risk Management Starts at the Planning Stage

What Are “Risks” in Project Management?

What is a risk, exactly? It’s any uncertainty that might affect your project in either a positive or a negative way, so a risk is really a potential threat or a potential opportunity.

A threat might delay your project, increase your costs, and reduce the level of quality that you deliver, as a few examples. An opportunity might improve project performance by doing things like reducing the cost, improving the schedule, or boosting the quality delivered.

Each project will have its own set of risks, so you shouldn’t assume that the risks involved in your last project will affect the one that you’re currently working on. In other words, every time you start a new project, it’s best to identify risks, analyze their possible impact on your project, and come up with plans to reduce negative risks or deal with them if they turn into actual problems, and take advantage of opportunities.

What Is Risk Management?

The purpose of risk management is to identify as many potential opportunities as possible, and to plan the project in such a way as to take advantage of them. Risk management also seeks to identify and eliminate as many threats as possible and reduce the negative impact of any remaining project threats. You can use risk management to prevent problems rather than dealing with them after they occur. You identify and assess risks, and then you plan accordingly.

So, you would start by identifying what could possibly go wrong throughout the duration of your project. Then, you would assess the probability of those risks manifesting into real problems, and you would figure out the impact that a risk would have on your project.

Next, you’d come up with strategies to eliminate or mitigate the effects of risks you’ve identified. Then, you’d create plans to resolve any issue that might arise so you’ll be able to act right away when necessary.

Finally, you’d perform ongoing risk assessments as the project progresses

The Benefits of Risk Management

A few of the main benefits associated with risk management are:

  • Savings on project cost and time.
  • Greater control over the project.
  • Fewer hours spent dealing with problems because solutions have been planned to improve efficiency if a risk occurs.
  • Minimizing scope creep (scope creep refers to uncontrolled changes or continuous growth in a project’s scope, and this can occur when the project isn’t properly defined, documented, or controlled).

A Guide to Risk Identification and Analysis

For the best results, take advantage of a systematic process for risk management like the one below.

Using this process, you can spend more time managing the creation of your project deliverables. And, if a risk were to occur, you’ll be able to quickly implement your planned risk responses (contingency and fallback plans), rather than determining a course of action when an issue has occurred. All in all, this allows for more proactive project management.  You can avoid losing a lot of time and resources when issues do not become problems.

  1. Plan Risk Management: Determine how risk management will be done on your project, who will be involved in it, and what procedures will be used.
  2. Identify Risks: Determine specific risks by project, as well as by work package or activity.
  3. Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis: Subjectively analyze the probability and impact of each risk (for example, by using a scale of 1 to 10 for each risk). Also, prioritize the risks and categorize them. Decide what high ranking risks move on to the Quantitative Risk Analysis process. Categorizing may also help you find common causes for some- risks.
  4. Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis: Numerically estimate the cost and time impact of the high ranking risks from the Qualitative Analysis process. Expected Monetary Value (EMV, or % Probability x $ Impact) is the most common way of quantifying these risks. With these calculations you can create a risk reserve.
  5. Plan Risk Responses: Determine a course of action to reduce the overall risk to the project by decreasing the probability or impact of threats, while increasing the probability or impact of opportunities.
  6. Control Risks: Execute the risk response plan to manage risks and control overall project risk. Continually look for new risks and keep the risk management plan updated.

Risk Starts During the Planning Stage

Risk management begins during project planning. However, because risk assessment starts during planning doesn’t mean it stops there. Instead, you should continue performing risk analyses, including qualitative and quantitative analyses, during each stage of your project.

Ultimately, by using risk identification and analysis throughout a project, you can increase the odds that it will go smoothly, that you’ll stick to your budget and anticipated resource requirements, and that you’ll finish on schedule to impress and satisfy your stakeholders.

Build Your Risk Management Skills

The ability to effectively manage risk is an essential skill for professionals managing projects.  You can learn more about how to clearly identify and prevent many of the problems commonly faced on projects using our Risk Management – Tricks of the Trade® for Project Managers – Third Edition practical and easy-to-use Course in a Book®. It’s essential reading for anyone looking for a clear explanation of risk management and how it fits into the project management process.  RMC also offers our Risk Management eLearning course, and Learn things you can apply to your projects today!

