Projects fail when the reason why the project is being done isn’t clear, or is a good one.

Projects fail because when we hope that what it will deliver will be good. Fingers-crossed, yes?

We need to know what a project will deliver before we start it. This is known as a Business Case.

When we don’t have a Business Case, or when the Business Case doesn’t prove that the project will deliver the desired outcome, we start the project with a great deal of risk.

So if you’re involved in a project – any project – then ask yourself this: why am I doing this?

If you don’t know, then ask your manager. Chances are, they don’t know too.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Are you a new Project Manager? Then you won’t want to miss these tips to get begin a string of successful projects!

Here are 25 essential tips for you new Project Managers!

1. Where your budget allows, recruit the best, most experienced people onto your projects
2. Play the role as ‘Project Leader’ too – inspire, encourage and create the best environment for success
3. Take the heat for your project team, if you must
4. If required, role up your sleeves and do the work that frees up your people to focus on what they’re good at – even if it’s getting the coffee
5. Be a good listener to your team, and ask questions about their well-being, stress-levels and satisfaction
6. Inject humour as well as discipline. Allow time for a little fun
7. Sell the benefits of your project to all stakeholders constantly – you need to keep them focused on the result!
8. Your project sponsors must always be involved in making big decisions
9. Ask sponsors to assign or approve all experts onto the team, especially external people
10. Ensure that your sponsors approve of (and physically sign-off) deliverables at each stage of the project
11. Always ensure you have enough time to do the job, even if it requires a tactful challenge of stakeholders
12. And allow time for rest. Don’t pile on the work!
13. Don’t move onto ‘building’ the end result until you have a satisfactory set of requirements (what is being built) and a working design
14. If you have to break rules, then break them. But get approval from sponsors first
15. Communicate bad news as well as good
16. Be brave. Be courageous.
17. Stand up and do the right thing. Always
18. Learn, consume and sleep your project life-cycle. Know each stage and phase off by heart!
19. Plan, re-check, plan again. But don’t go overboard. A slightly flawed plan is better than no plan
20. Hold regular reviews with sponsors, especially at the end of stages
21. Hold short and regular team meetings
22. When you’re in the run up to final delivery, hold (extremely) short ‘sun-up’ and ‘sun-down’ meetings (meetings at either end of the working day)
23. Always, always, use your experience as a source of learning
24. Don’t ever turn away an offer of help
25. When you wake up each morning, read the business case/objective of your project. Never let this escape the front of your mind!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Want to know a secret of how to make your clients say Wow!?

Is it about bells and whistles?

Do you do it by providing comb-bound booklets?

Or is it about *really cool* slide masters when you do a powerpoint presentation?

Like Hell it is!

It’s something so simple to describe, you won’t believe it. I know because it works for me. I’ve also used this, and made my clients say Wow! too. If you want to make your clients say Wow! then all you have to do is…

….Get the Job Done, when you said it would be done, at cost, and at quality. And Manage Their Expectations.

So do I have a degree in the obvious?

Well not really. I’ll divulge another secret: most clients don’t really believe they will get all those things, but do say they expect them. So when they get it, they really do say Wow!

It’s about organization, and demonstrating it. It’s about creating confidence, and honoring it.

Being an organized IT freelancer goes hand in hand with being a successful freelancer. If you work for several clients or if you have many projects on the go, tools that help you manage your client communications and projects are as essential as your computer.

Not only do you need organization for your own sanity but for transparency to your customers and team members (if applicable) as well. There are some great tools that can help you whether it’s your job to manage large projects or whether your job is a specific piece in a freelance project.

First Things First: Your To Do List

Do you use a to-do list? If you don’t you might find that the busier you get the more you’re scrambling to get things done at the last minute. A day planner is an essential tool to help you and many technical people do suggest that even if you have an electronic handheld planner or use an online calendar that you still keep a paper record of what you need to do because sadly, technology is flawed and systems do go down. You need to know what has to get done on a daily basis and that can be as simple as a checklist. If you have a lot on the go, you’ll need more than that but a basic checklist is an essential tool for keeping you on target.

