Paths to Career Self-Sabotage

If you want to have a long and successful career, here are the mistakes to avoid.

1. Failing to have a personal action plan– Like companies, the very successful career managers know where they’re headed. They have a clear plan, whether it’s memorized or actually written down; after they create it, they continually massage it, and refer to it often. That said, I am constantly amazed that many managers who would never think of trying to run their department or organization without an annual plan and regular reviews somehow think they can do a great job of running their life without one.When I am brought in to an organization to work with someone who is on the brink of being let go; I always start by asking him or her what they want out of their professional life. Invariably, these folks don’t know.

And of course, if you don’t know where you’re going, how can you expect to get there?

Ask any really successful individual if they have a plan for their career, their personal life and or their financial status and you’ll find that over 85% of them have a plan. They may not have it written down; but they can tell you what they intend to do.

2. Failing to deliver results – Winners in business know that it’s all about accountability.

Those who harbor a sense of entitlement for simply having put forth effort, irrespective of the results of those efforts, are guaranteed to fall by the wayside.

In many companies, it seems like promotions and raises are often granted based more on who one knows, or one’s appearance and not being a competent manager. Many companies appear to make promotion decisions about based on seniority without much weight on results. In such environments it’s easy to become complacent; believing that results don’t matter, or worse that you are bulletproof.

Surprise! In today’s job market, no one is bulletproof forever. And nobody survives forever without delivering the goods at least some of the time. Take a hard look at what you’re giving the company with your efforts – can your performance being quantifiably shown as making a difference? If all you can report are soft and squishy contributions that don’t make an impact of the company’s key objectives or financial targets – you’re at risk.

Also, don’t be one of those losers who inappropriately take full credit for positive results despite the help or input received by others. Winners give credit where credit is due. Losers inevitably reap what they sow.

3. Failing to self promote – Bragging is one thing, but ensuring that others throughout your company are aware of what you’re contributing is simply a smart practice. Losers often fail to recognize the importance of letting others know about their successes, or go about it in entirely the wrong way.

Relying on others to look after you is a quaint idea at best. In today’s world, decisions affecting one’s career are made very quickly. I know execs in startups who thought that they’d just joined a new company that was going to make them wealthy with a long-term career, but then saw the company bought out by a competitor. I’ve also known people who had enjoyed a good career but their employer couldn’t succeed due to industry evolvement. They found themselves talking to a new supervisor about why they should be kept in the new entity. A bad place to be.

Make certain that people in your company and elsewhere in your industry know of your success through whatever means available. Don’t put your future in the hands of others who are going to be preoccupied with their own long-term success.

Create a Statement of Work (SOW)

A solid SOW is essential to the success of a consulting engagement. Too much ambiguity in the SOW, and the client might feel their business is not getting what they paid for, or even that they’re being scammed. Too much minutia in the SOW, and your hands can be tied in adapting to what you learn about the project as you move forward — a SOW is not a functional spec. And worst of all (at least from a consultant’s point of view), if you don’t clearly set expectations in the SOW, you can end up bleeding time and money in countless reviews, revisions, and changes of your documentation and deliverables.SOWs are a two-way street, and what’s good for the client is almost always going to be good for you.

• Don’t use words with multiple interpretations. This may seem like something of a no-brainer, but contracts and their supporting documents are the realm of the fine-tooth comb. Do not use “the project” when what you really mean is “the second round of business requirements interviews.” Be laborious in spelling out every activity and deliverable. And while we are dealing with semantics, also take careful note of the advice to use “shall” when describing the vendor’s (that means you) activities, and never let phrases like “either” or “and/or” into your SOW. Spell out exactly what you are going to do.
• Add negative scope, specifically stating work that will not be done under the SOW. If the section is complicated enough to merit a meticulous breakout of tasks, it also merits a SOW of what not to be done. You can’t be too combative with a client, but a simple rider to keep expectations under control will work for both parties.
• Clearly define the acceptance and rebuttal loop. This is absolutely essential if you plan to get out of the project with a decent effective hourly rate and a solid relationship with your client intact. Clients (particularly VPs) never pay close enough attention to the details during the project, and always want to push you for added reviews and “tweaks” — some of which can be major revisions on your end. Spell out how many review cycles and changes you are committing to in the SOW; be prepared to go an additional 15% or so just to keep the peace; and then be ready to start filing change orders. In the culture of SOW-defined projects, it’s going to happen, so set expectations up front.

The client always has the upper hand — they write the checks — and so it’s in your best interest to err on the side of clarity.

