Project Management Course – Manager's blog

Need a refresher for your PM skill? How about taking an online project management quiz? A quiz is an excellent way to spot-test an individual skill.

We are working on adding quizzes, which will be set up to hone in on specific areas such as risk management, effective meetings, or communications plans.

If there are ideas you have for what would be handled by the project management quiz, we would like to know before we go live. Give us some ideas here, or when the online quiz is available, give it a test run.

Every strong project manager sometimes finds someone who is using less-than-authentic tactics in their management and leadership.  

How do you spot the phony? By testing and comparing it to the authentic, of course. Until there is a course in management authentic comparison, we’re here to help out!

Here in our table we have made it easy for you to spot the obvious:

This handy table will help, in a humorous way, spot the fake management styles.. Even if sometimes the fake project manager… is you!

First, Comic Con – if you didn’t know – is the largest comics book and related arts convention in the world (San Diego Comic Con starts today).

Second, you don’t have to like comics to enjoy this post.

So, what’s the spin on this? Well, you hone your craft, and the cartoon-makers hone theirs. You may not become Captain America, but your powers can increase!

Honing your craft takes time. You and the cartoon artists aren’t born with all of the skills. And there are conventions to let you strut your stuff.

How do top comic books get made? By managing the process. It’s part art, and part science, and perhaps part science-fiction. Technology helps, but the people… each of us artists in our crafts… are the real force behind making things happen.

And the final result is beautiful, shiny, and held up for display. But the crafting of it is the work. Working for days, weeks, months, the final result is usually only a vision in our heads.

With most projects, we get to shine at the end when it’s all done. After a long time fighting dragons, outwitting stalkers a la Showtimes’ Dexter, and dealing with Mr. Scope Creep, you show it off. With people in the visual arts, a convention like Comic-Con helps showcase the best work, and motivate those to keep on working on their art.

The video below gives a sense of the ComicCon energy:

You’re a wizard. Yes, you, because you trained for it.

All of the courses, all of your practice and experience, and all of the knowledge in your head.

Being a wizard is easy. It’s the work that isn’t always so.

In the Harry Potter movies series, training is key. In fact, learning takes a long time. Practice helps. But as usual – in movies and in life – luck and friends are needed pull you through the tough times.

The plot of your own projects in life, and in your career as a wizard, will unfold as you go. Destiny is there in the background, whether you love it or not. You find out that your future was not as you had planned, because there was another plan already happening.

Like Harry, you are born with gifts… wizardly powers… that perhaps are not known by those around you. Whether you train at Hogwarts, or you do your management training at Harvard, you learn. And in a sense, you’re always in school. Besides the benefits of continually stretching your brain, everyday life presents constant changes and knowledge for you to absorb.

And as you advance in your wizardly levels, you find out the “truths” you knew earlier are not the same. You grow up, and your world grows up.

But inside of you is the same young wizard, with the potential, and the magic inside to rise up to the challenges you face.

Phone hacking is in the news now because it touches on several aspects of the human experience:

Curiosity
Compassion
Control
Privacy
Secrecy

And more.  It is shocking in its scope, because it was kept under the lid for so long.

These aspects combine together:

Curiosity – we want to know about how this happenened, and the story is unfolding hour-by-hour

Compassion – the original root of the story’s viral attraction: we feel for the families involved in the missing girl’s situation.

Control – there are several areas here, including control over secrets, control of the authorities (and apparent mis-use), and in general lack of control over our own privacy.

Privacy – if the privacy of everyday people cannot be supoorted by those we trust it to, we feel exposed and want to learn more (and how it could happen to us).

Secrecy – we all have curiousity about once-secret activities that are being revealed, especially as this can reveal how people really think and act.

What can we learn from this in terms of managing our lives, and our projects?

First, know what you stand for… principles matter.  Of course you cannot change the culture of an organization overnight, but you can know yourself. 

Second, ask questions.  Learn what is really going on.  You may have to trust your intuition (which is really your ability to spot mis-alignments that cannot be aligned).

Third, communicate to your team(s) about your commitment to integrity, accountability, and transparency. You do have influence over the culture of your team. 

