Boundaryless Project Management

The term "boundaryless" has become a buzzword in business for working across department and division boundaries. It is challenging to get people to work this way within a company, but more and more projects cross significant boundaries and require boundaryless project managers.

Here's a common scenario. You are put in charge of a project that has team members in different cities, different companies, even different countries. It may seem like a daunting task, but the world of business is changing from one of direct authority to one of no authority.

Working outside of these boundaries requires special leadership skills based on collaboration, communication, and partnerships. Here are five tips for managing boundaryless projects:

1. Collaborative Planning - Involve all of your team members in the planning. Brainstorm tasks together. Discuss dependencies. Estimate as a team. Working together to agree on how to accomplish your project objective gives everyone a sense of ownership and pride to be part of the team. You will establish your leadership of the team quickly if you demonstrate to the team that each member can help shape the project direction.
   
2. Regular Communication - Set up a regularly scheduled conference call that is at a time suitable for everyone. You may have people calling from several time zones, so be considerate of everyone's business hours. You probably won't have access to everyone's calendars, so use your collaboration skills to plan a suitable meeting time.
   
3. Project Dashboard - Use your regularly scheduled conference call to review a project dashboard that clearly communicates milestones, issues, and action items. Language barriers and phone communication require a visual tool to help guide everyone through the meetings and to give each team member a handout for use between meetings.
   
4. Escalation Path - Although the tips above will help your project succeed, there may still be issues within your project team. It is important to have a clear escalation path for resolving conflict that can't be resolved within the team. Define this before it's needed so that you can turn conflict resolution into a process and keep your project moving forward.
   
5. Occasional Contact - There's nothing like meeting face-to-face with your team members. If your project budget and schedule permit, plan on some travel to bring the team together. Periodic in-person meetings help build teams that are easier to maintain over the phone and through email.
   

If you aren't already managing projects outside of traditional boundaries, you probably will soon. Get ready to develop boundaryless, collaborative leadership skills, and you will be ready to face the project management challenges of the next decade.

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Motivating Project Team Members: Personal Recognition

For project managers who do not have the authority to provide financial recognition to outstanding accomplishments of individual project team members, there's still opportunity to reward and motivate. There are plenty of inexpensive and even free ways to reward your top performers.

Top performers are a rare find. If you have a star performer on your project team, one of your top priorities should be to keep him or her engaged and motivated. When the star of the team is happy about the project and engaged, the rest of the team will be more motivated to give their best.

When you notice a behavior that is above and beyond the average accomplishments of your project team members here are a few ways you can encourage the star:

1. Send an email to the team member noting his or her specific accomplishments and how that has benefited the team. Copy the individual's manager to share in recognizing the accomplishment. A good manager will reward the team member with more trust, more flexibility, more opportunities for career growth, and more incentive pay.
2. Share the accomplishment with the team in a meeting and name the individual and the specific contribution. It may go something like this, "I want to thank Jennifer for going above and beyond by completing development ahead of schedule. Many of you have tasks that depend on this, and this will relieve some of the pressure for you. Great job." Public acknowledgment of positive behavior goes a long way.
3. Celebrate one-on-one. It never hurts to challenge someone that if they do the impossible, you'll owe them a lunch. Many people will work harder just to make you buy them lunch. It's not the lunch that's important. It's the acknowledgment of the challenging task and the willingness to give something of yourself.
4. Give away gift cards. When someone on your project team does something outstanding, be ready with a supply of gift cards. You can pull the individual aside, thank them for their work, and let them know that the gift card is a small token of appreciation for their contribution.
5. Write a hand-written note. In this fast paced email age, people especially appreciate the time and thoughtfulness behind this gesture. A note of thanks or congratulations will often stay in the recipients top drawer for months or even years.
   

One caution with each of these motivators - use them cautiously. It will backfire if you use these ideas to manipulate or if you use them to acknowledge mediocre behavior. Use them wisely, and your team will gladly follow your lead.