Why You Need Project Management Tools

Managing your own to do list is challenging at times but whether you’re a project manager, a key player in a big project or someone who finds that project management just happens to be a big portion of what they do, effective management of your freelance jobs will make a big impact on your stress levels and your success levels, too. Various tools can help you stay on top of your tasks and communicate with your customers and remote workgroups. It can also help you ensure you get paid properly and keep everything on target and on budget. Effective tools can help you both proactively and reactively so that you can handle any crisis that comes your way and circumvent crises before they threaten the success of your project.

Transparency

Showing a client that you’re organized and giving them the ability to track the progress of your project themselves works wonders for your relationship and reputation. Transparency can be very valuable with a freelance gig, especially when you are a remote freelancer and not working on site with a client. Some clients like to micromanage projects so their ability to quickly look up the status of something or have a quick web conference with you can save you time and hassle.

The Benefits of Web Based Project Management Tools

As much as you need tools for your client’s satisfaction you need tools to help you do your job more effectively as well. If you work as part of a team, web based tools offer a great deal of collaborative options and helpful features including offering you the ability to access the tools from anywhere. You can use web based tools for your own project management as well as for collaboration with clients and team members.

Another benefit of online tools is the ability to access them any time and anywhere. A lot of people don’t back up their work. Despite being IT professionals who know how catastrophic it can be to lose all your hard work, we get busy and we often forget or disasters happen suddenly. This is another reason why web-based tools work so well. While you should do your best to keep backup copies of everything it’s comforting to know that you can quickly access projects online from an internet café if some horrible fate suddenly befalls your desktop or laptop or Blackberry.

Managing Multiple Projects: The Basics

Whether you work for one client or for many, those managing several projects concurrently you should be able to give a precise status update to any of those clients at any given time. Your ability to do that largely rests on the types of tools you use in your everyday work. Even if you’re just managing a fraction of a larger project, knowing the basics of project management can help you deliver your portion in a way that demonstrates you are a key contributor and offer value to your clients. In essence, if you manage only a portion of a larger project your portion of that project should be managed like a project itself.

When managing a project you need to manage several factors:

• Schedule
• Delegation
• Budget

If you’re on a strict timeline you need to know if you’re on schedule at all times so you can act fast if you fall behind. Many factors can impact the timing and some of these are out of your control but your scope of the project has to be managed effectively otherwise you can impact other projects. If you have several people working on the project with you and everyone has various tasks they’re responsible for it’s important for the PM (project manager) and the end user to be able to get a bird’s eye view of where everyone is at, at all times.

While it’s useful to get text updates from everyone that tells you they’re on target sometimes you actually need to see this for yourself because the project can be like a house of cards so if just one small factor is out of alignment everything can come tumbling down. This will affect the schedule and the budget and potentially your reputation and ability to get future business from that client.

Project Management Tools

There are some fancy project management systems on the market that allow teams to collaborate and work with one another but if you’re freelancing you might not have the resources to use a high end expensive tool like some large corporations do. This doesn’t mean you can’t be organized. There are a lot of tools you can use to help you whether you pay for them or use them for free.

Let’s have a look at some options that are available individually for collaboration and for using on your own. You might find a great solution that encompasses many different areas or you could use a few different systems together to help you keep your project flowing well. Some options include forums, document collaboration tools, web conferencing and chat rooms.

Elance

Elance is the ultimate freelance job site that offers a great system that helps put customers and freelancers together. Not only does it match buyers and sellers but the tools in the system help you manage the process from start to finish.

If you’ve ever used Elance, various aspects of projects are tracked through the systems which are useful both for the provider and the buyer. If you’re managing a customer project the Elance system setup allows for conversations about the project to be saved in one place, for both parties to track the involved funds, for a chat room, status reports and more. While this tool doesn’t easily manage a large project with many providers, it can be very useful and does have team capabilities.

Skype

Skype is a chat tool that also allows video conferencing, voice conversations, instant messaging and document sharing. It also saves text discussions which can help you with organization.

This is a service that has a free service or a fee based service. If you have a headset and a webcam you can have regular meetings with clients and project team members. Using Skype can also save you substantially on long distance calling because you can call for free from computer to computer or pay a flat fee to call other mobile or land lines.

