Many teams all over the world, have been forced into a ‘work-from-home’ situation due to the Coronavirus spread and countries’ response with different degrees of lockdown measures to curb the spread. Inevitably, virtual teams have many challenges. This article will position how the skill of ‘Active Listening’ can play a huge part when leading virtual teams.
What is active listening?
Active listening can be described as follows:
Clarifying
Feedback
Focus
Improve the communication
Repeating
Intent
Encouraging
What are communication challenges to overcome?
The challenges people are coming across, include the following:
How to listen when you are part of a virtual team
Technology is overloaded; organisations and schools are using the networks, which could cause connectivity or sound issues
When no video is used, you cannot read body language. Tone of voice becomes very important
Participants can talk over each another, or some don’t get a chance to speak
How to address communication challenges with listening skills?
You will find with remote work that virtual teams require new rules and new ways of collaboration. Different ground rules will apply, for example to time-box discussions and to ensure that every participant get a chance to speak. More 1-on-1 discussions are required and you need to have more empathy.
Communication with virtual teams can take a lot of energy. Therefore, beware of low energy levels, for example if a person hasn’t eaten, or it’s at the end of a long day, people may lose interest.
Stages of Listening
Reception during communication can be explained with:
Intake
Meaning
Significance
Response
3 Phases of active listing
The following image provides a nice breakdown of the three phases of active listening, namely comprehending, retaining and responding.
Levels of listening
There are also different levels of listening to be aware of.
Level 1: Internal listening
You ask a question. When a person answers, you think of your own life, interrupt them, or just keep thinking of your own things, and stop listening while they’re speaking. It’s all about ME.
Level 2: Focused listening
The person who listens, asks clarifying questions. Now it’s about voice, information, body language (if it can be seen), emotions that are being observed.
Level 3: Global listening
The person listening has a sense of curiosity. You listen with emphathy. You consider the environment and you take into account a person’s background.
Level 4: Listening for potential
You listen with intent and a positive attitude while thinking of future possibilities and potential.
How to become better with active listening
What will really help you is to have curiosity and to use keywords. If you’re not interested, or curious, you won’t listen, or spend energy there. While listening, look for keywords, ideas and concepts. If things are repeated, look for patterns, because repeated themes are more important.
Another way to become better with active listening, is thinking in a visual way. To do this, you can draw notes, or draw a picture. This gives context, meaning and focus.
You can also improve your active listening skills by being aware of yourself. Do this through reflection, mindfulness and self-awareness. Ask yourself questions like:
How do I listen?
What is good and what not?
Can I improve something?
Nonviolent communication
Nonviolent Communication is an approach to nonviolent living developed by Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s. NVC is based on the assumption that all human beings have capacity for compassion and empathy and is really about communicating honestly and receiving empathetically. It is an essential ingredient to active listening.
The steps involved with NVC are:
Observe – when I see, hear
Feelings – I feel
Needs – because I need
Requests – please could you now. The needs of the other person are important and always considered
Tips to improve
There are several ways to keep improving your active listening skills. They are:
Conscious practice
Write down keywords
Note your own ideas
Ask neutral clarifying questions
In your mind repeat what other persons says
Try to visualize what the other person is saying
Ask additional questions until you can form a mental image
Don’t talk; rather use non-verbal signals like sounds and expressions, grunts and body language
Reply with 1-2 syllables
Admit you are lost
Repeat back or paraphrasing to show understanding
Adjust your own posture
Mirror the other person
Apply mindfulness
Check the environment
Drawing of notes, or pictures
The skill of ‘Active Listening’ should not be underestimated; it becomes even more important with virtual teams. It is something that can be practiced and improved over time.
As a virtual team lead, it is your responsibility to hone this skill and to model the behavior of good active listening to your team members so that they can also practice it and improve their listening skills. You will find that it will greatly contribute to building trust within teams and to help overcome the challenges of working virtually.
Sources:
Webinar by Pascal Papathemelis from Agile 42
Corporatecoachgroup.com: “How to improve active listening skills”
When you find yourself leading a virtual team, you will often need to take on the role as team coach to facilitate optimum performance. In order to do so properly, a good place to start, is with your understanding of what a team really is.
Much about teams and team performance can be learnt from the authors Katzenbach and Smith. No wonder that their definition of Teams became an industry standard over the years:
“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
Katzenbach and Smith
In an article: “Organisational Culture” published in the Harvard Business Review, Katzenbach and Smith stated that teamwork represents a set of values that encourage listening and responding constructively to views expressed by others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, providing support, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others. They explain further that teams require both individual and mutual accountability. Teams rely on group discussion, debate, and decision, sharing information and best practice performance standards. Teams produce work-products through the joint contributions of their members. This is what makes possible performance levels greater than the sum of all the individual members, also stated as a team is more than the sum of its parts.
A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The essence of a team is common commitment towards a purpose in which team members can believe. The attainability of specific goals helps teams maintain their focus on getting results. The combination of purpose and specific goals is essential to performance. In essence, goals help a team keep track of progress, while a broader purpose supplies meaning and emotional energy.
In working with teams Katzenbach and Smith have found when a team shares a common purpose, goals, and approach, mutual accountability grows as a natural counterpart. When people work together toward a common objective, trust and commitment follow. Consequently, teams enjoying a strong common purpose and approach inevitably hold themselves responsible, both as individuals and as a team, for the team’s performance. This sense of mutual accountability also produces the rich rewards of mutual achievement in which all members share.