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Project Management Software Comparison

Looking for project management software? Start with the PM Digest Project Management Software Comparison Chart. It compares desktop and enterprise project management software. This chart will be expanded over time, and separate posts will be created to provide more detail of the different products.

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Do You Need PMP Certification?

When it comes to professional certification, there are those who strive to obtain as many certifications as possible and others who strive to attain the highest certification possible. Still others see little value in certification, but rely on experience and formal education. If you are a project manager and are unsure about professional certification, this article is for you.

You may be considering the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI). This is the gold standard of certification for project managers, and requires significant preparation and experience to achieve.

Is it worth the time, study, and professional development needed to prepare for and maintain PMP certification?

Career Potential

If you do an informal analysis of the job boards, you can gauge the potential of your certification in helping you to find your next job. Do a search for "project manager" and see how many results are returned. Next, do a search for "project manager pmp" and compare the results. Make sure that you use the same criteria, like type of position, geographical area, age of postings, etc.

I looked at Dice.com and found that of the 12,764 project manager positions posted in the last 30 days, nationwide, 813 of them (6.4%) required PMP certification. I did similar searches for CISSP and MSCE, and found that they were 5% and 4% respectively.

From this experiment, you can see that it is required for about one in twenty jobs. If you want a shot at these jobs, and an advantage at the other nineteen, consider the edge that PMP certification will give you.

Skills Development

There are many skills and techniques in the project management profession that you will not develop without a goal in front of you. Many project managers have achieved their titles because they know how to get people to work together, to track tasks and owners, and to work through issues. While these skills are important for all project managers, larger, more complicated projects require a honed set of formal skills.

Obtaining the formal education that may be missing from your skills will help you to become a significantly better project manager.

Reputation

Let's face it. There are a lot of project managers. There are just as many who want to become project managers. If you differentiate yourself with professional certification you will gain the respect of your peers, both inside and outside of your company. People who share a common prestigious certification hold a common respect for one another. Those who don't hold it look up to those who do.

Reputation is not built on certification alone; it must be backed with a solid track record of project leadership. But certification is a great place to start, especially certification that combines experience with testing, such as the PMP.

Getting Started

The PMP certification requires you not only to prepare yourself for the six domains of the exam, but also requires 4,500 hours of experience. If you are interested in going further, consider one of the many preparation guides available at Amazon.com and preparation courses. Good luck!

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Project Management Degree Programs

If you are preparing for a full-time career in project management or want to improve your marketability, consider a degree that specializes in project management. But how do you select a program that provides you with the most opportunity?

Undergraduate vs. Graduate

Start by looking at where you are in your education. If you have not already completed your undergraduate degree, you may want to consider a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Project Management. These programs are not always easy to find, but they are available -- many in online format.

Your best bet, if it fits with your educational aspirations is to earn a Master's degree in Project Management. The focus of a graduate program will allow you to major in Project Management, rather than have it as a specialization. A Master's degree will give you an edge in finding your next job.

If you are already working as a project manager and are looking to improve your marketability, consider a Master's in Business Administration (MBA) with a concentration in Project Management. This will not only help you in your current position, but it will also prepare you for advancement.

Convenient Format

You may be lucky enough to have a local college that offers a degree in project management, but they are not as abundant as other programs. Consider an on-line or distance education format. Whichever format you choose, pick one that best fits your schedule, location, and priorities.

There is a definite benefit to graduating from a top ranked college or university. You will be in higher demand early in your career. But don't rule out a less prestigious program that is better suited to your family situation, work schedule, and time constraints. If you already have a good, progressive career in project management, this may be more favorable to potential employers than the college you chose for your degree.

Regional Accreditation

More important than the rank of the college is the accreditation. Regionally accredited colleges and universities give you more options than those that have other accreditations or none at all. With a regionally accredited degree, you may be more qualified for employer tuition assistance and financial aid. If you choose to pursue further education after your degree, accreditation is critical to being able to transfer credits and even gain admission.

