Category: PMP Tips

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#013 – Estimating IT Projects and an Update

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I will be presenting on Estimating IT Projects at PD Days in Moncton May 23rd.  I also talk about my new on-demand Estimating IT Projects training course.

Show Notes:
  1. Host: Ron Smith
  2. Music: www.hooksounds.com
  3.  www.chalder.ca
  4. PMI NB – PD Days
  5. Course Information link: Estimations Course mailing list and info.

Use the comment section below to comment on the interview.

Get your free audiobook by visiting managingprojects.ca/audible. Thanks to Audible for supporting this podcast.

Want to get more helpful project management insights like this directly in your inbox? Subscribe to the Managing Projects newsletter (see subscribe in the right side menu).

 

Ron Smith

Ron is a Project Manager with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

Check out the contributors page.

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#010 – Groupthink and Ineffective Brainstorming with Steve Martin

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“Groupthink leads to deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement.” – Irving Janis

Steve highlights the conditions that foster group think.  He discussed the devil’s advocate.  He teaches the perfection game and discusses the history of brainstorming and how realistic it is.  Did you know people will go through polarizing amplification of bias in groups?  Listen in as we discuss anchoring and idea generation to produce higher quality of ideas using 6-5-3 and Delphi techniques.

Steve Martin (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSP, CSM, CSPO…too many!)
Professional Bio:  Steve is a trusted management advisor and seasoned business transformation leader with over 20 years experience. He uses Agile and Lean principles to help organizations to define their strategic “big picture” and then leads teams to seamlessly execute tactical plans to iteratively and incrementally deliver technology-based products or solutions.

Steve is a sought-after speaker at major conferences, such as the Agile 20xx conferences, Scrum Gatherings, and PMI Global Conferences and PMI Leadership Institutes, and has a passion for training.

Website: www.cottagestreetconsulting.com. The Workshops tab has a list of upcoming public courses, such as CSM (Certified ScrumMaster) plus a private course offering list. You can get free articles, white papers, and selections from prior conference presentations as well from the Resources page. It’s all free! My only request is to give feedback on how well it worked or if it didn’t so we can improve them for others going forward.

Show Notes:

  1. Host: Ron Smith
  2. Contact: steve@cottagestreetconsulting.com
  3. LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/agilesteve
  4. Music: www.hooksounds.com

 

Use the comment section below to comment on the interview.

Want to get more helpful project management insights like this directly in your inbox? Subscribe to the Managing Projects newsletter (see subscribe in right side menu).

 

Ron Smith

Ron is a Project Manager with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

Check out the contributors page.

 

Transcription of Interview

Ron: Welcome to the managing projects podcast. My name is Ron Smith your host. Today I have Steve Martin with me and Steve has appeared on the show once before. He and I spoke about troubled project recovery and he works with teams in the agile space. So if you haven’t heard that episode that’s a fantastic one to go listen to. So today’s episode we are going to be talking about groupthink and ineffective brainstorming. So welcome back Steve.

 

Steve: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you inviting me back to the show. Especially with this topic of group think and ineffective brainstorming because it’s so related to the troubled projects that we’ve talked about.

 

Ron: It is and there was a temptation that I had to go into that. So I’m glad to have you back because this is a topic that could take its own episode.

 

Steve: Yeah so when it comes to groupthink the term was coined actually in the early 70s by a researcher Irving Janis. What he noticed is there are certain situations where groups of people just make really bad decisions. And one of the quotes that he had from his research he was a little bit pessimistic and I just love some of the words that he used because it really paints a picture. So to quote him and from his study… basically groupthink happens when you’ve got a group that makes bad or faulty decisions because of group pressure. And when you’ve got that group pressure it really leads to a deterioration of… and this is the quote: deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgment. He is not mincing words he’s just basically say these groups when they get together they’re so into it they just really ignore alternatives. They are convinced they’re right. And when you have these decisions that are shaped by group think they really have a low probability of success. So he’s really pointed with these words there. There are certain conditions that tend to foster some group think and that’s when you’ve got folks that might have a similar background. And what I mean by this is folks that all come from the same university or from the same program. So if you got folks that are from a same regional area, singular gender, singular race or ethnicity or a singular background. Anything like that, that tends to foster some group think. Some other conditions are if they’re insulated are just completely protected or siloed from outside opinions. They’re just on their own they’re just doing their thing. They are empowered. They’re on their way. They’ve got no clear rules to make decisions. They’re just going to go for it. But even when you have those three things whether it’s similar backgrounds they’re insulated, or siloed and they have no clear rules, what really cements it together is that they have a high degree of pressure to produce something and there is a low motive low motivation or a low incentive to realistically look at things outside of what they already know. They’re under pressure. They have to drive to results and they have to drive the results right now. And so, they’re not going to take the time to look outside of their circle to get those opinions. And making sure diversity doesn’t mean just to have one token person on that team.