Project Lead as a Team Coach
Having the responsibility to facilitate positive change in teams you lead, whether in person or virtually, you have much neuro-science research to back you up according to the Neuro Leadership Institute. How can this help you to coach teams for optimum performance?
Well, virtual team members have differing skill sets and depending on their background also different levels of experience to consider. It is important for teams to have the right mix of skills including technical or functional expertise, problem-solving, decision-making skills and interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills include risk taking, helpful criticism, objectivity, active listening, giving the benefit of the doubt, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others.
As a team coach it is good to be cognizant of behavioral differences in the virtual team. There are a variety of individuals with an even bigger variety of personalities. Having a basic understanding of personality types, will help you tailor your communication plans. Remember also that virtual team members may be at different levels of engagement and motivation.
Christopher Samsa from the Neuro Leadership Institute continues to explain important factors to consider as part of brain based team coaching. They are:
Collective intelligence
Collective emotion
Collective performance
Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligence is the prediction of the group’s ability to perform well. There is a correlation to how group members are social sensitive of one another, if there’s an equal distribution of conversation turn-taking and even the proportion of females in the group that can increase the collective intelligence.
As a team leader and coach you can help the team to be more meta-cognitive, to be mindful about planning out their work, tracking their progress, and assessing their own knowledge.
Collective Emotion
Collective emotion refers to the ability to empathise and to cooperate with one another. Some factors that come into play are:
Social regulation – a person’s ability to be explicit about their emotions. For example, if you join a meeting just after receiving some bad news, instead of trying to keep it to yourself, mention it and put it out in the open.
Mirror neurons – when we perceive some-one in pain, sadness, it fires the same emotions in your brain.
Social context, if are you friend or foe. A perceived similarity will help, perceived closeness will improve commitment. If one member shows progress, the whole team will feel they are making progress especially if they have a common purpose and shared goals. Work towards having positive connections and similarity in groups.
Help the team stay cool under pressure by managing expectations and helping other reappraise.
Collective Performance
Collective performance is about understanding the team behaviour at systemic and habitual level. Look at the culture of the team and figure out if they are generally positive. If they are connected to each other and are they contributing to team performance.
A common tool that many of you are familiar with, is the Tuckman model for teams. The Forming Storming Norming Performing theory is an elegant and helpful explanation of team development and behavior.
Principles for results coaching
The principles to use in order to coach for results are:
Self-directed learning – let people discover, find answers themselves, learning something new, making new connections.
Solutions focus – look forward into how to solve problems, instead of only discussing problems and issues.
Positive feedback to the team and individual members often.
Stretch – provide stretch goals that are not always easy to attain.
Structure – be consistent with the agenda and format of discussion, it will help to make people feel safe.
Model for Coaching
In their research, the Neuro Leadership Institute shares another very useful Model, called the Co-create Model. Based on this model you need to remember the following when coaching teams for optimum performance.
Source: Neuro Leadership Institute
Spend enough time in the Forming stage to establish a common purpose for the team based on the shared vision.
Agree on the performance objectives based on the common purpose; they could be business objectives or project milestones and deliverables.
Identify the gap between where the team is now, versus performance objectives and the common purpose. This is where you need to take into account the budget available, the project timeline, the team’s experience, skills and emotional status.
Explore all possible ways of bridging the gap. This is where the team can be stretched.
The Team decides on the best way forward and allocates who does what. Allow the team to discuss how they will manage progress and accountability and when they will meet next to review the actions.
The Harvard Business Review: Organisational Culture, 1993. By Jon R. Katzenbach, founder and co-leader of the Katzenbach Center at Booz & Company, which focuses on cultural and leadership joint research within client situations, author of “The Wisdom of Teams” and “Leading Outside the Lines”. And Douglas K. Smith, Chairman of the Board of ‘The Rapid Results Institute’ and author of “On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me”.
Neuro Leadership Institute: Managing your team virtually, April 2020
Whether you’re a project manager of a small or a big, complicated project, one outcome you’re always striving for, is for the project to be successful.
Looking at statistics from historic projects, there can be many causes of project failure, as can be seen in the Infographic below. Failed projects lead to wasted time and resources, unsatisfied customers and of course, it will cause damage to the project manager’s reputation.
Main causes of project failure
One of the most common causes include lack of executive support in the form of absent or inexperienced sponsors, or sponsors who don’t make timeous decisions. Another common cause of project failure is lack of skills or personnel for effective strategy implementation.
Remedies for failure
There are remedies for failure, depending on what the cause of the failure was in the first place.
If the cause is poor communication, there are numerous ways that a project manager can communicate with project teams in real-time using software solutions as well as good communication practices through-out.
Efficient project tracking is another remedy that can prevent unplanned changes or issues to impact projects negatively.
Having mitigation plans for identified risks, as well as contingency plans for when things go wrong, you have a much better chance of protecting projects from becoming derailed.
To address the Sponsorship issue causing lack of executive support, you need to ensure that the organization has a culture that supports active sponsors on project. Expect them to be advocates for the project, to engage actively with key stakeholders and to use their influence when necessary in support of the project. Watch this video from Worldfinance.com to find out how to get the best out of executive sponsors.
Study the infographic from Wrike.com for a prescription for project success, think of it as the medicine to cure the main causes of project failure.
PM Tips is a Project Management blog that guides you into the world of project management. They offer information on a wide range of project management topics in a simple, yet effective language.
With articles written by experienced project professionals and various subject expert contributors, it is a must-read for all beginners and veterans in the field of project management.