Sources:

A whitepaper by RMC Learning Solutions, “6 Essential Elements to Effective Project Management.”

https://www.projectmanager.com/training/how-to-analyze-risks-project

https://www.clarizen.com/whats-risk-analysis-process-project-management/

https://www.pmis-consulting.com/example-project-risks-good-and-bad-practice/ 

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Three Ways to Lead with Emotional Intelligence

Young woman smiling over shoulder using emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is your ability to identify and control your emotions to be a successful leader. Emotional intelligence is an awareness of emotions in yourself and in others.  It is the ability to develop and manage strong relationships.  Emotional intelligence uses reason to identify, understand and effectively deal with emotions. Studies show EI is a skill linked to success at all levels. Project managers with high EI are better equipped to deal with, handle and resolve conflict and change.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence

  1. What is Emotional Intelligence?
  2. Benefits of Using Emotional Intelligence
  3. Three Emotional Intelligence Techniques

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Author and social scientist, Daniel Goleman identified five categories within emotional intelligence.  They are: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation and social skills.  These 5 categories define the ability to understand the needs and feelings of oneself and other people, manage one’s feelings, and to respond to others appropriately. Let’s walk through each competency.

1. Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is a pivotal component of emotional intelligence.   When you are self-aware, you have the ability to identify and name your emotions.  It means you have the ability to honestly recognize your emotions and the effect of your emotions.  It also includes the ability to know your strengths and limitations and having self-confidence in your capabilities and worth.

2. Self-Regulation

Regulation is the ability to manage emotions, which includes both regulating your own emotions, and when necessary and helping others to do the same.  Other aspects of self-regulation include trustworthiness, the flexibility to adapt to change and having high integrity.  Being open to new ideas and information is also a key trait of self-regulation.

3. Social Awareness

Another component of EI is social awareness.  Social awareness is mainly about empathy.  Empathy is our ability to feel what the other person is feeling.  We often describe it as the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Social awareness also includes organizational awareness.  This is the ability to anticipate and recognize customer needs, an ability to read the politics and understand the power dynamics in your organization.  Finally, social awareness includes sensing what others need to grow and develop.

4. Self-Motivation

Also called self-management, it describes your ability to demonstrate emotional self-control.  You may experience impulses or be in a bad mood, but you control those emotions.  As a person, you are interested in moving forward towards a goal or strategy.  You are also self-motivated and don’t let setbacks control the outcome.  Finally, you are able to stay calm under pressure and don’t panic in the face of a crisis.

5. Social Skills

The core to social skills is relationship management.  It covers abilities such as influence, conflict management, teamwork and leadership.  You use emotional intelligence to create and nurture relationships.  Your ability to influence comes from a strong ability to communicate clearly and persuasively.

Benefits of Using Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is important as our teams are more global. It is also important as more of our work is online.  Our environments are more intense, but they’re also more distributed and remote.   This means we have fewer opportunities for in person understanding.  We all have emotional intelligence skills.  The big benefits come from understanding, managing and using EI competencies to perform our work.  The benefits of emotional intelligence are far reaching:

  • Ability to actively listen and restate what you have heard .  This helps you clearly understand expectations and builds trust. You’ll find you are better aligned to the goals of the organization.
  • Improve the ability to develop ourselves and develop others. You are able to provide feedback effectively and are comfortable building the skills and abilities of others.
  • Helps with managing and resolving conflict. You need to be in touch with your emotions and to see another’s point of view to get to resolution.
  • Builds appropriate reactions within the context of your organization.
  • Helps you tailor your communications to influence stakeholders in our work environment, projects and day to day work.

Three Emotional Intelligence Techniques

By increasing your emotional intelligence, you can better connect and collaborate with others. You become more resilient and help motivate and lead others.  There are many things you can do to increase your emotional intelligence.  Here are three ways to lead with emotional intelligence:

1. Practice Recognition

  • Analyze your interaction daily.
  • Journal or note emotions as they arise.
  • Watch response in others. Notice body language. Notice when people are not engaged.

