Project Management

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Servant Leadership in the Agile Context

By Linky van der Merwe

Servant Leadership in Agile context

The practice of Servant Leadership is not new, but it is embraced and adopted again with fervor, especially in the context of more organizations following an agile way of working. 

What is Servant Leadership Again?

What is servant leadership

To refresh memory, I want to reiterate the Servant Leadership definition as per Wikipedia:

“Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and a set of leadership practices. Rather than exercising power at the top (traditional), the servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”. 

Servant leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in “The Servant as Leader” that was published in 1970. His definition states:

“Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world.”

The most important elements of servant leadership are:

  • Commitment to developing people
  • Empathy through trying to see a situation from the other person’s point of view; putting yourself in their shoes
  • Listening with the intent to understand, not respond
  • Authenticity through being yourself
  • Awareness of what is happening in the lives of your team members (including any conflicts and tensions between team members)

Servant Leadership is also known from a religious tradition where in the Bible Jesus is known as the ultimate example of a Servant Leader.  In a business context, it can represent a decentralized structure that focuses on employee empowerment and encourages innovation.

Servant leadership is covered quite extensively in the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016). It’s because, once having practiced it, servant leaders can usually see how well servant leadership integrates into the agile mindset and values. When leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. As a result, servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. Successful agile teams also embrace the growth mindset, where people believe they can learn new skills. When the team and the servant leaders believe they can all learn, everyone becomes more capable.

Servant Leadership

With this clarity of what servant leadership is, what are the responsibilities of Leaders in Agile organisations and what characteristics of servant leadership will enable project leaders to become more agile?

Servant Leader Responsibilities

Here are examples of the responsibilities a servant leader may have:

  • Educate stakeholders around why and how to be agile. Explain the benefits of business value based on prioritization, greater accountability and productivity of empowered teams, and improved quality from more frequent reviews, etc.
  • Support the team through mentoring, encouragement, and support. Advocate for team members training and career development. Through support, encouragement, and professional development, team members gain confidence, take on larger roles, and contribute at higher levels within their organizations. A key role of the servant leader is to nurture and grow team members through and beyond their current roles, even if that means losing them from the team.
  • Help the team with technical project management activities like quantitative risk analysis. Sometimes team members may not have knowledge or experience in roles or functions. Servant leaders who may have more exposure or training in techniques can support the team by providing training or undertaking these activities.
  • Celebrate team successes and support bridge building activities with external groups. Create upward spirals of appreciation and good will for increased collaboration.

Characteristics of Servant Leadership

Characteristics of Servant Leadership

According to the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016) the following characteristics of servant leadership enable project leaders to become more agile and facilitate the team’s success:

  • Promoting self-awareness;
  • Listening;
  • Serving those on the team;
  • Helping people grow;
  • Coaching vs. controlling;
  • Promoting safety, respect, and trust; 
  • Promoting the energy and intelligence of others.

Servant Leaders on Agile Projects

Project managers acting as servant leaders will move from “managing coordination” to “facilitating collaboration.” Facilitators encourage the team’s participation, understanding, and shared responsibility for the team’s output. Facilitators help the team create acceptable solutions. 

Servant leaders promote collaboration and conversation within the team and between teams. For example, a servant leader helps to expose and communicate bottlenecks inside and between teams. Then the teams resolve those bottlenecks.

Additionally, a facilitator encourages collaboration through interactive meetings, informal dialog, and knowledge sharing. Servant leaders do this by becoming impartial bridge-builders and coaches.

Honouring the first value of the Agile Manifesto: ‘individuals and interactions over processes and tools’, a servant leader can help to remove organisational impediments. On a practical level you can look at processes that are lengthy, causing bottlenecks and impeding a team’s or organization’s agility.  It could be a process established by change control boards, or audits where you can partner and work with others to challenge them to review their processes to support agile teams and leaders. For example, what good is it for the team to deliver working product every 2 weeks only to have the product fall into a queue or process that could take 4 or more weeks to release due to lengthy release processes.