The regional accrediting agencies to look for are:

• Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Higher Education
• New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Commission on Institutions of Higher Education
• North Central Association of Colleges and Schools The Higher Learning Commission
• Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Colleges and Universities
• Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) Commission on Colleges
• Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)

Contribution to Professional Certification

Finally, look into how the program contributes to your certification. The gold standard in project management certification is the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, from the Project Management Institute (PMI). You will want to make sure that the program you choose helps you to either prepare for or maintain certification. PMI also has a Global Accreditation Center for Project Management (GAC), which provides accreditation for schools that meet certain quality standards for project management.

In an increasingly competitive job market, the well-prepared project manager has a significant advantage. Combining a degree and certification with a track record of successful projects will keep you busy for many years.

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Four Steps to a Basic Project Schedule

Whether you are leading a church picnic committee or a $500 thousand project, a basic project schedule is a must for effective leadership. For professional project managers, this may be second nature, but for the new project manager or for someone thrust into leadership for the first time, there are four basic steps to creating a project schedule that will help you to achieve your objectives.

1. Define the Tasks

Either by yourself or with the people on your project team, come up with a list of tasks that will need to be performed. Be thorough. You want to make sure each task is captured in your schedule. In general, if a task takes more than one week, it should probably be divided into subtasks.

List all of your tasks in one vertical column, leaving space to the right for other information. You may want to try to sort the tasks chronologically, but this is not necessary in your first pass. There will be time to sort them later to better reflect the progression of the project.

For large projects, it may be easiest to divide the tasks into three to five high-level phases. For example, in managing a software development project, you might divide the tasks into: Design, Development, Testing, and Deployment. Using categories like these will help you to think through each phase to make sure you are not missing tasks.

2. Relate Dependencies

With your tasks listed in one column, identify tasks that cannot be completed until a previous task is completed. This is called a dependency. The task depends upon the completion of one or more previous tasks.

You can represent dependencies simply with lines that interconnect the tasks you have listed. For larger projects, lines may become too confusing. In this case, consider numbering each task. If a task is dependent upon another task, list the number of the tasks on which it depends to the right of the task.

With your dependencies defined, you can order the tasks in your list so that they more closely follow the dependencies. For example, if task B is dependent on task A, put task A before task B in your list. This is not always possible, since task may have complex interrelationships that are not easily defined in a linear, sequential list. Just make it close enough to be understandable.

3. Assign Owners

With the tasks and dependencies identified, it is very important that task owners be defined. You may want to write the name of the task owner to the right of the task and dependency information. Be specific. Assigning a task to a group often means the task will not be completed. If a group needs to complete a task, ask one person from the group to be accountable to the project team for the task.

If any of the task owners do not participate in creating the schedule, make sure you check with them first on their availability and willingness to own the task. Putting their names on the project plan will not automatically get it done. Collaborate, communicate, and follow up with each task owner to make sure he or she understands what it means to complete the task.

4. Estimate Effort/Duration

With the tasks assigned, ask the owners to provide an estimate. Having the owner estimate the work will provide greater accuracy and will help the task owner to think through and own the task more completely than if you decide on an effort or duration.

What type of estimate should be provided, effort or duration? This is a great question.

If you are working with a predefined budget of hours or dollars, effort will be more important, since it allows the person to be spread across multiple projects, but only charge your project for the amount of time spent on it. Effort helps you with hours spent on the project, but not necessarily with meeting deadlines.

If you are working with more of a date driven schedule, duration will be more important, since this allows task owners to commit to dates, knowing what other commitments they have. In other words, durations are based on the deadlines, not the amount of hours spent.

This is an important distinction. Make sure whichever you choose to use, that you are consistent for all tasks in your schedule. If you mix them together, you will not be sure of what you are committing to.