Recently I’ve had the honour to be interviewed by PM Tips as part of their ‘Interview with an Expert‘ series. The interview covered my professional career development over the years, some challenges I had to overcome, my views on Agile and PM methodologies, as well as certifications. It is part of my contribution to help our PM community in advancing their skills by learning from others’ experience.
What research shows us, when assessing high performing project managers, is that planning as a competency is always present. We know that the process of estimation and planning is critical to the success of any project. The plan will guide the investment decisions, it tells us about the demand for resources, if work is on track and what functionality (deliverables) can be expected.
In addition to planning, high performing project managers are more likely to have extended personal and professional relationships within and outside their organizations. Not only will this give them more expertise to draw upon (by reaching out to your network), but when they need to interact with stakeholders to further the goals of their projects, they were more likely to have pre-existing relationships to draw upon.
In her book: “Adaptive project planning” by Louise Worsley, she describes it as ‘social capital’ that experienced project managers build up and value in contrast to less experience project managers who are less likely to do so.
Project Management Professional Journey
When looking at the journey of a typical project manager who started out as a novice and has progressed to working on large, complex projects, they seem to progress through 3 distinct stages.
#1 Intuitive
At this stage, they able to coordinate and schedule small projects. People are chosen, because of having good organizing skills, an ability to get things done, and they could be relied upon. There is a recognizable aptitude for project coordination, explaining the phenomena of ‘accidental project managers’.
The intuitive stage is where junior project managers build their confidence, and they begin to understand what works and what doesn’t. With their intuitive understanding and natural coordination skills, managers will perform well initially but are likely to struggle or even fail, as projects get larger and more complex. When more complex projects are given to them, they may feel ‘stressed,’ unable to cope. They often find the work-load is higher than they can manage.
#2 Methodological stage
At this stage they able to use a publicly repeatable process and plan medium-to-high complexity projects.
These are processes like PRINCE2 or Project Management Body of Knowledge, from PMI. It is important to take note that applying a specific method to the project, does not guarantee success in its own right. It needs to be accompanied by a build-up of project knowledge and skills and the exposure and learning from experiences in a much larger variety of projects.
At the methodological levels, for real progression to occur the range of experiences and responsibilities taken on starts to expand. A breadth of experience appears to be the basis upon which judgment is developed.
#3 Judgmental Stage
At this stage they are able to structure and appropriately select from a variety of approaches to manage complex projects.
With larger and more complex projects, the critical skill is the ability to mix and match approaches. To have the common-sense to use tried and tested practices whenever appropriate, but to have the confidence to step off that path and structure new ways of working when these approaches are just not right.
During this stage, you will focus on big picture understanding and planning becomes part of shaping the engagements.
Matching Project Managers with the Right Projects
Organisations need to attempt to match the skills of the project manager to the complexity of the project.
At the advanced level, change in behaviors and attitudes are necessary to run more complex projects. At this level, it’s about having experience, conviction of actions and perhaps even bravery. These project managers are working on high profile projects and must be able to face the challenges of operating under the very public scrutiny of many and senior business stakeholders. Their approaches must be backed by the experience and professional understanding which allows them to make judgments about how best to structure the project for successful delivery. These project managers understand that the structure of the project must be adapted to the characteristics of the project.
One more essential ingredient, based on research, that seems necessary for experienced project/program managers to be successful, is the opportunity to work with a senior manager in the organization (taken under their wing) and having a mentor in the organization in the development of their career.
In conclusion, it is important to remember that project managers need a planning armory which include techniques, tools, tips and tricks. Keep working on using your judgment, and adapting to change in every situation to come up with the best approach to use for each project.
Project management as a profession has evolved over the years. Many practitioners who have chosen to become professionals did the Project Management Professional certification exam or PMP, offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI).
PMI Exam
For project management practitioners who are considering doing the PMP exams this year, there was an important announcement by PMIthat the PMP exam will change and that June 30th 2020, is the last date you can take the exam in it’s current format. It is to accommodate the evolving nature of the profession. The exam is based on the Project Management Body of Knowledge or find out more about the current PMBOK here: PMBOK.
Every 3 – 5 years, the PMI conducts research to understand how the profession has progressed, the impact of emerging trends, and how the responsibilities of project managers have changed. The last research was conducted in 2015 and resulted in the current PMP® Exam Content Outline .
The changes on the future exam will focus on three new domains:
PEOPLE – emphasizing the skills and activities associated with effectively leading a project team
PROCESS – reinforcing the technical aspects of managing a project
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT – highlighting the connection between projects and organization strategy
Content that spans the value spectrum, including predictive, agile and hybrid approaches, will be included across the three exam domains. The best way to understand what is included in the exam is to review the updatedExam Content Outline.
Something important that is highlight in the Exam outline:
Where the current PMBOK versions used to be very process based, but aligned to the PMI Talent Triangle – find previous announcement here – the latest outline is more people focused with tasks supporting that. Here you will find the 2020 PMP Exam Content Crossover Map to show where new content is added.
New PMBOK Guide
The current, 6th Edition of the PMBOK Guide has been released 2 year ago: September 2017. We expect that the 7th Edition will reflect some of the changes to the PMP exam that we’ll see from 16 December 2019.
PMI has named Mike Griffiths as co-lead for the 7th Edition of the PMBOK Guide. Mike was involved in the creation of the Agile method, DSDM, and has over 20 years of experience in Agile methods. He’s an Agilist through and through. It seems that the 7th Edition will be a BIG change from recent editions. That is confirmed by this short article on his website. In his own words:
“This will not be just an update, instead a radical departure from all previous editions aligned with PMI’s new digital transformation strategy.