Servant leaders work to fulfil the needs of the teams, projects, and organization. Servant leaders may work with facilities for a team space, work with management to enable the team to focus on one project at a time, or work with the product owner to develop stories with the team. Some servant leaders work with auditors to refine the processes needed in regulatory environments, and some servant leaders work with the finance department to transition the organization to incremental budgeting. 

The servant leader focuses on paving the way for the team to do its best work. The servant leader influences projects and encourages the organization to think differently.Because servant leaders understand agile and practice a specific approach to agile, they can assist in fulfilling the team’s needs.

A Mental Shift

Mental shift

Agile project managers need to shift from being the centre to serving the team and the management. In an agile environment, project managers are servant leaders, changing their emphasis to coaching people who want help, fostering greater collaboration on the team, and aligning stakeholder needs. 

As a servant leader, project managers encourage the distribution of responsibility to the team: to those people who have the knowledge to get work done. Therefore, control of the detailed product planning and delivery is delegated to the team.

Ultimately, the project manager’s focus is on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.

Additional articles, videos:

What is Servant Leadership? Project Leadership at its best

Leadership Styles – Servant Leadership

Leadership Styles: The Vision of a Servant Leader

Leadership Styles – Is Servant Leadership the Answer?

Leadership Style – Servant Leadership and Communication

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Is Project Management for Everyone?

Project management career path

Many project managers land in the project management profession due to being technical specialists with great success in their field of expertise. However, they are not always fully prepared for the important skills, knowledge and competencies that are critical for success. 

Often there is a high expectation to succeed, especially if they come from a background of subject matter expertise or a general management. This begs the question: Is project management for everyone?

Career Path

Their career path does not typically begin with the goal of becoming a project manager, but rather evolves over time as experience builds. There is little to no clarity on the typical career options that project managers have in many organisations. When employees progress into project management positions, they are left to their own devices with perhaps only their line managers providing guidance and support.

According to a report published by Sage (2015), ’Is project management still an accidental profession? A Study of Career Trajectory‘, the study found there is no single project management career path. Rather, the project management role seems to emerge from employee experiences in different roles within the company over a period of years. The more knowledge and experience gained, the more likely it appears the employee will be assigned an integrative role such as project management that touches all functional groups.

Work Management Practices

Below is an Infographic from Wrike based on a Work Management Practice Survey. It was found that many people are expected to do project management at work, even though less than half had “Project Manager” in their title or description. To make it worse, it found that only a third of companies use standard project management approaches. Too much time is spend in meetings and much stress is caused by the use of various tools and platforms to track progress and to do reports, coupled with unrealistic project goals and not being able to find important information.

Without an organisational culture supporting programme management, a strong training program, strategic staffing and team autonomy, it will continue to be very difficult for project managers to succeed in their roles. This will lead to a profession in dire need for mature, professional project managers, to lose potentially good candidates who could have helped to deliver successful projects and programmes.

Although there are plenty Project Managers, not everyone can manage projects (#Infographic)


Infographic brought to you by Wrike

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Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers

by Dr Eben van Blerk

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers

Predictor of Success

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

emotional intelligence

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

EQ - understanding emotions

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

  1. 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.
  2.  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.
  3. Goleman, D. 1995. Emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

Connect with Eben on LinkedIn here

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Project Management Shifts: Then and Now

Project Management - Then and Now
Source: Wrike

We have seen how Project Management as a profession has matured over the past few decades. There were numerous shifts concerning tools, approaches and training, to emphasis on new skills and pursuing certifications.

Enjoy the summary in the Then & Now Infographic brought to you by Wrike project task management software

Project Management Then & Now

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What’s Happened to Project Planning?

By Louise Worsley

Appropriate planning of a project is the hallmark of a professional project manager—good planning is what sets apart great projects from failed initiatives. It is what ensures that the executive actions undertaken remain connected to the goals and outcomes expected by the stakeholders. A project plan is a framework for decision making throughout the life of the project. It is hardly surprising then that the significance of planning in projects is much greater than in any other management discipline. 