CIOs worried by the cloud, as IT departments left out in the cold

Cloud computing is being used to outflank the IT department, creating tension between CIOs and the rest of the business.

CIOs are worried: cloud computing is being used as a way for businesses to dodge the IT department and get services delivered more quickly. But as well as giving the CIO sleepless nights, this attempt to side-step the IT department is causing additional cost and complexity along the way.

I recently wrote about how cloud computing deployments are kicking off without the CIO’s knowledge, and only coming to light when sys admins put their expenses through. Inside a large organisation this can mean uncontrolled spending on cloud computing that rapidly reaches tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And according to research by Forrester Consulting, two thirds of CIOs now believe their business sees cloud computing as a way to circumvent IT.

“The simultaneous pull of cost reduction and simplification in one direction and better, cheaper, faster in the other is putting a strain on IT’s ability to meet expectations. CIOs are concerned that cloud provides their business a way around IT, which undermines the strategic partnership they are trying to build with business leaders,” said the report ‘Delivering On High Cloud Expectations’.

According to the report, one in three CIOs strongly agreed with the statement, ‘business executives perceive cloud as a means to be less dependent on IT,’ while only one in five non-CIO respondents felt the same way.

“This contrast indicates CIOs are more concerned than their teams that public cloud challenges, and maybe even undermines, their organisation. We agree with their concern; unbridled public cloud acquisition by shadow IT circumvents carefully planned strategies to reduce complexity, control costs, and provide reliable services.”

The survey also found that ’shadow IT’ acquisition of cloud services is adding to confusion: 48 per cent of firms surveyed officially support deploying mission-critical applications to managed public cloud services, even though these services were being deployed by 80 per cent of organisations. “The 32 per cent difference suggests that many firms circumvent IT to get the services they want, confirming CIO worries.”

Four out of five respondents said setting a cloud strategy is a high priority, but IT organsations are struggling with complexity: four out of ten respondents said they had five or more virtual server pools, and three or more hypervisor technologies, making reducing cost and complexity a priority. The survey, sponsored by BMC Software, polled 327 enterprise infrastructure executives and architects across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Effective Supplier Selection

As a project manager, you likely will be faced at some point in your career with selecting suppliers as part of the Project Procurement Management Process. It is not unusual for procurement to represent over half of the project cost, and often the high risk work.

Your goal in a successful procurement process is to find the best solution for the money spent as well as efficient operational costs thereafter.

Project Procurement Management includes the processes of purchasing or acquiring products, services or results needed from outside the project team.

Here are some tips and best practices to consider when selecting suppliers both before and after you issue the request for proposals (RFP).

Be Clear About What You Want Common sense dictates that you be as prepared as you can be before you issue an RFP for products or services. This includes—but is not limited to—knowing exactly what you need, when you need it by and what funds you have to pay for it.

In his bestselling book Project Procurement Management: Contracting, Subcontracting, Teaming, author Quentin W. Fleming, a project management consultant who has been involved with the development of the PMBOK^® Guide since 2000 and was the chapter lead on chapters 7 and 12 in the PMBOK^® Guide—Fourth Edition, discusses procurement plans and source selection in detail.

The book advises you to determine the best approach to fulfilling your needs. You should define in legally enforceable terms exactly what you expect from the supplier. This may include a business definition based on your past experiences and a technical definition based on the features and functions that the product will perform or the service will meet.

The more details you are able to provide to possible suppliers, the better able they are to match your needs. You also should have your selection criteria in place to help you compare your options.

Match the Supplier’s Experience with Your Needs Project Procurement Management has as much to do with actual human relations as with dollars. Once you receive proposals, it’s time to find the supplier who not only addresses your needs but also who would work best with your company.

Of course, you should perform complete price and cost analyses to determine the best solution for your budget. But you should also consider your potential supplier’s past record: look beyond if they’ve provided similar solutions and focus more on how they provided services and solutions.

“Traditionally, buyers focused on how vendors said they were going to fulfill a need, but now, we’re seeing a shift with more focus on past performance,” said Dan Deakin, PMP, a project manager with more than 18 years of experience in government, contracting and consulting, as well as a core committee member in the development of the forthcoming PMBOK^® Guide—Fifth Edition.

“By looking more closely at a supplier’s past experiences and calling their references, you get a better sense of how they performed,” Mr. Deakin said. “Did they bring insight? Did they work through the core issues? You’re also able to pair meaningful experiences with your needs.”

“You have to make sure you will be comfortable with the leadership on the supplier’s team or within the company,” he continued. “This way, if anything goes wrong, you can trust in the supplier’s leadership to handle mishaps appropriately.”

