Governance: The seeds of Operational Excellence

I am sure many of us have heard phrases like "we are in a constant fire-fighting mode," or "Pick your battles to win", etc. Somehow, these phrases have become so much a cliche that they have become part of our core management DNA principles. Recently, I was in a training session when I heard participants claim, "we are so much agile that we don't have time for iterations." Ignoring to immediately respond by focusing on principles of agile, grooming the backlog, and planning for iterations on this paradoxical phrase, I started questioning further. Not to most people's surprise, my finding revealed the lack of governance structure in strategic execution.

As I played archery game with my younger son on the Wii-U, he was explaining that I need to pay attention to the wind and distance before I can release the arrow. "It is not just a focus and strength game," he reasoned when I kept missing the target. It dawned on me immediately why people were failing to pay attention to strategy in execution, while strategy from the steering committee tells the archer which target to shoot the arrow, the archer still needs to have a specific strategy on how to execute to ensure the benefits align to the expectations of the steering committee. It is, therefore, management's responsibility to ensure that there are metrics and measures in place to inform the archer to take appropriate corrective and preventive actions.

However, when the managers and leaders fail to provide the required tools for people to upskill or reskill their talents, then they inherently suck the oxygen out of operational excellence. So, for an organization to continuously improve, they need to learn from past lessons and face new challenges and problems rather than relearn the same lessons or revisit the same challenges. It is leadership's failure to put the appropriate governance framework to ensure that execution is constantly aligned with the strategy.

The essential factors for operational excellence may vary within industries but they all should be having five important facts that I would like to call with a mnemonic phrase, "Strategy coordinates complex deliverable optimization." Let me expand on these five keywords:

Strategic Benefits - The strategy should deliver more than PowerPoints that make it into high-level objectives in people's scorecard. The leaders are accountable to provide clear measurable benefits that the execution should deliver. One of the important artifacts from program management domain is the benefits register that leaders should produce as an outcome from their strategic planning.

Coordinated Planning - While top management may have the vision, only the middle management knows the challenges of execution. So, top management should identify groomable talents within the organization involving them in the planning exercise with actionable outcomes. One of the best tools that the program and portfolio management domains recommend is a roadmap that orchestrates when the incremental and consolidated benefits will be realized (remember I just didn't say delivered) to help with adequate prioritization of customer and business value-add.

Complex Interdependencies - Whether benefits are delivered incrementally or consolidated, the complex interdependencies among projects and the operations still must be conceived by leadership and management. The middle management should be empowered to reskill their competencies in such a way that they are able to articulate around the political, economic, societal, technical, legal, environmental, ethnic and demographic (PESTLEED) dimensions leading to operational excellence. The best way to hold the top and middle management accountable is to have frequent management checkpoints (besides the health gate reviews) to inculcate the risks to delivery and the costs of non-delivery as part of their program or project design including the considerations for transition and succession planning.

Deliverable Integration - Particularly when benefits are incremental, but also as benefits become consolidated, integration of several benefits is a change management exercise. Understanding how changes impact the organization and evaluating the sensitivity around it as the projects and programs. This may take the form of standard operating procedures and transition and succession planning agreements (note that I didn't say just a plan or meeting but agreement) but most importantly having a controlled approach to releasing both the products to production as well as people to other projects.

Optimized Pace - Having a closed eye to how people will stretch themselves to deliver when benefits are not prioritized with multiple high-level priorities with interdependent resources is waiting for accidents to happen with the hope they don't. The most important assets to replace are the people and not having the above measures in places increases the stress level. Allowing people to decompress by requiring them to work on personal stretch goals aligned to the strategic benefits will help them reskill themselves to deliver on complex initiatives. They can't firefight forever and choose different battles to fight leading to employee attrition in the absence of execution treated with strategic outcomes aligned to the organizational benefits.

These five elements, in my humble opinion, are the governance fabric that lays the foundation for operational excellence. What do you think?

Simple Definition of Leadership

Leadership - Much has been talked about it both in scholarly literature and professional circles. Job roles, such as the Team Leader, also requires one to take leadership of a team. Similarly, various functional roles and strategic business units advance the notion of leadership inherent in them. For instance, a product owner is expected to be a leader in understanding the strategic nature of the product although the role itself doesn't have any leader tag associated. Similarly, account manager to lead the client and project manager to lead the client, team, and performing organizations mandate leadership qualities in them - yet there is no tag "leader" associated.