Is planning still an important skill?

adaptive planning in Agile

Today if you ask a project manager what the most important skill they require for their job is, they are likely to refer to areas such as stakeholder management, communications, leadership, or behavioral competencies. Is this because it is assumed that planning is obviously important and does not need to be mentioned or is it that project managers believe that with the right leadership style, communications and engagement they don’t need planning? Do approaches such as Agile, which expound people over process, deliberately or inadvertently promote the obsolescence of planning? 

After more than 70 years of experience in project management, and working with hundreds of professional, high-performance project managers, we know planning in projects is essential, but have also found the planning discipline to be both underused and misunderstood. Three factors we believe are responsible:

  • Planning is tricky to teach and to learn. Methods and frameworks such as PMI and PRINCE2 discuss processes involved in planning, but neither gives real insights into what a good plan is and what proper planning feels like. The purpose of the planning process is to structure the controllable factors to make the project achievable within the set of success conditions (constraints and critical success factors).
  • Planning is confused with scheduling. We do sometimes wonder if this is deliberate! We note the frequent and common substituting of the one word for the other, and the way sponsors accept Gantt charts when they ask for the project plan. Microsoft Project may or may not be a useful scheduling tool. What it most certainly is not, is a planning tool. What is so saddening is that while every project benefits from having a plan, it is less evident that all need a schedule, and many that have one don’t follow it. 
  • Templates are introduced to standardize and simplify planning. Possibly, in a well-intentioned effort to ease the learning curve for junior project managers and inexperienced sponsors, project management offices provide, promulgate, and sometimes mandate the use of a planning template. While without a doubt there is a single idea behind the need for a project plan, the impact of the differing contexts of projects frustrates the ambition for a single ‘silver bullet’ template. 

There is no single approach to planning

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 approach that is most appropriate to use; which techniques and tools are most suitable; and what factors to consider. 

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.

Adaptive Project Planning

Readers of Virtual Project Consulting who buy the book now, will receive a discount of 15% – use buying code WOR2019. Click on the image!

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How Work Management Tools Increase a Team’s Productivity

You all know how challenging it is to stay productive at work all day long. There is so much time wasted on inefficient work like:

  • Scouring through email looking for documents
  • Accidentally using outdated information, causing necessary rework
  • Waiting for someone to send you the information you need
  • Answering “Can I ask you a quick question?” desk interruptions

There are productivity techniques to help combat some time wasters like multi-tasking. For example, a time-management method called the Pomodoro Technique (first developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s) that works on the principle that you focus on a task for 25 minutes and then take a break for five minutes. This technique forces you to focus on a single task, eradicating the negative effects of attempted multitasking. This focus has an immediate positive impact on your productivity and will enhance your work speed.

However, it’s estimated that 25% of the average worker’s day is wasted on inefficient work. That’s huge. If you work an 8-hour day, that’s 2 hours wasted every day. …10 hours per week. …520 hours per year. Do the math and you’re paying the average worker for 65 days (over three months of work!) of “info gathering” every year. For every employee in your company!

Another way to increase your team’s productivity, is to use work management tools which help teams cut out these inefficiencies, so we can stop spending so much time on “info gathering” and start putting our time into actually getting work done.

Read more on the challenges teams and managers are facing in today’s workforce in the Infographic below, sponsored by Wrike. Try Wrike’s work management tool free for the next two weeks, and challenge your team to get more done every day.

Why Every Team Needs Work Management Tools (#Infographic)
Infographic brought to you by Wrike
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How Current Trends Impact Project Management in 2019

By Jessica Kane

Many articles are publishedat the beginning of every year covering a variety of trends that will impact the business sector. This article will look at it from the perspective of how the trends in 2019 will impact project management.

The Adoption of Agile

One of the most significant trends is the rise of “business agile.” Starting in 2016, a number of business sectors or industries commenced adopting the Agile development framework impacting various business operational, management, and strategic operations, including project management.

Still many individuals are not yet well versed in business agile. Indeed, in some ways, the concepts and practices underpinning business agile are in various states of maturity. With that said, the essential definition of business agile, is an “amalgam of different business & IT methods that work synergistically to create an agile and competitive business model,” according to the Business Technology Management Institute.