Mike Griffiths
One of the 12 Core Development Team members, Nader Rad, has written about his perspective of the new PMBOK as a shift to a principles based approach.
Reason for PMP exam change
PMI has a commitment to a world class standard of certification. The implication of that is they must base their examinations on a formal Role Delineation Study (RDS) or Job Task Analysis (JTA).
PMI carried out a survey of the trends in our profession that the current PMP exam fails to address. These then fed into their Job Task Analysis to produce a more relevant PMP exam for the coming period. Here, ‘relevant’ means the things project managers do in their real work settings. We all know that the work of project management professionals has been changing; therefore, the PMP exam must change to reflect this.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the changes are reflecting the current PM trends and seem to be addressing some gaps in existing certifications around Team Leadership, Governance and soft skills.
Here is another PMI announcement summary of the changes: Certification changes overview.
One of the Training Partners, OSP International, headed by Cornelius Fichtner, who I recommend as an affiliate, had the following comments on the coming changes:
““As a PMP® trainer, I have always focused not only on teaching my students how to pass their exam but also on how to become better project managers. That is why I think the change in the ECO is a step in the right direction.
With this change, PMI is moving away from the five current and somewhat ‘technical’ domains and shifts the focus of the exam to test a candidate’s knowledge of, and experience, in the skills necessary to actually lead and manage a project.
This is not to say that the knowledge of project management methods, concepts, and techniques, is any less important, but a candidate will now also need to show that they truly know how to lead a project and how to bring it to successful completion.”
Cornelius Fichtner
It is positive to see that PMI seems to have their members and associated professional PM practitioners’ best interests at heart in making these changes to ensure that people are equipped for the challenging and changing business world we are finding ourselves in.
When it comes to project planning, I have three beliefs that I adhere to on all my projects. They are:
Always be planning – that means you should be continuously planning
Always be communicating – use consistent communication practices
Always build relationships – team alignment is very important
However, there are more elements to great project planning. That’s why Wrike, a project management software company, is bringing us the right ingredients to cook the perfect project plan. Enjoy!
Project management trends that make the shift to Agile approaches more inevitable
The Agile Project Manager in the enterprise context
The role of the Agile Project Manager and what they need to do in the Agile context
This article will focus on what is required to make a successful transition to Agile project management.
An Axelos survey among project managers in 2017, found:
The project manager of the future will be valued above all for creativity, flexibility, agility and emotional intelligence.
Axelos
Reward systems
When adopting an agile approach, organizations will need to re-evaluate their reward systems to encourage agile practices, where collective goals supersede individual accomplishments. Most performance evaluation criteria is still focussed on the individual as well as on the more traditional criteria for project delivery, namely time, cost, scope, stakeholder feedback and benefit realisation. In agile it should be more about the performance of the team, value and benefit delivery as well as customer satisfaction.
Challenges with transitioning to agile project management
Project managers are accustomed to being at the center of coordination for a project. During execution and as part of the controlling processes of a project life cycle, you would be monitoring and tracking progress through status meetings, minutes and status reporting to represent the project’s status to the rest of the organization.
Now, there is a shift from being the center to serving the team and management. In typical high-change projects, there’s more complexity than one person can manage. Instead, cross-functional teams coordinate their own work and collaborate with business representatives like the product owner and subject matter experts (SME) of the organisation.
Project managers are now servant leaders which changes the emphasis:
to coaching people who want help,
to foster greater collaboration on teams,
to align stakeholder needs.
Adaptive approaches use short cycles to undertake work, review the results, and adapt as necessary. This means that Agile is fast paced, disciplined and demanding, encouraging improved team performance due to the inspect and adapt approach. These cycles provide rapid feedback on the approaches and suitability of deliverables, and generally manifest as iterative scheduling and on-demand, pull-based scheduling.
This will require project managers to unlearn some behaviours, to develop a different mindset and developing some new technical skills such as running a retrospective or ‘orchestrating’ work where in the past it was ‘managed’.
What do Agile Project Managers need to be successful?
Taking guidance from the Agile Practice Guide (2017) Project managers need to work on growing skillsets beyond their area of expertise. Some valuable attributes include:
Knowing how to provide a tailored experience for every client
ability to work with flexible workflows – coordinate between different systems and methodologies,
coaching their team(s) in a singular direction,
delegating the control of detailed product planning and delivery to the team.
Rather focus on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.
Remember that an adaptive environment requires adaptive planning. Planning for agile projects look different to what project managers are proficient with on traditional projects. The different levels of agile planning are clearly explained in the image above.
In their book: Adaptive Project Planning, the authors, Christopher and Louise Worsley, found that one of the most distinctive characteristic of high performing project managers is their ability to use their experience and know-how to adapt the planning approach to meet the specific challenges of the project they were managing.
Develop characteristics of Servant Leadership. This is not the answer to it all, but when leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. Read: “Servant Leadership in the Agile context” for more information.
Servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. They facilitate the team’s success by:
promoting self-awareness,
by serving those on the team,
by helping people grow,
active listening,
coaching versus controlling,
promoting safety, respect, and trust,
promoting the energy and intelligence of others.