In several training classes, such as PMP training and Agile training that I have done, classes that I have facilitated in the academic setting for adult learners, as well as in the corporate and professional circles that I associate with, the questions of whether one is a leader or not comes up! So, how can we define leadership in its simple form without attributing terms such as charismatic, transactional, situational, transformational, and servant definitions so that anyone regardless of any professional or personal role can relate to being a leader!

When I was traveling to Vietnam, I stopped by Hong Kong where I had to wait for the connecting flight. It is there that simple definition really clicked to me as I saw a picture of a flying character with the slogans written in Chinese. Now, I don't know what the transcription reads on that board but the definition of leadership as, "a superpower seeing the people beyond what they see themselves and supporting them to raise up to their capabilities!" came up in my mind.

Please see the video linked here to hear my thought! (If the hyperlink does not work, please visit https://youtu.be/YYE76ZQjEV0 ) Would you agree with this definition?  Share your thoughts.

Thanks.
Sriram

Using Time to manage Risks associated with Stakeholders

Often, in my project management experience, I see that people miss engaging with the required stakeholders proactively to deal with risks. When stakeholders have not engaged appropriately, then, risks go uncontrolled making it impossible to mitigate them. Based on my experience, I see three types of stakeholders that need a good project manager must identify to proactively manage.

1. Too much engaged to the extent that they suck up all the oxygen in the team. They knowingly or unknowingly give the indication to the team that their ways are the common-sense way and everything else is almost wrong. 
2. Missing in Action stakeholders are too busy never to be around but when decisions are taken without them, they appear immediately. They are the constant speed breakers, breeding distrust and sometimes fear.
3. Ambiguous stakeholders who are in between these two above extremes can never figure out what they want, changing the priorities repeatedly making it difficult for the team to progress or slowdown. 

All these three types of stakeholders bring several types of risks - business, technical, and people among the many risks. The most important thing is to "Taking Initiative Managing Energy" that I call TIME management. This energy can be translated into how we manage "expectations". This is the reason why the project management discipline uses engagement for "stakeholder engagement" but management for other areas like knowledge areas like "Scope Management", "Schedule Management", etc. When you look at prioritization, it is all about taking initiative managing energy!

Consequently, while principles like start list, wish list and stop list exist that have been further enhanced by MoSCoW principles like (Must, Should, Could, and Won't) to prioritize requests, tasks, features, etc., TIME management considers a few simple things that anyone can do manage the stakeholders. These are asking a few questions like the following to set the expectations with the stakeholders.

1. Is this required? Particularly when #1 and #3 types of stakeholders are involved, determining the customer or business value of any proposed technique would take these discussions far along in avoiding tangential discussions and focusing on value-added work. Including timeboxing principles such as a definite amount of time for every actionable outcome from every agenda item can further keep the focus and remove other discussions to the parking lot.
2. Can you help me solve this, please? This approach can be used in all the three types of stakeholders. By setting one-on-one discussions with the stakeholder to mention how their values are important but how their continued presence is eliminating any creativity from the team due to their inclination to agree with the stakeholder's views or long absences taking any timely decision making away from the team can take the stakeholder management very productive. 
3. What's the ROI? Particularly in the stakeholder #3 situation, refocusing on the efforts versus cost/benefits can bring a distinct focus back to the project's objectives. Refocusing on the opportunity costs due to the cost of the meeting in discussing features that may not be a value add unless the stakeholder can unambiguously quantify will require the stakeholder to think of the Pareto principle and focus on "DONE"!

In the end, engaging stakeholders is an art that any project manager must spend time on. Regardless of how well one is, without a kaizen attitude towards continuous improvement, such arts of engaging stakeholders depreciate exponentially with time. So, use TIME to manage risks associated with stakeholder engagement. 

What other thoughts do you have in engaging stakeholders productively? Please share/comment. 

Continuous Improvement: The link between "Strengths" and "Opportunities"

Many of us that have some exposure into management either by academic preparation or by practical experience know a simple technique called the SWOT analysis. It is an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This powerful technique is often delegated to management and leadership for major things like new product development, change management implementation, and sales & marketing. Its simplicity in personnel development as part of the individual development plan to rise above the competition is less understood and practiced.