2. Use Empathy

  • Identify the emotion you are feeling, or the emotions others are exhibiting. Identify when you have experienced similar.
  • Note differences in how others respond. Your emotions may be different than others and that is good information to have in order to read the situation.
  • Tailor your responses by being aware of yourself and others. Then, adjust appropriately to the situation and respond intentionally.  This will prevent you from trying to tell another person what they should be feeling or to dictate a response.

3. Respond Intentionally

  • Stop reacting immediately. Not every thought in your head needs to be shared.
  • Ask yourself if this is the right time to respond? Or do you need to take more time to think through your response?
  • Ask yourself what is the appropriate response and how much information do I need to share?

Final Thoughts

As a project professional, applying your emotional intelligence skills to increase your organizational awareness, identify opportunities to use the appropriate level of empathy, and enhance your self-awareness of your emotions helps you be an effective leader. You’ll be better able to deliver project objectives and deliverables with less conflict and a more cohesive team.

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Project Charter and the Practice of Law

project cTwo colleagues discuss the project charter and practice of law

A project charter can be a useful project management tool for the practice of law. The charter is the authorizing document for a project. It contains information describing the scope of the project, a rough estimate of its cost, the value of the project to the organization, and a basic description of the internal and external resources needed to complete the project. The document also identifies known stakeholders in the project as well as the project’s objectives.

An interesting aspect of the project charter is that it provides a basic description of what success looks like and identifies deliverables and objectives. While deliverables probably would not be relevant in most legal project charters, a description of objectives certainly would be. The project charter is signed by the project sponsor. This authorizes the project manager to do the project.  It is through the project charter that the project plan is created and money budgeted.

How Lawyers Can Use a Project Charter?

In modified form, a project charter can be adapted to some aspects of a law practice, perhaps as part of or attached to a retainer agreement. There are a couple of scenarios where a project charter might be helpful. In a case for the purchase of a business, where a client is looking to fit a prospective purchase with other businesses they currently operate, a document created with their lawyer outlining the strategic fit of such a business within their portfolio (from a legal perspective) could be helpful.

I am not advocating that the lawyer start providing business advice to a client, however, it would be a good idea to discuss where aspects of a purchase would fit from a corporate entity standpoint, a tax standpoint, or how intellectual property portfolios might mesh. This could provide a strategic baseline for the transaction that could be important if some of these assumptions change during negotiation or due diligence.

A charter would also be helpful since it could provide a first cut at estimating the scope of the transaction, the level of effort and cost. Having this initial look at issues relating to the transaction might provide good information to a client as to whether to proceed or walk away. It could also provide the clients other business advisors, such as accountants and business advisors with information that will allow them to better advise your client.

Additional Project Charter Benefits for a Law Firm

Another area that comes to mind for the potential use of a project charter could be where your client is contemplating filing a lawsuit against an intellectual property infringer. There, the strategic direction of the potential lawsuit, the goals sought to be achieved when matched against the costs and strategic risks associated with a such an action could provide vital insight as to whether and how your client should proceed. For example, balancing the risks of starting a patent infringement action against the risk of a counterclaim seeking to invalidate the patent or an antitrust action seeking damages or an injunction from misuse of the patent.

Many of these things are done by firms all the time. An advantage of doing them in the context of a project charter is that you are discussing these issues in a business language that your client can readily understand. In essence, by creating such a charter, in plain language, you are meeting them half-way, providing a legal framework for a proposed course of action described in a business context. This could be extremely valuable to your client.

Things to Watch Out for When Using a Project Charter

There are risks associated with this type of document. The first thing a lawyer should be mindful of is the possibility that any discussions of business strategy could be viewed as non-legal work and thus not covered by the attorney-client privilege. In creating a charter for your project, a lawyer needs to be careful to limit it to legal advice and related legal strategy.

