What is predictive analytics in project management?

If you ask me, predictive analytics in project management is software functionality that helps managers see beyond their capacity. IBM experts define predictive analytics as a way to “discover patterns in data and go beyond knowing what has happened to anticipating what is likely to happen next.”

While I understand that there are projects that last less than a year, lots of construction, aerospace, finance, or software initiatives take years to reach the finish line. People assigned to manage such complex projects lack the ability to see the project landscape until they find a proper tool. Contractors, in turn, risk delivering a pig in a poke.

That’s precisely when project forecasting tools come into play.

To understand how predictive analytics evolved in project management, let’s travel a few years back to when, where, and, most importantly, why it became a trend.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the increased innovation-led competition has called on businesses to revamp their old approaches in favor of the new ones. Companies started to look for efficient ways to secure their competitive stronghold and advance business capacity. Sitting on huge volumes of data, many realized that the trove of available project information was a valuable asset.

According to MathWorks, “Data-driven predictive models can help companies solve long-standing problems in new ways.” Project management is no exception and a variety of machine learning algorithms are applied specifically to anticipate cost overruns, forecast resource needs, and make time tracking effortless.

That’s why predictive project analytics is pretty much equivalent to the lever in the time machine that could allow project managers to travel in time.

Deloitte was the first in a class of its own to introduce the notion of predictive project analytics (PPA) for the sake of reducing project risks, especially in complex projects. Deloitte consultants are of opinion that knowing key factors that cause project failure, it’s possible to build tools that benchmark project success. I agree with them on the following:

Research shows that project success hinges on a range of factors, including the project’s inherent complexity, the project team’s capability level and the maturity of existing controls and governance processes. So it stands to reason that your organization could mitigate project risk, reduce the incidence of failure and close gaps if you could accurately benchmark your capabilities in each of these areas against similar projects. – Deloitte

The term first coined by Deloitte, predictive project analytics blazed a trail for many companies that further developed techniques of forecasting in management. Forecast project management has become a widespread practice among PM software providers.

Why do project managers need predictive analytics?

Project managers work in swamps of data – tasks, time estimates, priorities, milestones, capacity, workload, costs, and other digitized variables. According to Clive Humby, a UK Mathematician and architect of Tesco’s Clubcard who coined the phrase “data is the new oil,” data is valuable only if it’s broken down, analyzed, and refined. So far, in project management, a possible way to unlock the value of project data is to apply a predictive model to it. This will help project managers analyze their projects under various scenarios and, literally, create a simulation out of their programs and portfolios. If you’re thinking of developing your own project forecasting tool, it’s always good to engage with developers and IT pros who have experience in data science.

What predictive analytics certainly does is helping project managers answer a vast range of “what-if” questions that predict the possible outcome of the project if something has to be changed. Project forecasting software powered by predictive analytics will instantly move project managers in time to help them investigate the chain reaction and make decisions backed up by data when project cost management is under concern.

Ideally, a project manager armed with a project forecasting tool is able to detect floundering projects, find hot spots in project plans, and identify areas for improvement. Having access to this information (and the possibility for project managers to travel in time) grows the chance of setting and meeting quality goals.

Overall, a data-driven approach to project management helps businesses take confident momentous decisions and save millions of dollars of investments.

How forecasting applies to agile project management

Today, only lazy project managers haven’t tried to blend Agile into their context. It’s no secret that once applied, this methodology has a tendency to bring spectacular results to companies, willing to embrace change. Guy Maslen, the Head of Geohazards Monitoring Department at GNS Science, sees agility delivering a reduction in risk, “specifically the risk that we fail to create value.” According to Maslen, “The frameworks, practices, and culture place barriers in the way of human error occurring and minimize the consequences of an error should those barriers fail. We might still get things wrong, however, it will be at the smallest cost of time and effort, with the least possible sunk costs.”

Many are moving towards agile to better deal with uncertainty and predictability, but there are two camps of Agilists arguing over the relevance of project forecasting software in project management. While the representatives of the first camp believe that tools are ineffective and hinder Agile, the second camp of representatives, as Perry Watkins consider predictive models to be an asset:

I would disagree with the notion that attempting to predict future outcomes is not agile. Being agile has to be relative to something. You are agile today because of some perceived threat to some future state. If you have not defined what you think that future state should be, why would you need to act agilely? – Perry Watkins, the President of The TAPFT Company

The truth is that equipped with a predictive analytics tool, agile project managers have more power. They are able to experiment with different variables and see how changing one variable can influence the outcome.

The days of solidly intuitive predictions are long GONE.

What are the best examples of forecasting and predictive analytics in project management?

There are analytical project management tools designed to show your progress on each step of the way – be it in the past, in the present, or in the future. They provide project managers with vital metrics and information to keep them posted on the project’s progress. But true predictive analytics tools should do more than that. They are able to forecast what could be the future outcome of the project under various scenarios based on the data you have. According to Robert Wells, the CEO of Allocable who has nearly 20 years of experience in Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Automation, “This is done by using machines to process large volumes of performance and contextual data and predict outcomes that were previously impossible to foresee.”

Creating the list of these applications for project managers, I basically took into account two important things – available predictive modeling features and seamless integration with other tools, where you keep your data. These two things are critical to successful traveling in time. Apart from these preferences, I made sure that the tools can offer an exceptional user experience and help project managers at every stage of project management.

1. Runn – https://www.runn.io
2. Forecast – http://forecast.app
3. Celoxis – https://www.celoxis.com
4. Epicflow – https://www.epicflow.com
5. Hive – https://hive.com
6. ScopeMaster – https://www.scopemaster.com
7. Lili.ai – http://www.lili.ai
8. Certus 3 – https://certus3.com
9. nTask – https://www.ntaskmanager.com

1. Runn – https://www.runn.io

At its core, Runn is a resource management platform, and that’s what makes it so ideal for project forecasting in professional services businesses, where everything relies on people’s time and skills. Despite being fairly new on the market, the platform has become a favorite of IT consultancies, digital agencies, and software companies, and for good reason. 

Runn offers you the big picture of all your project plans, consisting of resource allocations (for actual work), placeholders (for work that’s in demand), and tentative bookings (for projects that haven’t materialized yet but were put in as opportunities by the sales team).

Project managers and operations leads appreciate Runn for the slickest and most intuitive interface, but what makes it stand out among the other solutions is the most dynamic financial reporting. Runn forecasts the revenue, cost, and profit of the project and with its robust capacity, workload, and availability charts, you can predict when you need to hire new people and spot the demand for different roles. 

In contrast to other project forecasting tools below, you won’t need to drill down to the details and estimate each single task. Just allocate your resources to projects and the system will put everything together and calculate whether your plan is feasible or not by taking into account resource availability and capacity and highlighting insights for you. 

2. Forecast – http://forecast.app

What makes Forecast stand out as a project management tool is that it learns from your project history and creates a regression model to provide future estimates of budget and task duration. It’s the first tool on the market that uses machine learning to automate project planning and thus provides you with valuable insights.

The beauty of Forecast is in algorithms that can learn and adjust for the future, but its main plus is uniting many project segments like planning, budgeting, time tracking, resource scheduling etc. in one platform. Additionally, Forecast has a myriad of integration capabilities that ease the transition and make connection simpler. For those tempted to try it out, the service includes a free 14-day trial without a credit card required. When it comes to AI and predictive analytics in project management, Forecast is second to none.