 

Steve: When you do this, you actually have to create the team in a way that is going to enable those diverse opinions to actually be heard and be considered. And so just having one person on there that’s just not going to do it.

 

Ron: Can you talk a little bit about the whole devil’s advocate. Does that play into the group think.

 

Steve: Yeah. So when you start taking a look at raising alternative opinions or alternative suggestions again if you’re under high pressure you tend to get more of the groans in the room. If you’ve got a group that says I don’t even want to be in this meeting in the first place I just want to do my job. Why are we hear? So every person that speaks up is just preventing me from doing what I really want to be doing. Whether it’s coding or designing or whatever it is. I’ve seen some groups put in things like well we’re going to have a mandatory devil’s advocate. All right this week that you’re going to be the mandatory designated devil’s advocate. You need to actually have someone who has a genuine Devil’s Advocate perspective and be able to argue it with a degree of interest and a degree of coming from the place of wanting to make this better. And that’s why there is there’s this concept of what one of my colleagues called being a skunk at the garden party which is very similar to like a devil’s advocate. But this is somebody that’s personally vested. Sometimes I invite these people to these meetings and people look at me like why would you invite this person. Because I know: A) that they may not like me, and B) they have an opinion. And I think if you invite this person and you can have them bring a friend, so it’s not like six people on one, where you can create the atmosphere of pros and cons to have a collaboration as opposed to just a combat. You can get to where it is that you need to go. But here is my advice to that skunk at the garden party. Don’t go in there with the attitude of I’m going to disagree with everything that you’ve got to say because chances are there is going to be at least one or two things that skunk actually agrees with. Start with that. Hey I like this or I like this. I think that’s in the right direction. I do something called the perfection game. This is what I learned from my mentor when I was learning how to facilitate the perfection game is this. I like this… what would make this perfect… would be if you also did… or what would make this perfect is… if you just tweaked this this way. And so it’s that old game of replacing but I love this. “But” there goes the flags. And the reason why I think that is this… now are people going to listen to that 100 percent of the time? No it’s going to be one of those trust things that over time you’re going to build. But I’ve actually had skunks at the dinner party turned into actually advocates for the team over time.

 

Ron: They’re a great advocate. Right. Because, they are someone who’s been turned and who was not shy to be talking about the topic in the first place.

 

Steve: Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Ron: So we got group think and then in the midst of that we have brainstorming so how did you brainstorming knowing that you don’t want group think.

 

Steve: So when you start to think about the history of brainstorming… the brainstorming idea actually came from an ad executive from the 1950s. And so that’s how long this this quote concept has been around and 70 years later folks are still trying to hang onto the concept that brainstorming is the way to go to generate new ideas. What this guy Alex Osborne said in the 1950s when it came to brainstorming was throw out as many ideas as possible don’t worry about feasibility about the craziness build on ideas and don’t criticize. But what we found when we do this it actually doesn’t work so well. Actually the research that has been basically proven time and time again is that brainstorming to generate ideas in this manner. Groups that do this actually come up with less ideas and have lower quality than if you were just to sit there by yourself and come up with ideas in a silo. All by yourself. Yeah so brainstorming actually yields some really poor results. Which is really… it’s just one of those things of when you start looking at groupthink and you start looking at individualistic behavior. There’s actually four behaviors that as individuals it actually impacts the group. And if you’re doing a group brainstorming session these things really take into account. Like for example: if you have an individual bias against something or towards something when you get into a group whatever that bias is going to be amplified. And so, whenever you start talking about a certain idea or concept you can have that bias as an individual but when you start talking about it with that group and especially if you’re like minded you’re going to become more polarized in that view. This was really kind of interesting. In one of the studies that one of the researchers did this was back in just around 2015 or so they called it the Colorado experiment because they held this in Colorado. The researchers did a study of a fairly controversial medical procedure and they gave a poll to two different groups of folks from Colorado Springs which tend to be more conservative than folks from Boulder Colorado which tend to be more liberal and so they answered their views as individuals about this medical procedure. Then what they did is they got people together like in a town hall if you’re from Colorado Springs you went here if you’re from Boulder you went there and then you started to discuss with people of like minded views. They went back and as individuals they took that same poll again. They found that the results became more polarized. And so I thought that was kind of interesting. So if you are in a group of folks and you start going down a certain direction you’re trying to brainstorm. You’re going to go into that direction of whatever that bias is. Because the third thing we are saying that we find especially when you start doing brainstorming as a group right out of the gate is that there’s this concept of anchoring. Whoever says the first statement… that’s an anchor, and the next statements that come after that are in relationship to whatever that first statement is. And so, whatever that first statement is – that’s that’s where you’re going to follow. And typically, the fourth thing is that wherever that anchor comes in is typically something that they know already. It’s something that they know. So it’s they’re going to emphasize something that’s a prevailing concept that they already know.