Part of the transitioning process is to keep learning, because the demand for competent resources and certified practitioners will keep growing globally. If you want to be a complete Agile Project Manager, your learning should include:
Adopting an agile approach to project management
An overview of agile methodologies
Agile planning: project initiating and requirements gathering
Agile planning: doing estimates and completing the release plan
Planning and monitoring iterations on an agile project (example: conceptual sprint plan on scrum)
Leading an agile team
Managing stakeholder engagement on an agile project
Ensuring delivery of value and quality in agile projects
There are many training opportunities available. What you choose, will depend on your circumstances, your project management experience and your new role in the agile context.
In the next article, we will explore some of the Agile Certifications available, as well as the considerations before you make a selection.
If you are a seasoned project management professional like me (20 years) who is transitioning into agile, you will find that this article aims to give answers when you’re trying to make sense of what it means to be an Agile Project Manager (PM).
We know that Agile is not a new concept. In 2001 it was made official through the publication of the Agile Manifesto although it had been around before then. It is just my experience lately that project managers, especially experienced ones, as well as new Project Management Professionals (PMP’s) are expected to understand Agile better and to know how to operate efficiently within an Agile context.
That is why representing organisations, like the Project Management Institute (PMI), have included information on agile practices, alongside traditional approaches in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide– Sixth Edition, and partnered with Agile Alliance® to create the new Agile Practice Guide. The guide provides tools, situational guidelines and an understanding of the various agile approaches available to enable better results and is useful for more traditional project managers to adapt to a more agile approach.
Before talking about the Agile PM role specifically, I think it’s worthwhile to have a brief look at the trends that I believe, are impacting the project management profession currently. This is not meant to be a complete list, but rather a focus on those trends that make the transition, to become Agile project managers, necessary.
Project Management Trends (2019 research)
#1 Project Complexity
In the past few years we have seen an increasing complexity on projects which requires project managers to have the ability to simply interpret and explain complex business processes to project teams and stakeholders alike.
#2 Project thinking
There seems to be a shift where project thinking is integrated into all parts of the work processes.
#3 Design thinking
Development of design thinking as a new type of creative approach. This would be applicable for tasks like definition of requirements, solutions to atypical problems and so on.
#4 Distributed work teams
Due to globalization, more and more companies have distributed work teams due to the increase in the number of international teams in modern business. Often, a specialised stream of work, is outsourced to a vendor company who may supply resources from India and it will be a cheaper solution than to find internal resources with capacity or local resources whose specialized skills come at a higher cost.
#5 Shift from Waterfall to Agile approaches
We see an accelerated shift from Waterfall to Agile Project Management in larger organizations as the only way to deliver on benefits in increasingly dynamic and complex environments in order to learn and adapt quickly.
#5 Project Managers as all-rounders
There is a move for PM’s to be more all-rounders, requiring them to be flexible, strategic, focus on the dependencies within the project. At the same time there is more pressure from stakeholders for PM’s to be more creative to meet strategic objectives.
#6 Emotional Intelligence
The development of emotional intelligence as an important soft skill has become essential as part of the day to day through the project life cycle. Read what it really means here.
#7 Cloud-based systems
There is a huge push to move projects to cloud-based systems which are accessible from any-where.
#8 Enhanced Reporting and data
We live in a world with expectations for enhanced reporting and data. Project stakeholders, like management, want views, templates and saved filters for easy access. Management and team members also want real-time information to stay informed and to help make decisions on a day-to-day basis.
Sources for PM trends:
Merehead
PMI Pulse of the Profession 2017
Invensis Learning – excerpts from group of experts
Clickup.com
Agile considerations
On projects with evolving requirements, high risk, or significant uncertainty, the scope is often not understood at the beginning of the project or it evolves during the project.
Agile methods deliberately spend less time trying to define and agree on scope in the early stage of the project and spend more time establishing the process for its ongoing discovery and refinement. With emerging requirements there is often a gap between the real business requirements and the business requirements that were originally stated. Therefore, agile methods purposefully build and review prototypes and release versions in order to refine the requirements. As a result, scope is defined and redefined throughout the project. In agile approaches, the requirements constitute the backlog.
The main difference between traditional and agile approaches with regards to the triple constraints, is best illustrated with the image below. On traditional projects the scope is normally fixed at the beginning of the project with either the resources/cost or time being more flexible or negotiable. On agile projects the resources (teams) and time (time-boxed iterations) are normally fixed, with the scope being flexible based on delivering the most valuable products first.
This is why we see in trustworthy sources, like the PMI Pulse of the Profession 2017 Report, that there are several principles and methods to be considered for an Agile approach. They include:
Focus of the team of specialists on the needs and objectives of the company’s customers;
Simplification of processes and organizational structure;
Division of the workflow into short cycles with specific tasks;
Focus on feedback and active use of its results;
Increase the authority of members of the work team;
Introduction of a humanistic approach
The Agile Project Manager in the Enterprise context
With a view of the current trends impacting the Project Management profession as well as the Agile considerations, where does it leave professional Project Managers?
Here, I’d like to quote Alistair Cockburn, a signatory of the Agile Manifesto 2001, when he was asked at a conference in 2015 whether organisations should get rid of project managers and replace them with scrum masters, his response was,
“If organisations think that agile is a way of getting rid of project managers, they’re wrong. We need good people more than ever.”
Alistair Cockburn
Although the quote is 4 years old, it still rings true.
In agile it’s about working together more effectively to deliver value more quickly to the customer. The Manifesto called on organisations to “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.”