3. Epicflow – https://www.epicflow.com

Epicflow is an all-in-one tool for project and portfolio management powered by predictive analytics. Collecting all your data under one Epicflow roof, you can figure out the most efficient way to perform well within set budgets and deadlines. Based on the project schedules, resource calendars, and resource load, Epicflow can run multiple what-if simulations in parallel that show you the progress of your projects in the future and help figure out what’s optimal for you in terms of costs, time, and value. What-if scenarios allow project managers to check the impact analysis on the demand plan. Thus it’s possible to define common areas of potential risk and incorporate appropriate checks and balances into the project plan to mitigate those risks.

The software proved itself exceptionally effective for companies from different industries, like manufacturing, construction, shipbuilding, automotive, tech, and healthcare. A free trial is available after the live demonstration.

4. Celoxis – https://www.celoxis.com

Celoxis is a complete powerhouse of algorithms that promise to get you and your projects covered from risk and uncertainty. The tool has been the platform of choice for brands like HBO, Bombardier, KPMG, Tesla, Adobe, and others. It excels at matching demand with capacity. Celoxis also provides powerful data-driven predictive analytics around slippages, costs, and revenues, so that you don’t have to depend on guesswork and rather act on your findings.

5. Hive – https://hive.com

Hive is the productivity platform for project managers. By leveraging AI and machine learning, Hive Analytics provides interactive and customizable dashboards to gain actionable insights on team productivity and proactively spot risks. It forecasts how long it will take to finish projects based on how long it has taken your team in the past. Hive uses algorithms to track and predict the estimates.

6. ScopeMaster – https://www.scopemaster.com

ScopeMaster tends to be a real game-changer for large software projects. The software is a go-to for project managers to reduce rework and scope churn. It can be used as a standalone SaaS or Jira plugin. Both provide some rule of thumb forecasts for effort, cost, time, defects based on regression analysis of thousands of previous projects. But the instrumental part of ScopeMaster is the dedication to the analysis of user stories. The company examined over 10,000 user stories from different sources to build up some insight into what represents a good user story. According to the experts behind ScopeMaster, problems with requirements in large software projects tend to be the most costly if they are undetected until later stages of the project. The tool objective is to reduce risks, improve estimation, negotiation, and project control by making requirements and user stories clearer.

7. Lili.ai – http://www.lili.ai

Lili.ai is a recent new-comer in advanced project management that immediately became popular in professional circles due to its powerful AI algorithms. What its CEO Milie Taing intends to prove by means of Lili.ai is that real-time, optimized, self-learning project management is possible. The tool automates recurring tasks, strives to identify risks, and suggests measures to minimize them. It also helps to prioritize to-do lists to reduce wait time. Lili is designed especially for large multi-million dollar projects subject to heavy legal contractual penalties.

8. Certus 3 – https://certus3.com

Certus 3 is the first cognitive example of forecasting in management. The machine learning technology inside the tool analyzes how people are performing together as a team and optimizes the best route for them, counting the probability of project success in. To do this, Certus 3 considers six peak performance attributes – clarity of purpose, balance, alliance, drive, certainty, and effectiveness – and suggests areas for improvements. It is a good addition to such project management methodologies as Agile, DevOps, and Prince2.

9. nTask – https://www.ntaskmanager.com/

nTask is a versatile project management software available freely in the market. It comes packed with intelligent features providing a smart over-all coverage to many project needs. Through native modules, nTask mitigates the need to constantly switch applications for effective project management. The tool also ensures an intuitive and smooth experience on the application via a smartly developed user interface.

Whether you’re a freelancer, part of a small team, member of a big corporation, or simply a blogger with lots of tasks at hand, the tool caters a diverse range of professionals. nTask helps you manage several teams, workspaces, projects, tasks, issues and has risk management modules.

What’s next for predictive analytics in project management?

Even though there are many efficient tools, the experts committed to driving change in the project management space don’t stop, looking for better ways to improve project performance. A new market report reveals that the global online project management software market is expected to reach a value of 6.68 billion dollars by 2026. GlobeNewswire suggests these numbers are due to the increasing adoption of cloud-based project management solutions. According to the report, the market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 9.4% during the forecast period from 2018 to 2026. I’ve collected insights from experts who develop tools expecting them to change project managers’ experience.

2nd Brain

Perry Watkins, the President of The TAPFT Company is in the middle of developing the project management tool powered by predictive analytics. It’s called 2nd Brain. He created it precisely because of the inflexibility of existing tools. “People invest enormous amounts of energy in creating project plans but from there on, they basically become static, adjusting only to completion or slippage of tasks,” remarks Watkins.

2nd Brain shouldn’t work that way. It would propose a new roadmap if, for instance, one of your best customers calls and says they need the product they have been delaying for 3 months but they still want you to stick to the estimated delivery date you committed to 3 months ago. It would also make adjustments when you find out that your lead programmer just broke his leg in 3 places and will be out for 6 weeks.

2nd Brain works like GPS software. You tell it where you want to go and, based on your current location, it tells you the best route for getting there and approximately when you are supposed to arrive. If that ETA is acceptable, great. You just follow the plan provided. If not, adjust accordingly. You might speed up. You might remove stops you had planned to make along the way. The options are limitless. The point is that you adjust the data until the ETA is within an acceptable range. – Perry Watkins

Project Outcome Prediction Software

Paul Boudreau, the President of Stonemeadow Consulting, Canada is currently involved in research about how AI technology can provide value to the project management methodology used by organizations. Boudreau is now developing the logic for a predictive analytics tool that will forecast project success before the project starts and in real time as the project progresses. Currently, his team of four people is building the model which will then be coded in Python programming language so they can run the data through a classifier such as a neural network. The project is being done as part of work at the college where Boudreau teaches.

“The most difficult part at this time is getting sample data. Companies are reluctant to provide historical data where their projects have failed” admits the expert. Boudreau is working more towards AI tools that predict success and can simulate the entire project based on key success factors. The downfall of predictive analytics, in his opinion, is that it is based on historical data so he plans to include the current environment and future factors as well.

To sum up, there are particularly effective tools to do project forecasts and refine your data and I can tell that these will certainly pave our way to better project management decisions in the future. I also hope you’ll find a project forecasting tool that applies to your context and method. Leave your comments below and don’t forget to subscribe to the next flow of project management inspiration.

Illustration: Copyright © Margarita Winkler

The post Tools for Project Managers to Travel in Time appeared first on PM Column.

No longer is agile a purely software development methodology reserved for techies – organizational leaders across all industries are looking to adopt Agile methodologies, or at least some form of agility in their own field.

I’ve asked project managers how to illustrate the concept of Agile in a simple engaging way that every kid can understand. Here’s my collection of answers.