The business agile model incorporates a variety of disciplines into its overall functionality. These include, but are not limited to: business technology management, IT portfolio management, business process management, enterprise architecture, information technology, and project management. 

Project management is impacted positively in that Agile help to improve employee communication, allowing the teams to inspect and adapt to changes faster and easier, often with quicker time to market and an earlier value realization for customers.

Increasing Interaction between the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence

During 2017, there was a great deal of discussion about the internet of things as well as artificial intelligence. Admittedly, a good deal of the conversations and presentations on these matters were speculative. However, in 2019 we see an increasing interaction between the internet of things and artificial intelligence, as the two impact or pertain to project management. 

The essential definition of the Internet of Things (IoT)is that it is a network consisting of physical devices of different types that are embedded with software, sensors, electronics, actuators, and network connectivity. These objects are enabled to connect and exchange data. Each thing in the network is uniquely identifiable, but able to inter-operate in a network utilizing existing infrastructure supplied by the internet itself. 

Artificial intelligence (AI)is defined basically as intelligence exhibited by certain machines or software applications. The term is also applied to the field involved in the creation of computers and computer software that are capable of so-called intelligent behavior.

The ongoing convergence between the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, which is expected to reach a new plateau in 2019, will impact project management. Project management is already heavily reliant on technology in many sectors. Thus, imagine AI machine learning focused on PM domains, like ROI models, common risks and estimation omissions. It can be used as a safeguard from making basic technical project management errors or omissions.

The First Wave of Millennial Project Managers will Appear

Millennial project managers

Another trend in 2019 is the first real wave of Millennial project managers appearing on the scene. Although there has been a sprinkling of Millennial project managers at work already, they have been few and far between. 

The primary reason why Millennials really haven’t been heavily involved in project management to this point really has been a function of age. The generational cohort simply hadn’t reached the stage where they had the experience and background necessary to occupy many project management positions. 

By 2019 a larger group of Millennials will have gleaned the experience necessary to take on project management roles. More Millennials will be found in project management positions, particularly in those industries that more heavily rely on technology. 

Although the Millennial generational cohort has a number of distinguishing features, the group is perhaps best identified by its use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies. Their familiarity with and reliance on these technologies is more profound than their generational predecessors, including Gen X and certainly Baby Boomers. 

Refer to this video article: “How to manage different generations at work” to help you understand the Millennials better. It’s wise to acknowledge that Millennials will have an impact on project management in many different ways. The number of Millennials assuming project management positions in 2019 will determine how significant the impact on project management practices will be. Expect some alteration in the manner in which project management is approached because of Millennials reliance and even addition to social media and digital technologies.

About the author:

Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who focuses on personal finance and other money matters. She currently writes for Checkworks.com, where you can get personal checks and business checks

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Is Mindfulness the Key to Healthy Relationships?

mindfulness

The trend of having virtual teams collaborate on projects while working in different physical locations have been growing for the past few years. I remember working on a few such projects in the past 5 years. Distributed teams are always more challenging to work with as a project manager. From coping with different time-zones, to culture and language differences, as well as the ever-present technical tool challenges – like team members having bad internet connections with poor audio quality to calls dropping, background noises etcetera – are the typical scenarios you will have to deal with on a daily basis. Add to that how difficult it is to build healthy relationships with team members who haven’t met in person yet and therefore will take more time to build trust and mutual respect, and you have all the ingredients for a stressful project experience. Unfortunately, this is the situation many project teams find themselves in as part of the ‘global economy’ we live in.

virtual team challenges

Today, enterprises are expanding their reach by taking advantage of telecommuting, with workers plying their trade based out of different offices, countries and even their own homes. Thanks to the Internet, modern professionals are enabled to work from virtually anywhere.

Some advantages of working as part of virtual teams, is the exposure to experts from outsourced companies and team members having more opportunities to engage with professional peers who reside anywhere around the globe.

