First Do Your Planning …. And Then Follow The Plan

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. - Lewis Carroll

A few weeks ago a friend of mine, Laurie Bacopoulos, President of CobbleStone Consulting, shared an interesting and educational presentation at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) State Council’s Leadership Planning Conference.   We had invited Laurie to speak on Project Management to our SHRM Chapter members from across the State.  These leaders are dealing with organizational challenges such as:  motivating volunteers, improving efficiencies, doing more with less, and delivering value for our members.  Sound familiar?

For over 21 years of my work career I’ve been involved with engineers and scientists, all demonstrating strong and proficient understanding of project management methodologies.  I’m grateful for those experiences and what I learned from them, as well as what I learned taking classes on Project Management techniques.  Working with my clients, I see the benefits they gain by improving their understanding of what the discipline of project management is all about.  Utilizing the tools and methodologies is a skill set that everyone can use whether working in a volunteer organization, or non-profit, private, or public sector enterprise.  It also really doesn’t matter where your position fits in the hierarchy of that organization.   If you’re working on completing a project that has a start and end date and someone (your boss or stakeholder) expects it to be done using specific resources, utilizing a solid project management approach will help increase your chances of success.

In today’s business environment, arming employees with a ‘project management tool kit’ can help the organization avoid these common operational potholes:

• Missed deadlines
• Poor quality of services or products
• Miscommunication and conflict between team members and stakeholders
• Rework to fix mistakes
• Unclear directions that result in rework and lost time
• Essential tasks forgotten or skipped
• Confusion of team member roles and responsibilities
• Duplication of effort
• Budget overruns

Do your work groups ever run into these problems?  Enhancing corpoate culture by introducing practices that embrace project management principles could eliminate these issues and improve overall performance of the organization.

So What is Project Management?

According to the Project Management Institute, the world’s leading association for project managers, project management “is the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently. It’s a strategic competency for organizations, enabling them to tie project results to business goals — and thus, better compete in their markets.”   And who doesn’t need to do that?

Project Management starts with understanding what a project is.  A project is defined by several unique characteristics: 

• an activity designed to produce a unique product, service or result
• temporary in nature
• not a routine operation, but a specific set of tasks designed to accomplish a specific goal. Because it is not routine, the project often requires people to work together who usually don’t have a need to interact – sometimes from different organizations and across multiple geographies - a defined beginning and end in time, scope and resources

Some examples of a project might include:

Human Resources	Development of a new health care benefits package
Information Technology	Integration of the PeopleSoft System
Comptroller	Introduction of a new payroll and compensation system
Safety	Compliance with new OSHA regulations
Chief Operating Officer	Changes associated with innovation and cost-savings measures

5 Phases of Project Management

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a guide published by the Project Management Institute, represents generally recognized good practices and standards in the profession.  According to PMBOK Project Managers should follow a 5-phase approach which clearly communicates what the end result is to be, as well as who will do what and when.  The phases include:

Phase I – Initiation:
In this phase the Project Manager facilitates research and discussion required to evaluate the business need, options and solutions for addressing the need, and works with the appropriate stakeholders to define the approach ultimately selected.   This definition of approach will include the scope of the project, along with the budget, project goals, stakeholder roles, and schedule.   A Project Charter is a helpful tool during this phase. 

Phase II – Planning:
In Phase II, the Project Team develops a workable plan for implementation of the project.  Obviously considering one of our examples above – implementation of a new payroll and compensation system – you can imagine that this Phase requires a lot of time and diligent attention to details.  Depending on the size and complexity of the project, the team may use a checklist to track the sequence of the tasks to be performed, or the needs may demand a sophisticated project management computer software tool.   Either way, the planning will involve details associated with:

• what deliverables the team’s success will be measured by
• each task or activity that needs to be performed in order to complete each deliverable and the sequence in which they must be done
• what resources, internal and external, will be required to complete each task
• how much time is being allocated to the completion of each task, with an eye to mitigating any risk resulting from a task determined to be ‘critical’ falling behind schedule
• allocation of the budget (labor and expenses) for completing each task
• process by which changes to the agreed to project scope will be managed

During this phase everyone needs to plan.  As the project team finalizes the Project Plan, each individual associated with the project should also be applying the same concepts to their own responsibilities within the project.   These plans will help each team member focus on the specific tasks they are responsible for and integrate how those tasks align with the team’s progress towards the final project goals.

