Why Project Managers Fail … and How to Help Them Succeed 93
Stressing the importance of meeting cost, schedule, and perfor- mance goals
Giving priority to achieving the mission or function of the project Keeping changes under control
Seeking ways to assure job security for effective project team members
Emerging Competencies
Having said all that, the definition of the “good project manager” is a moving target. As economic and cultural factors change, the pr oject manager role alters in response. And, the elements of the role have different importance to different people in the organization. To an employer, a “good” project manager is one who brings the project in on time and does not waste any money. To a project team member, it might be more important that the daily environment of the project is not one that careens from crisis to crisis, accompanied by raised voices and slammed doors.
And, as project managers expand into new industries, additional areas of competency will emerge. Recently, field research in biotechnology suggests that good project managers are skilled in “polarity management,”
which Barry Johnson defines as those organizational dilemmas that we must manage rather than resolve once and for all. For example, the skilled manager of a team is aware that she must constantly tack back and forth between focusing on the team’s performance as a whole and on each individual team member’s performance. Were she to focus on one to the exclusion of the other, one would surmise that she was not as effective as she could be. Table 4.1 describes the six “polarities” that project managers must manage.12,13 These polarities provide a look at how the project manager’s role is evolving away from technical, tool-based project management (especially in knowledge-based organizations such as R&D), and toward a broader “art” of leadership. However, that does not mean that the science can be left behind. Equally important are the competencies that many companies are successfully sorting into a new “starring role”:
the project planner.
94 Optimizing Human Capital
gathering status information, entering data into a timekeeping and sched- uling system, and helping to produce status charts.
Over time, additional responsibilities — such as tracking issue and risk logs, analyzing schedules, and facilitating planning sessions — were added
TABLE 4.1 Project Managers and “Polarities”
On one hand …. And on the other … Take account of the big
picture of the project.
Pay attention to the details.
Help team members advance a project; be an advocate for the project.
Help team members shut down a project, or rationally anticipate and plan for possible failure.
Play a supporting role to enable the team leader to lead. Inspire team leaders to be effective in negotiating for the resources and commitments needed from team members and
functional groups.
Provide project leadership in the areas that are not adequately addressed by team leaders, or which are beyond his or her scope or skill level.
Be responsible for the outcomes of a particular project and advocate strongly for it.
Be responsible for the outcomes of the company’s portfolio of projects. The project manager must be able to situate the project in the context of the portfolio of all the projects under development. At any given moment, the firm, facing scarce resources, must create an up-to-the-minute
assessment of which projects should be accelerated and which should not. The project manager must be aware of what is going on in other projects in order to be effective on his or her own project.
Negotiate resources for the team from the functional groups. Timely assistance from functional areas can significantly accelerate or retard the project schedule.
Protect the functional groups from excessive demands on their time, attention, and resources. If each project in the organization insisted that its effort was most important, allocation of resources would be based on which project had the most political influence, rather than on a rational basis. Thus, at times, the project manager must protect the functional groups from the inappropriate or excessive demands of his or her own team.
Why Project Managers Fail … and How to Help Them Succeed 95
to the coordinator role. More recently, their responsibilities increased to include handling resource constraints and allocations, schedule and criti- cal-path analysis, financial reporting of earned value, and other documen- tation sufficient to comply with the Sarbanes–Oxley Act.
Today, the role of project coordinator has evolved into that of project planner. The new project planner supports the project manager by taking over critical, detail-oriented, time-intensive tasks, such as the ones dis- cussed above. As a result, the project manager is free to focus on more strategic project goals and objectives.
Earlier in this chapter, we discussed the core tasks of the leader. It is worthwhile noting that the core tasks of the manager have been identified as:
Planning the work Organizing the work Implementing the plan Controlling the results
These tasks align with the role of planner. Together, the project manager and planner (controller) resolve the leader (manager) dilemma by sup- plying both aspects of these roles in collaboration.