As a freelancer it’s a good idea to invest in tools that help you grow your business but a lot of the free tools can be very effective as well. Whether you pay for a project management tool for your computer, subscribe to a web based collaboration tool, have your client supply one or use one of the many free online tools that are available it’s important to find something that works well for you because it’ll help you effectively manage the projects you handle so that balls do not get dropped and so that you have back-up and documentation if you need to handle any client disputes.

Forums

Community forums offer a great way to collaborate online. They can be set up so that people can talk and discussions can be organized. You can even assign tasks in some robust forum solutions. This can work well too because login names and passwords and permissions are assigned so it can be set up as completely private. Also, various sub folders in the forum can exist and people can set up permissions so you can have one forum for executive discussions and various other folders set for workgroups within the project team. Many forum systems are free for basic use and then offer add-on modules that allow additional features (such as a support ticket system.) Email alerts can be set up to notify forum members when something new has been posted or when something has been delegated and group announcements can go out as well.

Support Ticket Systems

Some web based project management applications have a ticket system feature to allow you to delegate and assign and track tasks. You can set up a forum that works with this type of system as well. These systems often have great reporting capabilities that can aid in the management of a project. The ticket system can notify someone on the project of various things like: new tasks, problems, items delegated to them or issues that are resolved. Reporting can also be pulled from these systems to analyze the project as well as individual team member response and performance.

Google Documents

Google Documents offers a free web based document sharing solution. If you have a Google account, you can collaborate with clients through document sharing tools. This allows you to share documents with clients and track conversations related to those discussions.

Microsoft Office’s Word

Microsoft Word allows you to track changes to any document. This can be very helpful in a collaborative effort because you can request revisions, see document changes and share with others.

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is a very collaborative tool as well. While this isn’t free it does offer some great features for document sharing.

Project Management Tools: Find The Right Tools

It may take time to find the right tools to help you do projects effectively. The more projects you manage the more you’ll put together a bag of tricks to help you shine as a great contributor in the future.

For freelancers who work on their own, especially, collaborative project management tools can make a big difference because various individuals working on a project might not ever meet in a boardroom together yet everyone needs to communicate. For this reason, web based solutions can be the most suitable because you can meet live, leave messages for one another and have sub groups within a larger group.

Here is a short list of ten project management solutions you might also consider:

1. WebEx Weboffice
2. DeskShare ProjectDesk
3. Easyprojects.net
4. AceProject
5. Clarizen
6. Genius Project
7. Basecamp
8. Zoho Projects
9. ProjectsCenter
10. Liquid Planner

Most of these tools offer free trials for their software so you can test drive it before you buy. You can also read product reviews to find out what others are using and how it’s working out for them.

It’s a great idea to get involved with online groups when you do freelance work because this can help you stay abreast of news and information in your specialty where you’ll find out about great tools that can help you do your job better.

If your job is in project management, it’s big responsibility to let a whole project rest on your shoulders. Beyond having the right people in place, you need to have solid tools in place as well that enable you to effectively manage things and circumvent little snags before they become giant problems.

If your freelance career feels fragile because you are regularly running in multiple directions it’s time to take your personal organization more seriously. And if you’re someone who is already ultra organized you probably thrive on tools to help you so it’s a good idea to peruse some of the great online collaborative tools to enhance your productivity, too.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

You’d be forgiven if you thought the last thing needed on the bookshelf is another Program Management handbook. If Program Management was an exact science, then why would we need so many books when one PM bible would do? The truth is, PM isn’t a science, although it isn’t an artform as such – it’s a skill that involves working with people.

In my article 10 REAL reasons why IT projects fail, I shared ten reasons why IT projects come unstuck, and what is the common theme?

You guessed it – the people factor.

(In fact this article has rocketed to second place in my most popular articles list!)

If you can understand and influence people, then you can run projects, and programs of projects. Wait a second though, having skills in workable, repeatable methods can make or break a Program Manager, can’t it? Well yes – I think that is true. Otherwise, the multi-billion dollar industry of Program Management would be wrong, right?

Enter a new book, the The Handbook of Program Management (formally titled The Handbook of Program Management: How to Facilitate Project Succss with Optimal Program Managment). This book is provides a refreshing view of Program Management by focusing on what’s really important – the relationships between people and the skills they require.