Still, the effective deployment of virtual project teams, is challenging for enterprise leaders. For instance, a Deloitte study found that 66-percent of virtual workgroups failed to meet clients’ expectations. Further studies revealed that many professionals believe that virtual communication is not as effective as face-to-face meetings. They also expressed feelings of confusion when using new teleconferencing technologies.

virtual workers

Despite these sentiments, one study found that successful virtual teams outperformed employees who completed projects while working out of traditional office settings. Other studies found that virtual teams improve productivity, with some consulting firms experiencing performance gains of up to 43-percent. Although research has shown that virtual project teams can produce improved outcomes compared to teams operating out of traditional offices, the experience can prove just as stressful if not more difficult than working in normal office settings.  

In this type of work environment, there are obstacles to productivity. To begin with, some workers may never meet in person or even live in the same country. Furthermore, it may prove difficult for project leaders to coordinate team members who live in different time zones.

For this reason, project leaders of virtual teams should establish policies that deal with these kinds of issues up front.  Another important aspect is mindfulness, which means that you as the leader take responsibility for your words and actions. The team members are also made mindful and are careful of their words and actions; they don’t let their negative emotions impact the others around them.

A well-planned project will ensure employee mental health and optimal productivity. Moreover, by teaching team members to understand each other’s cultural nuances, team leaders can create inclusive and cohesive work environments where staff members respect each other and, ultimately, are satisfied with their roles.

mindfulness for optimal productivity

To find more resources for mindfulness at work and what employers can do to help,check out this employee mental health guide developed by Maryville University’s online degree program.

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The Guide to 2019 App Development: Best Practices and Tips

By Ashley Lipman

Guide to App Development best practices

There are more than 3.5 billion internet users worldwide which is roughly half the earth’s population. Internet use has been steadily growing over the years but perhaps nothing has expedited global internet penetration as much as the smartphone. Priced much lower, smartphones have smashed the barrier to internet use that was caused by the prohibitive cost of laptops and desktop computers. Little wonder that in 2016, mobile internet users surpassed desktop users for the first time. That number can only be expected to grow not just due to rising penetration in developing countries but also as a result of the growing sophistication of the average smartphone that is gradually transforming into a minicomputer. Even internet users in wealthier countries are spending more time on their smartphones than their computers.

If you are involved with Mobile App Development projects, you will appreciate the rise of the mobile internet and companies’s necessity to have an excellent mobile presence. Hence, this Guide with Best Practices for App Development, is really invaluable for 2019 and beyond.

Here’s a look at some of the most important tips and tricks when building mobile apps in 2019.

1.    Less is More

The move toward simplicity has revolutionized web design over the past few years. As one would expect, this trend is rapidly making its way into the mobile app space. Traditionally, developers would pack in numerous features as well as spectacular interfaces in the hope of leaving a lasting impression on users and standing out from the competition. However, there’s a growing realization that this doesn’t achieve the desired result.

First, when an app has an excessive amount of design elements, the numerous moving parts create multiple areas of potential malfunction. Second, a busy interface can make it difficult for uses to comprehend the app’s logical flow.

To avoid these pitfalls, practice building your apps from the core out. In other words, don’t think about a flashy interface from the get go. Instead, focus on building and perfecting the app’s essential function. Ensure that the processing is seamless, the backend is rock solid (details about this subject on logging would come in handy) and that the results end users expect from inputs fit down to a T.

The bells and whistles are okay to have as long as they do not overshadow or diminish the core purpose of the app.

2.    Minimize End-User Workload

The purpose of an app determines what features are essential and which ones are unnecessary. Unless you are building a banking app or one handling a similarly sensitive process, chances are that you don’t need to incorporate comprehensive controls and security procedures.

A banking app may require session timeouts that force the user to sign in after a period of inactivity. Such controls would however be a needless impediment to the user experience on gaming, messaging and social media apps that are largely used for leisure and to unwind. Keep requested user inputs at the minimum. Don’t ask for information if it isn’t unnecessary.

Make the most of inline validation. That means verifying data validity as the user keys it in. For example, on a new user registration page, the validity of a password should be displayed as the user types it. 

Another practical but often overlooked idea? Autocomplete. When someone downloads your app, they probably already have dozens of apps on their phone that asked them for the same registration information that your app requires. Autocomplete ensures they don’t have to fill in the same data when registering on your app.

