Do You Need a Project Management Survival Plan?

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Situation: You need a fresh perspective on Project Management in general.

Steve Starke, VP of Program Management at Thomson Reuters, has written a new PM book entitled, S.T.O.P. The Project Management Survival Plan which outlines a new framework for managing projects based on survival principles used by many of our armed forces divisions in the United States. The book offers an alternative to the classic triple constraint triangle.  Instead he suggests that we focus on managing value, team performance, and communication.  We asked him for a few specifics in the interview below…

Dave: How did you come up with the idea of applying survival principles to project management?  Surviving is about achieving a minimum threshold –presumably in a difficult environment.  Are you taking a project view that says, "achieve the stated goal and no more?" (I.e. - stay entirely within scope) 

Steve: A key to surviving many of life’s situations involves mental toughness. Essentially, knowing how to think through a problem and develop action plans. If you think about your project as a survival mission in which it’s your responsibility to save and lead members of your team to safety, you may change your approach to managing your projects. You may start to understand your team members better: their strengths, weaknesses, and the environment in which they perform best. You may also have a new sense of urgency considering what’s on the line. Many times on survival missions you only have one shot to get it right. You could say the same thing about planning and managing a project. If you don’t get it right up front, you may find yourself and the team in front of the CEO explaining the failure, missing customer expectations, and hurting your career. With the role of the project manager, there’s a lot at stake and no room to take chances. Corporations are counting on project managers more than ever.

Dave, the view I am taking is that project managers, especially those involved with developing new and innovative products, must be mentally tough! Project Managers must mentally train themselves to think through alternatives before tackling any of them. As critical situations develop during a project, the project manager needs to physically stop and think to consider all their options. Next, they need to observe their environment and consult with their team members to determine the best plan of action - thinking through how the plan is going to be accomplished.

A project manager must also know when to recommend stopping the project. Stopping isn’t something a lot of organizations do well. In a recent study, the Accept Corporation and the Association for International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM) found that more than 60 percent of executives say they struggle making kill/ go decisions. There is a tendency to continue projects and activities even when most people involved realize it’s not an optimal use of their time.

The S.T.O.P. principles were designed to ensure that critical thinking occurs in high pressure situations (sound familiar?). I have taken those same principles and constructed a framework for project management. Giving the project manager guidance and direction on what that minimum threshold should be for being successful if their project is viable – and if it’s not viable, then what it takes to stop it!   

Dave:  When we thing of managing scope, schedule, and cost we are really balancing those things against on another in many ways. In your version of the triangle, do you see project managers needing to balance value, team performance, and communication?  How does that work?

Steve: If project management is to survive as a profession, then we as project managers need to realize that our job is more than just managing scope, schedule, and cost – it’s about delivering value. The iron triangle still exists; don’t get me wrong. But to truly be effective as a project manager I believe a new triangle must emerge. A triangle based on managing value, team performance, and communication. I developed equations in the book to help identify and quantify the variables where more focus and management need to be applied on our projects.

Let me give an example on how this works in regards to determining and managing project value:

You’re raised as a project manager with a visual implanted in your head of a triangle that flexes and constrains as you move through your project. You force your sponsors to make decisions and tradeoffs against the three (scope, schedule, and cost), but based on what? The answer should be value. When creating, developing, and delivering a product to the market, you seek to maximize its value. You want to maximize the customer benefit and experience while maximizing the return on investment. When you adjust your perspective around the triangle like this, you realize it’s more of an equation based on deriving value. I call this the project management value equation. It’s designed to give context to “scope, schedule, and cost,” ensuring that you’re weighing all that you do against the overall value of the project and keeping your sponsor and team focused on the prize. Said another way, it’s an equation meant to quantify and assess the value of a project and identify — if value has been decreased — whether the project should be stopped. The equation is the following:

Value = Scope ÷ (Schedule + Cost)

By understanding this concept, you bring more depth and meaning to what you really need your sponsors to trade off against. By assigning a value to each of your success criterion, you in essence are quantifying the value of the project. Increases to schedule and cost will decrease the value of the project if more scope is not being delivered to offset it. Ensure that your scale for scope, schedule, and cost are the same. Assigning either a percentage value or using a 1–10 scale can work if each variable is quantified consistently. The idea is that, at the start of the project, as you determine its overall value, it should equal 100 percent. As tradeoffs are made between each of the three variables, the project value will change. Together with your sponsor, determine what the threshold value is for stopping your project.

Dave:  Can you give us your top 3 tips for understanding and creating value on projects? Which tools do you apply and why are they important?

Steve: You bet, they are the following:

1. Stop before you rush into any project. Take the time to understand the project’s success criteria.
    
2. Think about each success criterion and ensure that it’s understandable, measurable, and achievable by the project team, stakeholders, and sponsor. Understand who is going to benefit from what aspects of the project and how they’re going to measure them. Tools exist in the book to help create and assess completion of project success criteria.
    
3. Create a project tradeoff matrix. The project tradeoff matrix documents the options available when critical tradeoffs must be made between scope, schedule, and cost when weighed against overall value. This matrix captures stakeholder guidance as you control the project through execution. It will serve as your compass, directing you as you balance and manage your project.

Dave: Can you give us your top 3 tips for managing team performance on projects? Which tools do you apply and why are they important?

Steve:

1. Creative disruption is a method to stop or disrupt the monotony of the everyday and introduce small, incremental changes that keep the team challenged and fresh. Just because something worked for a team on a prior project doesn’t mean it will work on the next project. Keep the team on their toes and in a mode of constant, critical thinking. Your project results and team dynamics will dramatically improve as this technique prevents stagnation and complacency.
    
2. Observe the differences in backgrounds, perspectives, and functional priorities that exist amongst your team. Managing team construction and dynamics are a part of your job. They’re counting on you to guide them through the project by reducing the risk of interpersonal conflict. Social bonding, Team identification, Team orientation, and formal Planning are the ingredients to team integration and performance.
    
3. Plan to capitalize on team dynamics and integration by understanding the three C’s of your product development lifecycle (conceive, construct, and commercialize) and knowing when to increase communication based on time and team function.

Dave: Can you give us your top 3 tips for ensuring effective communication on projects? Which tools do you apply and why are they important?

Steve:

1. Plan your project. A project schedule isn’t a project plan! A project schedule is a tool used to manage a plan. Create an integrated project plan designed around market/product needs and project outcomes. Do this and you’ll turn your plan from one that is inwardly focused to one that ultimately meets customer needs and ensures that all the project work yields the outcomes your organization expects.
    
2. To truly do that full robust planning, you need to establish a responsibility assignment matrix, commonly called a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) matrix before you start to build your project schedules. The RACI matrix describes the roles and responsibilities of various teams or people involved in developing and delivering a product. It should also include your stakeholders and any extended team members needed to deliver your project. Like the project tradeoff matrix, the RACI matrix can be used as a stop sign for your project. If you don’t have the right accountability and responsibility mix within your project — Stop! Talk with your sponsor; show them the results, and work with them to get the right team in place. The RACI matrix can also be used to help explain to your executive sponsor and senior leadership just how complex your project is. I’m not saying it’s the silver bullet in getting that message across, but it can help.
    
3. Develop your communication plan to reduce the risks and decide how to best implement the plan safely and with transparency. Ensure proper feedback mechanisms are put in place so you can monitor how the communication was received and whether you should alter the communication in the future.

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