 

Ron: Everybody gets.

 

Steve: Yeah we get this. We don’t have to talk about it. We know this and we’re going to anchor over here. And so that’s why we come up with different techniques to make brainstorming a little bit better. And that’s where I try to say let’s change the word from brainstorming. What if we called it something like idea generation and there’s so many different places where we do idea generation. Over the course of either a project or creating a product idea generation comes probably mostly in some sort of requirements or features or figuring out whatever it is that our customer needs. There’s a lot of ideas that come up with that same thing with design. There’s a lot of things that come up with that. How we test. There’s a lot of ideas that come up with that and so we always go in with what it is that we know and you’re going to follow the actions a statement of whatever prevailing bias needed to go into that direction anyway. You’re just really missing the idea generation concept is how do you do something new or innovative if you’re just going to go down the route that you’ve always been. No matter if you say we’re going to do this different.

 

Ron: So what does idea generation look like. How would you run a group through that process.

 

Steve: Well there’s a couple of different ways that you can do this. When I work with organizations that are looking at products or are trying to think of what’s the next set of features or whatever it is that our customers want. I tend to do it in a two stage process in the first stage. It’s about generating ideas as an individual. And then the second stage is sharing those ideas that you came up with us as as an individual, grouping those ideas, and then figuring out prioritizing which group should we go after first. And so when you go into for example an agile work room there’s a reason why there’s a lot of techniques of them using posted notes. Because as an individual, if he can write ideas down one by one as an individual and then you throw them up on a wall you will actually get more ideas higher quality and of greater diversity than if you were just to shout them out and only have one or two or three people really drive the conversation.

 

Ron: That is how I do my risk identification on projects you’ve posted notes people write it down quick. They have a very short time frame. Then we’re done. We’re done writing it down to the point everybody has written down maybe three or four minutes.

 

Steve: Yeah and I typically limit it to around a four minute time period. And then once they’re on the wall the next thing that I do is and this is the tough part. Silently. Silently, have the whole group of nine or 10 people whoever came up with the ideas go up to the wall and start group them into certain groupings that they come up with. So if there’s a theme of risks about a technology stack – okay those will group them over here. If there’s risks around resources okay we’ll put it around here. If there’s risks around certain dates or market drivers okay we’ll put them over here. If you have them do it silently. And that’s the trick. You start tapping into other forms of communication. And I know this is really crunchy granola. Yes I was born in California. But what happens here is you start to look at people’s body language and how they’re reacting to things and when they can’t talk and you get to see how tense somebody’s body is and they just want to put it here but you’re not letting me put it to you get to observe that and you can have a discussion about those things. So the third part of the exercise is coming together and saying oh right these are the groupings. Do these make sense. But if there are things that people feel very strongly against that’s the conversation I want to have I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on stuff we already agree. Then of course the last step is OK of all these things here which ones do we feel are most important. There’s a couple of different voting techniques that you can do. Dot voting or a secret ballot voting or put it into a survey monkey and do a survey monkey. There’s a bunch of different things that you can do. I like dot voting because you just get it done and done. It’s right there in the room.

 

Ron: So one of your presentations you mentioned the 6 3 5 technique.

 

Steve: Basically imagine you’ve got a group of six people. Each person has a sheet of flip chart paper in front of them. So we’ve got six pieces of flip chart paper. Six people. And so what you do is you put one person in front of each flip chart and you say OK here is the problem that we want to solve. All six of us want to solve the same problem. OK. As an individual write down three or so ideas and stick it on your sheet of paper. Give them a minute or two to do that. So at the end of that minute or two each sheet of paper should have roughly three sticky notes on it. Then everybody says Okay take one step to the right. So I’m now looking at the person who just put three ideas up there before me. OK we’re going to do this again take another minute or two. Look at those three ideas don’t consider your ideas. Leave them there. Consider these three ideas that somebody else came up with and start building off of those three. You have two minutes to build off those three. And so at the end of that second round you now have six ideas. Take another step to the right. Okay. Now you’re looking at six ideas from the first two people in front of you. Again don’t look at what people done before leave that behind. Look at those six ideas that you have right now and add three more to it. Build off of what they have. And so when you do this you’re taking five steps to the right. That’s for that five comes from and that 6 3 5. You come back to your original sheet of paper. You now have 18 ideas. All built off of your original three and you’ve got six people times 18. You have roughly just under 110 ideas. In about 15 minutes. Then you can start getting into the grouping exercise. Then you could start getting into the voting exercise. But this is another idea generation technique building off of previous people’s ideas. Now I tend to do something like this if we’ve got more of a completely blue sky or green field are completely hey everything is wide open. I sometimes do this if I want to get role clarity for people on a team. OK. Business analysts these are your roles project managers. These are your roles. If you’ve got a team member this is your role. If you’ve got a quality person this is your role if you’re somebody representing the business this is your role. Each person would have their own flip chart piece of paper. So it’s just again one of those ways to very quickly come up with ideas from multiple perspectives.