According to Collin D Ellis, a leadership and culture expert, organisations need to act as if people are the most important. He states:
“do this by regularly displaying behaviours such as empathy, respect, trust, courage, generosity and honesty. It means keeping promises and making sure people are recognised for their efforts. It’s about having a working environment that is diverse and inclusive by design and where people know that they are empowered as soon as they walk through the door to be able to act without fear”.
Collin D Ellis
Where do project managers fit in?
In the image below, you will see a framework for Agile (mostly Scrum) as it may typically look like in an enterprise environment.
It constitutes of three circles. The inner circle represents one (or more) Scrum teams with the cross functional dedicated team members fulfilling the three main roles, a Product Owner, a Scrum Master and the Development team who may consist of a Business Analyst, Developer(s) and Tester.
The second circle represents roles with people who are not necessarily dedicated to one team only, but who could support multiple scrum teams. They represent Architects (solution -, platform -, business -), Business Owner and Subject Matter Experts (SME), Release Manager, Project support (administrator), Project Manager and Agile Coach (optional).
The third circle will consist of a Business Sponsor and members of the Steering Committee, the Project Office (PMO), Change Management, Training, Enterprise Architecture and Program Management.
As you can see, the Agile Project Manager is part of the second and third circle and acts as the connection between the two. Where the Scrum Master is inward looking and responsible to support the team and to help remove impediments, the project manager is outward looking, more like a coordinator often overseeing multiple scrum teams on a project with duties including allocating and tracking budget, communicating with external stakeholders, contractors and vendors, maintaining a risk register and helping to manage interdependencies with other projects and teams.
The Role of the Agile Project Manager
According to the PMI PMBOK and Agile Practice Guide (2017), the role of the project manager in an agile project is somewhat of an unknown, because many agile frameworks and approaches do not address the role of the project manager.
Some agile practitioners think the role of a PM is not needed, due to self-organizing teams taking on the former responsibilities of the project manager. However, pragmatic agile practitioners and organizations realize that PM’s can add significant value in many situations.
The key difference is that their roles and responsibilities look somewhat different. The traditional role of a project manager as planner, organizer, and controller disappears, and the role of a facilitator or coach who effectively manages the collaborative efforts of team members without stifling their creativity takes its place (Highsmith, 2003). The focus is on people, rather than on process.
All project managers will not automatically move into the Scrum Master role, or alternatively into the Product Owner role. An Agile project manager must still monitor that corporate policies and project governance is followed. Mike Cohn (Mountain Goat Software, 2019) explains it well when he says that Scrum Master’s authority extends only to the process. The Scrum Master is an expert on the process, and on using it to get a team to perform to its highest level. But, a Scrum Master does not have many of the traditional responsibilities – scope, cost, personnel, risk management – that a project manager does. Duties, such as task assignment and daily project decisions revert back to the team. Responsibility for scope and schedule tradeoff goes to the product owner. Quality management becomes a responsibility shared among the team, a product owner and Scrum Master.
What Agile Project Managers need to do
Different Mindset
You will need a different mindset, considering the agile principles and values. There are new tools and techniques to understand and apply on agile projects for example Adaptive Planning techniques.
Servant Leader
The next thing to change is to let go of a command and control approach and being the centre of coordination. You will need to move into the Servant Leadership space in order to focus on people rather than process.
On a team level, the agile project manager can play a consultative role to put in place the appropriate people, process, and tools, to improve team efficiency and effectiveness. In addition you can be coaching members of the team as needed to optimise the project team’s performance.
Facilitator
Do encourage the distribution of your responsibility to the team: to those who have the knowledge to get work done. The team will be accountable as a whole for what needs to be delivered. For this to work well, you need to build a collaborative decision-making environment as a facilitator and a coach to empower the team to make decisions and to be high-performing.
Stakeholder engagement
The agile project manager works with the customer to layout a common set of understandings from which emergence, adaptation and collaboration can occur. The agile project manager lays out a vision and then nurtures the project team to do the best possible to achieve the plan, as per Mike Cohn.
Manage interdependencies
Another important responsibility on complex Agile projects will remain the management of project intra- as well as interdependencies, with other projects. To do this well, stakeholder engagement is still essential.
Recently, I had to start a new project with an estimated timeline of 12 months. With many of the project team members being contractors who are new to the company, the most important thing to do, after having an approved budget, is to plan for a proper kickoff workshop.
It serves an important purpose for many reasons. Some are:
to help with on-boarding of new team members
to establish the vision and objectives
to show the expected timelines with milestones
to explain the roles and responsibilities of team members and steercom members
to establish the governance framework and recommended way of working
to give guidance on tools and techniques to be used
Below you will find an Infographic with 10 steps for a successful kickoff. If you take the time to plan and prepare well for the project kickoff, you will have a great start with excited and motivated team members.
Infographic brought to you by Wrike virtual project manager
Which qualities do we need to be successful in life? Above average cognitive intelligence (IQ) and academic achievement are traditional measures of success in life. In fact, companies often focus on technical skills during recruitment and project staffing and ignore the human aspects. IQ, technical skills, academic qualifications and certifications alone however are not enough for success anymore. We are measured against a new yardstick. How we behave, get along with others and work together as a team, have become critical for success.
Much has been written about Emotional Intelligence (EI) the past two decades since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book by that title. Research linking EI to performance at work has proliferated. Emotional competence is linked to performance in a variety of jobs, organisations and cultures [1].