Build Your Project Management Knowledge

A project charter can be a useful tool for a lawyer. It can be used to clarify the objectives, costs, and potential risks of a legal matter. It is also a useful tool in lawyer-client communication.

Continue to learn more about project management techniques. RMC’s PM Crash Course in a book or online PM Crash eLearning course gives non-project management professionals an excellent foundation in predictive and agile methods so you so you can apply them to your job immediately.

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Applying OCM to Projects

Project team working at on applying OCM to their project

Projects come with specific objectives and goals that can result in changes to the way a business works. But if the individuals within an organization who are going to be impacted by the outcome of a project don’t agree to implementing changes, your goals won’t be met after all. The solution: Organizational Change Management.

Organizational Change Management and Projects

  1. What Is Organizational Change Management?
  2. Why Is Project Change Management Important?
  3. Organizational Change Management Strategies
  4. Using an OCM Framework Is a Game Changer

What Is Organizational Change Management?

A lot goes into managing projects successfully, but one thing that might be overlooked is Organizational Change Management (OCM). Put simply, this process helps ensure that anyone who will be affected by a project will be aware of, as well as accepting of, important changes.

OCM is a process that helps you prepare stakeholders and workers for the changes that lie ahead, thereby putting their minds at ease and giving them the chance to understand why the changes are necessary and beneficial.

Why Is Project Change Management Important?

Let’s say you’re managing a project that will result in the implementation of new processes designed to boost a company’s efficiency. Now imagine that those processes are quite different from those currently in place, causing workers to be resistant to the changes.

As you probably already guessed, when this type of scenario occurs, it can dramatically decrease the ROI of a project. After all, the whole point was to implement changes for the better, with the expectation that the people within the company would be willing to agree to the changes.

With OCM, the focus is on educating and preparing those who will be affected so they can understand the benefits and the necessity of applying the changes that a project requires. Ultimately, it’s about transitioning seamlessly from old ways of doing things to new methods that bolster success.

Organizational Change Management Strategies

How can you make the most of change management in project management, and make sure you integrate OCM into project plans effectively?

First off, homing in on the people who will be directly affected by a project’s outcome is the goal of OCM. But you want to do this while you’re managing a project, not after it’s complete.

Also, you can have a project management team and a change management team working together to help reduce risks, improve communication, and boost efficiency. It’s best if these teams work together, communicate well, and agree to the common goals. And it’s also wise to ensure team members on both sides understand their responsibilities and can follow a process that includes milestones.

Using an OCM Framework Is a Game Changer

Integrating OCM into your project management plan can be easier when you use an OCM framework that’s designed to reduce resistance, increase motivation, and create change smoothly and quickly.

A framework can help you take the appropriate steps, in the right order, to ensure people will be prepared for any changes that are forthcoming. You can address concerns and reassure everyone that a change will be a positive move in the right direction. Changes can be managed, workers can be productive, and project goals can be realized.

The good news is you can choose from various frameworks to find the one that you prefer. Examples include:

  • ADKAR Model
  • Satir Change Management Model
  • Kotter’s Model
  • Kübler-Ross Model
  • McKinsey 7-S Framework
  • Lewin Model

Bottom line: with Organizational Change Management, it’s all about managing a project like you normally would, while also planning for the ideal outcome by taking steps to ensure the impacts of the project will be readily accepted. And, with the right OCM framework, it becomes easier to focus not only on the requirements of the project but also on the people who will be affected by it.

Sources:

https://www.enableps.com/the-importance-of-ocm-in-projects-management/

https://adaptmethodology.com/change-management-framework/

https://blog.remesh.ai/7-organizational-change-management-frameworks

https://change.walkme.com/change-management-frameworks/

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Project Prioritization Troubles? Brainstorm New Metrics

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It can be challenging to get a group of people to agree on project prioritization or even individual aspects of a product. This can create prioritization troubles.  Honing your skills is essential for juggling priorities to achieve your project goals.

Prioritizing requires you to assess the value of an idea or work product against its cost and then compare it to other ideas. This is a process of determining the level of importance and urgency of a task.