 

Ron: So the first time we had you on we talked about troubled project recovery that was a really great. And I almost jumped into the group think topic then, so connect for me this whole group think in the midst of this troubled project recovery.

 

Steve: Yeah. So I typically like to use the Delphi Technique which is the coming up with a number of ideas as individuals and then popping them up there when I do something like that. I tend to not ask the questions of troubled projects of what made this troubled because again that’s is focusing on the negative. What I try to do in this case here to generate ideas is I might ask questions like What advice would you give to somebody joining the team.

 

Ron: Run.

 

Steve: And if the answers run why? Because I don’t want to say no ideas a bad idea but if somebody if somebody is going to give an answer like that everybody’s entitled to an opinion.

 

Ron: You’ll probably get that one out of humor if nothing else. Yeah I get it.

 

Steve: There’s some things that I put on there like what are some tools that would be helpful for you?

 

Ron: Well my goodness. It’s great to talk to you again. Second time we’ve had you on. I’m going to put your contact information in show notes for people who are listening just let people know how they can get a hold of you or see what you’re up to.

 

Steve: Yeah. So you can take a look at my Web site. It’s set www Cottage Street Consulting dot com. That’s all one word. Cottage Street Consulting dot com or you can e-mail me at Steve at Cottage Street Consulting dot com. And when you go to my Web site you’ll see a couple things up there that might be of interest. Since I do speak quite a lot at different conferences and write quite a lot of white papers. There is a lot of my presentations in white papers that are up there for you to download for free. And then, I also have a list of my upcoming speaking engagements, public workshops, as well as my private workshop list where you can either click on those register right away or you can contact me through my email and we can talk about some private onsite things.

 

Ron: Thanks so much for joining us today.

 

Steve: Thanks. It’s been a pleasure.

 

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#007 – Troubled Project Recovery with Steve Martin

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Steve gives great tips such as using the Lean Model Canvas (LMC), Business Model Canvas (BMC), insights from the Standish Chaos report discussing success of small vs large projects, calming the masses, empowerment by middle managers, the pause, and more…

Steve Martin (PMP, PMI-ACP, CSP, CSM, CSPO…too many!)
Professional Bio:  Steve is a trusted management advisor and seasoned business transformation leader with over 20 years experience. He uses Agile and Lean principles to help organizations to define their strategic “big picture” and then leads teams to seamlessly execute tactical plans to iteratively and incrementally deliver technology-based products or solutions.

Steve is a sought-after speaker at major conferences, such as the Agile 20xx conferences, Scrum Gatherings, and PMI Global Conferences and PMI Leadership Institutes, and has a passion for training.

Website: www.cottagestreetconsulting.com. The Workshops tab has a list of upcoming public courses, such as CSM (Certified ScrumMaster) plus a private course offering list. You can get free articles, white papers, and selections from prior conference presentations as well from the Resources page. It’s all free! My only request is to give feedback on how well it worked or if it didn’t so we can improve them for others going forward.

Show Notes:

  1. Host: Ron Smith
  2. Contact: steve@cottagestreetconsulting.com
  3. LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/agilesteve
  5. Music: www.hooksounds.com

Use the comment section below to comment on the interview.

Want to get more helpful project management insights like this directly in your inbox? Subscribe to the Managing Projects newsletter (see subscribe in right side menu).

 

Ron Smith

Ron is a Project Manager with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

Check out the contributors page.

 

Transcription of Interview

Ron: Welcome to the managing projects podcast. I’m your host Ron Smith. And today I have Steve Martin from Cottage Street Consulting. He has 20 years experience and he is the founder of that company. Steve’s a sought after speaker at major conferences all over the place. He speaks at the scrum gatherings, PMI global conferences, and PMI Leadership Institutes and has a passion for training. So today on the episode we are going to be talking about troubled project recovery which is near and dear to my heart. So without further ado welcome Steve.

 

Steve: Hey welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me appreciate it.

 

Ron: My pleasure. Just give the highlights of what a project like that looks like. And I know you haven’t an agile slant that you like to be focused on those particular kinds of projects that are involved in agile.

 

Steve: Yeah and kind of the funny thing is is regardless of whether you’re agile or not, there are certain characteristics of some things, I think that we’ve all pretty much felt, no matter how good we are when a trouble project just happens to pop up. Whether you inherit it or unfortunately this even has happened to me. You’ve created a trouble projects. So what it looks like is basically tensions are really high. I find that the people on the teams, the management the executives the customers all of them their patience is just really short. There are folks that their expectations are just not being met and they’re just really frustrated and they’re they’re just a little bit on the miserable. And when you get down to it they’re just trying to hang in there. It’s just really not a positive or fun experience.

