Craig Brown described his response to questions about technical teams and the management of technical teams. This got me thinking about how I would respond to the same questions from the point of view of Project or Program Management.
First let me say that managing the people side of projects and programs is not my strong suit. There are people in our firm that are much better than me when it comes to the "softer side." I know this and surround myself with people who either share my limit and focus on the technical side of management or people who have strong people skills and enjoy sorting out all the "softer" issues.
I converted the questions into Program Management and Project Management questions. Remember Program Management is the management of Project Managers, not projects.
Q1: How do you select the best possible candidate for the project management team?
Q2: How do you ensure each member of the project management team is motivated?
Q3: What do you do when the project is getting behind schedule or over budget?
Q4: How do you pick the methodology for managing the project?
Q5: What is the best advice to give a project manager?
Question 1: Selecting the right Project Management Candidate
Project Management is a practice and it is a theory. Both are needed. The principles of project management are the starting point for the selection.
- Does the candidate understand the principles of project management?
- Pick your favorite set of principles. PMBOK's Knowledge Areas are a good starting point.
- Can the candidate show the interviewer how the principles fit together.
The management of project is an experience based practice.
- Is there evidence in the form of work examples of the management of past projects?
- Is this evidence credible?
- Can the evidence be connected to the principles?
Does the candidate have the temperament to manage projects?
- Organizing the people
- Organizing the work
- Attention to the details of planning and scheduling, requirements oversight, stakeholder management, and the myriad of other annoying activities needed for a successful project?
Question 2: Ensuring Each Member of the Project is Motivated
Motivation is many times in the eye of the beholder. Finding out what motivates the Project Management starts with explaining what she is passionate about? Self actualization is probability not high of the list for the stakeholders. Getting the project out the door, with the team sharing to same gold of getting the project out the door is a good start.
Helping others to improve their project management skills is a good start. But these improvement need to be applied to getting the project out the door. Projects are finite things.
Question 3: What to Do When the Project is Behind Schedule and Over Budget
There must always be measures of physical percent complete.
- How far ahead did the project manager see this coming?
- !@#$ Happens, deal with it
- What actions were, are, or could be taken to "get to green?"
- Are the plans to get to green credible?
- What does Plan B look like?
- Is the team supportive of Plan B?
- How did we get to this point and how will we avoid it in the future?
Question 4: How to Pick A Method
Project management is not about software development, testing, Use Cases or all the other stuff disguised as project management. Project Management methods are not software development methods. Software Development methods are about developing software. Developing software is part of Project Management - the Technical Solution part and a bit of the Requirements elicitation part. If the Program Manager is confused between these two, get a new project manager.
The Project Management method needs to cover - in some way - the Knoledge Areas of PMBOK. "Cover in Some Way," means the method needs to address the Knowledge Areas with a method that "smells like" it does what the Knowledge Area says.
If you don't like PMBOK, pick another project management method. But in the end the Knowledge Areas of PMBOK need to be found in some form on your project, or you're not doing project management. You might be doing something else, but it's not project management.
Question 5: Best Advice for a Project Manager
Ask yourself the following questions every morning:
- Start with the Project Breathalzyer
- Repeat as needed