Note: For experienced project managers using software like Microsoft Project, it is easy to combine effort and duration by allocating a percentage of a persons time to a defined duration. For example, you can define that a task will take five days to complete with Sam allocated at 20%. This means that Sam will meet his deadline by completing the work in five days, but he will not spend forty hours to complete it. Instead, he will spend 20% of 40 hours, or 8 hours. This is important if Sam is responsible for work outside of your project.

Take Aways

If you have not created a project schedule up to this point, start out by following the steps above in a spreadsheet, like Microsoft Excel, with the following columns:

• Task number
• Task description
• Dependencies
• Owner
• Duration

If you are accustomed to using Microsoft Project, how do your steps match with the ones listed above? Are there any you are missing?

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Managing Project Issues

Issues come up in all projects. Some projects seem to attract more than others because of complexity, skill sets, and expectations of project sponsors. Knowing this, it is especially important that you manage issues before they manage you.

Issue management is an important part of any project. If you manage issues well, your projects are much more likely to be successful. If your project issues are unmanaged, there is a very high probability that your project will be late, not meet the required scope, or be over budget.

There are 3 important activities for issue management:

1. Issue tracking - Because of its importance in providing an early warning to project problems, issue management should be a centerpiece of all of your project team meetings. In this setting, encourage team members to raise issues and capture them in a comprehensive list of issues.
2. Assigning owners - Each issue should be assigned an owner. The owner is responsible for clarifying the issue, investigating how to resolve it, and following through to close the issue. In your list of issues, track the name of the owner and any clarifications on what it means to own the selected issue.
3. Follow-through - As the project manager, you will need to follow up with issue owners on a periodic basis to obtain status and remind the owners of their responsibilities. For issues that are not severe, you may be able to wait for your team meeting. For those that have a major impact on the project, individual follow up is especially important.

Issues may be tracked in a spreadsheet. A quick glance at the issue list should reveal answers to the following questions:

• What is the issue?
• What is the impact?
• What is the severity?
• When was it documented?
• Who owns the issue?
• What is the current status?
• When was it resolved and closed?
• What was the final outcome?

Download one of these sample Issue Tracking Template for an example.

• Issue Tracking Template (Adobe PDF)
• Issue Tracking Template (Microsoft Excel)

Take Aways

Here are a few take aways for you, if you feel like you are being managed by issues:

1. Download the sample issue tracking sheet.
2. Fill in issues for your current project. Does each have an owner?
3. What are the most severe issues? How will you work through them?

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Essential Project Management Dashboards

You are fully equipped for your project. You have your project schedule, your risk assessment, your issues list, project budget, and communication plan. But what do you communicate to your project sponsor or other stakeholders? Many project managers will communicate only the project schedule, but there are so many other perspectives to present to your stakeholders.

Another twist: when you are just starting to gain control of your project, your manager assigns you another one, and another, and another. How do you keep up with all of the changes that are going on in your projects?

Both of these problems can be solved by creating and maintaining project dashboards. Project dashboards help keep you focused on what is important about your projects and allows you to communicate at the right level of detail to those who have an interest in it.

There are two main kinds of dashboards to consider: 1) a project dashboard; and 2) a project portfolio dashboard.

Project Dashboard

A project dashboard is for a single project. It provides a complete picture of your project from a variety of perspectives, including schedule, budget, risk, and issues. Each of these areas should be easy to view quickly for areas of concern. Red, yellow, and green light indicators are common on dashboards, allowing the eye to quickly find issues for further exploration and explanation.

Sample Project Dashboard: Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Word

Project Portfolio Dashboard

A project portfolio dashboard may be used for communicating multiple projects at the same time. It may be used by individuals who are managing several projects or by a department manager who's team has multiple projects. It contains less detail than the individual project dashboard, but communicates similar indicators, lined up for a quick scan across multiple projects.

Sample Project Portfolio Dashboard: Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Excel

Take Aways

If you don't use a project dashboard, download the samples here and adapt them for your own use. Remember, keep it high level, but make sure that unmitigated risks and issues stand out clearly.