 

Ron: More so than your typical project and has a list of issues and a list of risks. This somehow passes a threshold of you’re in the uncomfortable now. Sometimes when I describe this I would say there’s no real clear means to fix the project. You’re in there and there’s no plan out.

 

Steve: Yeah, you’re just beyond the eye of the storm. You are the storm with everything. We’re in it with everything swirling around here. You just kind of sit back there and you just kind of go help.

 

Ron: So the interesting thing about I.T. though is that if you’re one of our listeners who works in I.T. and you haven’t been involved with a troubled project buckle your seat belt because at some point in your career the chances are you’ll be in one.

 

Steve: And when I’ve been the one that has created the trouble project that is one of those like Huh a little humbling experiences that you know. Out of all of these things here. There’s there’s tremendous things to learn. So I tend to look at these really as learning opportunities as uncomfortable as they are, they really are an opportunity for us to learn and become better as either project managers as just like managers or even executives moving forward.

 

Ron: So I’m picturing the plane flying over the company, they parachuted you in, parachutes open and you’re drifting into the company. Step one where do you start us off. Where do you get your boundaries or your scope here.

 

Steve: So it’s really kind of funny when folks give me a call a it’s usually somebody from the business or somebody from the technology side and they’re just saying things are not going well. I want you to come in and fix it. And I’m more than happy to come in and help. But the first conversation I have with the person who gives me that call is really having that conversation should you even be doing this project in the first place. You know and they’re like us we want to hire you to fix this. I’m like that’s fabulous. You know I’d love to take your money. But should you even be doing this in the first place? And the biggest tricks that I say here is is I want you to think about this project or the product that you’re working on from your competitors perspective. If you were your competitor would you do this project today? Would you even take a project like this and even begin it. Because if you can start removing yourself from that situation and that’s you know really passionate you’ve got a lot of stake into that particular position or whatever it is that you can working on. There’s a lot that you’ve invested in and you want to kind of rescue your baby. Should you even have the baby to begin with. Then when you start thinking about it from that competitor’s perspective. Would the person down the street do this project it just kind of opens up that conversation of – ha let’s talk about that.

 

Ron: So do you have any framework you like to use when you’re in that conversation.

 

Steve: Well there’s a couple that I like to use. You know if it’s just a singular project or something that is fairly much contained there’s something out there called a lean model canvas or LMC and you can go out there and search on any of these with any of the search engines if you search for a lean model canvas… When you look at one of those and you pop it up it’s got a bunch of different questions on there and it’s intended to be a short conversation about an hour or two. And these templates that you can find out there for like for a lean model this are intended to be on one sheet of paper. Because if you can’t describe these things in small chunks and focused around your conversation you haven’t quite got it yet. That is part of this lean model can this they talk about things such as you know what’s the problem you’re trying to solve. What’s the solution that you have. And what is it that’s very unique about you and your situation and what is the unfair advantage that you and your company can bring to this particular product that you’re working on. And yet it really brings that to life. You know what is it about this that truly makes this special. And then it has some other things in there such as like who are your customers, what are your costs and where do your revenues come from. And if you have all of these types of things there’s a couple more things on that canvas. If you have this conversation and problem solution uniqueness who is your customer anticipated costs and revenues from here and you have these things in front of you. It makes things just a little bit more objective. Now if it’s something that’s bigger than that if it’s more like a portfolio or you’re looking at a company strategy or a set of projects or a set of products I actually tend to like something called a business model canvas or a BMC. And on there again it is a one pager and what you try to do in this here is look at your business. So it’s just beyond a single project. You look at your business like what are the key activities your business what are the key resources of your business what’s the value proposition of your business and who are the customers and customer segments that you are going to be working with. So it tends to look across that portfolio level as opposed to a singular project level. And of course it looks for costs and revenue streams as well but it has that bigger picture. So whenever you use a LMC for some of the smaller things or BMC for some of the bigger things… It is trying to get those objective evaluations down on one sheet of paper using bullet points. So you can have that conversation with the folks in the room. Now the question becomes Who are those folks in the room. Well you shouldn’t be doing this with just you know let’s say just the business or just I.T. or just one department. When you create projects and you execute projects they take multiple folks. You know it’s not just one department it’s multiple departments. So you want to have a group of five to nine or so folks in that conversation around that model canvas.

 

Ron: I really like this approach. I’ve seen it with startups, actually, where we use the lean canvas and they basically have four sheets of paper in front of them and you can tweak different areas of the box. You could say well if you were selling to this market were or that you’d have different sheet for that variable or say your product strategy is this or it’s you know this feature set. You can have that and I really like it because you can talk through your variables very quickly and you can basically throw out the ones that don’t make sense.