3.    Optimize Loading and Processing Speed

App Development best practices

Source: Pixabay.com

If your app loads slowly, you are going to repel many users. Smartphones have experienced giant leaps in processing speed and RAM size just as available internet bandwidth continues its rapid rise worldwide. Nevertheless, this advancement masks the deep variation between devices, platforms and world regions.

Ergo, when developing a mobile app, find ways to create an app that takes this diversity into consideration. As much as possible, your app should load in in under 5 seconds in the majority of environments. In addition, communicate what’s happening to take care of instances where weak connectivity or poor device specs may make faster loading impossible.

For example, show loading progress by percentage that increases at it approaches completion. You could also make it clear that the sluggish speed is due to the user’s poor connection. These measures are vital because if the user opens an app and all they see is a blank screen, they’ll assume it’s frozen and could choose to uninstall it immediately.

If you are unlucky, they’ll even leave a bad rating in the app store. This creates a vicious cycle by steadily diminishing the incentive for new users to download the app in future.

4.    Test, Test and Test Again

App Development best practices

Source: Pixabay.com

Whether you opt for the Waterfall method or choose to go with the Agile approach, testing is an integral part of any software development technique. Yet, a remarkable number of mobile app developers either fail to test their apps or do not give testing the depth of commitment it requires.

Some coders have fallen into the bad habit of making their end users the first beta testers. While this can be an effective way of capturing glitches that escaped developers, it’s possible for one to overly rely on it to identify even the most mundane of app problems. Shoving an untested app into users’ hands can give it a terrible reputation even before it is available to the market in its final form.

Instead, create a robust testing process (automated where possible) that ensures the overwhelming majority of errors are identified well before the app is first made available to some or all end users. Test app functionality, usability, compatibility, versatility, security and everything else that will have an impact on its performance.

And do not stop testing after the app goes live. Networks, devices, platforms and user behavior are always changing so you have to ascertain that your app is still fully functional despite these changes.While the opportunities in the mobile app market are vast, the competition is also incredibly intense. If you are going to stand out from the hundreds of apps that serve a similar purpose to yours, you have to make an effort at making an unforgettable first impression. Design an app that resonates with users and delivers on what it promises. The defining trait of nearly all successful mobile apps is their ability to blend function and aesthetics.

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Are you on a Time-Critical Project?

By Louise Worsley

Time-critical project

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.

Strategy 1

Identify elapsed time delays, those activities which are not compressible using existing processes.

Strategy 2

Identify delays which may be introduced because of decision-making processes.

Strategy 3

Fast-track the schedule—look for ways of breaking dependencies between activities. Remember, parallel tasks increase resources and risks, so increase monitoring.

Strategy 4

Identify resource skills gaps up front

Strategy 5

Communicate and re-communicate the purpose, objective, CSFs, and value of the project throughout the project’s lifecycle

Strategy 6

Identify foreseeable problems (risks)

Strategy 7

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!

Adaptive Project Planning
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13 Ways to Build a Happy and More Productive Workforce

Wellness and how to build an happy and more productive workforce

In today’s demanding world, we need to consider wellness in order to be productive and to stay present, focused and positive in the chaos we’re often confronted with.

We want to strive for well-being so that we can know ourselves better, have more fulfilling relationships, personally and professionally, and reduce stress.

Wellness will lead to happiness and studies like the Harvard Business Review have reported that happy workers are 31% more productive and three times more creative than the rest of the workforce.

Find below 13 ideas to build a happy and consequently, a more productive workforce, with compliments from Wrike.

13 Ways to Build a Happy & More Productive Workforce - by Wrike project management software
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Purposeful Planning

By Louise Worsley

If you are going on a journey, it’s a good idea to know where you are going and how to recognize when you’ve got there. Might sound obvious, but many projects fail even that simple test. You really do need to know: 

  1. Purpose of the project: the problem or opportunity it is addressing
  2. Value of the project: why is it worth doing—and to whom?
  3. Objective: what “good looks like”—how to know the project has completed successfully
  4. Scope: what the project is expected to deliver in terms of physical things
  5. Critical success factors (CSFs): what has to be in place for success
  6. Risks: what are the main threats to the success of the project

These are six distinct and different aspects of the project, and failure is much more likely if one or more of them is not known, or, which is more common, they are conflated and confused with each other. The usual culprit is a statement that purports to be an objective, but which is, in fact, a hotchpotch of scope statements, activities, benefits and other outcomes. 