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Roles, Ownership, and Accountability

One of the most important factors for a successful project is clear roles and responsibilities.This is important for all projects, but especially for those in which your team has a dotted line relationship to you.

The Confused Project Team
Imagine you are assigned as a member of a project team, and you are not given clear direction about your role or what tasks you own. You may take initiative and create a role for yourself. In this scenario, you may help the project team to be successful. You may also prevent people from doing what they should be doing and create conflict that leads to the project's doom.

Instead of taking initiative, you may sit back and wait for work to be assigned to you. When you are approached about your deliverables, you may reply, "I didn't know you wanted me to..." or "I thought Joe was going to do that." Without clear accountability for tasks your project is again doomed to schedule and cost overruns.

The Organized Project Team
On the other hand, if roles are clearly defined and tasks have assigned owners, then the project team understands what is expected of them. Whether they are go-getters or laggards, they will have a goal to achieve and clear accountability for meeting their deadlines. Project teams like this are refreshing to the team members, since there is a greater sense of fairness.

As the project manager, and not just a team member, you are responsible for defining your team's roles and responsibilities at three levels: 1) project roles; 2) task ownership; and 3) accountability.

Project Roles

Clearly defined project roles help answer the question, "Why am I on this project team?" for each team member. Some people will be assigned to complete certain tasks, others may be responsible for sub-teams that have tasks or deliverables, and still others may be on your team because of the guidance they will provide.

Project roles should be agreed upon by the team members, their direct managers, and yourself. This usually requires communication of the project's purpose, the reason for the assignment of the team member, and the approximate duration of the project. It requires that the person's manager balance priorities and allocate enough time to complete the project tasks.

Don't forget to define the role of the project owner. This individual, often the sponsor of the project, will have the authority to make final decisions about project scope, schedule changes, and budget. As the project manager, you will need to actively manage the project owner's expectations and proactively communicate project status and issues.

Task Ownership

After knowing who is filling which roles in the project team, responsibility for the actual tasks and deliverables must be communicated. This will not be clear at the beginning of the project, but as the work breakdown and schedule are created, team members must be given the opportunity to clarify, expand upon, and challenge any tasks to which they are assigned.

Putting someone's name beside a task on the project plan does not convey ownership of the task to that individual. Many project plans are so long and detailed, that additions and changes are missed if they are not clearly communicated. For best results, create a collaborative environment for creating and maintaining the project schedule. Team members will feel a greater sense of ownership for tasks they have suggested.

Accountability

If you are both the manager of the people on your team and the project manager for the same people, you have great influence on the team members and can hold them accountable. You are also the exception to most organizations today, since organizations are becoming more and more matrixed in project reporting relationships.

In a matrixed project team, you may feel that you have little authority to hold people accountable. Do you need to rely solely on your charm and personal charisma to be successful? Not at all.

You can hold people accountable as long as you have defined project roles and task ownership, as described above. By being clear and up front with the team member and his or her manager on the expectations, duration, and priority of the project, you have created a clear line of accountability for project tasks.

If a team member is not meeting his or her commitments, first go to the individual and find out the reason for the delay. If you do not have the ability to remove obstacles, work with the individual's manager to clarify priorities, add resources, or provide guidance to the individual.

Always approach issues with team member performance as project problems and not personal attacks. Your goal is to be successful in your project by helping your team members to be successful and work through issues together.

Take Aways

Here are some tasks that you can assign to yourself to improve your project management skills:

1. Identify the project owner of a project you are managing or on which you are a team member. How active is the project owner and how strongly does he or she influence the project (positively or negatively)?
2. Look at the projects you are currently managing. Are there tasks you have created but have not clearly communicated at an individual level to the task owners?
3. Reflect on a team member performance issue you have experienced. How would defining project roles, task ownership, and lines of accountability have improved the outcome?

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Getting Started with the Project Life Cycle

Congratulations! You've been assigned as a project manager for an important project in your company. You are accountable for the success or the failure of a team of people in achieving a goal, delivering a product, or implementing a new system. So where do you begin?