And lastly, beware of social engineering.  Set up a password on your phone/handset, your voicemail, and if possible on your phone account (to access customer care or to make subscription changes).  Be aware of account information of yours that you can get without verification.  Think like a hacker before they do.

Okay, so maybe “weapon” is too strong. Let’s use the word “tool”.

As a project manager, leader, or in everyday life, your influence is a tool you use to get results. In many areas of your life, you don’t have authority, control, or …, and you have to nuance others to action.

An example is getting a nice table at a restaurant, or to get a table more quickly. You ask the person at the door to help you out. Of course, you’re the same as every other customer. And the person gets this request frequently.

So, you have to find some influence. You could try a compliment “Nice shoes! Where did you get them?” You can try conversation, such as the honest and obvious “You must get a lot of requests for special treatment. How do you handle them?”

This type of influence is getting them to like you, or at least interact with you from a personal perspective. There are many ways to understand influence, and to find strategies to identify, understand, and use them more effectively.

There has been an increasing amount of attention on influence. The 1998 book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini was (and may still be) a milestone reference in understanding influence. The core idea was the concept of the six weapons of influence. These “tools” are reciprocation, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. The expansion of the ideas in the book continues today.

However, the explosion of interest has come more recently due to online social websites for networking and interaction. Influence has become more quantifiable. It can be seen, measured (to some degree, in some cases), and studied. Social media sites and services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn have various ways for people to influence others. And mobile apps are just starting to enhance this trend.

How does this help you solve your project management challenges?

First, keep your focus on the positive aspects of persuasion. We know that too much persuading can be seen as annoying, pushy/aggressive, or begging. Using some of the “six tools”, having people like you is helpful, even if it is only at a level of professional respect. This only happens if they know something about you. In fact, not knowing about you makes their interaction less personal, and perhaps less of a priority.

Reciprocation is another tool that applies to management. You can divide this into these three phases of time: before, during, and after. If you do something for someone (in the past), then they will want to reciprocate. If you are doing something for them now, then it is similarly an optimal time to ask for reciprocation. The future-based strategy would be, for example, promising now to do an action, and then asking for a reciprocal favor or action. Brain and mind studies have shown that reciprocation is part of human biology, and you can do more research in how this works to understand both sides (i.e. how others may be using it).

Another tool that is not explicitly one of the six weapons listed above, is communication. People understand what is communicated to them, so this helps your influence. Additionally, people react with more interest to the ideas they have been exposed to, and the more often, the more aware they are of the concepts. For example, if you include more people in your project updates, then over time they will have seen some of this information more than other projects.

“We control fifty percent of a relationship. We influence one hundred percent of it.” – Christopher Marlowe

Your ability to manage projects involves leading those involved across the finish line. On nice days, leading is enjoyable and a rewarding challenge.

However, on those dark days when problems cannot be solved, when deadlines are coming (or past), when you don’t have all of the answers…

… those dark days are your opportunity for leadership.
Leading yourself, leading others, and leading the project. Let’s look at these:

Leading yourself: You don’t know all of the answers, but you must. Inside of you is fear, uncertainty, and the confidence that you surely don’t know it all. At this time, you can look to others (“What would my mentor do..?”) or simply just tell yourself to keep going & exploring options. Another tactic is to lead yourself from the future: ask yourself “What will this look like in 30 days?” (or 6 months, or a year, or longer). Pretend you are yourself, wiser, living in the future, and tell yourself what to focus on and how to move forward. This technique can also relax you by focusing on the longer term.

Leading others: People will follow you, even if you don’t have all of the answers, or if the path you chose didn’t work out. You can lead from the bottom, by asking for ideas and recommendations. You can do this boldly (“I have no clue, so help me out here team!”) or with subtlety (“There are some options we have, but first, what do you all have to offer?”).

Leading the project: Recognize where you are now, and where your project needs to go. Think about the future, not on what happened, except if you need to analyze a cause to solve your issues. For example, if you are late, thinking about why you are late isn’t saving any time, but thinking about how you will handle being late will set the stage for what will happen anyway. And in preparing for what will happen you also tend to come up with ideas of options of how to make it better. It’s project management intersecting with project reality.

