To me, data rules all! In any situation, I need to define a metric to measure, measure it, and then utilize the data to make my point. I was recently working with a client and we wanted to define a metric that would help prove the value of their project management efforts. Like many clients, they have over 100 defined projects and 5 project managers. To combat this, they have created several project lead positions to try to fix the project to manager ratio. However, that just takes more time away from the project managers. The problem is, how do you represent this?
We decided that there should be four "buckets" of time the project managers should use to track their time on each project that they work on. They are:
- Planning - Any time performing true planning activities
- Communication - Any time in meetings, typing e-mails, handling phone calls, etc.
- Administrative - Any time filling out project management systems, creating meeting minutes, etc.
- Mentoring - Time spent helping the "project leads".
This should give us a total percentage of productive time the project managers used. We should then be able to correlate project progress and status to the percentage of time in each category.
I will post back in a couple of months the results that we found, but felt that may help others out there trying to find the same information.
No day but today,
Rick
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
A Lesson in Class....
I look everywhere for lessons, quotes, and motivational snippets to share with my followers. Many of you also know that I am a big University of Tennessee fan. I just watched the University go through it's own bit of recession. I do not mean to harp on sports or Tennessee, but when it comes to communications in times of crisis, I couldn't resist sharing this quote.
Tennessee had taken a huge risk in hiring Lane Kiffin as their head coach. When Lane came in, he immediately started making high profile remarks against solid programs such as Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama. He made accusations and tabloid type rumors as sensationalism. We all wrote that off as a young and cocky coach making a splash. He later stated that it was a strategy to land high profile recruits which paid off when some of the top recruits chose Tennessee at the last minute. I defended these actions to friends (and really to myself) because of the results. I would tell people who would ask me that he had to get in the national spotlight to make up for time lost in recruiting. I always had that uneasy feeling about the antics, yet I would try to reason them away. For those of you have read my book, Kiffin was no doubt firing Scud missiles! He continued his antics until finally, he shocked the entire Tennessee family by abruptly leaving Tennessee for his dream job of USC.
As tough as that was to hear, my wife and I had several discussions about what Tennessee players must feel like. Many of them decided to come to Tennessee because of him and then he just left. As many of these players who are learning to become men, the sense of abandonment must be overwhelming. Less than 3 days later, Tennessee hired Derek Dooley as their new head coach.
Of course the press has had a field day with this story. There are many young men out there searching for which program will suit them and the media loves controversial stories. There are reports that Kiffin and his staff are telling Tennessee recruits not to attend class so they can get around some rules and enroll to USC with them. Many of the same antics he did when he came to Tennessee, so nobody should be surprised that he is doing that now that he left Tennessee. Among all of the controversy and widespread speculation, Tennessee hires Coach Dooley. Roughly four hours from taking the job, Coach Dooley is standing at the podium for a press conference. As reported by UTSports.com:
A radio reporter asked Dooley if he would call any Southern California recruits and ask them not to go to class, making reference to reports that previous staff members had done the same to some of the Vols' mid-term enrollees when leaving UT.
Dooley just waved his right hand.
"Look guys, if you're going to look for sound bites and things from me that's going to attack other programs and disparage people, that's just not how I am," Dooley said. "I'm worried about Tennessee. I'm worried about what we need to get our program going, and I'm going to always keep my focus on that.
"I think when you're worrying about somebody else, what other people are doing, then you're not taking care of your own house. We got plenty to be feeling good about in this program, and that's what we should keep our focus on. The times of worrying about what happened are over."
There was a round of applause from a shocked community praying for comfort. It would have been so easy to make a remark against Kiffin or to make a joke to try to get a quick win from the fanbase. It would have been understandable to try to say something funny to hopefully win some favor from a hurt Tennessee program. Instead, with dignity and respect, he made a commitment to focus on what we can do and to leave the grandstanding and headline grabbing remarks for other coaches. To me, that was a lesson in class. Welcome Coach Dooley.