The Six Faces of a Project Plan

Six faces of a project plan

The six aspects of the project plan are like six faces on a beachball.  If you are close into the beachball then you are only going to see three of the faces. In this beachball we see the faces that the sponsor or client is likely to (or at least ought to!) focus on.

And here is our technical specialist or planners view of the beachball.  The tendency to over-focus on some aspects of the plan is an example of the ‘magpie effect’, in which our attention is drawn to those things that matter most to us, often to the exclusion of other views of the world.

Six faces of a project plan

One of the critical roles of project managers is to ensures that each aspect – each face of the beachball gets the attention it requires.  That means ensuring that each of the stakeholders in the project get the space and time to engage in the planning process.

Effective Project Initiation Workshops

One of the biggest decisions that a project manager takes is who to have in the room and be involved in the early stages of initiation.

To get at the problem-objective-value side of the beachball, the first one or two project initiation workshops (PIWs) are for the key stakeholders. They need to engage. The project manager should attend, of course, and possibly other project team members, but they are observers, not contributors.Now is not their time.  Too often we see projects falter as technical specialists drive these early workshops into discussions about solutions – what we can and can’t do – rather than what is wanted and valued.

It is quite likely you will find that despite the best efforts of a facilitator, client stakeholders will drift off into discussing solutions, their preferences, and even how to run the project! All of which is fine and should be recorded, however, the focus of these workshops is the outcomes; a domain wholly owned by the stakeholders. Its purpose is to determine what the project has to achieve. It’s not that other comments and observations will be ignored; necessarily. Such comments by stakeholders maybe fundamental success criteria for the emerging project. So, all ideas should be captured in the appropriate place around the beachball. These will be for discussion and review later.

The process of establishing answers to the three questions posed: ‘Why do it?’, ‘Why is it valuable, and to whom?’, and ‘What does success look like?’ may take several iterations before everybody is happy with the wording. We remember, with some delight, going through this process for a project in Ireland–it was the changeover to the Euro currency in a large bank. After a particularly tense workshop the sponsor, a senior manager in the bank commented, “To be sure, this clarity is a terrible thing.” We like to think he meant it in a good way!

Maintaining the plan-to-execution link

link between plan and execution

Now we have an agreement on the six faces of the project plan. What the world is to be like at the end of the project is understood, and why it is important to succeed, as well as what it is worth and to whom. In most cases, the basis for the solution is also agreed. All there is left to do, is to ensure that the money and effort expended, is structured, sequenced, and demonstrably connected back to the desired outcomes.   

The next stage is to work out how to provide the outputs, what tasks to perform, by whom, and in what order.  Now the project managers will be very much focused on another group of stakeholders – those involved in the delivery of the solution.  But how to make sure that these agendas, this effort remains connected to achieving the stakeholder-required outcomes.

Connecting the ideas and actions, translating the vision of the stakeholders to the mundane actions of a project is the fundamental purpose of project management. And it is a common source of project failure. To address this, CITI, a UK based Consulting Service, developed the CITI Mission Model™. It is used to capture the six perspectives – the six sides of the beachball, and then links them through a ‘bridge’ to the tasks, resources and schedule of an executing project. Maintaining the bridge is the real role of all the project governance structures.

About the author:

Louise Worsley

Louise Worsley, with her husband, Christopher Worsley, are the authors of “The Lost Art of Planning Projects”, published in February 2019. Planning to good purpose – planning how to manage successful projects in terms of delivering to the stakeholders’ expectations, is the subject of the book. Based on case studies, it analyses how best to plan under different situations, when and how to plan a project, when you have to use programme planning, and what the role of a portfolio manager really is.  

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The Lost Art of Planning Projects