Who owns float?

If you had been a student of mine, you would have been taught that float has real value to a project.

If float has value, then who owns the float in a project schedule.

Recently in one of my classes we have been engaged in that discussion. Lots of folks seem to think the PM owns float, by right. Others felt the issue of using float should be resolved in the Project Charter. One, less than hopeful, student pointed out that his boss always stole float by delaying his decisions until the last possible moment.

My position is that whomever uses the float owns it, unless there is some negative ramification against the float thief, she takes it she owns it.

Dr. Rogers’ Rule1 If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it!  If float has value that you can measure you can manage it. If float has no measurable value then it can’t be managed.

My suggestion is that the team or PM place a cash value on each day of float and let those who need it, or use it, buy it. or the float thief could pay it back in-kind.

The take away. Float has value, charge for it!

The “meaning” of work

Did you ever wonder if all your hard work is meaningless? Its ok to ask this fundamental work life question. Hey! if we wonder about the meaning of life in general, why not about the meaning of work?

I don’t claim to know the answer to the meaning of life question, but I do have an answer for the meaning of work question.

You work to earn a living. (i.e. feed, clothe and shelter yourself and maybe your family) and if you are very, very lucky you work to have fun.

I count myself among the lucky ones. I rarely worked a day in my adult life when I wasn’t earning well and having fun. Having fun  by learning something new each day (I am by nature curious) and interacting in a positive way with those around me. (Was I perfect, no but I think I was at least a 90% er, 90% useful and positive)

If you want to decide on a career change. Ask yourself two questions.

1. Do I satisfy my physical needs through this work? If the answer is yes then you best analyze any “need” to change careers (or employers)
2. If you answered yes and are having fun each day, why worry? If you answered yes to the first question ad no to having fun, just chalk that up to bad luck and put your head down and get back to work.

The take away, in today's economic reality,  a job is a gift and should be considered as much, as the present conditions continue. (I don’t subscribe to the latest industry views on limited or no employer obligations to workers and worker loyalty, but that is another posting). If you are having fun, count yourself very lucky indeed.

You don’t need to be loved just respected.

I have been reading a lot of PM discussion boards, blogs, comments and individual recommendations lately, and it seems to me that lots of individuals want to love and admire their managers and leaders. I guess they expect a perfect work world. Maybe that’s a need to replace our messy social, personal and community lives with one of perfect order. Lots of these commenter's were looking for a perfect “holy’ person to look up to. A manager who they would follow to the death.

Sorry folks! you should expect an imperfect human for a manager, and if you are lucky, he or she will act as professionally as possible for the greater part of their working lives. They will make mistakes, and they will sometimes make you angry or upset. If you are lucky you will get a 90% plus perfect manager.

It is difficult for us to set aside the bad things and look at the positive. We want to live and work in a perfect world, and when we have time on our hands we often focus on bad rather than positive. We expect positive, so bad sticks out.

I never wanted to be loved as a manager, just respected. Respected for what I was able to accomplish not who I was. Who I am, is for my personal life. I had employees for ten years of more who didn’t believe I was married when then finally met my spouse. I gave 110% to my job, but I never gave my wife to my job.

I suspect that I was at least a 90% er. I made some whopping errors in judgment, and had character lapses (I still do) over my career and I am sure that I made individual employees, vendors and even clients uncomfortable at times, but I am certain that I tried hard and mostly acted in a positive manner.

The take away:

Don’t expect your boss to be perfect, look for the over arching trend.

Don’t expect to be perfect yourself,try and be at least a 90% er.

Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark!

A federal government study found that after 15% of the project duration and the project is in a ditch, there is very little if any possibility of bringing it back. You might get it in on time, but not on budget, or you might get it to budget, but not on time. The quality might be degraded, or the scope reduced. Something has to give.

To avoid having to call Project 911, do the right things in planning a project. Before you take any actions on a project, ensure that the measurable deliverables are agreed to by stakeholders and build a detailed plan, especially for the start of the project.

In the development and construction world, where I spent most of my career, things rarely went south when we were painting the walls, or moving in the furniture. Bad projects, went south during the buying of the sub-vendors or digging the hole to start. I  am sure that in bad IT projects there is an analogous southward trip.

Projects go bad at the start, and we have evidence if they are not corrected early they rarely recover.