The next time you must find an external supplier for a product or service, focus your attention and energy on how they performed in the past. That can make a big difference in the success of your project as well as the quality of the product or service.

The Complete Project Manager

Are you seeking the missing ingredients to move from good to great, to bridge the gap between strategy and execution? Are you looking for the next generation of skills, mindsets and processes to transform your performance as a project manager?

When you integrate knowledge and skills, you’ll see a positive impact on your desired project outcomes. The complete project manager integrates key people, team, business, technical and organizational skills to achieve optimized results.

You can use these skills to take your performance to the next level.

Leadership and Management Skills There is one thread that runs through all the key factors that determine success and failure: PEOPLE.

People do matter. Projects typically do not fail or succeed because of technical factors; they fail or succeed depending on how well people work together. When you lose sight of the importance of people issues, such as clarity of purpose, effective and efficient communications, and management support, then you are destined to struggle.

The challenge is to create environments in which people can do their best work.

The complete project manager needs to be both a leader and manager—covering both what to do (vision) and how to do it (execution). This requires placing a priority on understanding and listening to people. Lead by example. Demonstrate a positive attitude. Cultivate relationships up, across and down the organization.

Identify leadership qualities that have made a difference in your life—people who have influenced you. Study what they did. Be the “teachable” student who continuously learns and applies a flexible approach to leadership.

Project Management Skills Complete project managers are professionals always ready to learn and always moving one step beyond. They are people who overcome a fear of making mistakes, are able to recognize better ways to get the job done, and can learn from their successes and failures as well as from others.

Competence is a key to credibility, and credibility is the key to influencing others. Most team members will follow competent project managers.

A common shortcoming is to focus on a deliverable you are providing (an output), but not articulate the benefit (the outcome, or value in business terms). Outputs have little intrinsic value unless they are linked to outcomes.

For example, a complete project manager might state, “By initiating a project office to coordinate our portfolio of projects [output], we select the right projects to meet our strategic goals and provide the key set of services required by our customers [outcome].” These statements have a strong project management process behind them.

Organizational Skills An imperative facing complete project managers in all organizations is to execute projects within “green” organizations that encourage project-based work. In this context, “green” means the need to eliminate pollutants and “toxic” actions that demotivate people and teams. This environment allows people to work as natural, organic living systems.

Examples of a “green” organizational environment include:

• Trust among colleagues and management
• Cooperation instead of competition
• A common sense of purpose provides sustenance and meaning to all activities
• A shared vision brings clarity to the direction of work
• People fully communicate with each other regularly
• Individuals are respected, able to express their creativity and have power to influence others through positive persuasive techniques

There are a number of other skills (such as negotiating skills, political skills, sales skills and change management skills) that a complete project manager brings to the table. Achieving completeness is an unending—and thoroughly satisfying—journey. The rest of the story is in your hands…

SaaS won’t work for all software

The buzz over software-as-a-service (SaaS) in the enterprise software space may be getting higher, but analysts say the hype surrounding it needs to be checked as this delivery model is not a universal fit for each and every kind of software category.

While SaaS was beneficial in enabling new ways for IT shops to solve problems, Matt Healey, program director of software and services at IDC Asia-Pacific, said stressed that there was a lot of hype around it which companies should “take with a pinch of salt”.

“People read about SaaS, that it is perfect and the greatest thing out there, so it must be applicable to every single software market. It’s not [and] I am skeptical of any solution [which claims to be] one-size-fits-all,” he said.

While SaaS was a “great invention and delivery model”, Healey noted that only certain software types were a “natural fit” for SaaS such as customer relationship management (CRM).

Companies should take the hype over SaaS “with a pinch of salt.”

— Matt Healey Program Director, Software and Services IDC Asia-Pacific

“CRM is perfect for SaaS [because] it is mainly used by salespeople who tend to be mobile and companies hire and fire salespeople often, so it needs a solution that is mobile-friendly and can be easily scaled up or down and add new users.”

Human capital management (HCM) is similarly attractive for SaaS for the same reasons of easy and fast scalability, he added.

In contrast, software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM), are not a good fit with SaaS, because its end-users were not necessarily mobile and the level of scalability was not as fast, Healey explained.

Somak Roy, lead analyst for enterprise solutions at Ovum, similarly noted that in Asia and worldwide, CRM, HCM, and collaboration are the few software “blockbuster success stories” that see high SaaS demand.