For example, most people get exposure to specific techniques like programming, spoken language skills, design skills, communication skills and many others. One even goes to get certified by prestigious vendor neutral (e.g.: Project Management Institute, CompTIA) and vendor specific organizations (Microsoft, Oracle). Admiral pursuits like these give us the competitive edge in the form of strengths leading to opportunities like new job or promotion either laterally or vertically.

But, too often, not having the written SWOT analysis with SMART objectives for a 3-to-5-year strategy soon moves our own strengths into the weakness quadrant. This is because a lot of new developments happen. For instance, when I was in Vietnam last month, I saw ambitious projects like a tunnel from Vietnam to Japan being considered. Academic institutions had representation from a few countries teaching and training at their universities. Students traveled several hours each way to attend classes to increase their career potential. As globally several colleges prepare their learners to excel and several non-profit organizations provide numerous opportunities for volunteers to sharpen their competencies, the supply of such new skills and competencies is constantly increasing. So, unless someone awakens to the competitive reality, one loses the competitive edge they once thought they had!

So, how do we sharpen the saw? The best way to do this is to open the mind and have time for opportunities outside. Kaizen or Continuous Improvement is the key that is going to unlock the opportunities available by giving us a reality check on whether the skills are still on par with the market demand and allow us to gain competitive skills over time. For instance, project managers often think delivering on OBOSOT (On Budget, On Scope, and On Time) is the important metric. With the strategic talent triangle in place, the need for benefit realization is taking equal prominence in addition to OBOSOT needs. How will we ever know this if we don't attend professional networking events and certification workshops and gain guidance through mentors or coaches? 

I personally saw the six mega trends advanced by Vielemetter and Sell (2014) for leadership, such as globalization 2.0, environmental crisis, individualism and value pluralism, digital era, demographic change, and technological convergence. Don't let your skills get rusty. Refine, supplement, and augment them by sharpening them. Increase your competencies through volunteering and begin serving the ikigai that you are meant to. Opportunities only knock the doors of those that not only knock the doors but also build them of glass for opportunity to readily see and come.

Where is your SWOT and how are you preparing yourself for the future?

Ref.: Vielmetter, G. & Sell, Y. (2014). Leadership 2030. New York, NY: Amacom

Executives need to understand Program & Project Management

As a firm believer in continuous improvement, I have always been monitoring the external environment to find new trends and equip myself with this knowledge. One of these interests was understanding more about Program and Portfolio Management. Although I had executed successfully a few program initiatives and been part of the strategic portfolio management, my interest to pursue Program Management certification became strong with an announcement of Project Management Institute on Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act (President Barack Obama Signs the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act, 2016). It was then I made a commitment to pursue PgMP certification which I passed successfully this month.

During the pursuit of this journey, I felt the inexorable gap in people in strategic leadership positions not truly understand the value of Project Management - let alone the program management. Many viewed program management that focuses on benefits delivery and benefits sustenance the same as project management that focuses on unique product or result. Mark Langley, the CEO of Project Management Institute, claimed how the lack of understanding project management culture among chief executives such CFO leads to money being wasted on projects failing to meet their strategic objectives or not having the appropriate structure for strong project management culture is a recipe for organizational failure (Langley, 2015).

If the culture of project management that touches on scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, stakeholder, procurement, human resources, communication, and integration can't address servicing customers, delivering good quality products, and retaining talent, what other professional discipline can be part of the operational excellence that touches on all areas of middle management to address customers, products, and people? It is no wonder Ireland (2006) claimed almost ten years back why executive management needs more project management skills than technical skills or delegation skills to effectively lead the organization. Several years later, Gale (2012) reports on a few organizations as a case study to support the case for increasing role of project management.

As I went through the program management framework that lays the foundation for strategic benefits, coordinated planning, complex interdependencies, deliverable integration and optimized pacing, the role of program management in benefit delivery was conspicuous. The focus of programs not only dealt with incremental benefits delivered through component projects but also on the consolidated benefits through structured governance to resolve quin constraints aligning the program efforts to organizational direction, identifying and responding proactively to risks across the projects and into operations, and leading, coordinating and collaborating multiple work streams. When such a program level leadership role is not identified to go through a program delivery framework, lots of productivity loss becomes transparent to the organizations.