1

If you take the purest meaning of agile, which is how I always explain it to my children, agile is about being able to move quickly and easily. — Belkis Vasquez-McCall, USA

2

You remember when we were at a zoo? The organization is like a big zoo, but a human one. There are many different kinds of people with different kinds of food to eat — interests. Agile is something to connect them better, to let them eat together and share their food with each other. Only then the organization can change as quick as a leopard and adapt like a chameleon. If they don’t, the lion will come and eat them. And we don’t want this, so it’s better to learn agile. — Aleš Štempihar, Slovenia

3

Agile Project Management is when you have a boring and complicated school task that you transform into an exciting game with your friends. All of you contribute to the game, using your skills and interests, and the task gets done. — Yulia Tchernaya, Denmark

Agile can take on many meanings as you continue along your agile journey. Complacency can set in, which is dangerous because it can truly make agile feel almost the opposite of how it should be. Instead of enabling us to move quickly and easily, sometimes we get so bogged down with processes and documentation that we seem to do more moving by standing still and talking about moving than actually getting the job done.

4

Like building something from LEGO and whatever you decide to make any time, you will always have all the pieces you need and always have the correct instructions. — Barry Curry, Ireland

While you’re here, would you like to check out the results of our Project Manager Book Survey 2018?

5

Son, you know when dad arrives from work, very hungry? Agile is like when we keep bringing him tapas rather than keeping him waiting for an elaborate main dish. — Marisa Silva, United Kingdom

Agile has several different flavors, but in most cases agile means you get started on something before you’re completely ready to get started. You then have a time box — say, two weeks — during which you are expected to deliver. At the end of that time box, you show what you did, and then you get input from others on whether or not to move forward. Over the next two weeks, you repeat that process and move progressively forward until you’ve achieved your goal.

6

Son, when grandpa and grandma married, a long time ago, times were tough and they didn’t have much money to build a big house (like Auntie Rose has). This was October and winter was coming so they had to build something very quick at first – here, have a look at this picture. Yeah, it was a very small house, just with the basic but grandpa ensured that the foundations and the roof were solid enough to survive winter. Then summer came and grandpa started adding to it — first, the living room, then he also extended the kitchen because grandma needed more space to cook. And for the next two years he was incrementally improving their house: here’s another picture, when he added the porch and the garden in the back. Grandpa did it all by himself (with the help of uncle Tom sometimes) and grandma was really happy with what they built. And that, son, is what Agile is about too! — Marisa Silva, United Kingdom

7

When my nearly two-year-old frames a question ever so thoughtfully by starting with “Daddy… I want to….”, however that ends, the next question is “Great. What’s the fastest and easiest way to do that?” Now you’re agile, kiddo. — Pete Adams, Australia

8

When you’re trying to build a prototype of the Eiffel Tower, just using your LEGO parts, that’s called the AGILE Version of Building a REAL one. — Afshin Montazami, Iran

All roads lead to Agile, but some project managers even try to explain backlog prioritizing to kids.

9

Backlog prioritizing is like sorting your LEGO. You put your favorite pieces into one box, so it is easy to reach them, and the other, less important ones, into the box that goes on the top shelf. A backlog is like all the homework you need to do. — Yulia Tchernaya, Denmark

But sometimes project managers have a hard time when a kid asks who’s a stakeholder. Then classmates, teachers, and principals automatically become stakeholders.

10

Treating and building good relationships with teachers, peers, and your principal is the same as building healthy relationships with clients or vendors, which in turn is a crucial aspect of Project Management. — Mayur Sonawane, India

11

Agile is what you do when the ice-cream shop you went to turned out to be closed. If you’re not agile, you go home because your plan was foiled. If you’re agile, you figure out something equally fun to do. — Allen Holub, United States

12

You know when mommy says NO and you go ask dad? That’s Agile. — Perry Watkins, United States

13

I want you to get dressed in the morning. You can do that yourself. These are the things we plan to do this week so you must pick your clothes accordingly. They need to be fit for purpose. You can’t go to school in your swimming costume, for example. Even though we have planned what we are going to wear, we have to expect that things may change. If it is raining you will need a raincoat. If it is hot, you probably won’t want a coat at all. Being able to change your mind on what you choose to wear is O.K. as long as you always wear what is fit for purpose and you always leave the house on time. You may make a mistake. You may not take a coat when you need one. We learn from mistakes so we don’t repeat them. — Kerry Burns, United Kingdom

14

I would describe a backlog as a washing basket. They add the clothes and when it’s time, you pull the clothes out of the basket that can go into the wash (the sprint) together. — Kerry Burns, United Kingdom

15

Well — we might make a mistake, so we work in small steps and ask ‘is this right?’ at each step. That way if we get something wrong, or have to change something, it’s not a disaster. — Guy Maslen, New Zealand

16

I would use examples from everyday life to explain these terms. I think kids (even adults!) learn more from concrete examples that they can learn from books. For example, set up a Kanban board on the fridge for household chores and work through it for a few weeks. The kids would begin by helping their parents create the Product Backlog, then volunteering to do certain chores (listed on the backlog) the next week. — Kirk Bryde, Canada

17

I’d say (very tongue in cheek) that a good parent has a child that says DOD before daddy. I used to scrum my little one’s bath time routines. Whiteboard and all. But had to stop when I was challenged on the DOR being my job to have bubble bath already in the water. — Garin Reyneke, South Africa

18

Mhm. I don’t do Jargon with the kids. My daughter composes music. Every couple of days, she plays a new or modified piece to me and asks how I like it. Sometimes, the feedback is along the lines of, “A bit too exciting”, but usually like, “I wish it was longer”  or, “Very enjoyable.” When I like it, she introduces the piece to her peers. — Michael Küsters, Germany

19

Depending on their age, I’d probably talk about planning a weekend, to get the best out of it. A list of things they want to do. A list of things they ought to do even if they don’t want. Prioritize and rough the schedule. During the weekend I’d ask them what happens if a friend calls with a good idea. Rearrange to fit it in? What happens if a friend / the weather cancels something that was planned? Rearrange. I’d encourage them to have a look back on Sunday evening. Was it a better weekend than usual? What do we want to keep? Want do we want to do better? — Paul Oldfield, United Kingdom

20

Agile is when groups of people believe that we can consistently break down work into smaller, simpler chunks and build something that is valuable to other people. As we keep doing this, we always see if there are ways we can do better, and make things more valuable. Imagine you and four friends started building the LEGO Voltron set. We’d break it down by having each of you work on one of the 5 lions. As each of you completed each step, you’d check your work, or have someone else check it, to make sure it was right. After you completed all the little steps, you’d each have built a single lion, which is valuable already. However, when you all come together and combine the lions, you’ve now formed Voltron, a giant robot who defends the universe from evil! Had you started by building one lion, then the next one, and so on until all 5 were done, it would have taken you much longer to form Voltron, and the universe would not have been protected. — Marc Morell, United States

21

Agile is what you do at your (Montessori) school, where the motto is: “Help me do it myself.” Many people haven’t been at such schools, therefore they still have to learn how to do things themselves, and then they need a word for that. Don’t worry about that word. You are already doing it. — Niels Malotaux, Germany

22

It’s like a group science/ social studies project assignment at school where you brainstorm, plan, assign or take up the work deciding who will do what, build, test in case if it’s a science project, finally submit your work with the presentations. And just like your grades, cumulative of data/fact, display, presentation, and how happy everyone felt looking at your project, etc. all this is done by teamwork. Or playing candy crush with your friends having to finish a level with at least one star (which is horrible) before moving to the next level. — Aneeta Gupta, United States

What is agile? It all depends on who you ask. Let’s enrich this collection of thoughts. Leave your ideas in the comment section below and don’t forget to subscribe to be the first to get project management insights of an even higher caliber.