Both analysts’ comments come in light of an announcement from SaaS vendor Salesforce which last month reported record billings for its CRM products, and acquisitions of cloud-based HCM vendors by IT giants including SAP and Oracle in recent months.

Weighing cost and other considerations But rather than dismiss other categories as simply unsuitable, Roy emphasized it had more to do with the fact that the benefits brought by SaaS were not as advantageous or compelling when considering the functionality and total cost of ownership (TCO) for these kinds of software.

For instance, business process management (BPM) software has “absolutely nothing to do with” where an application is delivered from, and everything to do with organizational complexity. In terms of total ownership costs, the software acquisition, integration, customization, process reengineering, and training are high, whereas the hardware and software infrastructure are low.

Hence under these circumstances, the cost advantages of SaaS “cease to be a big deal”, Roy explained.

He pointed out that the competitive pricing of SaaS remains a main driver for adoption, so unless a SaaS vendor can offer a cost advantage regarding a particular software type, that market will not see it become on-par with non-SaaS offerings. “That is why SaaS is a peripheral low in so many markets such as BPM, supply chain management (SCM) and business intelligence (BI),” he said.

Analysts nonetheless acknowledged that while SaaS was not applicable across all software categories, the market for SaaS was indubitably expanding.

Healey, for one, noted SaaS will only continue to get more developed alongside cloud maturity, which opens up opportunities for business continuity and disaster recovery. For instance, SaaS would be useful for companies to quickly return to operations and recover their data after losing their data centers in a natural disaster, he said.

In addition, as emerging markets such as those in Asia-Pacific mature and broadband penetration grows, companies will start having more advanced needs and seek different ways of consuming IT to meet these needs, which might lead to SaaS adoption, he said.

Right SaaS approach Healey pointed out that “organizations think that SaaS will solve all of their IT problems are wrong”.

“The better approach is to go into SaaS with your eyes open–that it can help some of my problems, but not applicable for every single thing that I do,” said the analyst.

Healey suggested that three pointers for companies to consider when determining if a SaaS offering is appropriate.

Firstly, companies should look at the distribution of the targeted end-user base. The analyst pointed out that it is the case for many organizations that users are desk-bound with little overseas travel, and a traditional on-premise hosted IT function is “entirely reasonable”.

Secondly, companies should also think about how quickly their software solution needs to be scaled.

Thirdly, how important the security of the data is. For instance, organizations with highly confidential and sensitive data will find SaaS less of an attraction, he noted.

Ownership

As IT professionals we’re essential to keeping things running smoothly, ensuring uptime, making sure critical data is backed up, and all the zillion things we’re expected to do. But we often stay stuck in that  mind-set: the mind-set of an employee who supports the organization. The key to a bigger bonus is to stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like a business owner. Once you do that, you can start looking for opportunities to generate revenue and/or cut costs. As tech geeks, we’re in the know about new tools and technologies that can help businesses.

Understand your company’s business model

The first step is to understand your company’s business model. To really succeed, you need to understand more than “we sell stuff online and people pay us for it.” That might be how you capture revenue, but it’s not your business model. A business model is more comprehensive. It includes aspects like:

• What problem is your company solving?
• What customer segments are you targeting?
• What channels do you use to reach customers?
• What solutions do you offer for the customer’s problem(s)?
• What’s your unique value proposition?
• What costs are required to generate revenue?
• How do you capture revenue?

We’re just scratching the surface on the kinds of things you need to start thinking about. Keep in mind that no matter what your company’s product — whether it’s a physical or digital product or a service — the product is NOT the business. The goal of the business is to execute the business model. So whether it’s widgets, wakeboards, or weasel grooming, your business needs to execute and optimize its business model.

Armed with that knowledge, look for ways to amp up the business model

Now that you have a solid understanding of your company’s business model, you can look for inefficiencies, gaps, or new ways to create revenue or cut costs. Think about:

• What current activities generate revenue?
• What are the most costly aspects of the business?
• How can you optimize current revenue?
• How can you capture and/or generate new revenue?

Create quick, cheap tests to demonstrate your value

Depending on the size and structure of your company, you may need to partner with your marketing/sales department on some of these ideas. The goal here is to test and measure things using small, inexpensive experiments to find out what’s most effective. You can create these  kinds of experiments but now that you’re thinking like a business owner, you’ll  want to focus on things like increasing traffic or leads, or optimizing conversions (i.e., sales). Depending on the scope of your experiments, they can either stand on their own or act as a springboard for bigger initiatives. Either way, you’ve shown how using IT tools and technology can add to the bottom line.