 

Steve: Yeah. I think there’s some great things that we can learn from multiple tool sets from multiple industries. Lean startup has a set of tools. There’s a variety of tools as part of you know various agile approaches such as scrum, such as Kanban, such as XP or Extreme Programming. There’s some fantastic concepts that you can borrow from Lean. Which was based out of the Toyota production system in the whole, “How do you make your operations have less waste along the way so you can deliver better and faster”. So there’s so many tools that are out there. What we try to bring in as our part of thinking in these turnarounds is what are these tools that we have available so we can generate those conversations on are we really doing the right thing.

 

Ron: So that is your step one when you’re hoping to get the ‘why’. The why would you do this project. Are you gauging how committed is the company to this?

 

Steve: Yeah and I’ve also seen companies you know with a high degree of commitment and that is an amazing thing. But I want them to have a high degree of commitment for something that’s going to have a return or something that’s going to be viable for them. If they’re going to put that commitment and invest their time resources and money into it. I want it to be successful and I’m sure they do too. I want something to come out of it that’s positive.

 

Ron: Do you get into the sizing of the project in this as well. You’re trying to you’re trying to figure out is this a small project that just went sideways or is it part of a monster sized project for the company.

 

Steve: Well I think to kind of lead me right into the next thing that I do and I take a look at the size of the project you know there’s been a lot of reports that have been done about smaller incremental projects having more success than larger ones. One of them is the most famous from the Standish chaos report. Of the survey projects from around 2011 to 2015. This is around 50000 projects around the world. So it has a really nice representation. They found that of all the successful projects 62 percent of them were successful if they were small, and only 6 percent of the successful projects were considered large. So if you are ten times more likely to be successful with a smaller project. I want us to take a look at some of these big ones that we’re looking at because that could have been one of the reasons for the trouble in the first place. I want to see if there’s a way that we can break this down into smaller chunks or smaller increments. Not only so that we can’t focus but we can also limit technical risk because if you are working on something smaller you’re not working something terribly big. Chances are you can focus in an area and reduce some technical risk. But you can also validate whether or not you’re going in the right direction with that product with your customers and your stakeholders. And so if you can do a chunk let’s say in a 3 months time period and get it out there you can actually get a win. Hey look we actually got something out there. No it’s not the full thing but we’re showing progress and are moving the steps forward.

 

Ron: Celebrating the wins in these troubled projects is a must.

 

Steve: Yeah and if you can build on that positive momentum instead of just set you know the dreaded drumbeat – you know folks coming in every day and you build on that positive momentum even if it’s small you get a lot more spring for your step out of that. And you can’t really deal with that emotional and psychological hit that they took.

 

Ron: Where do you head next?

 

Steve: I also want the group to consider a roadmap. I find that many troubled projects that I’ve run into don’t have an idea of a roadmap. They want everything all at once and the very first release because in past projects they’ve only had one release. If they didn’t get it in that one release, they were never going to go back and get more funding afterwards to go do those secondary things. So it’s no wonder that you go into some of these organizations and you think about requirements or features on a scale of high medium or low. Everything is high. Everything can’t be high all at once. And so if you can create a roadmap that says okay and the first chunk we’re going to look at this. We think the timeline looks something like that. Our second chunk looks like that and our search looks like that. And then for each of these chunks these are the customer segments or the people who are going to target for these various things if you can start to be transparent for how you’re going to build these things. It’s going to remove some of the uneasiness some of the uncertainty about whether or not you can actually deliver some of these things because you’re being very transparent with this is the path of how we’re going to do this. And so again what you’re trying to do is ok once you build off the first one you’ve had yet first increment success. Chances are folks are going to look at that second and third and maybe the fourth increment with a higher positive light.

 

Ron: One of the things that I notice when I have done these in the past is how down the team is. There’s a lot of emotions. You know what I’ve noticed as well is it’s not just the team members. Sometimes their families back home are saying hey, Billy has a job down the street. He’s an I.T. as well. He’s fine. Maybe they’re hiring. And so when I say that kind of tongue in cheek but the reality is that sometimes you’re dealing with people’s you know raw emotions. They’ve been there for awhile and they’re tired. And they had you know missed vacations. And there is this constant push-push let’s just make it to the weekend and that happens again again again again. So what do you look for. What have you seen of kind of the emotional connection of some of your team members and how do you try to kind of unlock that and work with a team that you get working with.