There are a variety of tools that can be utilized in this phase including: Gantt Charts, brainstorming, Fishbone Diagrams, Critical Path Analysis, and MS Excel for financial analysis, to list a few.

Phase III: Execution
This is the phase where the actual work begins.   A word of caution:  Often organizations have a tendency to sacrifice the planning phase in order to more quickly jump to execution.  The carpenter’s rule to ‘measure twice and cut once’ is a good rule to follow when anyone suggests shortening the required time for good planning.  Experience has demonstrated time and time again, that spending less time on planning results in rework, overruns and unhappy customers.   The process works for a reason – be true to the process.

Phase IV:  Monitoring and Control
The Project Manager is continually interacting with the project team and soliciting communications about how things are going.   What’s working well, what problems are being encountered, and what potential project risks need to be mitigated.  Depending on the length of the project, this type of interaction may be occurring daily, weekly or monthly.  This is the phase where the Project Manager (PM) is assessing where the project is, compared to where it was planned to be, including planned vs. actual costs and deliverables.  This phase continues until all the deliverables have been achieved and the project is considered complete.   Of course, there can be reasons that a project is stopped before it is completed.  These reasons are usually out of the PM’s control.

As you would suspect, Phases III and IV require the PM to utilize excellent interpersonal, communication and conflict resolution talents.   These abilities are useful in the other phases as well, but as the project begins and progresses, the PM will have more involvement with team members and must influence them to stay on schedule and within budget while delivering quality work.

Phase V:  Closing
This phase is often overlooked, as some organizations see the delivery of the final outcomes as the end of the project.   However, it’s very important to follow the PMBOK model all the way through Phase V.  Often without the correct attention to project closure the organization will continue to experience resources being consumed to support project activities which are no longer necessary, and often by this point it is without a return on the investment.  

During closure the Project Manager ensures that the entire project plan has been completed.   This is a great time for the team to celebrate its accomplishments, as well as to facilitate an honest critique of what worked and what should be done differently the next time.  The team members need to be re-assigned to other projects or work tasks, and the deliverables should be signed off by the customer.

So What’s Next?

The recession has taught us all how to do more with less: at home and at work.  Encouraging the development of strong project management skills within an organization can re-enforce the abilities to accomplish more with fewer resources.  While staffs and budgets are leaner and meaner, project management practices could improve the organization’s abilities to:

• meet and exceed customer expectations
• maximize the use of limited resources (time, talent, funding, space, technology, etc.)
• complete projects on time and within budget
• transfer knowledge about what was done and lessons learned for future references
• build confidence and good business practices across work teams 

Recently I’ve been noticing more organizations asking consultants to share their project management experiences, and at the same time have also seen more job postings requiring project management skills.  Could it be that organizations are beginning to understand that Project Management skills aren’t just for engineers and IT workers?  If they are, great!  But let’s not forget these skills are important for existing employees as well.  Introducing project management skills, for project managers and non-project managers alike, into the organization’s professional development and training plans can improve the abilities of work teams as they are more aligned with a unified concept of the project work process, the terminology, the methodologies and tools, and the purpose of this type of approach.  All of this leads to a higher probability of project success and team performance.  What firm wouldn’t want that?  

Laurie, who is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), suggests that “when utilizing a framework built from established project management standards, Project Managers also have the opportunity to demonstrate their competencies associated with tenacity and determination, organization and attention to details, risk and relationship management.”   Reviewing the five-phase approach you can see how these additional attributes complement the Project Management rationale.

As our economy continues to be defined as ‘knowledge-based,’ what are your thoughts about the relevance of improving project management skills within our organizations?  What experience have you had with project management and do you see a benefit?   What programs and/or certifications have you found helpful?   I’m curious to hear what you think.   Please take a moment to comment below.  And, if you found this blog helpful, please forward it as appropriate.

Creating a Fishbone Diagram