Organizations today are changing dramatically. The need to respond to changes rapidly is an essential fabric to maintaining market share amidst the political, economic, societal, technical, legal, environmental, ethnic, and demographic changes and competitive edge. So, the need for executives to understand the project, program, and portfolio management is not a luxury but a necessity.


References

Gale, S.F. (2012). The case for project management. PMI Executive Guide. Retrieved August 31, 2017, from https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/publications/pmi-executive-guide.pdf

Irelend, L. (2006). Executive Management's role in project management. International Project Management Association. Retrieved August 31, 2017, from http://www.ipma-usa.org/articles/ExecRoles.pdf

Langley, M.A. (2015, August 6). 3 Things CFOs Should Know about Project Management. CFO.com. Retrieved August 31, 2017, from http://ww2.cfo.com/business-planning/2015/08/3-things-cfos-know-project-management/

President Barack Obama Signs the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act (2016, December). Project Management Institute. Retrieved August 31, 2017, from https://www.pmi.org/about/press-media/press-releases/president-barack-obama-signs-the-program-management-improvement-and-accountability-act 

Customer Service Redefined

I am currently in Vietnam as part of my faculty relationship with Northeastern University to teach a course on Strategic Leadership at the International University in Ho Chi Min City. Being a vegetarian, I asked about the menu options at the hotel I stayed at prior to my departure.  There were a few options presented. Upon arriving at the hotel, I explored all the four vegetarian menu choices in a couple of days! I had about 10 more days to go! Naturally, I was worried and started walking around to find other healthy vegetarian options!

I explained this to the chef at the hotel, Saigon Prince, and this is when I started a new definition of customer service. The chef patiently asked me more about my preferences, clarifying food options are considered acceptable for me. He even asked me to share with me a few menu choices and coming from an India background I provided ideas of Indian menu choices first followed by other cuisine ideas like Italian, Chinese, and Mexican recommendations. The chef was a Vietnamese origin and prepared me a couple of off-the-menu Indian choices. What surprised me was his reading about the Indian menu choices I presented along with the ways of preparation! I was pleasantly shocked to the attention to the detail in preparing the area for making my dish and giving me a clear vegetable broth soup that he found from his research accompanied this sort of dish. I was so happy that I recognized his due diligence and efforts by talking with the senior management appreciating him.

There were days the chef couldn't be there and so I still had to use my survival skills to explore the region. Using a combination of technology finding local Indian restaurants, I found about five Indian restaurants. One of these restaurants, Saigon India, particularly caught me off guard with another exemplary customer service. While most restaurants gave what I needed, the manager approached me and wanted to know a little more about it as he had not seen me before. That itself is an example of  good customer service in differentiating frequent visitors from new visitors and trying to offer specialized service. Additionally, knowing more about my food challenges and interests, he specifically custom ordered a dish and made the lunch menu to be one of my favorites. I was so pleasantly surprised with this burning desire to know more about the customers and catering to their needs by customized service.

Both these two businesses realize that I am a passing visitor. Not making any efforts to truly understand my needs, clarifying my requests, and following through on servicing my needs is really within the normal expectations of operating a restaurant or café. So long as the quality of the food, timely delivery of order, and demonstrating respect for me has been addressed, both these businesses have met the standard operational definition of customer service. But both redefined customer service in their attempt to understand the food challenge that I faced, clarify the requirements, research more to meet my demands, and then deliver a dish that met my requirements.

To me, they have redefined customer service. Customer service is not mentioning the customer is the king but truly making him or her feel like one. Whether the existing products meet the customer's demand or not, trying to understand the customer's request and the reasons behind such a request first applies the four stages of active listening (hear, clarify, interpret, and respond) and follow through with the products they had available to meet the customer's needs. That truly made the customer feel like a king and in today's globally shrinking world the customer may be far away but can still be a great marketing aid. As the basic rule of marketing goes, I will always refer them to anyone traveling to Ho Chi Ming City in Vietnam.