Illustration: Copyright © Zhenya Oliinyk

The post Project Managers Explain Agile to Kids appeared first on PM Column.

Last year’s Global Leadership Forecast 2018 performed by Ernst & Young has shown that only 14 percent of CEOs have the leadership talent to execute their strategy. According to the researchers, the toughest nut to crack for business owners, in spite of 50 billion annual investments, is to develop “the bench leadership strength” to meet future business goals. Leaders have to learn to redefine competencies.

We either know the formula or we fail. Task delegation, executed efficiently, is a path to a successful work process and a way to offload many of your tasks to be able to do the strategic work.

Project management communities tend to be a goldmine for new methods, techniques, and lessons. I’ve asked PM experts to share their opinions on the subject of task delegation and they came up with up-to-date formulas and methods that will likely help leaders learn to let go of their work in a less painful, but professional way. The approach you’ve chosen to delegate the tasks to your subordinates will influence the relationships between you and your co-workers and create a balance at the workplace.

Creating a Healthy Delegation Environment

Task delegation is the first step to getting work done. As a leader, you need to delegate your power and authority. The question is how to do it in a less painful way. Kiron Bondale, trainer, coach, trusted advisor and speaker in the project management domain, reveals three contributing factors to delegation from his experience.

Successful delegation has three prerequisites — a willingness on the part of the delegator to truly delegate the activity and to do so without micromanaging, the ability on the part of the delegatee to do the work and the wisdom to know when they need to circle back with the delegator, and organizational culture to support efficient and effective delegation.

Many project managers support this opinion. Chris Dees, an experienced IT Engineer and Project Manager agrees that delegation is not delegation if you hover and you will not build your team up with micromanagement. According to Dees,

If you must, you can use iterative activities and tasks to prepare an inexperienced, but worthy subordinate, for heavier responsibilities. Have them shadow you on an activity and then work together on it until you think they are ready for it to become their responsibility, but don’t drag it out. Quality people can do some of their best work when they are trained briefly and “thrown to the wolves” with you or another expert as an advisory “lifeline.” No one experiences real professional development until they are forced to stand on their own two feet.

Structuring Task Delegation Process

The most practical and easy-to-use formula in task delegation is a 20/70/10 rule. Jorge Gamas Ortiz, an executive-level Project Manager and Functional Manager with 11 years of Information Technology (IT) and business management experience, considers this method to be the most effective. According to Ortiz,

Once you have a task defined, spend 20% of the task time with the delegate explaining and defining what to do and what are the expected deliverables. Let the delegate to do the job by themselves the 70% of the expected task duration, and finally the 10% remaining use it to review results, provide feedback and answer questions. You can adapt it according to the delegate experience/knowledge.

Structuring the delegation process this way, you dedicate a sufficient amount of time to prepare an employee to perform the task. These tactics will help the worker understand that you approach task delegation in a disciplined and systematic way, where specific time slots are purpose-built and that you will not stand over their shoulders.

The formula will likely work well in combination with tasks that are more predictable and less volatile, in finance, tech, and manufacturing environments. Ricardo Bethencourt, Electrical Engineer and Project Manager with 28+ year of experience admits that as a leader, project manager has to build the trust, provide the direction, and give the feedback needed to keep the machine well oiled. The above formula is the first step to reach this goal.

Read more: Tools to Effectively Manage the Task Delegation Process

To ensure that the work process doesn’t knock your people off balance, Tony Markatos suggests logically breaking the product down into smallish “chunks” that are loosely coupled and highly cohesive. Without such a logical partitioning, in Markato’s words, the tasks have a tendency to soon get out of balance.

Overcoming the Challenges to Effective Delegation

Participating in such a highly cooperative process, like delegation, is always challenging. Sarah Hoban, a leading opinion maker, strategist, and project management blogger admits that it is important to resist the urge to problem solve on behalf of your team.

If the person to whom you’ve delegated returns to you too often with questions or issues that are within their power to answer, you need to make it clear to them that they are fully capable of answering these questions themselves. Some techniques might involve using the Socratic method (answering a question with a question), leaving the decision up to them, or asking for their recommended solution and why. As a last resort, make yourself temporarily unavailable for questions, so the team has no choice but to forge ahead without you.

Corey Freedman, a collaborative Program and Project Manager is convinced that trust and verification is an accepted approach that makes task delegation less painful. As a PM, Corey needs to trust that his subordinates know how what, and when the task is to be done and done well. Corey believes that the verification is just as important: “PMs must be sure that processes are in place to validate the work is done well and a team member must be comfortable with that process. Sometimes, the process is a peer review, sometimes it is a QA resource, sometimes it is something that I was a PM review.”

Leaders who have learned how to create healthy delegation environments, structure the delegation process, and, eventually, let go of work, can concentrate on their goals without spending too much time in the operational wheel. Are you still running around?

Illustration: Copyright © Oksana Drachkovska

The post Project Managers Reveal Tricks That Make Delegation Successful appeared first on PM Column.

Since I became the President of IPMA Young Crew Portugal in January 2018, it has been a never-ending learning process. And so has my entire professional experience and my personal life.

IPMA Young Crew Portugal is a non-profit organization affiliated with APOGEP with around 25 active members – students and young professionals sharing a passion for project management, all voluntary and coming from completely different backgrounds. One may think the context is too distinct from a normal company, so why bother reading further?

People Are the Drivers, Not Processes

At some point, last year things were getting hard to lead forward. Teams were not motivated enough, they were struggling with a sense of injustice and showing low levels of engagement throughout the entire structure. We knew we had to do something about it, so we shifted our attention entirely to people. It’s not that people weren’t already important, they were just one of our many other focus points. To address this, we first decided to talk to everyone and understand their expectations. These conversations not only helped us show our appreciation for their work so far, but also provided us with tons of information to reflect on.

We then looked inside our organization and started to change our strategy in order to fit in what we’ve learned there with what we wanted to do. We want to create a culture where one can find their own special place so that together everything would be possible. All organizations, and not only voluntary-based ones like ours, should care for people. We know people are the drivers to deliver a project, not processes. Right?

Sustainability Builds on Trust and Empathy

This topic has been discussed all over the place, so it may sound like common ground to you, but you’ll be amazed at how many take for granted their most valuable asset – people. There are a lot of leaders that focus so much on brand and business that usually go like: Why are people sad and underperforming if we have such a great brand and a good business? But do you? Probably yes, but only temporarily. You will always need people to make things happen and that holds true for brands and businesses. Sustainability builds on trust, trust builds on relationships, and relationships build on empathy. Although this may look easy and somehow intuitive, don’t fool yourselves. People are complex.

Sustainability builds on trust, trust builds on relationships, and relationships build on empathy. Although this may look easy and somehow intuitive, don’t fool yourselves. People are complex.

I will never forget a quote from a speaker at one of our conferences saying “people are a lot of things.” If you think carefully this has so much of simplicity than it has of truth. And the sooner you truly impersonate this mindset, the sooner you’ll get to know the ones around you, and the quicker you’ll help them achieve their goals. If you give people a purpose and you mix it with your organization’s mission, you’re closing in on a success formula.

You Can’t Make Everyone Happy

Moreover, I was being haunted by loneliness… a lot. Running a business, a department, or a team can give you that. Every single decision just looks like you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders because you want to choose what’s best for everybody. And then you realize it’s impossible. You will most likely feel miserable and procrastinate on those difficult moments, even if sometimes you know you’re delaying the inevitable. So as a President, or a leader, you have to understand that you can’t make everyone happy.