Tennessee had taken a huge risk in hiring Lane Kiffin as their head coach. When Lane came in, he immediately started making high profile remarks against solid programs such as Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama. He made accusations and tabloid type rumors as sensationalism. We all wrote that off as a young and cocky coach making a splash. He later stated that it was a strategy to land high profile recruits which paid off when some of the top recruits chose Tennessee at the last minute. I defended these actions to friends (and really to myself) because of the results. I would tell people who would ask me that he had to get in the national spotlight to make up for time lost in recruiting. I always had that uneasy feeling about the antics, yet I would try to reason them away. For those of you have read my book, Kiffin was no doubt firing Scud missiles! He continued his antics until finally, he shocked the entire Tennessee family by abruptly leaving Tennessee for his dream job of USC.
As tough as that was to hear, my wife and I had several discussions about what Tennessee players must feel like. Many of them decided to come to Tennessee because of him and then he just left. As many of these players who are learning to become men, the sense of abandonment must be overwhelming. Less than 3 days later, Tennessee hired Derek Dooley as their new head coach.
Of course the press has had a field day with this story. There are many young men out there searching for which program will suit them and the media loves controversial stories. There are reports that Kiffin and his staff are telling Tennessee recruits not to attend class so they can get around some rules and enroll to USC with them. Many of the same antics he did when he came to Tennessee, so nobody should be surprised that he is doing that now that he left Tennessee. Among all of the controversy and widespread speculation, Tennessee hires Coach Dooley. Roughly four hours from taking the job, Coach Dooley is standing at the podium for a press conference. As reported by UTSports.com:
A radio reporter asked Dooley if he would call any Southern California recruits and ask them not to go to class, making reference to reports that previous staff members had done the same to some of the Vols' mid-term enrollees when leaving UT.
Dooley just waved his right hand.
"Look guys, if you're going to look for sound bites and things from me that's going to attack other programs and disparage people, that's just not how I am," Dooley said. "I'm worried about Tennessee. I'm worried about what we need to get our program going, and I'm going to always keep my focus on that.
"I think when you're worrying about somebody else, what other people are doing, then you're not taking care of your own house. We got plenty to be feeling good about in this program, and that's what we should keep our focus on. The times of worrying about what happened are over."
There was a round of applause from a shocked community praying for comfort. It would have been so easy to make a remark against Kiffin or to make a joke to try to get a quick win from the fanbase. It would have been understandable to try to say something funny to hopefully win some favor from a hurt Tennessee program. Instead, with dignity and respect, he made a commitment to focus on what we can do and to leave the grandstanding and headline grabbing remarks for other coaches. To me, that was a lesson in class. Welcome Coach Dooley.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
What about my capacity?
I work with many organizations that really want to understand the capacity of their IT organization. Rarely do the ask about the capacity of their project managers. Building on the theme that not everyone can do project management, then maybe capacity to do projects starts at that level. What if the organization limited the number of projects they can truly accomplish by the capacity of their project management staff?
I had a chance to build a PMO based on a very valid model. They had a consultant perform a study about the type and length of projects and the demand that is required to handle what the organization wanted to complete. It was determined that roughly 35 projects per year was the maximum for the company and a PM could run up to 5 of those projects during the year. Therefore, the staffing model was set to 7 project managers. We ended up completing 47 projects in the first year, but the expectation was set and the management of the company recognized the value that true project management can deliver. So how do you determine the capacity or number of projects?
The best way to determine the capacity of your project management practice is to first establish tiers. Projects should be classified in 3-4 tiers. Tier 1 being the most strategic projects or the projects with the most risk. Tier 2 is still a highly strategic project, but it is shorter in duration or is not as risky. Tier 3 can be single unit or department initiatives and tier 4 can be internal initiatives or projects that can be run by team leads. Based on the governance models of the organization, an estimate of a percentage of a PM's time can be assigned to each tier. For instance, a tier one may take up 50% of a project managers time where a tier two may take 35%. Once this has been established, then the capacity can be determined. As an example:
If Tier 1 = 50%, Tier 2 = 35%, Tier 3 = 15% and I have 5 project managers, then the project capacity could be:
10 Tier 1 projects (500%)
or
5 Tier 1 (250%)
5 Tier 2 (175%)
5 Tier 3 (75%)
or
Any makeup that equals 500%.
This allows you to determine the real capacity of project management.
I had a chance to build a PMO based on a very valid model. They had a consultant perform a study about the type and length of projects and the demand that is required to handle what the organization wanted to complete. It was determined that roughly 35 projects per year was the maximum for the company and a PM could run up to 5 of those projects during the year. Therefore, the staffing model was set to 7 project managers. We ended up completing 47 projects in the first year, but the expectation was set and the management of the company recognized the value that true project management can deliver. So how do you determine the capacity or number of projects?
