This week in pm-clinic: turning the tide

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I have just joined as a Project Manager at a software house employing 130 people, 90 of which are involved in software. The engineers are talented but number of PMs is low and failed projects is high. CEO is technical, but sees PM is a discipline he has neglected for too long. Hence the board have hired myself and one other PM to help.

Many engineers are anti-management and believe they don’t need managing, but after 3 weeks I see major problems of out of control work, lost budgets and late schedules. Some engineers fear I’ve been hired to cut headcount and are anxious (though I anticipate that the opposite may be true).

My preliminary moves to add structure to projects has met great resistance: some engineers refused to attend a weekly team meeting.

How can I bring order to the chaos without resorting to the stick method? How can I get engineers to buy in to the Project Management ethos? I already feel I’ve alienated some by my job title, and I don’t want to do more damage.

One Response to “This week in pm-clinic: turning the tide”

  1. LL

    Implementing a more structured project environment is a project so look to your project management skills and processes – don’t look at things in an operational context.

    You need a scope document (what you’re doing and what, of course, you’re not doing) so that you (and when you talk to the others, they) are focused on the deliverables. From your description, it seems that you are in a nebulous situation: what are you actually supposed to be delivering and when will you know it has been successfully delivered.

    And you need a kick-off meeting. Executive sponsor needs to call and lead it telling all the engineers what is expected and what they will be measured against (because if you don’t measure it then it won’t be done).

    I’m concerned about a red flag: the other PM. Although you say that the other PM was hired to help, it’s somewhat ambiguous: to help you or to help implement the change. I would have expected more comment (heck, *any* comment) about the other PMs contributions, understanding, feedback … anything! Instead, nothing. If the other PM isn’t ‘on side’ or isn’t contributing, it suggests that he/she hasn’t been sold on your approach.

    It doesn’t appear that you actually have an executive sponsor. It seems from your description that you are reading into your work an interpretation that hasn’t been articulated by management. Is this your approach to the issue or are you implementing an executive’s decision? If the former then you need to make certain your objective is aligned with the organization; if the latter then you are in a stronger position.

    The lack of executive support and preliminary analysis to substantiate your position (the best you can come up with is “though I anticipate the opposite may be true”) suggests that your project is one in the category of “scheduled for failure”.

    The toughest type of project is process change. There’s a lot of groundwork to lay before you can begin implementation. At that point you have to (Behavioral Psych 101) unlock the current environment, transition to the new and then lock the new environment.

    My recommendation? I think you may need to rewind, reinitiate the project, perform a more analytic assessment of the current situation, reposition the change (you aren’t adding structure; you’re recognizing the things that have been done right so that all future projects can benefit from the lessons learned) and you need to demonstrate management support and buy in.

    I’d drop your weekly meeting and recast it as a Senior Management meeting where a senior manager is present — preferably chairing — at every bi-weekly (not weekly) meeting. (Once the culture has “bought in” to that, then you can drop the senior exec. That will be at least six months from now.)

    The bi-weekly needs a highly structured format and agenda. I’d suggest a standard scorecard to be submitted the day before. The “discipline” point isn’t the numbers in the project (especially, the numbers in the project compared with other projects) — it’s the submission of the form. So the first item on the agenda: who didn’t submit and why. The balance of the meeting is (1) a single project presentation and (2) a roundtable for everybody else.

    The meeting itself should be 45 minutes long. An hour means people talk too much about too little to fill in the time. Thirty minutes isn’t going to be enough every two weeks. I’d hold it Tuesday. Monday is for filling in the scorecard representing the effort from the previous week.

    As the PMO “leader”, you’ll be taking minutes — minutes are where the power is. If it isn’t in the minutes, it didn’t happen. If it’s in the minutes, it’s important — one more opportunity to highlight the list of PMs who didn’t complete the scorecard.

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