Job Responsibilities of the Project Planner
The project planner is a key member of the project team and works directly with the project manager to help define the project’s vision, goals, and objectives; analyze progress reported against the work schedules; and recommend and take action to improve progress. For a visual represen- tation of how the two work in tandem, see Table 4.2.
TABLE 4.1 (continued) Project Managers and “Polarities”
On one hand …. And on the other … Focus on the demands of the
project itself. A project suffers when its leader and members are not single- minded. The project manager must help the team leader focus everyone’s efforts on the goals that will advance the project.
Focus on the context for the project.
Projects do not operate in stable settings.
Surprises come in the form of technical glitches, competitors’ actions, and from other sources. The project manager must help the team leader step back from the immediacy of the project’s tasks and rethink the strategic assumptions that led to the project in the first place.
96 Optimizing Human Capital
TABLE 4.2 Duties of the Project Manager and the Project Planner by Knowledge Area
PMBOK® Guide
Knowledge Areas Project Manager Duties Project Planner Duties Scope
Management
Work with project owners to ensure all scope
(features/functionality) is explicitly defined and documented.
Accountable for maintaining integrity of scope, or authorizing scope changes.
Document scope baseline.
Track scope changes.
Gather data and analyze impact of change.
Make recommendation(s) to project manager.
Quality Management
Charged with making sure project fulfills business needs.
Overall responsibility for the quality of any products delivered by the project.
Accountable for overall health of the project.
Collect project
documentation for quality reviews.
Prepare project status reporting on a set-interval basis — i.e., project dashboard giving high-level view of project health.
Document project requirements.
Time Management
Obtain approval on schedule and any revisions.
Proactively improve timeline through parallel tasking or finding smarter ways to carry out work.
Develop and maintain schedule.
Collect status updates for tasks.
Analyze variations, slipping tasks, impact of task changes, critical path, overall ability of project to deliver on time.
Perform earned value analysis.
Perform burn rate projections.
Recommend improvements.
Why Project Managers Fail … and How to Help Them Succeed 97
Cost
Management
Work with owner/sponsor to obtain initial budget.
Proactively obtain further funding if needed.
Charged with ultimately delivering project within set budget.
Track all expenditures.
Analyze spending trends and project final costs;
report any deviation from baseline.
Recommend method to keep project under budget.
Risk
Management
Canvas team to identify all issues and risks;
liaise with other business partners or project managers who have completed similar projects.
Develop mitigation ideas and work to have strategies in place should they be needed.
Facilitate team session to identify risks.
Document/track issues, risks.
Oversee risk analysis and impact.
Provide project manager with status report of open issues, risks, mitigation.
Escalate, as necessary, extraordinary risk impacts and /or issues.
Procurement Management
Ultimately responsible for procurement of all products, resources, and materials necessary to
successfully complete project.
Maintain open communication with suppliers/procurement to ensure quality products/services from suppliers.
Build sub-schedule to determine procurement dates.
Collect updates from suppliers and analyze impacts to project schedule.
TABLE 4.2 (continued) Duties of the Project Manager and the Project Planner by Knowledge Area
PMBOK® Guide
Knowledge Areas Project Manager Duties Project Planner Duties
98 Optimizing Human Capital
Communications Management
Communicate with entire organization, from the project team to the C-level.
Negotiate conflict resolution when needed, between team members or business partners.
Honestly represent project status to project sponsor and other stakeholders.
Communicate with team to coordinate execution of tasks and provide status of project activities and milestones.
Facilitate planning sessions including development of Project Charter, Project Plan, WBS, Network Diagram, and Schedule.
Facilitate risk sessions.
Facilitate lessons learned sessions.
Integration Management
Charged with making sure that project plan and processes are followed throughout project; negotiating with sponsor or key stakeholders should modifications to the plan become necessary.
Work with project team to develop project plan, including facilitating processes for handling risks, issues, scope, quality, and general project communication.