The time to call Project 911 is early, before the 15% deadline, but put them on hold.

I always used the strategy of significantly engaging clients early in the project. They were there when things were turning and they could see for themselves where they could help. (I did have had a couple of rare occasions where the client did not want the project to succeed.)

If its early and the client can be engaged in the rescue, don’t be embarrassed to ask for their help. You  might loose the client in the future, but it sure will be a little less stressful, than having a bad project and loosing the client anyway.

On two occasions, for significant international clients, I was called by the client to help the team recover the project. I was not the designer or the builder, nor even selling consulting services at the time. The client saw the project going south and brought help to for the team, my task: set realistic deliverables and help the team begin to  meet them.  Take direction from this ancient Chinese proverb, and always spend largest effort in the front end of a project.

Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark

Look around your office, if you have one.

I got an email from my wife the other day with a list of things that are disappearing form our daily lives.  Younger folks don’t miss them, they are already irrelevant to their lives.

As a good way to predict what your work life will be in a few years, look around your office (if you still have one) and try and think of the work as it was, or must have been like just three decades ago. (When the old grey haired guy down the hall started work here, or some simulation of what he or she might look like had they survived.)

The 1980 PM office

• Single line telephones with no speakerphones or wireless.
• No fax machines (They are already going extinct after only 25 years or so)
• Black chalk boards (if one at all) Maybe a cork tack board.
• A Rolodex (some of you won’t even know what that is)
• Carbon copies (then carbonless copies)
• Adding machines pretending to be “computers”
• Coat hooks.
• Book cases, with books.
• File cabinets with files rather than obsolete computing  junk.
• Real wood desks.
• Uncomfortable desk chairs.
• Pink phone message pads.
• Sticky pads (invented by 3M in the mid 1970’s)
• A real live receptionist.
• A typing pool.
• A hard square briefcase (not a messenger or laptop bag)
• A light table to overlay drawings and tracings.
• Green accountants tablets. (for writing not medicating).
• A mainframe computer that was slower than a pencil.
• Yellow pencils and erasers.
• Liquid-paper, white out in the white bottle with the black label.
• Copy machines almost as they are today, and I don’t know why?
• Maybe even a mimeograph machine.

Write down everything you see in and around your office, and try and figure out when and how it will become obsolete. Then invest in the replacement product companies.

My bets:

• Assigned offices, hell why even have a headquarters building.
• Desk top PC’s will be gone within 5 years replaced by netbooks, ipads, and/or thin client servers.
• Mice and keyboards of any kind.
• Remote controls, garage door openers and keys replaced by iphone type devices.
• The desk top telephone as you see it now. Why we have them is a mystery to me already!
• Paper, but we though that it would be gone a generation ago, but we make more now than ever. Paper must be in our souls.

This might be a good team building exercise next time you start a meeting!

Fearlessness

You might think that I have dropped off the face of the earth, and with all the really ugly things happening in the economy, politics (Arizona citizen) and in nature (BP, oil spills, earthquakes, tornados), you might be right, but you aren’t.

Over the past several weeks I have done lots of optimistic things because I am FEARLESS.

I just posted to a discussion about what makes a great project manager and I included the seven predictable, but lame, items I use to teach PM 101.

My motto: Indolese  Rapio, so those ideas are pretty much stolen from Stephen Covey, who stole them from Peter Drucker, who stole them from someone else before him.

However, I added the one that I think really propelled my career in Project Management:

FEARLESSNESS

That doesn’t mean I am foolish, ignorant, or un-thoughtful. It means that once I have analyzed the risks (and I do worry a lot) and rewards of a venture, I move forward without trepidation or concern for the outcome.

I know I will survive and be better off than before I started. It has always worked for me.

