Whether you're a an entrepreneur leading a small business , a C-Level executive (CEO/CFO/CIO/CTO) at a mid-sized business, the head of the Project Management Office (PMO), or a business manager watching out for your department, you are often stuck in the position of having to “watch that basket” with your most critical projects.
Even worse, many times you're never truly sure if one of your key projects is in trouble until it's too late.
Fortunately, there are some signs that can help you identify a troubled project early, so that you can intervene and put it back on track. I polled our project recovery services specialists at Cedar Point Consulting, and we thought of seven effective ways to identify a troubled project:
Is your Project Behind? Over Budget?
Cedar Point Consulting can help. Through our Five-Step Rapid Project Recovery Process, Cedar Point Consultants quickly evaluate your project's current state and help you to make the best decision about how to move forward -- in as little as two weeks.
While your situation may differ and results can not be guaranteed, Cedar Point consultants have delivered these Rapid Project Recovery success stories:
For a heavy manufacturer, a troubled multi-year, multi-million dollar product engineering and manufacturing project was recovered and the project was delivered two months early and $300,000 under budget.
For a large financial institution, a trend of late project deliveries was reversed by a Cedar Point consultant, resulting in three consecutive on-time deliveries in a one year period.
For a large U.S. Federal agency, a $1.25 million troubled project was recovered and successfully delivered after nearly a year of little results under prior leadership.
For a free initial consultation, call 1-866-CEDAR-34, or contact us online.
Perpetual Green Lights, Little Activity. Many of us are familiar with the approach of labeling projects green when they are on schedule and budget; yellow when the project is falling behind; and red when the project is far behind and/or over-budget. Perhaps your key project has been reporting green for the last three months, but oddly there's been very little activity related to the project. This is probably a good signal that the project is actually in trouble.
Lot's of TBD's. Effective risk and issue management are critical to the success of most projects, yet they are often ignored. If your key project is well past the early stages, but is reporting back a lot of TBD's (to be determined) in the “resolution” column for risks and issues, then it's probably a troubled project, even when the schedule doesn't show it.
Avoiders. The leader in charge of your key project may be a formal project manager or a manager of a business line, but regardless of who they are, you are getting the unsettling feeling that they are avoiding you. Perhaps they are missing at meetings, they're head the other way down the hall when they see you, they're not returning phone calls, or they're not providing status reports. Unless you have a problem bathing, the project leader is likely avoiding you because the project is in trouble.
Troubling Trends. Experienced project managers are familiar in using techniques like earned value management (EVM) to identify project progress by comparing actual to planned results for work completed, costs incurred and time spent. Though you may not be using EVM on your projects, you can watch for dramatic increases or drops in spending, dramatic changes to the work being delivered or sudden changes to schedule with no new schedule dates. In many cases, your key project is in a free-fall.
Non-Progress Reports. You're wise, so you have asked your project manager to provide status reports on a weekly basis. However, they're more like “Non-Progress” reports than progress reports because no progress has been made. In particular, if you have received two weekly status reports where no progress has been made, you're well on your way to having a troubled project on your hands, if you don't already.
Inability to Show Tangible Results. Well in to your project timeline and knowing that interim reviews are a good ideal, you ask for a review or demonstration of work completed thus far. However, your review meeting is repeatedly delayed and rescheduled, sometimes by a few days and sometimes by weeks. Even worse, you've tried a quick visit by the desk of the project leader and it resulted in the person shoving documents in their desk instead of sitting with you to review tangible results. If so, this is likely a troubled project.
Spidey Senses Tingling. Like Peter Parker in the Spiderman comic book series, you know which projects are highest risk and every time the subject of your key project comes up, it sets your spidey senses tingling, though you're not certain why. While I'm a big believer in science over emotion, there is surely something very scientific that you're reading so trust your instincts. Your likely to find something amazingly like trouble in your key project.
Of course, identifying a troubled project is one thing, but recovering that project is a completely different challenge. I provided some tips to recover troubled projects in a previous article that may be of help.
However, particularly if you don't have experience recovering troubled projects and the stakes are high, it might be time to consider getting some help. Our firm provides project recovery services and we're proud of our success rate, but other competent firms do, as well.
Donald Patti is a Principal Consultant with Cedar Point Consulting, a management consulting practice based in the Washington, DC area, where he advises businesses in project management, process improvement, and small business strategy. Cedar Point Consulting can be found at http://www.cedarpointconsulting.com.