It does a great job of covering very well the necessary fundamentals of PM – communications, presentations, getting signatures (really doing it – not just relying on a loose email thread), impact management using organization charts (how simple is that, really?) and identifying (and actively managing) the ‘non-executive directors’ of a program – the people with influence, but without authority.

The author, Dr James Brown, demonstrates his experience by sharing with the reader the real important factors of PM, not just the ‘boxes and lines’ we often see with methodology texts.

I’ve probably not done this book justice. There is a far better review of this book by Rich Saltzman on his blog Scope Crêpe which you can read here.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

You wouldn’t talk to someone who isn’t paying attention. Nor would you make a movie if you didn’t know who would watch it. So why do projects often deliver to a Business who isn’t ready to receive?

Business Readiness is a loose term which can mean the Business’s ability to take on what a project delivers. So Business Readiness is a measure of preparation. A Business that is Ready will have made all the preparations necessary to accept the deliverables of a project, and begin operating them. The deliverables might be:

• A product
• A service
• A process
• A new screen in a business application
• New infrastructure, like a PC
• New cellphones, Blackberrys or palmtops

Anything that involves a change to business operations requires Business Readiness.

As I said, Business Readiness is a measure of preparation. What kind of things do I mean that we might measure?

• User training and guides
• Desks and chairs
• Financial budget
• PCs
• Customer communication
• Regulatory clearance
• Resources
• Buy-in and motivation
• Business ownership and Change Management
• Facilities such as power, lighting, and even coffee machines or washrooms

This list shows that a number of the measures are qualitative, so difficult to actually put a score to it. This is why Business Readiness is hard to measure and plot on a scale. I think this is why many organizations really struggle with Business Readiness.

There are deliverables which are (at least nowadays) easier to assess the Business Readiness for. Software is one of them, and in fact there is an emerging standard to assess the Business Readiness of Open-Source software, known as Business Readiness Rating, or BRR. However, there isn’t a common approach to this problem which means it remains an artform rather than a science.

What tends to happen then is that Business Readiness is considered a low priority and an afterthought, often allocated as a slug of time at the end of a project. It isn’t well planned, well resourced and therefore poorly executed.

A lack of Business Readiness (by whatever measure) can be disastrous. The problems that arise are complex and often embarrassing. Whole careers can rest on the adoption of project deliverables, so it’s a high-risk area. If an organization isn’t able to cope with the changes it is subjected to it can have the following effects:

• Disrupted operations
• Customer complaints
• Low morale
• Wasted effort
• Increase in costs

Have you ever experienced these things?

There isn’t a silver bullet to solving the challenge of Business Readiness. If there was, I wouldn’t be writing this I guess, so at least the problem gives people like me something to think about. There is, however, a number of interventions that we Leaders can put into place to reduce the likelihood and impact of business un-readiness. These are:

• Always make sure that there is time allocated at the end of a project to checkpoint Business Readiness, and moreover, have Business Readiness a consistent agenda item throughout a project
• Define as best you can what Business Readiness is, even if it’s just what you might see. Ask yourself ‘What does Ready look like to us?’
• A simple but powerful step is to use your entire organization’s Structure Chart (or Organagram – old term) to consider the impact and dependencies across your whole organization
• In the latter weeks of a project, run daily meetings with representatives across the project and business to share information and to discuss readiness
• If you don’t institutionally have a ‘Model Office’ then you must at least involve end users in Business Acceptance Testing to ensure that end users are aware of the changes ahead, and just as importantly, these business reps take on the responsibility of sharing information about the changes within the business itself
• Last, but not least, check your business ownership. Is there a business sponsor engaged in the project who is accountable for communication within the business? Does the business sponsor attend meetings and contribute to project delivery, issues and risks? If not then it’s likely Business Readiness is low. I wrote about the importance business sponsorship in my articles Ten REAL Reasons Why IT Projects Fail, 15 Blunders to Avoid when Implementing BPM and Why Business Sponsorship and a Center of Excellence is Key to BPM Success

Here’s a book a colleague recommended to me which discusses Business Readiness amongst other subjects in the software delivery lifecycle, although I beleive many of the concepts are applicable beyond pure software: RAPID Value Management for the Business Cost of Ownership: Readiness, Architecture, Process, Integration, Deployment (HP Technologies)

Don’t let Business Readiness be an afterthought which will grow teeth and bite you on the ass!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

In a recent post on her blog, Elizabeth Harrin shares with us some research from Forrester which (in her words) reminds us that projects are about people, not technology.