So here are the FEARLESS  things I have initiated this spring:

• Signed up to develop curriculum and launch a new academic program with a fellow colleague at the university.
• Agreed to take on a volunteer development opportunity in Indian Country.
• Put in an experimental garden in March and built the deer fences for the permanent garden, as well as purchased the materials for the raised beds.
• Hired an architect to design an addition to my home in Arizona, even though we are probably at a small net negative worth. (slightly underwater)
• Arranged to refinance that home with a view to be able to stay in it for at least ten years.
• Opened a new LLC venture and landed my first paying client. (not sure how much profit there will be, but hey its a shot).
• Let my wife buy an expensive piece of art that she has wanted for a long time, without a clue as to how I would pay for it. (Not too expensive)
• Offering six graduate courses on-line this summer. A new personal record.
• Determined to blog post more often. (Blogging has really helped my writing, even if you don’t notice it)

So here is the take away: See an opportunity, analyze the risks and rewards. If you go for it, go without fear. No matter the outcome you will be better for taking the effort.

PS. When I was thirty-five years old, I was given an opportunity to work with a small group in a company turn around. The company had 15,000 employees worldwide. I was given the six western states with $400M in work. We busted our butts, and took our lumps for eight months and had the company turned around when we were slapped with RICO suit by the DOJ, we folded three days later. 

What I got: a Vice Presidency on my resume, ten years of business experience gained in less than a year, a reputation for a can do fearless manager, and a six month vacation at the beach before I joined my next start up venture.

All face to face meetings to disseminate information are a complete waste and should be banned in modern practice.

All meetings and/or portions of meetings that are to transmit information should be banned from modern project management practice.

All meetings that do not fully engage all attendees for the full meeting should be banned from project management practice, or the unengaged should be dismissed form the useless portions of the meeting.

All meetings that do not have a specific desired outcome of some solved or partially solved problem, should be banned from modern project management practice. (Well organized planning meetings and team building exercises qualify as outcome desired meetings.)

Corollary: All meetings should be working meetings.

In the old days, when we had one telephone and it was connected by two wires and no speaker , we used regularly scheduled meetings to transmit information, and get commitments and occasionally solve some pressing problems. We also used the meetings as a record to prove someone other than “me” was responsible for delays and cost overruns.

That was then and this is now.

Having a meeting solely to transmit information, assumes the attendees are either illiterate and/or have no e-information skills. That’s great for team morale (not) and to imply that you think your client is rather dull. Both are great business productivity improvement schemas. I once worked for a college dean who would bring all the memos and notes he had received that week and read them to us. What a waste of everyones time.

With modern communication tools and portable scheduling devices, top managers should easily be able to schedule meetings so that individuals can come and go  when they need to be engaged min the business of the meetings. If they are not engaged, let them drop out to the lobby (or better provide a “green room”). The reality is that busy and smart folks are already texting or reading email when they are not engaged in any meeting they are forced to attend. We have great electronic communication tools to organize, plan, organize, run and  follow through meetings.

This week I attended a meeting by a teleconference call while I attended a webinar. I would watch the webinar and tune in when I needed to be in the meeting and I did the same for the meeting following the agenda to trigger my engagement. The meeting was held 250 miles away, and the webinar was sent from an adjacent building. I was also supervising a staff worker in my office and monitoring my email and voice mail. (my voice mail is available on my laptop.) I did all this with one rather plain notebook PC.

Meetigns for meeting sake are often just ego support for the sponsor and many times for the attendees. In my last organizational management role (academic chair) we were required by the institution to hold regular faculty meetings. I would walk around to the faculty and “call a meeting”, the meeting would last the semester while I walked around from office to office. We adjourned the meeting on graduation day with a social lunch. Many of the faculty just couldn’t get it. They argued for meetings and more meetings. I refused, as these meetings were exercises in futility, where the smartest among them just wanted to prove how dumb I was, and how they knew everything. It took then ten years to oust me (on my schedule) for not providing them with a regular outlet for their anger and frustration. There is a reason things take forever to change in education. However the day is coming for change, the failed economy, on-line education and robust teaching and learning technology and productivity measures will deliver the necessary impetus for education change.

Caveat: in our ever remote lives, we need social contact. I readily admit that fact. I mostly work at home and do not need an office, except to keep my public persona memorabilia and very occasionally meet someone. I go to “work” for social engagement and to gage the sense of the organization. That's for fun and easier to triangulate what’s going on. As I only have one part time tele-worker to supervise, we rarely get together, but we both make sure we do that at least a few times a year.

The take away: Think about how much you are wasting of your own and others time when you schedule and plan meetings. is their some other more effective and efficient way to get the job done. If there isn’t a better way than meetings, invent one!

 

Planting a Garden

What in the world has planting a garden have to do with Project Management?