There are a lot of tools that you can choose from to help make you successful. There are risk management matrices, issue tracking spreadsheets, milestones, Gantt charts, and more. But before pulling a tool out of your toolbox, the most important thing is to assess where you are in the overall project life cycle.

The project life cycle consists of the following three phases:

1. Project Initiation
2. Project Implementation
3. Project Termination

Choosing a great project management tool, but for the wrong phase, is like trying to fix your bathroom faucet with a wood axe. Little good can come of it.

Let's look at what these phases mean and help provide a framework for which tools are suitable for each.

Project Initiation

Everything in the Project Initiation phase prepares you to move into the implementation phase. This phase usually starts without anyone realizing it -- until you are placed in the lime light as the project manager. But before you became the star, there was an idea, a request, and a decision to create and proceed with a project.

Portfolio Management

In many companies, this seemingly unstructured phase is managed by a process called portfolio management. Various ideas and initiatives are looked at for benefit, priority, return on investment, and risk. Those that rise to the top of this assessment (or that have the most convincing sponsors) are "green lit". They are given the approval to proceed, according to resource availability and budget.

Project Planning

After a project is approved, a project manager is assigned to create a plan. There is no work being done at this stage, other than planning, assessing, and estimating. The most important activities in project planning are:

• Organizing the project team
• Creating a work breakdown
• Estimating the effort of tasks
• Creating a schedule and milestones
• Creating a proposed project budget
• Assessing project risks
• Creating a communication plan

These activities and the deliverables they produce are foundational and will be referred to on a regular basis as your project proceeds into implementation. The essential outputs of this phase should include:

• Project schedule
• Project budget
• Risk assessment
• Communication plan

You can expand on this list, as your project requires.

Note: Some people consider estimation, scheduling, and resource allocation as the beginning of the Project Implementation phase. Either way, project management comes down to creating a plan and implementing that plan.

Project Implementation

You are now at the starting line, equipped with the project gear you created in the planning phase. Upon the approval of your plan, you leap forward and watch everything work just as you had planned. Everyone works together, meets the schedule, and stays within budget. Probably not.

Creating the project plan is only the first step in your project. There are many miles to go.

It is in this stage that everything that can go wrong will go wrong -- unless you take an active role in identifying issues, resolving conflict, controlling project scope, and mitigating risks.

It is also in this stage that you will feel the strain of managing a team of people who may not report to you. Your team may be pulled in different directions, assigned to other projects, and unable to meet their date commitments. You will need to balance authority with compassion, accountability with encouragement, and candor with diplomacy.

Communication is a critical success factor during implementation. The communication within your project team is the most important. Hold regular meetings for all team members to get status updates, escalate issues, and collaborate. How frequently you meet depends on how many days are left until your project is due. Weekly team meetings should be considered the minimum.

Don't forget to communicate with your project sponsors and stakeholders. This is important so that they will feel confidence in the project when things are going well and will receive early warning when they are not.

Project Termination

You have completed implementing your project. Hopefully you were able to deliver it on time and within budget. Now it's time to wrap up. Terminating your project in a controlled, consistent way allows you and your team to get closure on your tasks, celebrate successes, and find opportunities for improvement. Besides this, you may have to close your project budget by reconciling timesheets, invoices, and expenses.

Some companies have defined processes for project audits, closing project budgets, and documentation. If your's does not, create a list of all the things you will need to close out and work through the list. This will free you to move on to other projects, knowing that your work is complete.

Take Aways

We have covered your whole project in less than five minutes. It sure would be great if all projects were this easy. Now it's time for you to put it into action.

1. Create a list of your own personal project management tools, and identify for which project phase they are ideally suited.
2. In which phases of the project lifecylce is your tool box not stocked? What tools can you add?
3. Look at a project you are currently managing and identify the current phase. What steps could you have completed in an earlier phase to make your project more successful?

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