People rely on you to decide which path to follow with a reason – you’re expected to be in the best position to gather the most valuable information that will support your decisions, and not them. And as long as you trust your vision, you clearly communicate it and motivate your team to pursue it, you’ll probably be fine. Apply coherence between what you say and what you do to develop trust and really invest in that. Sometimes a lot of people will be angry, but that’s normally when you signal a red flag on how wrong you should be. Then you go back to your thoughts and try to figure out what might need adjustments.

Project Managers Need Allies to Delegate Decisions

Decisions are a daily basis for leaders or project managers themselves. We are increasingly dealing with ever-changing contexts or scopes, unexpected budget cuts, new market demands, and people depending on us. We are being flooded with data and asked to act quickly choosing from infinite options. So unless we can upgrade our brain’s processor or add more RAM, as well as multiply ourselves to be in several places at the same time, the outcome could be a disaster.

I’ve faced a bunch of projects that were supposed to last weeks but turned into months instead, even years. Imagine you take more than 9 months to pick the right furniture for your son’s bedroom and by the time he is born he has nowhere to sleep. A bit extreme and ludicrous, I would admit, but we are already there in some of our projects. Despite this overwhelming reality I believe we can find ways to cope and I found mine through agility – the concept that invaded the minds of 99% of project managers worldwide.

I’ve faced a bunch of projects that were supposed to last weeks but turned into months instead, even years. Imagine you take more than 9 months to pick the right furniture for your son’s bedroom and by the time he is born he has nowhere to sleep.

I recently realized that if I wanted to respond faster and better I would need allies. If you can delegate tasks, why not delegate decisions too? Start by identifying those who show the ability to inspire others and also breathe the culture. Understand what motivates them and how they prefer to work. Adjust your speech and way of doing things. Empower them to make decisions without consulting you, show trust, and learn to stay away from every single detail. Ask for reports to follow progress. Finally, watch as the machine works and enjoy the time to target what requires the most of you. Naturally, this won’t happen overnight so I suggest you begin working on it. Don’t try to change from 8 to 80. Introduce slight changes gradually and adjust them to your context. Remember there’s no one-size-fits-all on this, stay agile.

Reflective Practice Works

I started applying reflective practice to learn through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self. I landed on this by chance, but now it’s so vital to me that I can’t picture myself living without any other lens than this. I’m confident this way of thinking has been working well as it allows me to extract wisdom from each and every step of the way. No mistake should go unnoticed and every positive experience must make room for better things.

Do you bear a resemblance to my experience? Please comment below or write to me, I would love to hear your stories!

Illustration: Copyright © Oksana Drachkovska

The post What I’ve Learned Being the President of IPMA Young Crew Portugal appeared first on PM Column.

PMI’s 10th Global Project Management Survey

Every year the Project Management Institute reveals exclusive insights on the state of project management in different countries. Yet, it’s probably the best survey on the project management landscape, packed with various kinds of domain insights. The full stack includes eye-opening statistics on project failure, project management trends, advice for PM practitioners, and key gaps worth filling to improve project performance.

In contrast to other project management surveys, this one provides research highlights by industries. Did you know that manufacturing companies lost more money than other industries because of constantly changing project objectives? Monitor their new upcoming project management surveys here and check out these top six skills for digital project managers, according to PMI.

Wellingtone’s State of Project Management Survey 2018

I personally love this project management report for clear insights they provide about the key challenges project managers face and the most difficult processes to embed, in infographics. In 2018, for example, the researchers noted that the largest project management challenges (again, based on the UK data) are 1) poorly trained project managers, 2) attempting to run too many projects, and 3) a lack of project funding. This project management survey is based on questions and infographics across many strategic areas of project management, so you won’t get lost in the middle of text — only key insights, numbers, and statistics.

Project Management Benchmark Report 2018

Arras People know what they’re talking about, especially when it comes to analyzing the project management climate. The survey sheds light on a breadth of project management topics. Based on the information collected from the UK respondents, the report reveals:

• recruitment trends in project management
• numbers on gender impact in the domain
• current PM education and qualifications trends
• relevant age profiles of PM practitioners

I recommend this project management survey for experts who’d like to get data that is applicable in the real world. You can download it online for free after registration.

PwC’s Project Success Survey 2018

That’s enough of UK-based reports for today. Because PwC witnesses Belgium as subject to the same trends as the rest of Europe or globally, these guys developed the first project success survey focusing specifically on the Belgian market. It answers a number of project-related questions:

1. What are the key challenges of getting things right?
2. What makes a project successful?
3. Why do projects fail to deliver?
4. What do organizations do to make projects a success?

In addition, this project management survey provides “PwC’s 12 elements for project success.” Definitely worth reading.

AIPM and KPMG Australian Project Management Survey 2018

We’ve been waiting for this for so long. Finally, there are insights on project failures from Australia, thanks to KPMG. As the researchers admit, it is a collaborative effort of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and KPMG to see how the ground lies and explore current trends in project delivery in Australia. Apart from interesting insights, you’ll see beautiful lions at the beginning of the survey, but soon they will disappear to show you that “there is a significant amount of project activity underway in Australia.” Read the report to investigate the top reasons for starting projects in Australia, the country’s project performance results, and many more pages the experts prepared for us on our way to improvement.

Project Manager Salary Survey 2018

The Digital Project Manager presents the ultimate guide to salaries in the project management profession. In this survey, you’ll find the average project manager salary by role and by country. In 2018, DPM gathered information from around 190 respondents from countries such as USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and Ukraine. The guide also presents statistics from previous years and suggests filling out their new 2019 salary survey.

While you’re here, would you like to upgrade your project manager’s resume?

McKinsey’s Agile Compendium 2018

The report is a closer look at Agile project management in disruptive times based on McKinsey’s in-house research. It’s an umbrella edition of articles that bring light to Agile research, written during the last three years. Agile Compendium is a confluence of Agile trends and topics that will help you blend Agile principles into your work. This guide, as no other project management survey in this list, reveals Agile transformation tips to streamline your project success. You get free access to golden project management insights from the world’s top organizations and key players.

Project Manager Book Survey 2018

Last year, PM Column collected insights from project managers worldwide to share what books they were reading in 2018 to improve their skills or entertain themselves. I interviewed project managers from different countries, such as Canada, United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazilia, Jamaica, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. While there are many project management books in the list, you’ll also find books with a twist on psychology and self-development.

Anything missing? Share your favorite project management surveys of 2018 in the comments below.

Illustration: Copyright © Anastasiia Shcherban

The post Top Project Management Surveys of 2018 appeared first on PM Column.

As outlined in their latest report The Project Manager of the Future, the next stage of project management development will demand a focus on data science skills, innovation, security and privacy knowledge, legal and regulatory compliance knowledge, ability to make data-driven decisions, and collaborative leadership skills.

To be in the fast lane, project managers will have to pay more attention to these six project management competencies. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Data Science Skills

The year 2019 rolled around and presented a new spectrum of competencies for digital project managers to embrace. The first top skill, according to PMI researchers, is the ability to extract knowledge from data with the purpose of improving project outcomes.