Project Prioritization and Metrics

  1. Prioritizing by ROI is Easy
  2. Ranking without ROI is Hard
  3. Brainstorming New Metrics
  4. Rank Your Ideas

Prioritizing by ROI Is Easy

ROI is a simple concept. You compare the investment in a project against the projected
return – money in versus money out. When you can use monetary value for benefits and costs, prioritization can be relatively easy in a for-profit organization.  ROI analysis helps you quantify the efficiency, the return, and the costs of an idea. It can help predict the outcome before the product or feature is ready.

Although it can be challenging to estimate revenue or cost savings, you probably have some historical data to reference. When the idea has a positive expected ROI and its return is bigger than other ideas, it moves to the top of the list.

Project Prioritization Without ROI is Hard

When your ideas or potential projects are not easily monetized, prioritizing is much harder. Some products which are offered to customers at no cost: articles (like this blog post), white papers, webinars, and conference talks are built to reinforce our value to existing customers and find new customers. These products are difficult to monetize. Companies often must connect with a potential customer many times before they  have an opportunity to present a proposal or make a sale.

Non-profit and government organizations have the same challenge. Their main value is service to their members or citizens who receive the services without a direct payment (I know that citizens pay for the services with their taxes, but these payments are not usually directly tied to the service received). These organizations need to use project prioritization factors other than ROI to determine relative importance.

Brainstorming Project Priorities with New Metrics

So what can we use other than ROI to prioritize projects? We need other criteria or metrics to rank the new product ideas. One way is to identify other values that might result from building a particular product or solution. Part of this analysis requires you to create a method to measure and compare these values.

Developing and using varied metrics makes project prioritization easier. Be creative about coming up with ideas for new metrics. Encourage your team to think about the values your customers or your organization might receive by approving the project.

Brainstorm different types of metrics. For example, will the solution result in increased efficiency? Will it provide better service? Will it improve the quality of our products?

For government agencies – Will this solution:

  • Enhance the quality of life of a citizen?
  • Make it easier for our citizens to interact with us?
  • Make our agency more efficient? More agile?
  • Allow us to work more smoothly with other agencies?
  • Build goodwill with other regions?

For marketing products consider:

  • Will this product attract a new customer?
  • Will this product extend our brand awareness in the marketplace?
  • Will this product fill a need that our current customers are looking for?
  • Will this product further or deepen our relationship with a current customer?
  • How will this product impact our competitors and our industry?

Rank Your Ideas

Create a ranking for each criterion and total up the values. You could use the Fibonacci series of numbers as we do in planning poker (Learn how to play in our Agile Fundamentals eLearning Course) to make best ideas jump out (0,1,2,3,5,8,13..). This is not an exact science, don’t get stuck spending too much time analyzing, just estimate.

Benefits Ranking Example:

Idea Improved efficiency Better service Higher quality Total Score
Idea 1 1 8 5 14
Idea 2 13 0 0 13
Idea 3 5 13 3 21

Try out some of your new metrics ideas and see how they work. Sometimes by simply trying to find new metrics, your team will discover its most important project priorities. Often people know which ideas are more valuable than others but have a difficult time articulating their feelings.

An objective ranking can help surface your team’s underlying knowledge.  Facilitating more quantitative, analytical thinking will improve your team’s future decisions making also. RMC offers an eLearning course called Handling Unrealistic Schedules where you can  learn more about project prioritization.

Sources:

https://blog.rescuetime.com/how-to-prioritize/

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/roi-return-on-investment/

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Leadership in Project Management

Young professional in a meeting discussing leadership in project management[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″ da_disable_devices=”off|off|off” da_is_popup=”off” da_exit_intent=”off” da_has_close=”on” da_alt_close=”off” da_dark_close=”off” da_not_modal=”on” da_is_singular=”off” da_with_loader=”off” da_has_shadow=”on”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.9.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]I’m reading “Leadership and the One Minute Manager,” by Ken Blanchard. The book discusses “situational leadership,” which essentially means that a manager’s leadership style must vary depending on the competency of the person being managed.   As I was reading the book I realized that these management styles, while probably relevant, would not initially apply to project managers. Continue reading Leadership in Project Management
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Agile implementation – 9 essential steps

Woman at white board working on agile implementation

Let’s face it, change is hard.  Whether you’re a project manager or a CEO implementing major changes to your organization is difficult. There are usually two types of obstacles.  One is institutional. Organizations have a certain momentum.  Making changes requires you to slow or stop the business-as-usual mindset along with all the typical documentation and approval requirements that currently exist.  The other is human, getting people who are used to doing things the same old way to accept and use new processes.