I think a lot.

First my confession: I have always been a gardener of some sort or another. I will pick three oranges off my orange tree this year. Its tough keeping an orange tree in the mountains, even in a green house.

I grew up in a neighborhood where most families kept a vegetable garden (a vestige of the great depression and the war years) so I knew how to plant and pick carrots (my specialty) and pick tomatoes. My grandmother even had an urban garden where she grew the cucumbers to be pickled later. One year a few decades ago, my wife and I shared a quarter acre garden with friends. it was a lot of work but we had lots of vegetables for ourselves and our fiends from June to December.

Mostly over the  last few years I have planted grasses, trees, flowering shrubs and flowering plants. This year we set in an experimental garden with a wide variety of vegetables, in a variety of micro environments. I will report later this summer on what we learned.

But I digress.

A good project manager should be a bit of a gardener.

• Gardeners think and plan ahead.
• What can we plant next week, next year?
• What can we grow this season?
• Gardeners are experimenters.
• What new things can we plant?
• Will they actually grow?
• How can we change the environment for our plants?
• Gardeners are nurturers.
• We water and weed  so our plants can thrive?
• Gardeners are Darwinists.
• Sometimes things just won’t thrive and we pull them out so as not to waste effort on the unfruitful things?
• Gardeners are reapers.
• We will pick our flowers and vegetables in due time.
• Gardeners are opportunists.
• Ever find a “volunteer” plant or tree in your garden? I have, and watched it grow.
• Gardeners are investors.
• We save seeds or buy inexpensive seeds and harvest valuable crops?
• Gardeners should be practical, but we aren’t
• Think about my orange tree!

As a developer/project manager I always thought in terms of planting seeds that would grow into valuable plants to be picked by someone (not necessarily me). I also knew that sometimes those seeds would either not sprout or would wither and die, and there would be nothing I could do about it.

The take away: as a good PM, think of yourself as a gardener. You plant the seeds, add water and light, and the plants do all the work!

 

If you win you loose!

Many, many times in my career I have come across the rotting carcasses of managers who had stood on a high horse and won the battle only to loose the war in ragged retreat.

One of my mantras about entering a fight was: Can we win?, and if we win will it benefit us. Some might feel that was mealy mouthed, soft manager speak, but I disagree.s. I heard many times from employees that leaders should always fight for what was right!, but more often than not the team could never agree to what was righteous. My attitude was, if the team couldn’t define what was right, I sure wasn’t going to lead them into hell for it. I also felt strongly that it was actually a show of strength to not go down a path where teammates and employees wanted you to go, just to show who was the toughest SOB in the place.

Thisissue came up today, in a discussion with a senior construction manager who is leading a project that is going to hell in a hand-basket. The root cause of the projects failure was that the contractor had left $250,000 out of his bid and was low, (every one involved knew he had a bad bid) and the owner thought that they could take advantage of this error in this economy.

Wrong headed thinking. This project will end up in litigation. The bonding company will not make the owner whole (as they believe) financially.

And the proximate reason for guaranteed failure is not the low bid (that's a given restraint). The current reason for guaranteed project failure is that the owner has taken the first error (the low bid) personally and is editorializing project problem rather than stating the facts and working to fix the problem.

The senior manager has tried to caution the owner about making this a “personal” fight rather than a business difficulty. In the owner’s view, the contractor is an agent of the devil who must be overcome. In the real world of bonding companies, courts and juries, personal anger and personality conflicts are disallowed as irrelevant.

Five years from now, this matter will still be in litigation and all the lawyers costs, lost opportunities and anxiety will have been for nothing.

The take away:

Stay off your high horse, and be a business person. Project problems are not personal. When you write letters and record facts, lay off the editorializing about motives. Keep anger and idle threats out of the record and out of your mind. Anger only clouds your reasoning to the best possible solution for the project business problem.

I am pretty sure my health is still good, because I learned early not to assign motivations to people or companies that I had disputes with, but to deal with each problem as an optimization solution basis for everyone involved not just for me. I tried to avoid mutually assured destruction.

Even the best fail to heed their own advice.

I am one to admit mistakes when I make them.

Over the last few weeks I was very busy developing future opportunities. While attending to the future, I lost track of the hired help, and as you would expect, I got jammed up on Friday.