The best way to determine the capacity of your project management practice is to first establish tiers. Projects should be classified in 3-4 tiers. Tier 1 being the most strategic projects or the projects with the most risk. Tier 2 is still a highly strategic project, but it is shorter in duration or is not as risky. Tier 3 can be single unit or department initiatives and tier 4 can be internal initiatives or projects that can be run by team leads. Based on the governance models of the organization, an estimate of a percentage of a PM's time can be assigned to each tier. For instance, a tier one may take up 50% of a project managers time where a tier two may take 35%. Once this has been established, then the capacity can be determined. As an example:
If Tier 1 = 50%, Tier 2 = 35%, Tier 3 = 15% and I have 5 project managers, then the project capacity could be:
10 Tier 1 projects (500%)
or
5 Tier 1 (250%)
5 Tier 2 (175%)
5 Tier 3 (75%)
or
Any makeup that equals 500%.
This allows you to determine the real capacity of project management.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Some People....
Normally I will discuss items that happened career wise, but I had to share this story. For a Christmas present, I flew up to Norfolk, VA and picked up the sweetest little 9 week old Pappion puppy for my family. This little guy is so much fun that we take him with us everywhere we go. Today, we had some last minute items to take care of for Christmas and as a family we ran several errands. One of the errands was to the pet store in which we to Zeus (that is his name) in to the store with us. We then continued into a grocery store.
Now Zeus is about 1/2 a pound at the most and had a sweater on. My wife was carrying him as we picked up a couple of groceries. Technically, there are no dogs allowed in the grocery store unless they are seeing eye dogs. However, our puppy is so little that we did not want to leave him in the car and we didn't think anyone would mind. Additionally, our trainer said to let Zeus meet as many people as possible to socialize the puppy as much as possible.
We barely made it down the first aisle when a lady ran up to my wife and tapped her on the shoulder. She informed us of the rule and told us that Management was on the way to kick us out of the store. We were confused. About one minute later, a young kid apologized and asked us to take the puppy out. He told me in confidence that nobody really minded and that many people loved to see the puppy, however, the lady that approached my wife had complained and he had to carry out the complaint.
This made me wonder about this lady. Maybe she was allergic. Maybe she has a fear that a 1/2 pound puppy would break free and severely injure her. I do not want to judge why she did it, but I was truly apalled by her demeanor. As I analyzed the scene, it was as if she wanted to make sure that we knew it was her that brought this to the stores attention. She could have complained and management would have removed us and we would be none the wiser. We wouldn't have even questioned it. It was the fact that she confronted us that confused me. Maybe she could brag to her girlfriends at the bridge club about how she evicted a Christmas puppy out of the store today. Whatever her reason, she did that in front of my children!
After it is all said and done, we were not supposed to have the little man in there. I just didn't understand the motivation behind the whole thing. Some people.........
In an case, in our typical fashion, we laughed it off and chalked it up to another experience. I thought I would just share ;)
Have a great holiday and remember, a great injustice was solved today by some random lady in the grocery store. Film at 11.
RIck
Now Zeus is about 1/2 a pound at the most and had a sweater on. My wife was carrying him as we picked up a couple of groceries. Technically, there are no dogs allowed in the grocery store unless they are seeing eye dogs. However, our puppy is so little that we did not want to leave him in the car and we didn't think anyone would mind. Additionally, our trainer said to let Zeus meet as many people as possible to socialize the puppy as much as possible.
We barely made it down the first aisle when a lady ran up to my wife and tapped her on the shoulder. She informed us of the rule and told us that Management was on the way to kick us out of the store. We were confused. About one minute later, a young kid apologized and asked us to take the puppy out. He told me in confidence that nobody really minded and that many people loved to see the puppy, however, the lady that approached my wife had complained and he had to carry out the complaint.
This made me wonder about this lady. Maybe she was allergic. Maybe she has a fear that a 1/2 pound puppy would break free and severely injure her. I do not want to judge why she did it, but I was truly apalled by her demeanor. As I analyzed the scene, it was as if she wanted to make sure that we knew it was her that brought this to the stores attention. She could have complained and management would have removed us and we would be none the wiser. We wouldn't have even questioned it. It was the fact that she confronted us that confused me. Maybe she could brag to her girlfriends at the bridge club about how she evicted a Christmas puppy out of the store today. Whatever her reason, she did that in front of my children!