Management Presentations are Unscheduled Interviews for Career Growth

Many project managers in a strong project environment must do presentations before management or clients providing management level status updates about their project or program. As the performance review time comes and project managers want promotion accompanied by increased compensation, how much they have used their projects as catalytic vehicles to promote their personal brand is often not understood by many project managers. Little do many realize the type and structure of presentations in the first place in engaging with the stakeholders and use these presentations to their strategic advantage to build their own individual personal brand.

For instance, when the performance review time comes, why should they be considered for a promotion? Granted their ability to deliver projects on budget, on scope, and on time (called often by OBOSOT) is critical. But, despite the best efforts of a project manager to proactively identify risks and have risk response strategies to address these risks, the external environmental factors may adversely impact the project contributing to schedule slips, cost overruns, customer dissatisfaction, or project terminations. The project manager's ability to engage with the stakeholders managing their expectations proactively and communicating these results with the subsequent impacts on the projects positions the stakeholders to represent their interests to their management. The management presentations that project managers deliver are a critical component to this stakeholder engagement that emphasizes one's personal brand.

The presentations in general fall under three categories, namely informative, persuasive, or explanatory. I call them the "Communication PIE."

1. The informative presentations often summarize status updates of a project and review reports and variance analysis to project team members, project sponsor, and some senior members of management depending upon the project visibility. 
2. The explanatory presentations involve workshop or training style presentations where stakeholders or team members across the functions are trained to understand the processes, tools, policies, procedures, etc. The goal is on what they should know, how they should respond, where they should access more details, and who they should escalate when issues arise that are outside of the workshop or training. The goal is building team morale, addressing change management, training on tools and technologies, understanding processes, etc. 
3. The persuasive presentations focus on lobbying for a solution and presenting a strategy providing substantial reasons on the reasons, risks (threats/opportunities), impacts or benefits if fail to act in a reasonable time. The audience in this presentation is often the senior management including the sponsor involved in the decision making.

This persuasive meeting, for instance, is a moment for management to know more about your critical thinking and leadership skills. These presentations, in my humble opinion, are unscheduled interviews for the project managers where the management takes copious notes on how well you presented the solution and how thorough your analysis was. It is these presentations that come vividly to the senior management's mind with their mind voice reinforcing your need for a promotion. 

So, don't take these management meetings less seriously. These unscheduled interviews should be followed through on how you did, where you could improve, and have action plans to ensure that you are addressing these that your management sees. Maximize the opportunities, therefore, using your strengths in these meetings and eliminate the threats of stalled career growth by addressing any of your weaknesses. 

How well do you think you can utilize these management meetings productively next time? Share your thoughts by responding to this thread.

Method to create a Risk adjusted estimate - PERT

While estimation discussions come up among project managers or students pursuing project management, many never consider PERT. The discussions revolve around top down, analogous, bottom-up and parametric estimation. While each of these techniques have a place in estimation, I wonder why PERT is never considered. In fact, in one of the chapter meetings organized by PMI MassBay, one of the founders of PMI, Jim Snyder, considered the "Father of the Project Management Institute, expressed how even PMP certified people cant' explain the basics of estimation techniques like PERT.

I prefer PERT to any estimation technique and only prefer because it builds into a risk adjustment quantitatively. Perhaps, I am biased, but my bias comes from the fact that the analogous has too much uncertainty and the bottom-up estimation drains people's time. So, one of the approaches that I have taken is to get information using historical data and expert judgment and extract details for bottom up without spending too much time on the bottom up.  That is, my approach is to get the data required for PERT without asking people. 

For instance, if project archives tell some work took 100 hours when projected estimate was 70, then, I know 70 was a guess at the time it was given. Similarly, if someone said 70 hours but historical projects have taken up 100 hours for that level of effort, I know the 70 hours was the same guess. Now, put them in the normal or binomial curve. If 100 hours is the regular median, then apply the standard deviation calculations which says rough order of magnitude may go from 25% to 75%. The optimistic is 25% (17.5 less from 70 hours, i.e. 52.5). The pessimistic is 75% more than 70 (i.e., 52.5 more from 70, 122.5). Since 70 itself was a guess, I apply a slack based on complexity, unknown assumptions, level of expertise of the person giving, and add 10 to 15% more to 70. So, using 10%, I have optimistic (52.5), optimal (77) and pessimistic (122.5). So, (52.5 + 4*77 + 122.5)/6 = 80.5 PERT.