Human Resource Management
Resolve conflict within project team.
Boost morale and reward project victories
— i.e., hitting milestone dates.
Negotiate with project sponsor to obtain scarce resources or materials.
Garner team buy-in and support of the project.
As part of schedule development, determine that project has all needed resources.
Ensure resource allocations are current — i.e., that resource has adequate project hours to cover tasks and has availability to work on project.
Educate project team on status reporting techniques and manage the process.
TABLE 4.2 (continued) Duties of the Project Manager and the Project Planner by Knowledge Area
PMBOK® Guide
Knowledge Areas Project Manager Duties Project Planner Duties
Why Project Managers Fail … and How to Help Them Succeed 99
To achieve required consistent documentation and reporting, many organizations are positioning the project manager and project planner as part of a centralized project support organization, usually referred to as the Project Management Office (PMO) or the Strategic Project Office.
Typically, the SPO reports to a high-level business executive who is responsible for driving the business in his or her domain, whether a CIO, VP of Operations, or head of New Product Development. It is their desire to implement consistent processes across all their projects.
Specifically, the project planner is responsible for carrying out the following six responsibilities:
1. Advise the team on proper processes. The project planner educates and advises the team on project management policies and stan- dards, methodologies, and processes across all phases of the project: initiating, planning, controlling, executing, and closing.
This includes describing the processes’ purpose, utilizing schedul- ing and costing tools, determining who is responsible for deliver- ables, and detailing approval procedures.
2. Facilitate or oversee project planning sessions. Organizing and facil- itating team planning sessions also falls within the realm of the project planner’s role. These sessions may deal with a variety of topics such as planning, developing the WBS, developing the network diagram, integrating the WBS and network diagram into the project schedule, estimating resource hours and task durations, controlling issue or risk management, capturing lessons learned, and project reporting.
3. Develop the project schedule. Using project office standards, the project planner works with other key members of the team to develop the project schedule, including resource leveling and critical path analysis. Once baselined, the schedule is used to measure work progress, manage resource assignments, track mile- stones, and monitor and report on project performance metrics.
4. Control progress to ensure success. The project planner proactively manages the schedule to ensure that the project is delivered on time. As part of this responsibility, the project planner must regu- larly collect task statuses; update the schedule; analyze any varia- tion or forecasted variation to the plan, emphasizing items such as critical path, slipped tasks, and upcoming tasks; calculate, ana- lyze, and present metrics such as earned value; manage resource assignments, including submitting resource requests, monitoring current allocations, and forecasting future needs; and meet with the project manager to discuss project status.
100 Optimizing Human Capital
5. Track and analyze costs. The project planner must work with available accounting and project management software tools to track actual (or blended) costs, actual time charged against the project, equipment usage, procured resources, etc. He or she must also analyze cost run rates and variations to extrapolate or forecast total costs, as well as report findings to the project manager, project office, and any financial oversight committee.
6. Manage issue, risk, and change control. The project planner ensures that issues, risks, and change requests are identified, ana- lyzed, and estimated so they can be escalated to the appropriate levels of management for disposition, and documented or tracked in the project’s collaboration database. The project planner moni- tors issue, risk, and change request resolution dates; contacts team members listed as responsible parties for status and documentation;
offers assistance to responsible parties to facilitate progress or resolution meetings; and provides the project manager with the status of open issues, risks, and changes.
What Makes a Good Project Planner?
To efficiently handle the responsibilities outlined above, the successful project controller or project planner must possess technical expertise in project management software and related spreadsheet or database (finan- cial, resource) tools, as well as business process expertise in cost budgeting and estimating, risk analysis, critical path diagramming and analysis, resource forecasting, and change control. In contrast to the project man- ager candidate, the ideal project planner has the following personal and professional characteristics:
Logical thinker and problem solver Organized and detail-focused Numbers-oriented
The ability to interpret complicated and interconnected data Communication skills, especially as they apply to project informa-
tion
Project management software expertise
Application software expertise (accounting, procurement, etc.) Table 4.3 describes the various areas of competence we have identified for top planners.