After it is all said and done, we were not supposed to have the little man in there. I just didn't understand the motivation behind the whole thing. Some people.........
In an case, in our typical fashion, we laughed it off and chalked it up to another experience. I thought I would just share ;)
Have a great holiday and remember, a great injustice was solved today by some random lady in the grocery store. Film at 11.
RIck
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Determining Business Value for Projects
I wrote this for a client today and thought maybe others would find value in this. Hope it helps!
The key to understanding the business value of projects is to look beyond our standard metrics. Additionally, we will want to create measurements or metrics that will score projects in an objective versus subjective way while still allowing subjectivity to play a role. Sound confusing? It is! Our role as the Portfolio Management Committee is to break down the projects and create selection criteria to do our best to ensure that we are working on the right projects at the right time. However, the scoring and selection should be a guideline as to which projects should be completed instead of the hard and fast rule. The first thing we need to throw out is the generic definition of a project. It can't be as widely scoped as "anything over 40 hours" or "2 or more departments should be involved." It needs to be flexible enough that it encompasses many factors, but not so simple that every initiative becomes a project.
So how do we define what the measurement criteria should be? This is an iterative process that will take some time, but here are the first few questions we all should answer:
Overall Value for Entire Organization - What metrics can we create that would show the overall value to the entire organization? What is something today that crosses the whole organization and what does it do?
Overall Value for Department - Internally, there should be a measurement of how it fits the goals, directives, and compliance/regulatory initiatives for the department
Overall Value for Customer - How will this affect our customer base? What could we ask to track this?
Financial - What is the cost of the entire project? What is the cost of the alternatives? Return on Investment? Net Present Value? Internal Rate of Return? Payback Period?
Department Ranking - What is the rank of this project if they had to pick the most important to the least important? This is a subjective measurement.
Overall Ranking - What is the rank of this project if they had to pick the most important to the least important over the entire organization? This is a subjective measurement.
Risk - What risk factors should we track?
Organizational Capacity - Do we have the capacity to do this project? When would we be able to pick the project up?
Overall Scoring Methodology - How do we classify and score all the above criteria to pick which projects we should do?
Override - If we pick one project with a lower score than another, what type of override policy should we require?
The above items should be discussed, agreed upon and scored. Then the scoring should help determine the apples to apples business value
The key to understanding the business value of projects is to look beyond our standard metrics. Additionally, we will want to create measurements or metrics that will score projects in an objective versus subjective way while still allowing subjectivity to play a role. Sound confusing? It is! Our role as the Portfolio Management Committee is to break down the projects and create selection criteria to do our best to ensure that we are working on the right projects at the right time. However, the scoring and selection should be a guideline as to which projects should be completed instead of the hard and fast rule. The first thing we need to throw out is the generic definition of a project. It can't be as widely scoped as "anything over 40 hours" or "2 or more departments should be involved." It needs to be flexible enough that it encompasses many factors, but not so simple that every initiative becomes a project.
So how do we define what the measurement criteria should be? This is an iterative process that will take some time, but here are the first few questions we all should answer:
Overall Value for Entire Organization - What metrics can we create that would show the overall value to the entire organization? What is something today that crosses the whole organization and what does it do?
Overall Value for Department - Internally, there should be a measurement of how it fits the goals, directives, and compliance/regulatory initiatives for the department
Overall Value for Customer - How will this affect our customer base? What could we ask to track this?
Financial - What is the cost of the entire project? What is the cost of the alternatives? Return on Investment? Net Present Value? Internal Rate of Return? Payback Period?
Department Ranking - What is the rank of this project if they had to pick the most important to the least important? This is a subjective measurement.
Overall Ranking - What is the rank of this project if they had to pick the most important to the least important over the entire organization? This is a subjective measurement.
Risk - What risk factors should we track?
Organizational Capacity - Do we have the capacity to do this project? When would we be able to pick the project up?
Overall Scoring Methodology - How do we classify and score all the above criteria to pick which projects we should do?
Override - If we pick one project with a lower score than another, what type of override policy should we require?