 

Steve: Well I think there’s three different levels or three different areas that can help with that emotional support. And this is where I find the greatest amount of my coaching when I’m on site. It’s really kind of funny sometimes they say are you sure you’re not a psychologist? Should we just get one of those chaise lounges and put it off in the corner? I feel like you’re a good psychologist when this when this happens. So if you’re a project manager or you’re somebody who’s on a project team you’re in there in the moment. And the biggest thing that you can do especially if you’re a leader or you see one of your team mates that’s just starting to flip out and there just say it’s not a good day. It’s not a good day. You know you need to reach out to that person before it spreads to other folks. What I have found in my experience is that whatever emotion is prevalent in the room that’s the emotion that’s going to continue building momentum moving forward. So if you have a negative room it tends to become more negative. But if you’ve got a positive room it tends to become more positive. Take that person out for coffee. Take that person out for lunch. Remove them from the team take them off to the side. I’m not saying remove them permanent from the team but you know take them away from the team and have a conversation with that person of what’s frustrating them because sometimes they just want to get it out. This is really making me mad today or this is really frustrating me today. Figuring out once that frustration is out there. How do you address that. The next thing that you can do from a management or an executive level is… I know that managers and executives are getting really antsy. Especially executives who got a lot of money on the line and they have a lot of their reputation on the line. When are you going to deliver? When are you going to deliver? When are you going to deliver? Stop asking that.

 

Ron: What should they ask instead?

 

Steve: Yeah, that is a great question. We all know that we want to deliver. What we should be doing instead is OK. We know that these are the objectives this is a vision. How can I help the teams with that vision. This is what I know I can do. I can talk with the stakeholders to manage expectations and put a protective bubble around the team so you’re not getting hit with angry phone calls from stakeholders. I can have proactive conversations with the stakeholders management teams or the customers teams or the sales teams to say okay here’s a roadmap here’s where we are. Would you like to have a demonstration at the end of the month of where we’re at or at the end of the week. You know so calming the masses and saying okay this is what we can do in order to make this happen. Or if there are things that the teams run into that they need the help. Hey we’ve got these three things that we’re working on that we think we can only get two out of these three things done in the time frame. And so the instant reaction I get from most managers executives will suck it up. Put your shoulder into it just get it done. Which ones most wins do you. Yes so the question we need to ask there is OK let’s focus on these two or you say which are the two that you recommend you ask the teams and if the teams don’t know I can choose for you. Do you want me to do that? Most of the teams already know which one or two that they want to do. And they say OK what is the increment that we need in order to get that third one done. Add more time, more resources, where more resources even applicable. You know I’m blanking on the name of the law. But there is a management law out there that just throwing more people onto a project actually makes the projects go slower.

 

Ron: Really what you’re doing is strategizing with them. What can we accomplish next. What’s feasible. Okay we’ve got the plan lets go. I like it.

 

Steve: Yeah, and there’s multiple studies out there that show when you have that more participatory approach you actually long term get better results. There is one study that was looking at. I’m kind of a glutton for punishment. I’m in a doctoral program right now. I’m researching empowerment by middle managers specifically and what the research is telling us is that, yes, if you are a middle manager or even executive you go in and you tell somebody to go do something. Yes you’re going to get it immediate bump. But but that bump is going to be short lived. And what happens when you go in there and you start telling people what to do. Over time those teams are going to tend to wait for direction as opposed to being proactive. If you’ve got more of the participatory approach. Yes initially it may not seem like you’re getting as far and as quick but over time they tend to be more innovative quicker have more by end and have more pride in the product that it is that they’re actually creating. And so the trick for managers and executives is to create that environment of yes there is a sense of urgency that we’re going to be looking at this together from a team perspective from a management perspective and executive perspective all together to get this project back on track and where it is that we need to go.

 

Ron: Steve can you come in and fix our troubled project – a way to translate that. How do you get the team unstuck? Because the team is often very competent for whatever reasons they’ve hit some roadblocks that their stuck or they’re moving too slow or what have you. But when you get that with the team moving and you can start to see the velocity of their work, that’s when they start to believe oh maybe we have a shot at this. What you said about almost being a psychologist… first of all they’re nervous. So let’s take a 50 person team and they’ve been struggling. Guy comes in on the parachute. And I think one of the one of two things goes through that teammates mind at that point. One is is this guy going to help or is he going to put a stick of dynamite in it and may we may we potentially be out of work soon. I think that is what goes through their head. They are very nervous. And so I think what they’re looking for is they’re going to make a determination on you, the trouble Project Recovery guy or gal. And say, do I trust this person with what I’m about to tell them? Do I need to be in defense mode or do I need to be in contributing strategy mode where I’m going to put my shoulder into it with them.