The world of work is emotional. Most of us have experienced moments in our lives where we are caught up in daily challenges which distracts us from achieving our goals. Our energy is often drained by peak hour traffic, a difficult client or colleague in a project meeting. We start the day with best intentions but soon we find ourselves in the opposite direction we had in mind. Our emotions have surpassed all sense of reality, leaving us in denial and regretful about our behaviour.
The behaviour of others can influence our emotions and our emotions can influence our performance. Emotions can either help us to achieve our goals or contribute to us not being successful at all. Increasing research evidence suggests that learning to become more aware of our emotions and becoming better at managing our emotions can have a significant positive influence on how effective we are at getting things done. [2,1,4]. Research has shown that EI exceeds IQ when it comes to success. EI has become one of the biggest predictors of success at home, at the office and life in general. [3].
Emotions and the structure of the brain
Understanding the concept of emotion will add more clarity. An emotion is a physical reaction or change in our body based on what we experience in our environment, e.g. something we see, hear or think. An emotion is a trigger for our body to act. The basic emotions are anger, sadness, fear, enjoyment, love, surprise, disgust and shame. Each emotion is accompanied by a biological signature. With anger heart rate increase, fear leads to sweaty hands and enlarged pupils, surprise causes the eyebrows to lift and with shame, blood often rushes to the face.
Emotions are often referred to as matters of the heart. The human brain however is central to our emotional and rational life specifically two of its components, the limbic (emotional) brain and the rational brain. The limbic brain records everything that happens in our lives. It serves as our emotional memory and controls all emotional related matters and biological signals such as tears of sadness. It is the centre of our fight or flight responses and stores a repertoire of possible reactions when triggered. As we grow older, with life experience this repertoire of responses, is extended. Our response to each emotion is also influenced by our experiences, upbringing and culture. The limbic brain is key to our survival as humans. Our rational brain on the other hand is responsible for problem-solving and decision making.
Emotional hijacking
When faced with danger, the rational brain will start the problem solving process evaluating all relevant factors to devise a plan of action. While this is happening, the emotional brain will consult its repertoire of stored responses and send out the necessary fight or flight instructions to the body. The emotional brain reacts much faster than the rational brain and in effect hijacks the rational brain and simply takes over. Before we can rationally think what to do, our emotional brain decided and our body reacted. This is often where afterwards we struggle to understand why we acted in a particular way since “…this is not me, I am not like that…”.
Intelligently managing our emotions
EI in essence is the ability to manage the above emotional hijacking that happens in our brain. In layman’s terms it translates to acting appropriately in any given situation. From an academic perspective, EI is a “set of skills relevant to how we perceive, understand, reason with and manage our own and others’ feelings” [5].
If we recognise and understand what we are feeling and why, we can intelligently manage our emotions and use it to our advantage in decision making. Without this ability, our emotions can often be a source of great misery in our lives. The good news therefor is that EI can be improved, if we have the desire to do so. Self-awareness can help us to understand how our emotions influence our behaviour. This insight can assist in rewiring our limbic brain to ensure that our behaviour is more in line with our intentions and values.
This is the first instalment in a series on emotional intelligence. Further articles will unpack the business case for EI, how EI is measured as well as the difference between EI and IQ. Each of the emotional competencies that combine to make up emotional intelligence will be discussed in further detail. South African research on the role of emotional intelligence in project management will also be shared.
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References
Sala, F. 2006. The international business case: emotional intelligence competencies and important business outcomes. In Druskat, V.U., Sala, F & Mount, G. (eds). Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work: current research evidence with individuals and groups. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum: 125-144.
Bar-On, R., Handley, R. & Fund, S. 2006. The impact of emotional intelligence on performance. In Druskat, V.U., Sala, F. & Mount, G. (eds). Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work: current research evidence with individuals and groups. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum: 3-19.
Goleman, D. 1995. Emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Van Blerk, W.E. 2013. The role of emotional intelligence in implementing information technology strategies. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town.
Palmer, B.R., Gignac, G.E., Ekermans, G. & Stough, C. 2008. A comprehensive framework for emotional intelligence. In Emmerling, R.J., Shanwal, V.K. & Mandal, M.K. (eds). Emotional intelligence: theoretical and cultural perspectives. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science: 17-38.
About the Author:
Eben van Blerk is a Manager and Senior Business Analyst with more than 25 years’ corporate experience in information systems. Eben holds a Doctor of Technology degree in the role of emotional intelligence in information systems work. He has a keen interest in the role of emotional intelligence in performance at work and a passion for assisting individuals, through coaching and mentoring, to become more emotionally intelligent. In addition to presenting industry talks and facilitating emotional intelligence workshops, Eben has co-authored articles and book chapters on leadership and emotional intelligence in local and international publications.
Time-constrained projects arise from four external drivers.
Window-of-opportunity—the value of completing the project is severely compromised if delivery is late, for example producing a game for the Christmas market
Compliance—meeting a legislated delivery date, for instancebecoming compliant with new privacy laws for personal data
End-of-life—increased risk of unprotected catastrophic failure caused by using systems and products after their predicted shelf-life, for example using obsolete switching gear
Public commitments—exposing the organization to public ridicule or genuine reputational risk, for example, the opening event of the Olympic Games
Sponsor View
In each of these cases, the significance of meeting the end-date varies depending upon the sponsor’s view of the risk exposure, or loss of benefit, they are prepared to countenance. Missing a legislative compliance date may result in a fine, but the sponsor may decide that this is preferable to the additional costs associated with speeding up the delivery of the project. In a time-constrained project, the project manager must understand the sponsor’s position about the date.