To put it simply, business environments will encourage project managers to collect data and draw lessons from past experience, this time backed up by graphs and numbers. Different data sets will become the main decision drivers on various stages of project management — from initiating to closing a project.

Digital project managers will have to learn to view past projects as leverage to perform better in the future. Additionally, they will be held responsible for generating such organizational data that will determine which particular employee skills will complement future projects.

But it’s not the only way how data analytics is expected to influence project management. Based on data, project experts will be able to see if their projects are on track and predict any deviations from their plan if problems crop up.

Innovative Mindset

A course on innovation depends on how ready you are to invest in new project management tools and approaches. Attaining a rank of an innovator can be difficult in risk-averse organizations, though.

According to one PMI article, there are three obstacles that stand in the way of project managers developing this skill. Firstly, some organizations prefer time-tested practices over new ideas. Secondly, despite there is free project management software, tools designed to help PM experts innovate pass by their attention and remain inconspicuous. The power of up-to-date project management software is overlooked or misunderstood by many organizations.

Finally, project managers’ third obstacle is time, or a lack of it, to be specific.  So many different tactical demands and project initiatives should go firsthand, right?

Whatever the project environment, abandoning innovation all together is nearly always counterproductive. — PMI

Nevertheless, you can fuse a variety of methods into your work process that will foster the culture of innovation in your company. The 6-3-5 method, the pool method, the pin card method, the clustering technique — they were all designed to steer the growth of new ideas.

Security and Privacy Knowledge

Needless to say, security and privacy knowledge doesn’t fall outside the remit of the PMO office. Project managers have their part to play in building security into projects they manage.

PMI started to focus on security and privacy knowledge due to the reason that more and more projects are becoming dependent on information systems, which, unfortunately, have security flaws. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, cybercrime now makes up 40% of all recorded criminal incidents in the United Kingdom.

This haul of cyber security attacks should be a concern for every project manager. You never know which project will become the next victim of a breach, so it’s better to weigh up all possible consequences that might follow an attack of this kind. “Without solid knowledge of security, your projects could open your organization to crippling threats,” writes Nick Ismail, a cybersecurity correspondent for Information Age.

What is this ‘solid knowledge,’ then? Are project managers supposed to become cybersecurity experts? No, it will suffice if they know what kind of data they’re dealing with and protect it by all means. In fact, it’s a good idea to start building communication plans and take steps to inform their teams about the value of data they hold.

Legal and Regulatory Compliance Knowledge

At every workplace, there will always be borders employees cannot cross and limits they cannot exceed. There will be different factors and rules that your organization, country, or other institution, has set up to ensure a common process and vision on how things should be done.

In Switzerland, for instance, it’s considered illegal to own only one goldfish. But let’s have a closer look at legal and regulatory compliance knowledge as it relates to project management directly. Every organization has its own rules, laws, and requirements that have an impact on different aspects of project management. These standards may concern budget control, management of scope, and other deliverables.

As you forbid your children to talk to strangers, the same way your company prohibits you from disclosing private project information to PM Column, for example. As unbelievable as it may sound, the company can also establish an appropriate length of your beard or allow only emails written with purpose (check out these 25 ridiculous and crazy workplace rules).

Creating a successful project with compliance, however, doesn’t necessarily mean reaching a specific goal — the journey is just as imperative.

As a manager, you should keep asking yourself if everything you do at the moment adheres to your company’s codex. Were your processes — the planning phase, the execution phase, and the delivery phase — compliant with recent regulations established by your CEO? Do you communicate properly within your projects? Does your team receive regular feedback? Lines of questions. Digital project managers should not only be able to answer them all and plan based on definite criteria, but capable of reacting fast to new regulations that come up their way.

Ability to Make Data-Driven Decisions

Most companies sense that data should form the core of their best project management practices. Using data analytics to focus on different levels of project, program, and portfolio management, project managers will be able to make better decisions and, eventually, improve project outcomes. The power data can give to project managers manifests itself in:

• knowledge if what they are doing is what they really intended to do
• insights who or what preempts an initial plan
• better awareness of true project delivery dates
• the ability to make impactful decisions backed up by numbers

Organizations that want to become data-driven will expect project managers to use different kinds of metrics. But you should learn what data can do for you in your specific situation. Construction managers, for instance, can use architecture collaboration software to get the right cost estimate for their next building project. Consider training on how to prioritize and sort your data in a way that will have a positive impact.

Collaborative Leadership Skills

According to PMI, technical skills are not enough on their own but must be paired with leadership in order to support longer-term strategic objectives. The notion of collaborative leadership in project management is not new, as its core attribute is the collaboration between a project manager and the organization as a whole.

Control should be the last thing collaborative leaders seek to perform — they inspire others to work as a team. They also have a set of transferable skills that let them engage successfully in stakeholder management and strategic planning. Being a collaborative leader also means you should break down the walls and encourage cross-functional communication.

Collaborative leaders are culturally competent and possess contextual intelligence required to work with different sectors in the organization. These kinds of leaders offer security and trust to their team, at the same time motivating people to take risks. The decisions they make are passed through multiple teams in advance to make them more objective and create a system of shared goals.

These top skills for digital project managers will be key for success-driven organizations. By cultivating them now, you will gain a competitive advantage in contrast to your peers. Also, check out the ultimate guide to improving a project manager’s resume.

Illustration: Copyright © Irena Voilenko

The post PMI Named Top Skills for Digital Project Managers appeared first on PM Column.

#1-2 An Innovative Mindset

Working in a digital environment demands a focus on innovation. 2018 GE Global Innovation Barometer indicates that companies all over the world contend for maximizing the return on innovation. According to the new PMI report The Project Manager of the Future, an innovative mindset will be one of the fundamental criteria for hiring digital project managers in the future. To become an innovation influencer, you should have a tendency to invest in skills, training, and development, learn about cutting-edge project management tools and approaches, and contribute knowledge to your company’s culture.

#3-4 Risk Tolerant

Project managers that tolerate risk will have a privilege applying for positions that presume work in digital environments. McKinsey researchers define “digital risk” as an umbrella term embracing “all digital enablements that improve risk effectiveness and efficiency—especially process automation, decision automation, and digitized monitoring and early warning.” In the light of project management, tolerating risk means replacing a culture of excessive control with a culture of enablement. Facebook has become a vivid example of risk tolerance in project management:

As managers at Facebook, we’re taught to embrace risk. We focus on uncovering new opportunities for people and pushing them to try something new. It’s core to our culture, and it’s how we help people grow. — Dwayne Reeves, Software Engineering Manager at Facebook

Just try being a manager who makes sure that your team members never see any limits in creativity. Be sure to check out this ultimate guide on task delegation methods.

#5-6 Customer Focused

It’s painful to see customers go. As the competition between the leading game changers grows eminently, customer success becomes a company-wide effort. Project managers, responsible for healthy relationships with the client, should do everything in their power to build trust and top-notch customer experience. A digitally-competent project manager aligns project success with clients’ expectations by ensuring that no roadblocks appear in the customer’s journey. Your potential employers should see that they can rely on you when it comes to quality assurance. That’s why mentioning that you value your relationships with the clients will leave a positive mark in your resume.

