The key question in Project Management

Most managers, even if they don’t have the formal title of ‘Project Manager’, manage projects. They take requirements from users, allocate resources to the task necessary to deliver those requirements, and do their best to complete that task, with the available resources, within a specific time-frame.

If the manager recognizes that doing all of the above competently,  requires more than just run of the mill management skills, then they likely go out and learn something about this unique process. They quickly find out there are two primary sources of information; PRINCE (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment) or PMBOK (Project Management Book Of Knowledge) – They also discover that there are certifications available to validate that they have studied (for many many hours) these sources (and paid all the appropriate fees to sit exams) and can now speak the lingua franca of Project managers around the world.

With these technical bona fides in hand, they are now officially Project Managers.

There’s a problem of course. It’s the same problem inherent in all management roles. Project Management isn’t primarily, or even mostly, a ‘technical’ skill. It requires people skills and those are, shall we say, “more difficult” to learn from a book, and it’s even more difficult to gauge the quality of those skills in a pre-packaged exam.

At the core of project management we’re doing something conceptually simple.

• We identify a task that needs doing.
• We determine that this task will require a certain amount of effort.
• We assign a set of resources with which to execute the effort.
• We now have a time-frame in which to complete the task.

The PM’s role is to ensure that all the sub-tasks necessary to complete the project, are completed according to schedule. When necessary, resources are re-allocated to sub-tasks, or obstacles are cleared, to bring tasks back on schedule.

That’s it.

The fly in the ointment is the “when necessary” part.

How do we know if everything is going according to plan? Since we’re not actually doing the work – we’re just ‘managing’ the work - We have to ask the persons/teams working on the sub-tasks a simple question…”Are we where we should be, according to the plan?”

IF the information we receive in response to the question is accurate? Then we don’t have a problem.

IF the information we receive in response to the question isn’t exactly a true representation of reality?

Then we have TWO problems, one large, the other is off the scale;

                  1) The plan is collapsing, (The large one)

           and 2) We don’t know that. (The one that should keep us up at night)

In other words, we don’t know it’s now necessary to make changes. Neither PRINCE2 nor PMBOK can help us now. We’re rudderless, caught in a maelstrom, heading for the craggy reefs and we’re blissfully unaware of this, while we’re sipping a hot rum toddy in our cozy cabin. We’re doomed I tell you! Doomed! (Sorry a flashback to my younger days managing projects – it won’t happen again.)

The response we receive could be inaccurate for several reasons.

1 – Despite our best and honest intentions, accurately estimating when we will complete a task is almost impossible.

     e.g. I live in Brampton, I’m going to drive to Ottawa. How long will it take me?

          a) Honest answer? I don’t know.

          b) My guess? About 5.5 hours.

          c) My best answer? I’m 95% confident I will arrive in 6 hours +/- 30 minutes.

     The correct answer should be of the c) format – but even then? It’s guesswork – precise guess work, honest guess work, but guess work never-the-less.

The sad, inescapable fact is that we should consume every estimate, with heaping servings of salt. We’re not good at estimating, to pretend otherwise is dangerous. We can get better at it through practise, experience and training. We can also accept that we’re hardwired towards optimism (Otherwise, why get up in the morning?) and adjust accordingly.

2 – We’re reluctant to deliver bad news, especially when we know it won’t be received well.

This is where good people skills reign supreme. Do we create a safe environment for our employees, that encourages the communication of good news, bad news, and sometimes, hopefully not often, the ugly news?

Feeling comfortable delivering bad news isn’t easy. Even when it’s well received by management – it’s an admission that we didn’t deliver as expected. Wrongly expected perhaps because we’re bad at estimating, but still… we didn’t deliver.

The value of bad news is obvious. Would we rather hear that we don’t have enough gas in the car, before or after we pass the last gas station, before entering the 300 kilometer deserted dirt road through the 50º Celsius desert?

Would we rather know six months into a two year project that we underestimated by a year, or later, perhaps one week before the delivery date?

IF we’ve answered yes in both cases, then we need take the time, and make the necessary effort to ensure it is known that we welcome bad news… reluctantly perhaps… but we do need to hear bad news as soon as humanly possible.

This isn’t easy. News that we’ve just cut the power main, or dug into a reservoir, or the project is going to be late, is always going to cause a little bit of stress. Acting on that stress will ensure that next time? We won’t hear about problems until they’ve become a crisis – or perhaps a newspaper headline.

© 2017 Peter de Jager – Peter believes bad news should travel faster than gossip. He’s both naïve and optimistic, connect with him on Linkedin.