If we look at the way the planning poker is played, it is mainly making sure that people agree on a point value by allowing people that have the lowest and highest point engage in a conversation. The entire planning poker game is to promote the central tendency in a team setting. So, the statistical principles do apply. The PERT is another statistical approach that does the same thing to enable the teams to arrive at a value agreeable to all. 

Therefore, use the statistical ranges and historical data combined with expert judgment to realistically even out the uncertainties by creating a risk adjusted estimate using PERT.

How do you think you can apply this approach?

Listening with Eyes

The popularity of communication being the lynchpin for a successful project is very well known. In one of the conferences I attended, I even heard the speaker say that project success is 80% communication, and the other half is communication. People have classified communication by priority, the medium used, accessibility, etc. Communication plans therefore also require to be formal, clear, concise, comprehensive, accessible, and engaging stakeholder commitments. But one of the most critical aspects of any communication is in listening!

Again, the concept of active listening has been around for a long time. The four critical steps of hearing, clarifying, interpreting and responding to active listening have been reasonably understood by the project management community. During all these sessions, people focus on hearing the person putting aside their opinions and bias and understanding what the speaker says. All these sounds great but true active listening goes further beyond what is physically heard by the ears. One should go beyond the words spoken and unearth what is left unsaid. How can you accomplish? This is done by listening with eyes and senses.

When you are listening with eyes, you are not hearing what the person says but watching how the person says. The moments of pause and silence can emphasize the severity of the message while the rolling of eyes and other body gestures may provide indications of ambiguity, resilience, discomfort, etc. Frequent use of checking phones, lack of eye contact, and change of topics are also things to monitor as listening with eyes extend practicing actively non-verbal communication to a different level getting deeper. All these approaches also have to factor along with the geographical cultural components so that your clarifying questions and interpretations are not misleading.

Listening with eyes can also be practiced in written communication where the use of color in fonts, emphasis using bold, use of upper case letters, balanced use of emoticons to soften the message, use of proper white space to give breathing room for the reader, etc. There is a reason why there is a saying "read between the lines" exists.  Practice these communication approaches even when people are not talking to you such as in osmotic communication.

So, don't just focus on creating status reports and publishing emails. Factor as part of your management style "listening with eyes" actively. A good communicator is not always the good writer but the good listener.

Please respond with your thoughts.

RACI Errors: Impact on Project Integration Management

In developing a good project integration management, it is critical to understand the role of responsibility assignment matrix. The goal of project management primarily is to deliver results through other people. This involves a clear role and responsibility for every work package or function that will play a critical role in project delivery. One such responsibility assignment matrix is the RACI.

I have often seen RACI filled incorrectly and have blogged (Rajagopalan, 2014). However, I would like to discuss the following two issues further as they have a relationship on other aspects of project management knowledge areas.

1.  Mixed roles with "A" and "R": When a person or function is marked with both these roles, then this may introduce the risk of project schedule slip. If the individual responsible for doing the function fails to perform, then typically the accountable person will monitor the slip and ensure that the work is getting done. Alternatively, if the work is not completed satisfactorily, the accountable person shares the onus to check on the quality and the cost of poor delivery. However, if the "R" person also is the "A" person, then the latter will not put any pressure on the former because they are both the same. This impacts risk, time, cost, and quality. Similar challenges can be seen with "R" and "C" or "I" overlap.

2. Too may "A"s: If two people are accountable, then there are two types of problems. The first is the blindness game each "A" role plays thinking that the other role will keep an eye in ensuring the task is completed. When this task fails to be done, the blindness game becomes the blame game reasoning with the "I thought you would have done it." This introduces project delays that may impact time and introduces challenges with procurement. The second issue is the team gets conflicting directions from each "A" person leaving the team to get caught between power plays. The resulting team dynamics may lead to HR and stakeholder challenges.  Furthermore, these issues may impact other areas of project management.

There are several symptoms that a proper RACI may resolve for the project manager to proactively address. But unless a project manager has a good understanding of RACI, the symptoms deteriorate leading to major problems requiring surgical intervention from executive management.  The project manager can avoid these strategically by planning to succeed with end in mind. 