#7-11 Able to Make Data-Driven Decisions

There will be no place for speculative decisions in 2019. Initiating, planning, and executing projects, you should neither make decisions out of the blue nor rely on your intuition. Make sure that you back up your opinion with facts and numbers. The companies of the future will expect you to cut through the clutter of data sets to make accurate project prognosis. That’s why genuine interest in predictive analytics and knowledge how to retrieve information relevant to your case are becoming the top door-opening project management competencies. It’s just high time to develop your analytical prowess — it will be valued more than ever in 2019.

#12-13 Comfortable with Ambiguity

According to PMI, companies already invest in training and development of a very important project management skill — comfort with ambiguity. It’s a given that starting to manage a project, you’ll have to face many split ways and decide where to go next. Ask yourself if you can stay calm under this pressure and still make sure that your projects are on time, on budget, and on value. Stating that you’re comfortable with ambiguity means that you can sort out priorities in an efficient way.

For a more structured approach to project planning, check out this mind-mapping project management tool.

I hope this set of digital project management skills in your resume will help you raise in the competition. What do you think?

Illustration: Copyright © Anastasiia Shcherban

The post 13 Words to Complete a Project Manager’s Resume appeared first on PM Column.

From my experience as a member in nearly 50 project management groups on LinkedIn, I must admit that very few of them show any signs of response and engagement. What grabbed my attention to this topic was a post by a Senior Project and Programme Manager and a famous influencer in the project management domain, Marc Hammoud. “Most stuff published today on LinkedIn ranges from barely hidden marketing to naked promotion, and sometimes it goes down the spiral of outrageous straight spam!” admits Hammoud. It appears that a project management community with more than 800,000 members is now a mismanaged and spammy hodgepodge that is more an advertising platform than a #1 Group for Project Managers. Sad, but true.

But to help you filter out the spam from the most responsive project management groups on LinkedIn, I created this short list of options you can go for if you want to talk to project management professionals, ask for advice, present yourself, and what’s most important, be heard.

PMI Project, Program and Portfolio Management: #1 group for career advancement

As an official LinkedIn group of the Project Management Institute, it probably has the most active and incredibly responsive community of project managers on LinkedIn, consisting of more than 200,000 members. Its administrators carefully filter out off-topic posts and feature relevant news for project managers. As indicated in the description, this project management group welcomes both PMO leaders and new project managers, experienced project, program or portfolio managers, business analysts, or just anyone who works in a project-oriented profession.

If you’re doing research on a project management topic, preparing for a PMP exam, or simply looking for the answers to your questions, this community of project experts is always out there and eager to help. While investigating what project managers were reading in 2018, I received more than 50 comments with book suggestions from the PMI community.

Agile and Lean Software Development

Agile and Lean Software Development group is a highly responsive network of project managers practicing Agile. It has more than 145,000 members. What makes it a goldmine for Agile practitioners is loyalty to project management topics and strict content moderation. It’s the only group that personally informed me about the violation of their rules when I tried to give a link to my article there. As a trusted source of advice for project managers, this PM network offers various discussions on Agile topics. For example,

• What is Agile all about? Is it a framework or methodology or tool?
• When you talk or write, do you distinguish between “agile” (lowercase) and “Agile” (uppercase)?  If so, how do you distinguish between them? Why?
• Which participants make agile change and the associated self-organisation and self-responsibility more difficult?

Before publishing or distributing anything to this group, I highly recommend to learn its rules first.

I want to be a PMP®

The group’s name speaks for itself. As stated in the description, it is the largest and most active PMP® study group in the world. It was designed to create a virtual space for PMP candidates, credential holders and experts who join for PMP exam preparation. Often, people would go there to share their PMP exam preparation tips or ask for help regarding easy PDU collection to maintain the status. From my observations, despite spam that sometimes occurs in this group, it’s still a network of PM professionals glad to congratulate you with passing your PMP® or share their recommendations.

Also, be sure to check out these good old sources of inspiration for project managers.

So far, only these three project management groups deserve to be mentioned here as they show the highest level of engagement I noticed.

Anything missing? Leave your suggestions in the comments below and subscribe to get the news straight to your mailbox.


Illustration: Copyright © Irena Voilenko

The post 3 Top Responsive LinkedIn Groups for Project Managers appeared first on PM Column.

At this point, I recommend referring to these trusted project management sources where you’ll definitely find what you’ve been looking for — pure inspiration, joy, knowledge, and words of encouragement. Apart from the list of these good old sources below, you’ll find PM articles worth reading right here, right now. So here’s my top six.

CIO | Project Management | News, how-tos, features, reviews, and videos

For me, there’s no better place to go hunt for a solid piece of project management news or advice than CIO. Its project management column is written by the word wizards whose messages are clear and recommendations relevant. There you can find leadership lessons, digital transformation tips, and beautifully crafted reviews of project management applications. If you don’t feel like reading, you can go watch their expert videos or listen to the interviews with top project performers.

Must-read: How AI could revolutionize project management

Harvard Business Review | Project Management Digital Archive

HBR is one of my favorite professional project management sources I read when I feel that my level of motivation gets depleted. It honestly reveals the challenges of project manager’s role in a simple but witty manner. The only downside of HBR, in contrast to CIO, is a limited number of articles you can read without a paid subscription. But even reading three free articles a month can fill in your reservoir of inspiration and motivate you. It’s mesmerizing how HBR’s contributors can fit an impressive amount of information into their clear-cut recommendations.

Must-read: Why Agile goes awry — and how to fix it

McKinsey | Project Management Blog

There’s still time in our lives when we want to dip our toes in the waters of research and stay away from lyrics about project management. In this case, McKinsey sounds like a perfect choice. With a thousand of experts and consultants around the world, this group of researchers creates different types of content worth even your single minute of free time. McKinsey’s project management podcasts, articles, and white papers are always backed up by their own research and real experience gained through cooperation with the world’s top companies. What I like most about McKinsey is their way to present content — making it exclusively readable. This website won’t get you irritated with advertisements or irrelevant news. Vice versa, McKinsey prefers that you stay focused on what you’re reading.

Must-read: Managing big projects: The lessons of experience

Project Manager Today

PM Today is one out of many editions focused on project management that sees the world in a printed version. It’s a good old source of inspiration for project managers who prefer the smell of printing ink to computers and smartphones. Generally, PM Today uncovers current project management trends and analyses how digital transformation affects the domain. What makes it one of the best sources of inspiration for project managers is loyalty to the subject and its target audience.

A Girl’s Guide to Project Management

Written by Elizabeth Harrin, this source is probably one of the liveliest project management blogs on the web and the first in a class of its own speaking to the audience of women. A Girl’s Guide to PM regularly offers valuable information to its readers in the form of independent software reviews, project management books, PM conferences to visit, and other practical information you need to thrive in the domain of project management.

Must-read: 15 tested and practical tips from women in project management

The Digital Project Manager

Enriched with the power of over 40 professional certified project management contributors, this platform is one of the newest and fastest growing digital project management websites in the world. It offers how-to guidelines, reflects light upon PM tools and presents insights key to project success. What distinguishes DPM from other listed sources of inspiration is a beautiful, modern, and user-friendly design.

Must-read: How to identify and avoid scope creep

Toptal Projects Blog

The Toptal Projects Blog is best for inspiration when it comes to the current best practices, tricks, and state of knowledge in Project Management and Agile leadership. The articles are penned by the professional network of Toptal project managers who share their experience and make the domain more tangible.

