Adaptive Path Newsletter for April 22, 2009

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5 Tips To Becoming a Great Project Manager

What is a manager? What are they really supposed to do? My dictionary provides the following definition:

manager (noun)
a person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.

This is the classic understanding most people have of what a project manager is and does, yet I find that it is possible not only to ‘control’ a project, but also to come up with creative solutions, while enabling your team to become better at what they do. I call this facilitating a project. Here is its definition:

facilitate (verb)
make (an action or process) easy or easier.

The manager is in the center and is the controlling party, while a facilitator is supporting the process and making sure all of the pieces are working together. That is what I do best; facilitating the creative process. Perhaps a more apt title is creative facilitator instead of product manager, account manager, project manager, etc… but I would hate to add anything more to an already overburdened (and over-tilted) role.

Regardless of the title, people in these roles use and share a lot of the same skills. But from the perspective of a facilitator there are a couple of tactics and tips that may not be as emphasized in traditional project management training.

OMNISCIENCE

As a creative facilitator, omniscience is your ultimate goal. Any project, regardless of its complexity, requires an awareness and knowledge of all the various moving parts. You may be called to stand up for unrepresented audiences, are expected to understand the dependencies, and must calculate the schedule impact of any critical failures in the process. While omniscience may be more aspirational than tactical, the tips below can help you get closer to the ideal.

TIP #1 MAKE LISTS: Make lists in notebooks, your email program, OmniGraffle, project sites (I love Basecamp), spreadsheets, and multi-colored sticky-notes. Your lists help make a map of where you are going as well as laying out the directions for how to get there. Lists provide focus in an environment where you are exposed to a lot of information and distractions.

When making lists, consider how re-usable or shareable they need to be. Does each list need to track items to completion or are your lists an aid to commit them to memory? Determining this will help you make the choice between digital and analog formats, as things that need to be tracked are more likely to be shared at one point or another.

BE IN THE LOOP (ALWAYS)

I ask that everyone on the project team ‘cc’ me on every project related email. My intention is not to have a say in everything, or to be all Big Brother, but to have visibility into everything so I don’t have to ask folks “what’s going on?” all the time. Often the response to that question results in complex or summarized threads of information. Being and staying in the loop is critical because it allows me to be proactive about addressing issues rather than reactive.

TIP #2 TRIAGE EMAIL THOUGHTFULLY: Consider setting up a filter or tag on the email that you’re cc’d on and triage it from the rest of your email. That way you can separate the project related communication stream you should monitor from the project related email that you need to act on. Information is critical but maintaining focus on what you need to do is more important.

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING NEXT

Whatever I am doing, I dig into the details, question assumptions, and know the process to the point of being able to explain things to anyone who asks. I want to always be able to talk about what is going on with my project and why any particular thing is important to the overall objective.

TIP #3 PLAN TO REPLAN: Revisit your plan weekly, not just as a reminder to track progress and be aware of upcoming milestones, but to add new information. Ask yourself, “What might we need to do in the next couple of weeks that isn’t represented in the plan?” Make a note of it and ask questions about it. You may uncover risks or identify unforeseen tasks.

KNOW WHAT IS ABOVE AND WHAT IS BELOW THE LINE

Scott Berkun, consultant, friend of Adaptive Path, and author of Making Things Happen, describes his experience as a program manger for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as an exercise in holding the line. Every project has a goal. Every idea, concept, or feature that is developed needs to be mapped to a specific project goal. If there isn’t a clear relationship between goals and features then that idea is not included. As Scott would say, it is “below the line”. It is critical that I am able to identify what is valuable to the overall solution and what is a distraction. Distractions should be held for another release, another product or another lifetime.

TIP #4 REVISIT THE GOALS EVERY TIME YOU EVALUATE: A project’s goals and objectives are your guiding light. Keep a copy of them easily accessible and review them when evaluating progress with stakeholders, and use them before design reviews to set the appropriate context for the evaluation.

DON’T BE A PRISONER TO THE SCHEDULE

Good solutions depend on a process that people can follow. Mapping that process to how people work provides a schedule. Schedules have critical points where decisions need to be made or things need to be handed off to other folks. These are often referred to as Milestones. Milestones are often scrutinized as a measurement of how successful I am at managing the project. For some people, progress is measured quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Are you meeting milestones or not? That’s what they want to know. But good solutions aren’t run like a clock. Good solutions adapt to changing circumstances and deliver what is needed for the project to be a success. My job is to understand how to shift tasks, adjust effort, or change dates to make it a success.

Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin, and another friend of Adaptive Path says, “the person who is best able to describe the problem is most likely to be trusted with solving it.” This is important not only to win the project assignment, but also to convince people who have already have had their expectations set, to adjust the plan in order for the project to be a success. I don’t believe shifting the plan is a sign of failure. The earlier I am able to adjust the approach and move forward, the better I am at my job. I am responsible for delivering the best solution for my clients and I am responsible for making the case for changing tasks, timelines, and resources to do the best work possible.

TIP #5 MANAGE UP USING QUALITATIVE DATA: Breakout of the status report trap. Measuring progress quantitatively is important but the success of the project will be measured qualitatively when it’s done. Incorporate sketches, flows and videos into your reports. Less information is better if you can get people to focus on what is important.

I have more tips that I will be sharing with you in a few weeks, for now let me know what tips or advice you have for project, product, program managers!

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