Elizabeth Harrin is a blogger (a girl’s guide to project management) who won the ComputerWeekly 2008 IT Blog Awards in the Project Management category. Her post summarizes the research which talks about the selection of good people on your project, and that good people come with good recruitment practices. I recently wrote about Ten Real Reasons Why IT Projects Fail and at number 9 was ‘The Wrong People’. The reasons weren’t in ranked order, but if they were then this would be at the top.

I was reminded again last week when I heard from an old friend based in Idaho telling me he had recruited onto a multi-million dollar project a technical expert in SOA who had passed his interview with flying colors because he was a guru in the subject. What the recruitment process didn’t find though that he had some interesting personality traits, like shouting at people, ignoring women on grounds of their gender, and a total disregard for business ownership. It is a nightmare in which my friend is struggling to recover from. His personal reputation hangs in the balance.

It just goes to show, as Elizabeth says, Projects should be about People, and Not Technology.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Why do IT Projects fail? Project Managers reel out a million reasons and excuses. But in my years of working in projects, whatever the size or budget, there are 10 reasons why failed projects end up that way. (Maybe you know more? If you do, please share them!)

1. Too Many Parallel Activities into One Completion Date

Project deadlines are not like train stations. Activities of a project are rarely, if ever, allocated their own line in which they have no dependencies on others. The more parallel activities on a project, the greater the inter-dependencies and it is these that cause confusion and delay. Parallel activities often are part of a critical path and each activity must complete on time, on budget and without overstepping the dependencies identified during the planning phase. But this never happens. Task interdependence is always under-estimated! My preference is to structure a project into a long series of intermediate deliverables where each activity can bank its history and reduce interdependence. If too many interdependencies exist, then re-cut the plan to reduce them.

2. Planning for Perfection

This is the fools gold of Project Management – the perfect plan. Plans work if nothing changes, including the delivery of the plan itself. Plans are an approximation and forecast of the future . But business and people are naturally chaotic – there are always factors that complicate things. Projects fail when Project Managers assume that nothing will change other than what their plan will change. But a plan doesn’t account for everything that will change, so it is inherently flawed. My advice, have a solid plan for no more than a month, a strong plan for up to 3 months and have statements of intent for the remainder, as that’s the best they will be. Wrap these up into whatever words the stakeholders are happy with, but don’t waste too much time gazing into a crystal ball.

3. Too long

Linked to above point. Projects are often way too long! Human nature is curious; according to boffins, humans will only really start working hard on a project until 50% of the time allocated to it has elapsed . Sounds implausible, but think about projects you’ve worked on and you’ll know this to have some truths. Also linked to point 1, long projects should be broken down into phases, where the results of a phase can be banked and, if you’re savvy, deliver business value as they stand. This is the art of turning a plan into a strategy.

4. Too Many Managers – Not Enough Delivery

Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians is perhaps an outdated phrase nowadays, but it fits here. Why is it that organizations feel that adding more management helps delivery? Delivery people help delivery. OK, not enough managers is a problem too. But too many managers is also bad, if not worse, because this creates too much cost overhead as well as a line structure that dis-empowers people from delivering.

5. Scope Rigidity

Too many projects are constrained by initial commitments of scope. Project sponsors can easily add in scope, but it is a much more difficult conversation about taking items out. This causes unnecessary chaos as more is attempted with the same resource. Projects require flexibility on scope . So I am advocating the tolerance of scope-creep . This is the boon of many Project Managers. Get over it, I say. Projects, especially programs of projects, must stay flexible to cope with the changing business environment. The reality is that the business environment changes over time and the priority of deliverables changes as the business does. New items come in, existing items go out. A ‘killer’ of PMs is when items don’t go out. The project sponsors should be as flexible to take things out as they do putting them in, or scope creeps without the capability to deliver. One other thing – when items are put on hold, they are really being removed forever . At the point when they come back in, the requirement has always changed, so it is a new item.

