Recently the bulk voices in the project management literature are talking about conversations, people skills, tools (PM2.0 tools), and a variety of other 2nd and 3rd order things. While these may be necessary for success, they are far from sufficient.
Some of my favorites come from PMI and voices at PMI.ORG and those firms "selling" project training services based on "human skills," personnel development and all the stuff around things that have little or nothing to do with actually delivering outcomes. "Bending metal into money," is one phrase we use.
What Does Done Look Like for Being a Credible Project Manager?
To be not only necessary but also sufficient we need 5 pieces of information:
- Do we know where we are going?
- Know where you are going by defining “done” at some point in the future. This point may be far in the future – months or years from now. Or closer in the future days or weeks from now.
- How are we going to get there?
- Have some kind of plan to get to where you are going. This plan can be simple or it can be complex. The fidelity of the plan depends on the tolerance for risk by the users of the plan.
- Do we have enough time, resources, and money to reach the end?
- Understand the resources needed to execute the plan. How much time and money is needed to reach the destination. This can be fixed or it can be variable.
- What is going to prevent us from getting there?
- Identify the impediments to progress along the way to the destination. Have some means of removing, avoiding, or ignoring these impediments.
- Do we have some way of measuring physical percent complete?
- Have some way to measure your planned progress, not just your progress. Progress to Plan must be measured in units of physical percent complete.
If we don't have credible answers to these 5 questions, all the people skills, tools, touchy feely courses, facilitator consultants in the world are going to save you from failure.
This approach, while annoying to many, is the core bottom line for our value as project managers. Without credible skills to answer these 5 questions, we have no value to the project.
One Approach To Project Management
When I hear about a tool, a proposed method, some clever new approach, I always think about the words I hear every week on the programs we work.
Be eternally suspicious, take nothing for granted, investigate everything. Program success is obtained only by enormous attention to detail everywhere.
Challenge every proposed item to produce tangible evidentiary material to demonstrate effectiveness and performance. Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) and Measures of Performance (MoP) are core concepts in Systems Engineering. These need to applied to project management.
In the End
The success of a project depends on showing up near the planned completion date, near the planned budget, with enough of the needed features to put the outcome of the project to work. Each of these elements are subject to change (through the change control process).
But no matter the mechanics, the management of the work effort must answer the five questions posed at the top of the post.
Without answers, the project manager and the techncial staff as simply spending the customers money with little hope of success. In fact "hope is the only strategy" at that point.