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2014). RACI: Errors and Implications in building the right one. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/07/raci-errors-and-implications-in.html

Professional Networking Inevitable for Developing Personal Brand

In one of the workshops, I facilitated this month on agile project management, there were questions around gaining real experience that limited students to get gainful employment. In a talk that I gave subsequently later this month on PARAG framework for transforming middle management (Rajagopalan, 2015) highlighting how we should strive to learn from failures of projects within the industry of our specialization, the question revolved around how to go about learning from other project failures in similar sectors or industries.

As I ponder over these questions from both students looking for entry level positions as well as professionals in the work environment trying to improve themselves, there is a good striking similarity of the lack of understanding of professional networking. Perhaps confounded by the proliferation of the number of social media websites, the size of the friends’ circle within social media network and the practice of liking and sharing posts of people daily life, people think these social media practices are equivalent to professional networking. You can see some of these practices even in professional networks like LinkedIn where people seem to follow such practices. I believe people seem to have lost the connection to professional networking and its true benefits.

When colleges seek high school students, they are looking for a lot more than being the first in the school because there will be a lot of such 'first in school' students applying for the college. What distinguishes one student from another is becoming critical as the entry criteria for admission. This fundamental need to differentiate is why the students attempt to do many things, such as volunteering for a social cause, practicing a unique art or music, or excelling in a specific sport. Particularly, these volunteering opportunities open the doors to the understanding of customer service, accountability, and responsibility among many other indispensable values that many need to become well-rounded individuals.  How did this core need to volunteer get lost after graduation and employment?

While contributing to society by volunteering time is more rewarding, it provides an opportunity for one to augment their skills and gain experience in many areas, such as event planning, technical skills, customer service, etc. Besides, the same experience introduces other people that know you by face and work ethics, which carries a long way in expanding professional opportunities as one gains experience and seeks introductions. One is not only helping a cause but also building their reputation and visibility as they meet new people, make connections, learn new skills, gain competencies through experience, and get introductions. This experience is not the same as liking or sharing posts in social media or broadcasting forwarded posts through communication vehicles.

Now, the professional networking can also be expanded with a Kaizen (continuous improvement) attitude to professional improvement. By attending professional networking events like the monthly chapter events organized by the local chapters of the Project Management Institute, for instance, one can expand professional associations on topics that they may be unfamiliar with, problems encountered by other professional in the same industry or sector, or creative solutions to problems like us. Further, one can even seek input on how to solve a problem that they face in group activities at larger professional events like professional development days or executive committee meetings. Any information thus gained becomes invaluable as one adapts them to their needs creating new knowledge that can be shared to others through blogs, presentations at local round tables or chapter meetings, through the open space, global cafes, unconference, or lean coffee meetings

One common question that always comes up is the time commitment needed and the cost of the events. It is true that events cost money because they must be arranged too. Now, if professional improvement is at the core of your growth, then, one can find time because in my humble opinion, TIME is all about taking initiative managing energy. Many organizations support these professional improvement opportunities. One can always find ways to volunteer in part or full to cover themselves to attend these professional networking events. For instance, PMI is a volunteer-supported organization that has numerous opportunities and Agile Alliance has the purple volunteers always available to support large events. And I am proud to have volunteered with both these organizations.

In addition, the best way one can deepen the knowledge and wisdom gained is to share it with others. Just like how the people in the rally race get a head start running along with the person passing the baton, it is our responsibility to share the wealth of our knowledge and wisdom to the next generation during the time life can allow us to work together. There are many mentorships needs, such as those organized by PMI and NAAAP for professionals to volunteer supporting other students and professionals giving an opportunity for us to question our own fundamental assumptions from a different limelight and offer value to mentees.

In the end, whether one chooses volunteering, mentorship, or just professional improvement, it is imperative that one really understands that the value of one's brand lies much more in how many people know you for what you are! This knowledge of your true worth should be much more than just your organization but for the professional society that made you who you are. The best way to positively develop this individual brand is to be a servant leader in unlearning what you know, learning what you thought you know, and relearning to master what you learned. Then, your reputation precedes you.

References
Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Product Personification: PARAG model to successful software product development. International Journal of Managing Value and Supply Chains, 6(1), 1-12.