6. Technology Rigidity

Especially rife in large organizations, projects can be hamstrung when ‘standard’ technologies are applied to solutions where they don’t fit properly. So much time is wasted in trying to get it to fit, just because an IT Architect says it must. Sometimes, a project exists to revolutionize a business, not just evolve it. So new technologies should be a consideration of the revolution.

7. Ineffective Testing

Project delivery teams often claim that not enough testing is done. I think this is rubbish. The reality of projects is that further down the delivery chain an activity it is, the more it comes under pressure when previous activities slip. This is how it is. Not enough testing is a lazy statement . Ineffective testing isn’t. When testing is suddenly presented with a shorter life-cycle, then the test team has to change its priorities, and some testing needs to be consigned to posterity. So testing needs to be applied to the highest-impact, highest risk areas. When the awakening occurs, the test team should already know what the highest-impact tests are, and start there. What doesn’t get tested are the lowest-priority items, and these should be either accepted as a risk, or a case for the remaining testing built. So effective testing is risk-based testing , and I’ve seen this work in every instance, no matter how much time is left.

8. Lack of Practice

An amazing phenomena that is all to common is when projects believe that they can bring in new technologies or methods to bear without any mistakes. Competence requires practice , so why do Project Managers sometimes think that no practice will still result in a perfect outcome? Projects fail because too much has rested upon a perfect delivery, which rarely happens. So part of a change in technology or method should be a pilot or proof of concept that doesn’t impact the critical path. I am absolutely advocating new technologies or methods, but I challenge anyone who thinks that high-impact changes will slot in without any drama. Don’t let the drama impact your project. Bed it in before it hits your critical path.

9. The Wrong People

Project Managers tend to be really good at bringing in resources because they have the right technical skills and experience. Just because someone knows C#, then they must be right for you if you need C# skills, right? Wrong. If personalities, soft competencies and perfect resumes were not a factor, then life would be this simple. But it isn’t unfortunately. Most projects fail when the Wrong People are working on it . It is much easier to recruit a Wrong Person than it is to get rid of them. A lot of damage can be done by the Wrong Person, even if they know about the subject matter like the back of their hand. To avoid Wrong People, more time must be spent on looking for the fitness of a candidate based on their personality, approach to working and their ability to build rapport and strong working relationships. This is why it is common for people to bring in folks they have worked with before onto projects, because they know how they behave.

Above all else, individuals on a project, and the team, must have passion . A lack of passion means that Project Managers don’t get 100%. A lack of passion can result in latency in decisions and delivery. How many times have you asked for a meeting to discuss something to be told you can have a slot in 3 weeks time for half an hour? This is because the person you want to see doesn’t have passion for what you’re trying to achieve. An organization succeeds or dies on people working together, in sync. And the strength of an organization is as strong as its weakest link . A lack of passion is often the weakest link. Passion creates focus, drive and flexibility. Passion can overcome most problems. I’d rather work with a passionate novice than a lackadaisical expert. Passionate people learn quickly and don’t get hung up on mistakes. They don’t hide behind professional boundaries or corporate suits. Screening candidates for passion isn’t easy, but not impossible. When someone’s character radiates passion, you know it.

10. Ownership

A major contributor of project failure is when the owner or customer stops caring about it. Perhaps their priorities change? Perhaps they have new leadership? Perhaps they never cared in the first place. Whatever the reason, projects fail when the people who the project are delivering to lose interest. This may manifest itself as continually changing requirements, and could also be signalled by lack of engagement or drive. Project Managers must continually test their customer to check their interest and yes, passion for the outcome. One trick is to deliberate supply wrong information in a project update, such as an expense, and see if there is a reaction (which of course can be corrected!) It’s a bit sneaky, but it works.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

I found a tool offered by Computer Associates which gives CIOs the ability to assess their organization’s Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). CA says:

68% of IT organizations are underutilizing their project resources – how do you compare? Take this opportunity to gauge the maturity of your own IT organization’s Project and Portfolio Management process with a fast, informative, and confidential PPM maturity assessment tool. See how you company against your peers in minutes.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.