I have someone to cover some of my web work. She moved (without notice to me, and why should she?). However she lost internet for a week, and I wasn’t back checking the status of her projects.

She (or it could have been a he) fell a week behind. My name is on the door, so I fell a week behind.

On this project, we were able to overcome by working over the weekend. (I had to defer some other things). However we had some slightly upset customers, who I now have to “up the service level” to keep them from bolting. This was not a fatal error, but it was an error in judgment on my part. On your part, a similar error could be fatal to the project so:…….

The take away is: When you think things are just going swimmingly well, they probably are not.

PS Its not arrogant to consider yourself one of the best, the best always get up shake it off and move forward, and then analyze how to eliminate the mistake.

PPS. The customers acknowledged, they had recognized that we were falling behind, but didn’t even mention it to me, so I guess they were not that disappointed.

 

First, do no harm! Hire the right people.

The first thing HR or any hiring manager needs to do is hire the right people. Notice I di not say “good” people. I believe to the core of my soul there are very few bad people. Most people who are hired are “good” people. But why are so few “good” people the right hires.
What follows is my tried and true test questions of myself when hiring:

• Does the person fit with our company culture? I am not talking about any external cultural manifestations, I mean core beliefs and actions.
• Will they get along appropriately with others in the firm?
• Will they become bored, or worse, will their ambitions upset the harmony we have achieved. (I know many many firms thrive on dissonance, and I have worked and thrived in them, but MOST companies thrive in accord!
• Will they be satisfied with our company pay, promotion and transfer system?
• Will they criticize or bully others or push to hard for change?
• Will they need constant care (high maintenance) and praise feeding?
• Are they smarter than you, and if so, will they have the grace not to rub that in your face every minute of every day?

After you analyze the above, and you  might make a hire that doesn't exactly fit (be prepared to manage that problem if you judge the reward worth the headache.) then ask?
Do they have the skills, abilities and desires to do the job you ask them to do?
If they don’t, don’t make the hire.

Rule Number 8. Have Fun

Of my rules for Project Management. I think the most important one is Rule 8. Have Fun.

Project management is hard work, and the best project managers who get the scary projects aren’t always assured success. Scary projects have lots of risks, and sometimes the forces arrayed against the project are immense. So its essential to have fun with your work. If it is painful to go to work every day, then get a new job. I left Project Management due to my health and that of my wife. We made a great new life as academics and teachers and I make sure to have fun every day. The pay is less but so is the stress, and I get to consult and teach about something that I have spent forty years studying and practicing.

During a productive part of my youth, I spent a decade taking on broken projects, or first of a kind projects. I happened into it as an assistant project manager, when Ford Motor Company, pushed by Japanese auto makers on quality, decided that they could design and build a full paint shop ($150M, 1980 dollars) in one year. That was tall order enough, and then they forgot to get an EPA permit that put the project start back 14 weeks. When we asked for an extension, they said, sorry Dec 15th is still the deadline. It was great fun with 300 managers and supervisors pushing 3000 workers on a project that went 20 hours per day seven days per week. When we completed the work to deadline (within budget I think), an executive from Ford came to the plant and congratulated “we happy few, we band of brothers”, and then lowered the boom by stating that Ford Motor Company had their doubts about  the possibility of our completing the project on time but they were very happy with the outcome and henceforth all Ford Motor Co major plant construction would be done to similar schedules. Almost thirty years later I am still in contact with a handful of the living team members. My life has been blessed with membership on other fantastic teams.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Shakespeare Henry V

The take away:

If it hurts to go to work, find another job. Project Management skills are vital to dozens of different industries and hundreds of thousands of potential employers. I know that times are tight and a job is a job, but if you work yourself to death with stress what good is that to your family.

A former student and friend returned this year from a military tour in  Iraq.  Here was part of the message he sent me.

Dr. Rogers, I never knew how important home and the family was, until I was taken away from it. 

A good lesson hard learned. So Have Fun with your work and your family.

So you call that a project plan! or my “Eating Project WBS”

One of the fundamental roles of a project manager is putting together a coherent and understandable plan with the buy-in (consensus) of the team.

After you have a good plan, you need to be able to execute. That’s where a solid WBS pays for itself.