It is important to note that the project planner may be supporting several projects simultaneously (based on project size and work experi- ence). Therefore, he or she must also be flexible in dealing with multiple
Why Project Managers Fail … and How to Help Them Succeed 101
project managers, while maintaining the required level of standards demanded by the organization.
Just as with project managers of varying experience and skill, one will find a hierarchy in the project planning and controls arena. A serious project controls person will have a breadth of experience that encompasses many of what we have termed “specialty areas,” such as change (config- uration) control, risk management (from the perspective of quantifying risks with the tools), issues management, action item tracking, multiproject
TABLE 4.3 What We Look for in a Project Planner Schedule
Management
WBS development, critical path analysis, float analysis, schedule analysis, baseline, procedures and processes, general logic, frequency of updates and how obtained, change control, tools (software), scope management.
Resource Management
Method for managing, resource-loaded schedules, baseline, utilization analysis, scope management, frequency of updates and how obtained, change control, tools (software).
Cost
Management
Baseline, procedures and processes, types of analysis — break-even, roi, trend, estimating, frequency of updates and how obtained, change control, tools (software).
Reporting Management
Determine effective reporting needs, determine level of management to receive reports; baseline, financial reports, earned value (bcws/bcwp/acwp) analysis, types of reports — schedule, resource, cost, trend analysis.
Facilitation Requirements
Effective meeting leadership, effective management of difficult stakeholders and team members, knowledge of requirements for the project charter and project plan, capability to obtain necessary input for project charter and project plan, capability to obtain updates and status.
Communication Skills
Conflict management, proven oral communication skills, proven written communication skills — reports, e-mails, team written communications, effective communications in difficult situations.
Experience Type of industry (government, construction, utility, etc.), type of experience and number of years, job
responsibilities, decision making roles, level of reporting, industry tools (software).
Education College degrees and field of study, specialized classes, certificates, specialized certifications, project
management professional (pmp), certified cost engineer.
102 Optimizing Human Capital
reporting, executive reporting, scheduling integration, organizational resource management, multiproject resource analysis, forecasting, and leveling, multiproject what-if analysis, management of the organizational (enterprise) resource library, schedule estimating, cost estimating, etc. And, just as with project managers, the organization will benefit from establish- ing a career path from the specialist team member level to a sophisticated divisional project controls position.
Results: Increasing Project Efficiency and Success
There is no denying that the role of project planner has the power to positively impact project performance and project success rates. In fact, organizations that have already installed project planners, such as State Farm Insurance Companies, have seen immediate improvements. Jeanne Childers, Director of State Farm’s Systems Project Office, states, “We’ve been using the project planner role for the past six years, and with solid results. What our project managers are finding most helpful is that they can delegate time-consuming yet critical tasks like updating and analyzing schedules. This enables the project manager to focus more time on higher- level issues and leadership responsibilities. By utilizing the planner role we’ve been able to expand the capacity of our project managers to handle more projects concurrently.”
Childers concluded, “We’re finding that our project planners at State Farm are an excellent asset during the project planning phase. Many of our planners have become very skilled at organizing and leading project planning meetings. In addition, we’re in the process of expanding the role of our planners to take on other project management responsibilities
— under the direction of a project manager — for segments of our larger efforts.”14
Another insurance executive characterized the roles relationships in this way: “We like to think of the project manager as the CEO of the project, and the project planner as the CFO. Like the CEO and CFO, both the project manager and project planner carry out crucial duties, and both need to possess significant, albeit different, skill sets and experiences in order to bring the projects in on time, within budget, and at agreed quality levels.”15
In building the business case for planner, some of the benefits of developing this as a separate position and career path include:
It allows project managers to take on additional projects.
It reduces risk in schedule slippage.
It allows for more consistent and accurate status reporting.