The above items should be discussed, agreed upon and scored. Then the scoring should help determine the apples to apples business value
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Valuing People
You will often hear me speak about the value of people. The fact that I hate the term "Human Resources" is a dead giveaway. I talk quite a bit about making sure that you are achieving the work/life balance and that people and their families are your greatest asset.
Another great asset to remember is your network and your friends. You truly have no idea when or if you will need someone else's help and where that help will eminate. I hear story after story about what a small world it is and how this person is tied to this person. Have you ever tried to play "Six Degrees of Separation?"
Whenever I am asked for a favor or a recommendation, I try my best to lend my help. You never know what it could lead to. I have had huge contracts landed by simply replying to a question on a social networking site. I have had many friends land positions at companies just because they asked someone for assistance.
This leads me to another conversation. Those that close themselves off from this behavior. Around the holidays, I am always nostalgic. I have had a great deal of fantastic people drift in and out of my life. Some relationships ended well, some did not. However, every relationship was important to me. I have learned something from just about everyone that I have ever met. I overheard a conversation today about someone reaching out to a past relationship, only to be rebuffed. The rebuttal was, "There is no need, it has been 20 years."
I am sure there are reasons and I am sure there is much more to the story. However, it still made me think about the value of the people in my life. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I am thankful for each of you that have ever taught me a lesson, shared an experience, or have given me the honor to call you a friend. I value people, not our greatest resource, rather, our greatest asset.
No Day But Today,
Rick
Another great asset to remember is your network and your friends. You truly have no idea when or if you will need someone else's help and where that help will eminate. I hear story after story about what a small world it is and how this person is tied to this person. Have you ever tried to play "Six Degrees of Separation?"
Whenever I am asked for a favor or a recommendation, I try my best to lend my help. You never know what it could lead to. I have had huge contracts landed by simply replying to a question on a social networking site. I have had many friends land positions at companies just because they asked someone for assistance.
This leads me to another conversation. Those that close themselves off from this behavior. Around the holidays, I am always nostalgic. I have had a great deal of fantastic people drift in and out of my life. Some relationships ended well, some did not. However, every relationship was important to me. I have learned something from just about everyone that I have ever met. I overheard a conversation today about someone reaching out to a past relationship, only to be rebuffed. The rebuttal was, "There is no need, it has been 20 years."
I am sure there are reasons and I am sure there is much more to the story. However, it still made me think about the value of the people in my life. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I am thankful for each of you that have ever taught me a lesson, shared an experience, or have given me the honor to call you a friend. I value people, not our greatest resource, rather, our greatest asset.
No Day But Today,
Rick
Monday, December 7, 2009
The First Grade Lesson for the PMO Manager Search
I have had several conversations over the past week and a half with clients on the creation of a PMO. I see this happen all of the time. Companies want to have a PMO, but they are really not sure what they want the PMO to do. Additionally, I get asked the question of whether to promote from within or hire externally for the PMO Manager. I generally have two responses to this question:
1) I think it is a cultural decision whether to promote from within or hire externally. For the most part, the expertise can be found externally, but they have to learn the cultural and political land mines to navigate. Internally, however, can sometimes just promote more of the same. It may not bring the change companies are looking to make.
2) To find a great PMO Manager, they are not necissarily your best project manager. To breed change and to make an impact on the company culture, you need someone who is willing to color outside of the lines. However, project managers have been taught to color inside the lines and ask for permission to let the color stray. It becomes the age old debate of creativity versus functionality.
I do not think there are any right or wrong answers to this puzzle, except to say that companies must understand what they want the PMO to accomplish before embarking on this journey. I will post much more on this topic in the coming weeks.
Rick
1) I think it is a cultural decision whether to promote from within or hire externally. For the most part, the expertise can be found externally, but they have to learn the cultural and political land mines to navigate. Internally, however, can sometimes just promote more of the same. It may not bring the change companies are looking to make.
2) To find a great PMO Manager, they are not necissarily your best project manager. To breed change and to make an impact on the company culture, you need someone who is willing to color outside of the lines. However, project managers have been taught to color inside the lines and ask for permission to let the color stray. It becomes the age old debate of creativity versus functionality.
I do not think there are any right or wrong answers to this puzzle, except to say that companies must understand what they want the PMO to accomplish before embarking on this journey. I will post much more on this topic in the coming weeks.
Rick
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