And, it’s not about you. Put yourself aside, and think of what the stakeholders want, and how the project will evolve towards their needs.

Leadership is easy until it is hard, and it is at that moment that you have the opportunity to grow. Use your concern and “negative” energy towards where you are going. Recognize the strengths you have, and those that you are developing.

Managing a project involves managing several parts. One of the parts is risk. Notice that it is not called ‘risk solving’ but is called ‘risk management’. The issues presented by some risks may be solved, but the risk handling process is management.

Project types may vary, but risks tend to be categorized in a fashion similar to brainstorming. Since generally brainstorming is random, this may not be a workable approach.

Your project will be successful in some degree by identifying, planning for, and avoiding risk. Once an initial plan is made, carrying it out is fairly mechanical. But risks are the gremlins waiting along way to your eventual project completion.

Brainstorming is one initial approach to identifying risk. Having a free flowing discussion allows these risks to be captured for later analysis. And in every meeting, there is the possibility that a new risk comes to surface. Capturing and communicating these risks is important, especially since not everyone attends each meeting.

Communication is always important in project management, and this is true for handling risks. And face-to-face communication, via discussion, is a key method of analysis that can often be overlooked. Our brains process information in both a linear and a non-linear fashion. In person discussion allows both methods to be used to advance an idea that simply writing (via status) or via email threads does not handle well.

At the base of project risk management, there is the need to track risks over time. Risks can rise or fall in importance or in the ways they can be managed. There is an old saying that a problem identified is a problem that is half solved. This applies in concept to risks, in that once a risk is captured, described, and communicated, the impact of the potential damage is significantly reduced.

(part 2 of this write-up will further the risk management presentation)

(Some tips you may not learn in your classes)

Okay, so you have the job, and you’re taking courses to improve your management skills. Then reality hits. You’re a little shocked.

“There is something else I need to learn.”

But it’s not in the courses, not really. It’s described in cartoons such as Dilbert, but you think it’s not real.

1. No one really minds your meetings, if you make their attending worthwhile: attention to them, compliments, entertainment, or brain growth. Meetings are social events, which is something that our biology is designed to enjoy. Keep the meeting pace and content relevant, and greet people who attend, and show real interest in them.

2. No project plan lasts through the first hour of real work. Same for your WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), etc. You cannot foresee all events that affect your plans. Get used to it, but…

3. You have to act like your plans are set in stone. This is especially helpful when you have to ask some other group or person to change their plans.

4. Your team loves you. You help give them additional purpose in their day/life/career, and this is what most people crave. The sense of purpose, even if you’re just passing the purpose on down from above.

5. Your team hates you. You give them priorities that don’t make sense. Especially if you’re passing the priority on down from above! They want you to stick up for them and their individual constraints, in spite of what may need to be down in the larger scheme of things.

6. Every project is unique. This is great, since your brain will enjoy growing new knowledge, which keeps you sharp all your days. If something seems similar from a past project to the one you have now, don’t get too comfortable with that…

7. You have to always be looking for what can go wrong. Great management relies on not stopping your worry circuits from working constantly. It’s a habit once you do it often enough, and it’s a helpful habit to improve. Look for the negative possibilities, but…

8. You will do better if you are an optimist. What has gone wrong is past, what will go wrong is perhaps fixable, but you will have better ideas if you maintain a positive outlook.

9. Be comfortable with estimates that are not accurate at first. People will throw out a number, like “10″, when they know they only have 9 to give you. Or they just like round numbers. Assume everything is an estimate, and keep refining.

10. (see #9).

An upcoming post will focus on cloud-based project management. This will cover some of the major providers, along with trends and tips for project managers.

Services such as Basecamp (from 37 Signals) or Planbox offer collaborative project tools online. These fall into the overall Saas (Software As A Service) category of providers. The benefit is scalable services, at a cost comparable to desktop-based products. They also allow collaboration while offering data security (online storage is a given) and platform independence (only a browser is needed).

If you have any suggestions on project management-as-a-service type of providers, or other related areas for the post, leave them below.