 

Steve: Yeah, and that all happens really, really quickly and how the management and the executive team brings me into an organization or any turnaround person into an organization is so incredibly critical because naturally folks are already upset and and folks are already tender and that who is this person coming in. And can I can I even work with this person? And like you like you just basically said am I even going to have a job. I mean so there’s a lot of fear in there. And so going in there with a heavy hammer tends to not work out so well. When I was very young and doing this you know 10 15 years ago that’s the way I went in it. Yeah those didn’t work out so well. Come from the perspective of listening to what it is that they’re saying as opposed to the emotion and how they’re saying and you can really get far. The next thing that I like to do is hold a retrospective and I want the whole team there. This is hard for managers and specifically. They’re the ones that really have the hardest time with us. What do you mean you want to do a pause. We’re already behind to and you’re going to take two days to pause. We’re going to lose two days of productivity by far. When I’ve had that two day pause, and we do this very specifically, I’ve had more success with turnarounds by just saying you know what we’re going to hit upon us. We recognized things are not going so well here. We see the frustration in everybody’s eyes and we don’t think that’s good for you. We don’t think it’s good for the product. We don’t think it’s good for the company and we want to have an open conversation about how we can make things better. And so borrowing from actually comes from some XP practices or extreme programming practices. This concept of looking back so you can improve how things are looking forward. And so the whole idea with a retrospective. Some folks say OK what are the things we talk about what are the things that went well and what are the things that didn’t go so well. That’s kind of just on the surface of what a retrospective is. What a retrospective is, is figuring out what are those continuous improvement things that we can do to make our lives better. And so if you go in there with that retrospective point of view as opposed to a lessons learned point of view to me lessons learned as more backwards here’s what went good here went bad. You know if we had to do it over again you know here’s what we can do. The idea with the retrospective is you’re looking forward fate is in your hands. You’ve got the wheel. How do you want to improve things moving forward. And so if you start looking at those things from all the perspectives from the people who were involved that got there in the first place chances are you’re going to have four or five ideas really good ones that people have come up with that for some reason they just weren’t given the voice in order to try that. And so if he can surface those sayings on day one of a two day pause, and then on day two you can think about things such as you know creating a road map for the people who are involved. And where do those continuous improvement things that we just identified from day one that we’re going to embed into that roadmap. Again we’re putting more of the fate and more of the control and the people who got there and were just slowly and incrementally starting to shift things moving forward. And so if you’ve got the team there the management there and then the executives you know your executive sponsor there and you can have this facilitated by somebody who is experienced in doing this. You can start to move things around.

 

Ron: I find it an interesting discussion when you get yourself in those retrospective reports. The team often thinks that they’re playing by a certain rule book. So the rule book would include: we have to build all of the scope, we have to follow all the processes as they are to a tee, and they have other rules that they’ll throw in there too and they will think they’re ironclad. We must do this this. This is what we were asked to do we must do this. And they believe that they’re handcuffed. And to say is that a true assumption? Let’s list all of the the big rock items that are immoveable with that roadblocked wasn’t there. How could you get it done? Well Steve. I really like this topic recovering troubled projects. So thank you today for talking to us. So if folks did want to reach out to you. Where would you point them?

 

Steve: So there’s a couple of places. I have my web site www.CottageStreetConsulting.com. That’s all one word. And on Cottage Street Consulting dot com there’s a couple of different pages on there. You’ve got some resources from some previous white papers, some blogs, some previous conferences. All that stuff you can download for free so you can take a look at the information there and you can also take a look at my workshops page and I’ve got my public courses offered there as well as my list of private courses as well. And click on anything in there and you will be directed to my e-mail which is Steve at Cottage Street Consulting dot com.

 

Ron: Well thank you for your time Steve. It’s been great talking to you.

 

Steve: Thank you so much for having me.

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PMP Certification – Steps to obtaining the PMP® certifications

PMP® Certification is becoming a popular route for professionals who want to demonstrate their management and organizational skills.  It is becoming a very popular entry point for the PMI certification tracks.

Steps to obtaining the PMP® certifications

  1. Review the requirements to take the test
  2. Join a local study group
  3. Register to take the test
  4. Take the test

Where can I find qualification information on the certifications

You can find information on the Prerequisites here:

Check to see if you qualify to take the test.  If you do not have enough direct work experience you may consider taking the CAPM certification.

Local study groups

Look up your local chapters and see if you can get added to their mailing list.  These chapters are full of people who will help you get started and often can direct you to the study groups often happening in your home city.  Those chapters also put in great lunch and learns to help you keep your training up to retain your certification.

Favorite materials to ensure you add to your study curriculum

When I studied for my test I was given the PMBOK as well as a few study guides.  I remember a difference maker being Rita Mulcahy’s book.  I’ve never met Rita but if I did I’d thank her for the guide that helped me learn the concepts in a really clear way.  Just a little tid-bit of info for you 🙂

Where does one take the test?

You will want to check the page on the PMP Certification as at this time the CAMP certification course can be taken online.  I did not see this on the PMP site but I bet it would be coming soon.

I personally took the test at a local testing site about 2.5 hours away from my home base.  You can see a list of testing centers hopefully near you.:

Alternatives to the PMP® Certification

As of the time this article was written: PMI offers 8 certification tracks.