Last Updated on Monday, 08 March 2010 14:36
Challenges Managing in the Knowledge Economy? The Answer is Beneath You
As children, many of us grew up with a vision of the manager as "the boss” – a key source of authority in the business who knew the answers, told others what to do and led with a firm hand. As adults, many of us move into management and try to live that childhood vision – with disastrous consequences. Why hasn’t the “boss as manager” model work for us today? What’s changed? Surprisingly, the answer is beneath you.
To understand what this means, consider, first, the era when management as profession came into vogue – the industrial age. The emphasis had shifted away from the craftsman-apprentice model before mass production, where individuals passed on knowledge one-on-one. Instead, the secret to success in the industrial age was mass production, which required the standardization of business processes and simplification of tasks so that unskilled workers could more easily complete the work.
A manager's primary responsibilities were to coordinate the efforts of large groups of people, so a highly regimented top-down management style fit best. The 24-hour day was broken down in to two or three shifts, people were assigned to shifts and they generally completed their assigned work. During this age, a manager's biggest challenges were employees who didn't show up on time, who left early or who didn't complete their fair share of work. A firm hand was required to prevent abuse and keep productivity up; the “manager as boss” excelled in this world and this management approach flourished.
On to the knowledge age, where knowledge is the key tool used to create products as well as the product itself. For the first time, many products -- semi-conductors, computer hardware, software, even modern phones -- rely heavily on knowledge as the key inputs to their creation. In the knowledge economy, the highest single cost in creating the product is the labor of experts - not manufacturing labor or raw materials. In turn, making the most of the knowledge of these experts is the key to success – not necessarily making the most of their time.
With the shift from industrial economy to the knowledge economy, the storehouse of knowledge and authority are no longer in the same hands. In the industrial age, the boss knew best; in the knowledge age, you, as a manager, still have the authority, but the knowledge is beneath you, in the hands of the experts. To adjust for this, a change in management style is needed.
Based on my conversations with respected managers in the age of knowledge and my own experience, here’s how to succeed as a manager in the knowledge economy:
Ask the experts. This sounds simple and straightforward, but it’s rarely followed. Because many of us are former experts who moved in to management, we consider ourselves experts still. Yet, how long does it take before our expertise becomes out-dated when we don’t use it? As little as six months? As much as a couple of years? Consider this: If your subordinate knows all of the features of the latest version of your software, but you know all the features of the last one, whose knowledge is more valuable?
Facilitate – don’t order. As managers, we all know that the experts around us are extremely bright – in many cases brighter than we are. How condescending it must seem, then, when we managers order our team members to execute our instructions. Instead, help them to identify the problems together, then assist in developing a methodical approach for solving it. In the process, it will become clear which team members should tackle each step in solving the problem. No orders necessary.
Coordinate – don’t control. As former experts, we’re acutely aware of the challenge of being “stuck in the weeds” – that desire to keep your head down and focused on solving the problem in front of you. As much as that tendency toward isolation grips our fellow experts, we should coordinate their efforts and encourage them to work together as a team. Coordinating the team means bringing them together, discussing key challenges and asking one expert to help another to achieve breakthroughs when addressing a challenging problem.
Serve as a knowledge bridge. In many cases, the specialized knowledge of one expert on your team is very different from the specialized knowledge of another. For example, one person may specialize in database design, while another specialized in user interface (screen) development. Because of this, they are often working on very different tasks, even though one person’s knowledge may be needed to solve another person’s problems. As the manager of this team, we know what each team member is tackling and we should know whether they have solved past problems. It’s our job to connect the dots across the work of our teams, to point out patterns in problems that we see, and to bring together the experts to share their relevant knowledge, solving each other’s problems more quickly and efficiently.
Set challenging (but realistic) goals. Knowledge experts like challenges, so work with them to set short term and long term goals that are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-specific. As part of the process, be certain to set goals to be a little more challenging than the person believes is possible – but not so difficult that the person ignores the goal because he or she thinks it’s impossible.
Value the individual. In the industrial age, the loss of an individual team member was disappointing, but it wasn’t likely to cripple your business, your division or your projects. In the knowledge age, there are people who are so essential that their departure could force the business to crumble. While I would argue that it has always been important to treat people well, in the knowledge age, it’s even more important to treat each individual with respect and consideration.
In many respects, the knowledge economy has made managing more challenging. In many management positions, “people” skills are more important than analytical abilities. Even more challenging, your position as manager often makes you more expendable than your subordinates. Combined, it’s critical to your success as a manager to look beneath you for the knowledge and expertise for you and your organization succeed.
Donald Patti is a Principal Consultant with Cedar Point Consulting, a management consulting practice based in the Washington, DC area, where he advises businesses in project management, process improvement, and small business strategy. Cedar Point Consulting can be found at http://www.cedarpointconsulting.com.