Timeboxing
There is a fifth cause of time-constrained projects. It’s called timeboxing.
Notice the often-useful management effects of rigidly maintained time constraints on projects where some software development methodologies—in the old days DSDM and RAD—and now, Agile approaches – deliberately adopt the imposition of rigid time constraints on the product development process.
In the right circumstances and for the right products, a time-boxed approach works. Its value arises from the impact on what management is obliged to implement to meet its obligations driven by the temporal constraint. Done well, and using the time constraint as a driver for innovation in tasking and resourcing, it is a powerful productivity tool.
Implemented poorly, the time constraint becomes an excuse for de-scoping with disappointing results. There are many circumstances where the imposition of an unnecessary time-constraint leads to trouble, including situations where incurring the associated technical debt is unacceptable. Whatever else it may be, timeboxing is not a panacea for every project.
Is your project really time-constrained?
The truth is that less than 20 percent of projects are genuinely end-date driven. Project end-dates are often not deadlines but more like these:
Estimated dates: baseline finish dates that have been calculated based on a task-sequencing tool. These vary over the life of the project as the level of certainty around what is to be delivered and how long the tasks will take, fluctuates.
Target dates: a date agreed with the sponsor as a target, but with the understanding that it can be renegotiated should it become necessary to do so. Targets are not constraints—–unless, of course, the sponsor makes them so.
And this is important! The target date may be regarded as a deadline, but it is not treated as a drop-dead end-date. It is not the primary driver for the project.
Strategies for Planning Time-Bound Projects
Where an end-date must be met, the planning process changes. For a start, planning under time constraints always demands more effort in planning, not less. It is essential, therefore, that the project manager engages with the stakeholders so that they become aware of this and in so doing resists the just “get on with it” pressure so often applied by them.
If “time is of the essence” for your project; if you need to bring in your project in tight time-scales, then here are just some of the actions you could and should be considering:
Strategy
“Crash” the schedule by adding resources. Remember, more resources and more tasks mean greater monitoring.
Identify elapsed time delays, those activities which are not compressible using existing processes.
Identify delays which may be introduced because of decision-making processes.
Fast-track the schedule—look for ways of breaking dependencies between activities. Remember, parallel tasks increase resources and risks, so increase monitoring.
Identify resource skills gaps up front
Communicate and re-communicate the purpose, objective, CSFs, and value of the project throughout the project’s lifecycle
Identify foreseeable problems (risks)
Be prepared for unforeseen problems
Tactics
Working with larger numbers of resources influences the way work is structured, scheduled, and communicated. Remember the bigger the team resources; the less productive each member will be.
Develop new processes, which allow products to be delivered faster. Remember new procedures will create new types of errors, and you won’t have prepared ways to correct them. So test and monitor more.
Ensure clarity on who makes what decisions and stick to it. Factor in decision-making; bring governance closer to the project. Delayed issue resolution can kill your project.
Evaluate and manage the additional risks associated with changing the standard dependency structures. Identify management actions; include in plans. Remember to investigate Start-to-Start with lag times sequencing rather the Finish-to-Start serial sequencing.
Whenever a task demands effort from a specific resource, try to eliminate it—it is a significant risk on time-constrained projects. If not possible, make the attaining and managing of that person as a CSF for the project.
Find ways in meetings and one-on-ones to rehearse the mission of the project with every project member —and in the steering group—and keep checking back with the sponsor that nothing has changed.
Log each risk statement with at least one management action associated with it. Most “fix-on-failure” solutions will cost more in time and money than the other four risk strategies. In time-constrained projects, making good is the least favoured option.
Schedule milestones, even inch pebbles. Only schedule at the level of detail that reflects your level of uncertainty. The less you know, the greater the detail! Remember schedules are the most volatile project document. Expect to change it frequently to account for the unplanned circumstances.
Time-constrained Projects are less complex
Time-constrained projects can be tough on teams; they may involve hard work and lots of overtime. However, our research suggests that managerially, they are often less complex. With an understood, agreed and, most importantly, an immovable constraint—a genuine drop-dead deadline end-date—the compromises that have to be made are clear-cut. Either you meet the end-date—or you fail. It is much easier to manage when the conditions of success are clear!
Adaptive Planning Techniques
In our research into what makes project managers successful, planning, along with monitoring and control, are the two areas where high-performance project managers spend most of their time. What is also clear from the findings is that the most distinctive characteristic is their ability to use their experience and know-how to adapt their planning approach to meet the specific challenges of the project they were managing.
There is no single approach to planning a project, but neither is project planning a free-for-all. One consistent finding is that the context – the environment within which planning takes place – determines the following:
approach that is most appropriate to use
which techniques and tools are most suitable and
what factors to consider.
The project-planning environment is itself a product of the set of constraints that bound the project, and these constraints involve much more than time, cost and quality. To plan effectively and appropriately project managers must take into account both the source of the constraint and their relative significance or priority – the hierarchy of constraints.
About the Author:
Louise Worsley, with her husband, Christopher Worsley, are the authors of Adaptive Project Planning, published in February 2019. This book prepares you for many of the common project planning situations you will meet. It addresses how planning and planning decisions alter, depending on the constraint hierarchy: how resource-constrained planning differs from end-date schedule planning, what is different between cost-constrained plans and time-boxing. It also discusses the challenges of integrating different product development life cycles, for example, Agile and waterfall, into a coherent and appropriate plan.
Readers of Virtual Project Consulting who buy the book now, will receive a discount of 15% – use buying code WOR2019. Click below!
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