Do we fully understand Scope Management?

The record of how information technology projects fail has been studied and documented in numerous reports, such as the CHAOS, McKinsey, etc. The staggering statistics of the percentage of projects failing to meet their schedules, experiencing budget overruns, and failing to deliver the promised business value doesn’t always lead to technology as a failing component. The origins of failure often are not associated with technology but the people unable to relate to the scope in the big picture and the inadequate controls in the processes. In this blog article, let us focus on requirements on some of the less known aspects of scope – the boundary of what controls what the project should deliver!

Scope Grope: One of the less familiar aspects of scope management that plague the software industry is the team’s inability to articulate the requirements. These requirements manifest themselves as the rough draft of “wish lists.” This may also include some of those “gold-plated” features that are thought to be adding value. However, since these requirements are not solidly grounded in the technical, operational, and economic feasibility, these requirements do not strategically relate to winning more business, streamlining multiple channels of engagement, increasing employee performance, etc. These kinds of requirements become the "scope drifters" and are often a "productivity spoiler" and "promises stealer" because the business team fails to articulate the requirements clearly for subsequent analysis and design.

Occasionally, this challenge may further be passed from the business team to the technology team where the requirements further need to be assessed for technical plausibility within the constraints of human capital knowledge, budget limitations, security and compliance considerations being some of them. This scope grope may further be experienced by delay tactics by execution team members and the agile approaches to time-boxed delivery may easily be used to consider spikes as a limited experiment.

Among the many techniques available to use, a good technique to consider by both product managers, project managers, and business analysts is the SIPOC model. Using this model can help understand the relevance and importance of the entire value chain and the business impact of delivering or not delivering these wish-list features! Additional techniques include the benefits register, use case diagram, SWOT, PESTLE analysis, etc.

Scope Creep: This is a popular terminology even among agile practitioners that despises anything plan-driven. Although many relate to these concepts, there is a misconception that scope creep only involves the addition of new features not originally in the scope. Scope creep may also result from removal from scope any requirement and based on the time of the request, there may be rework required to revert some or all the changes done.

Perhaps mistakenly inherited from some of the account managers viewing scope creep as change orders executed with their client to reconcile financial changes in scope, the need to understand the process used in managing the product, program, or project cannot be emphasized more. Any organizational change control policy or governance framework must document changes not in the form of scope initiated by the client or product managers due to the market forces in the form of new or modified requirements but also the changes to the environmental context that also impacts the project’s schedule, cost, risk and quality.

Since the scope may have to reworked to bring the project to the same stability before additional work can be executed or released to the customer, the project manager’s astute awareness of the commercial and non-commercial aspects of the project’s boundary conditions may very well require additional stakeholders to be identified.

Scope Kill: It is an attempt to disengage with new ideas because the project’s operating framework doesn’t allow it, or the organizational culture doesn’t have an appetite for innovative ideas. There are many reasons for these "scope kill" contributors and some may include the scrum master not parking new ideas to be discussed at a later point and using time-boxing as an excuse to immediately mute the flow of ideas.

Several tools exist to control scope but one of the most critical tools is to have a RACI through which the Stakeholder map can be formed better to build alliances and form bridges to ensure that benefits are aligned, risks are mitigated, and quality is not compromised. The other tools include risk register, communication plan, stakeholder register, risk-adjusted backlog, a documented change control process and blue ocean thinking.

Scope Leap: Another uncommon terminology related to scope management is the scope leap, which is a result of a dramatic shift in the strategic focus or tactical direction of the organization altering the backdrop under which the project, product, or program is operating. In such cases, the measurable organizational value (MOV) no longer holds true completely. As a result, the focus of the minimum viable product may also have its significance for the product and project managers.

The biggest challenge comes when the same techniques for handling the Scope creep are used. Often, scope leap is happening when the project is in-flight, and it is understandable why one would resort to these techniques. However, since the project’s assumptions and subsequently the charter have been changed, getting back to the scope grope tools is better to revalidate ourselves before moving forward.

In the end, before any technology can be associated with a project’s failure, think of the role played by people, process, and organizations on a product and project’s scope and the resulting outcomes. It is possible for an IT project to fail because of technology but not all the technology project's failure come from technology failure!