The size of the project is irrelevant. Grocery shopping, for me, requires a list. I make the list and then rearrange it into a hierarchy to suit my local supermarket layout. All vegetables together, cereals also together, etc. Its been a long time since I had to write a budget figure on the list, but with the economy as it is, that might happen again soon

I take the grocery list (or what you might call my “EATING PROJECT WBS”) with me to the market and as I complete a task like “lettuce to shopping cart”, it gets checked off. Without my “Eating Project WBS” I would probably return home with about 1% of the required work done, leading to extra costs and re-work, as well as a delayed dinner or two.

I have had this habit for almost my entire adult life. When I was a young man in college I lived about 30 miles from town and the campus without a car, the last bus stopped about a mile from my home at 8:00 pm. (this was in the pre cell phone era and certainly in the pre Internet era. When I went to town in the morning I had my “daily life project WBS” made before I left for town. If I wasn’t organized, I didn’t eat, or maybe even sleep in my own bed, and I certainly didn’t meet up with my friends.

The take away:

No matter how small the project a rudimentary WBS will make successful project execution more likely.

Interviewing for a new job? here is a tip!

If you are looking for a new job, or know someone who is, or if you want to understand your own company, here is a quick tip to set yourself apart.

I have seen reports that say as many as 15% more firms last year instituted formal ethics policies. My guess is that after the next round of business corruption reports and investment failures that the number of firms with open ethics policies will be increasing.

Would you want to do business with an investment firm that did not have a transparent honesty policy? Be on the look out for advertising from firms about how they are dealing with the meltdown and how their ethics policies have improved performance for clients.

So, when you go for your next interview, make sure you have fully checked out the firm that is recruiting you. Study their policy. If they don’t have a written ethics policy, either pass or find out why? I once hired a major construction firm for a project. I was shocked to learn they had no formal safety manual. When I challenged them, they pointed out that safety wasn’t second in their firm, it was first, and that safety was embedded in every policy manual, including ones on the desk of typists for proper posture and chair selection. I guessed they had directions on how to avoid paper cuts, they were that serious about safety.

The take away, know your companies ethics policies and abide by them. If you are looking for a new position check the written policy of the prospective firm. Ask pointed questions of the interviewer, such as: “Can you provide me with an example of where your written ethics policy was crucial in protecting an employee and/or a client from harm.” This might surprise the interviewer and set you apart as a serious person worth a second look.

If they seem clueless then  you can suspect the policy is a sham. if they are proud of their firm they will know at least where to look to find the written policy.

If you don’t agree with what they have written pass. If you get the job, live by the policy, in spite of what you might think you see from others around you. If the policy is a sham, get a new job.

Suck it up and take the blame!

As a project manager, rarely does everything go your way. Mistakes by the team happen and they are often seen from outside by supervisors and clients.

When I was younger, and on the south side of wisdom, I would get upset when mistakes were made and things didn’t go my way. I rarely got angry with a person. At least I was that wise. However; I would show my displeasure with the outcome or the product. My team members learned to sense when things were not going well. They were certain that when things were not going well that the focus would be on fixing the problem not casting blame or doling out punishments or worse yet corporate purge.

When things went wrong, I would suck it up, take the blame, and move on. When I reported problems to clients, I always had recovery or mitigation plans ready. After awhile my clients and bosses rarely asked for the details of the plan, they knew that the fix was was already in the works. I found, that every time I took the blame, my stature in the eyes of my client and/or my boss went up. They knew I was a stand up guy, and wouldn't waste effort on things not related to the project moving forward.

Hey, I wasn’t averse to providing career guidance and or an opportunity for an individual to excel with our competitors, but I felt that retaining the new knowledge gained by the error often outweighed the cost of the error. One approach that served me well in “fixing” problem employees was to recognize that there were no “bad employees”, just mistakes in hiring, training, assignment or supervision, and those mistakes always led back to me.

Once I discovered that there were no “bad employees’, I learned to reassign work towards the individuals strength. They could regain team trust by performing at a high level in their skill mastery area. They would get back on the horse that threw them, so to speak. Sometimes, as an added benefit to me,  the individual would get angry and leave; saving me the public humiliation of firing someone who I had hired, trained, or assigned and who I had certainly supervised.