Must-read: How to prevent and manage scope creep

You might also like to check books project managers have been reading in 2018 and an easy-peasy explanation of Agile to children.

What’s your favorite project management source of inspiration? Share it in the comments below and don’t forget to sign up! 

Illustration: Copyright © Anastasiia Shcherban

The post The Good Old Sources of Inspiration for Project Managers appeared first on PM Column.

The Beginning of the Agile Transformation Journey

Ilkyung managed a dedicated scrum team of around eighteen people across eight different areas of engineering. As you might have guessed from Ilkyung’s job role, management at the engineering department was pushing the Agile project management agenda. Since the new Vice President and Director of Engineering entered the office, the team has begun to use a pure Agile iteration-based methodology.

Ilkyung’s major responsibility was to lead the Agile transformation effort while managing the work intake for the internal network and engineering related infrastructure projects. At Disney, he was more of a general project manager, running projects in Digital Consumer Product Interactive department and using traditional Waterfall methodology. At his new role, Ilkyung was involved in full-scale Agile Scrum — daily scrum meetings, sprint planning, sprint grooming, review, and retrospective sessions.

When Ilkyung started working, he was assigned an uphill task — to migrate from old structureless management processes to Agile Scrum in a very siloed part of the company. Before new management came in, nobody was questioning how and why people were doing things a certain way and all tasks happened in silos with little communication and trust between team members. Ilkyung noted that the prior management system they had was merely a weekly meeting and an Excel spreadsheet. They neither tracked work on a daily basis nor they had a proper ticketing system. Ilkyung helped introduce Jira to the engineering team, simultaneously coaching them and the Product Owner on proper Agile discipline.

Agile Transformation Agenda

One of the first tasks on his agenda was to figure out the best Agile methodology working with the manager of engineering and most favorable sprint length and integrate daily sprint meetings to check on the team progress.

After determining that we would proceed with Agile Scrum, it was difficult in the beginning, because we started with a two-week sprint cycle and it felt very fast for the team. They were used to a much slower-paced environment, so a two-week iteration was too frequent and it did not work well for them. After two sprints, I decided to push for a three-week sprint cycle to introduce more breathing room between meetings that would allow the team to gradually develop optimal velocity. We then introduced “the daily scrum.” We started from meeting once a week and increased the frequency to meeting two to three times a week.

In the beginning during the transition process, you have to start slow, especially when you’re going from no system to Agile. You cannot suddenly go from meeting once a week to meeting every single day. It’s too abrupt. Do you know what’s interesting about this process? Back when I got my Scrum Master Certification when I was first learning Agile, it was only teaching you how to do Agile, it was not necessarily teaching you how to do a smooth implementation. That’s something I had to learn myself, through doing it. Anytime you make a big change, the smoother you are in the transformation process, the smoother the results are going to be.

Another prerequisite to successful Agile transformation is determining how to set up a process of making accurate task estimates. In this regard, Ilkyung has a set of recommendations. If you are working with a dedicated team, it’s a good idea to start using story points in Jira and estimate the volume of work in a measure using a high-level guideline that includes both time and complexity, as an example, a task that takes 1-2 days with medium complexity can be considered 2 story points.

If someone told me that a task is going to take 4 hours and in reality it took 20 hours, they are going to feel like their estimation skills are terrible. This happens all the time. It’s very difficult to estimate something accurately in hours before you actually do it but if you instead estimate in story points with the entire team’s input, then 90% of the time they’ll get it right. It’s a lot easier to hold people accountable with accurate and realistic estimates. The point system worked really well in the engineering department.

Story points, however, can be insufficient to rely on if you have a shared pool of resources. Today, many companies have offshore and outsource resources and a situation of multiple teams working on multiple projects. If all of them are crisscrossed between multiple projects, then, the experts recommend doing capacity planning in man-hours at the beginning of each sprint for each Scrum team. The key difference between capacity planning in Waterfall and Agile is that in Waterfall you generally do capacity planning once during the planning & analysis phase, while in Agile you do capacity planning every sprint cycle, in other words, every two or three weeks.

One of the options to make Agile transformation easier and more structured for large companies is to transform your shared pool of resources into a few dedicated teams. Even though the process can take some time and is challenging, your teams will end up more focused towards their goals. The first step Ilkyung recommends taking is to structure dedicated teams, for example, clearly delineate the work by breaking it down into projects, department areas or applications and assign people to them. That way you can reduce the chances of two resources duplicating efforts. This will also allow for quicker daily stand-ups via smaller teams.

Read on: How to Make Task Delegation Less Painful

The Challenges of Migrating to a Full-Scale Agile Scrum

Going from no system to a pure Agile was a true challenge for the team. People started to mount stiff resistance — during the first couple of sprints, the team was not happy having to learn a new tool to track their work. They just wanted the manager to let them do their job and trust without any visibility that it would get done. It was the old archaic way of doing things and a very ad hoc approach to management. What really helped Ilkyung to encourage the team was the fact that the other department, such as the software team in the Digital Media Archives group, have already been practicing Agile thanks to the department’s management push on Agile.

The crucial factor was support from upper management. Previous companies’ PMO where Ilkyung has worked at unfortunately did not support the Agile methodology. Ilkyung admits that if you first have support from the top, implementing Agile throughout the company is going to be a lot easier to accomplish. It took around four three-week sprints for the engineering team to start getting used to the new system and the results were immediate.

When I was measuring the team’s output velocity, I was able to determine how many points the team can produce every sprint and the team’s output after a few three-week sprints was equal to 45 points on average, which means that the team is collectively able to deliver an average of 15 points per week including bandwidth for contingencies and issues that happened on a weekly basis. This is a metric that the department never had before. Over the course of the sprints’ retrospective sessions, we noticed that the “what can we do better?” section was gradually getting smaller and smaller.

Migrating to Agile helped the company consolidate engineering resource efforts, see what’s happening at each step of a task’s lifecycle, and drastically increase overall transparency. It stabilized the process of continuous improvement and structured teamwork. However, according to Ilkyung, the biggest challenge in the project environment was not having a clear governance model and not having a clear direction on how to track all the projects from a program or portfolio level.

All I had was Jira and that’s great for managing tasks, but if you want to manage a program, a series of projects, and get a whole portfolio view of the entire timeline for multiple projects, we didn’t have a tool for that. Jira has a portfolio view plugin but we didn’t have that there. What saved us was Trello. Thanks to Trello cards, I have an airplane view of all the projects that are going on simultaneously. Each card represents one project and we can just have a very high-level view of the key resources, project descriptions, estimated timeline if applicable, and overall status (in progress or on hold).

To communicate project progress to management, the team met at the end of each sprint before they started the next sprint and shared all the progress they’ve made in the sprint, using the Trello board.

We were able to show every single project’s progress since the last meeting because we had milestones that we could check off and they could see the overall progress across the milestones.

Ilkyung is convinced that Agile Scrum is exceptionally effective, but the slippery slope of Agile is having a crystal-clear plan for the next iteration yet lacking the view of the big picture.

That’s actually what almost every Scrum Master indicates as the main challenge from my experience, and Ilkyung is probably not the last one on improving the visibility into the future of his projects.

What’s your panacea to seeing into the future in the Agile-driven environments?  

 

Illustration: Copyright © Oksana Drachkovska

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