Bringing Agile to Your Organization

As project leaders and team members, we are all trying to get to the same destination on our projects —successful outcomes and happy stakeholders. However, not all projects are the same. Different projects require different methods.

That’s why Agile is a necessary skill set to have in your toolbox to stay current and deliver results. Let’s begin by focusing on the human aspects of an agile implementation and gaining acceptance.

9 Essential Steps for Agile Implementation

1. Establish the Need

Gain consensus on why the change is needed.  Qualify and assess the organization.  Analyze and document the current problems and shortcomings.  Capture previous stakeholder complaints, issue logs, and post-Morten problems.  Keep it read, but if there is a burning platform from which we must move forward, document it fairly.  Determine the business benefits and describe where we are now.

2. Create a Vision

Describe a better state. Outline the goals and objectives we are aiming to create.  Unite everyone with a common goal of what success would look like.  Describe where we want to be.

3. Form a Change Coalition

Identify key stakeholders.  Get people involved on the initial project and the advisory and review boards.  Provide mechanisms for general input and information exchange.  Use websites, lunch and learns, etc.  Be civil, humble and nice.  Do not assume or give the impression that the change team has all the answers.  Ask people how we should get there.

4. Communicate the Vision

Provide a clear outline of what is going to happen. People generally need to hear things five times in five different ways to ensure it sticks.  Use different formats, analogies, and styles.  It is generally impossible to over-communicate a change initiative vision. Plan and promote the organizational changes.

5. Encourage Employee Participation

Make sure people are involved.  Schedule follow-up sessions and speak to people about their concerns. Ask for volunteer reviewers and give praise and thanks for reviews, especially if negative.  This is the opportunity to turn people around while the resistance is relatively low.  Work on forming good relationships.

6. Plan For and Create Short Term Wins

Identify the initial project.  Schedule some early, small victories to build momentum, demonstrate progress, and reassure sponsors.  People only trust for so long.  So, give them something to justify their continued support.

7. Provide Rewards and Incentives

Change on top of a regular job is a lot of extra work.  Reward contributions as much as organizational norms will allow.  If you can’t give bonuses, plan great food for lunch and learns.  Give good mementos and freebies or arrange for time off if teams work hard on initial projects.  People must see benefits in taking part, otherwise they will not bother.  Goodwill, loyalty, and corporate benefits do not cut it with everyone.

8. Consolidate Improvements

Make sure the successful changes get repeated.  Document the successes and spread the word.  Monitor and perform mid-project retrospectives.

9. Institutionalize New Approaches

Complete and review the initial project.  Measure and promote the business benefits and get the sponsors and users to promote the benefits.  Identify the next project and broader roll-out plan.  Make changes stick by institutionalizing them.  Make them part of the standards and culture and support other groups trying to repeat the process.

Learning More About Agile Implementation

Now you have the nine steps the rest should be easy, right.  Clearly that is not the case.  The above is an outline of the work that has to be done to integrate agile in a workplace.  The above describes the “what.”  The “how” is for further posts.

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7 Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Adopting Agile Approaches

Business man talking about adopting agile

Are you thinking about adopting an Agile approach? Or are you currently using Agile on your projects? Where ever you are on your Agile journey, it is important to know the seven pitfalls organizations make when adopting agile approaches.  This post, along with our post on Introducing Agile-Chance Resistance Strategies give you helpful information about adopting agile approaches.  We will also introduce the five Ws (Why, Who, What, When, and Where) of introducing agile. Continue reading 7 Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Adopting Agile Approaches