The take away:

• There are no “bad employees”, just hiring, training, assignment or supervision errors.
• Suck it and take the blame, it can raises your status in an organization.

PS. As I recounted in a previous blog. I once had the opportunity to take the blame for others, and was promoted on the spot to a direct report to the CEO of a company with 2000 employees. I was newly hired to fix a project (I spent a decade in project turnarounds). The guilty team members were all assembled, expecting a few executions. The CEO walked in and said “Who’s in charge of this mess/”. I said “I am but I have a plan to fix it.” He looked at me and said: “Good, then you have my support and please let me know directly what you need from the corporation to fix the problem.” and he left the room. It took about one minute for the team to recognize who was now in charge and that I had saved at least some of them from a trip to the pink slip office.

PPS. If your company has public executions of mistake makers. I suggest that they are not a “learning company” and you should seek a new employer.

The Project Management Circus Parade.

Information is key to orderly and enjoyable project management. Information is one of the necessary resources for efficient and effective project management.

Dr. Rogers' Rule 5: Project Communication is an active, two-way process, not a one-way street

Dr. Rogers' Rule 8: Have Fun!

Information coming down “Communication Street” often looks just like a circus parade. Lots of elephants, jugglers, and clowns obscuring the tractors, trailers, and cages overlaid with a cacophony of sounds and smells. Communication Street should be like a mythical wide boulevard with shading elms and sidewalk shops and cafes; a perfect Paris or New York thoroughfare. A two way street, broad enough to allow the parade of information to make a straight run from one end to the other even with the overload of busy cross traffic, parade watchers, souvenir hawkers, and pot holes, a typical project endures.

Like a major city artery “Communication Street” needs to provide for the boutiques, cafes and shops (your matrix providers of services) that line the sidewalks. Your allied team members need to pick up the information they need to stay in business without interfering with the project parade and without the parade overwhelming their main business enterprises.


“Communication Street” also needs to allow two way traffic during the parade. The entire project team needs to know what’s happening up and down the parade route so that they can react to the lions escape. The sidewalk cafes need to stay open during the parade to provide a place where one can rest a minute and pick up or drop off information.


Effective and efficient communication of information is essential to project success. Top project managers are like “Circus Ring Leaders”. They know how to lead the parade down Communication Street, ignoring the jugglers, clowns, and elephants while picking up and dropping off information at the cafes and making it all the way to the Circus Grounds.

Already behind as the new year starts? Crash the schedule!

As usual, the new year brings new expectations for productivity increases, quicker and smarter project delivery and as always some new twist coming out of no-where.

This posting will review the fundamentals of crashing a schedule. Whether you find yourself behind schedule with clients breathing down your neck, or you want to look for ways to move your project ahead of schedule, there are certain fundamentals to consider.

It has been my experience that even good project managers make mistakes because they fail to master the fundamentals. It is always a good idea to review fundamentals.

If you plan to shorten a schedule by crashing, take these basic steps.

1. Look at the critical path activities. (Assumes the good practice of creating a CPM schedule before starting a project.)
2. Review longish activities in the near future that have small associated costs and make a list of the targeted activities. (You might have to use Pareto analysis to fill the list, but that's a good thing).
3. From your list, pick the longest task with the smallest cost. (Low hanging fruit.)
4. Analyze what resources would need to be added or compressed to shorten the activity. Never overlook new technologies or new ways of doing the same thing. I once was able to crash a schedule simply by de-cluttering the workspace of tools. (The idea came from junior team members.)
5. Analyze any "added" cost of the added resources.
6. Simulate "what-if" to the critical path if you shorten the chosen activity. You might just create a new critical path that does not significantly shorten your schedule.
7. Analyze the cost benefit, or non-monetary cost benefit and make a decision, yes or no.
8. Repeat activities 3 to 7 until you have looked at a variety of options and new schedules.
9. Bring the team together to discuss the options and decide on a course of action. The team will probably have some good ideas and maybe see opportunities or pitfalls that you have overlooked.

When the decision, which activities to crash, has been made, ensure that it is communicated widely and that you have buy-in from anyone who can help or hurt actualization.

Pay promptly for the change.

Communicate success or failure. Failure should be rewarded at least by acknowledging the effort and diligence of the team.

Start looking for opportunities again.