By thinking like a business owner, increasing revenue, or wisely cutting costs through things like automation, you’ll have surefire ways to achieve sustainable career success

Estimating Techniques

Include Project Meetings and Collaboration Time in Your Estimate

Departmental and company meetings are not typically within your control and are not accounted for in the project schedule. On the other hand, meetings that are project-related should definitely be included in the schedule and should be added to the estimated effort and cost of the project. This is because meetings of this type are within the control of the project team. The project manager can schedule these for one hour every other week or they could be scheduled every day.

Likewise, try to account for the total time required for all participants in any collaborative project-related meetings. For instance, if you are planning deliverable walkthroughs, make sure you include the time of all participants. When you are circulating documents for approval, include some review time for each person that you think will be involved. If you are planning on having review meetings at the end of each milestone, make sure to include time for each participant. 

Start Off With an Estimate Range

There are many times when you are asked to give a high-level estimate for a project or an individual work activity. Usually you are asked to produce one number, for instance 1000 hours. However, if at all possible, these high-level estimates should be given in a range. The range reflects the level of uncertainty for the estimate. For instance, a high-level estimate might only be accurate to within 50%. In the prior example of 1000 hours, for instance, you could estimate the work to be between 500 and 1500 hours. Another way to say the same thing is that you estimate the work at 1000 hours, plus or minus 50%.  If there is a lot of uncertainty on the estimate, your margin of error could be plus or minus 100% or more. However, the purpose of providing the range is to help manage expectations. If you say that you estimate a piece of work to be 1000 hours – that is probably the number you will be held to. Given the information you know, this could be a hard number to achieve. If you provide an estimate range, however, you will have a much better likelihood of delivering the work within the estimate and you have a way to show the level of uncertainty in the numbers.

Use Monte Carlo Modeling for Determining Scheduling Risks

For larger projects there are more powerful techniques available for recognizing estimating risk. The most common is the Monte Carlo model. Monte Carlo modeling starts off a little like the PERT estimating technique. Rather than give one estimate for the duration of an activity, you provide a series of estimates that represent the best case, most likely case and the worst case. For each of these cases, you also assign a probability.

For instance, there may be a 10% change of hitting your best case estimate, an 80% chance of hitting your most likely estimate, and a 10% chance of the work extending to hit the worst case scenario. In other words there is a 90% cumulative chance the activity will be completed by the most likely scenario (10% + 80%) and a 100% cumulative chance that the work will be done by the worst case estimate (10% + 80% + 10%). You don’t need to determine the percent likelihood for points in between – just those three points.

You then have to prepare these three estimates for each of the major work activities in your schedule. For example, you may estimate an activity to most likely take 60 hours, with a best case of 50 hours and a worst case of 90 hours. These three estimates would need to be prepared for dozens (or hundreds) of activities in the schedule.

When you are done, most schedule tools have a function to perform a Monte Carlo Simulation. Basically, the simulation models how the project will progress, and reaches an estimated end-date. The schedule is then mapped out again, this time using differing probabilities, and therefore calculating a different end-date. The reason the model is run many times is for the risk percentages have a chance to play out. For instance, in the example above, if the simulation was run 100 times, you would expect that each individual activity would be assigned the best case estimate 10 times (10%), the worst case estimate 10 times (10%) and the expected case estimate 80 times (80%). As the modeling tool randomly picks estimated values based on probabilities, many different project schedule scenarios play out. Some show the project completing earlier since many best case estimates are randomly chosen. Some schedules show the project completing later since many worst case are randomly chosen. However, after running the project model 100 times, a basic pattern starts to emerge that allows you to estimate the most likely date that your project will end. This is usually done by looking for the deadline date where the Monte Carlo Simulation shows the project will end 80% of the time. In other words the simulation shows the project ending on this date or earlier 80% of the time.

Although the example above used schedule risk, you can also use this technique for providing estimates for cost and effort as well. The good thing about the Monte Carlo Simulation is that if you provide activity estimates in ranges, most tools will perform all the statistical calculations automatically. You just have to make sure that you have provided valid and reasonable estimates for the activities. You can see that the extra work required in the estimating process makes this a model to be used for projects that are very large or those that contain a lot of risk. Small and medium-sized projects would probably not find value in this technique. 

Tips To Keep Your PMO Vibrant, Healthy and Valuable

Project Management Offices (PMOs) seem to have proved their worth.

1. Continue to Evolve

Consider reevaluating the PMO’s charter and reflecting on some new goals. “This is a good time to build on successes and address challenges,” said Craig Letavec, MSP, IMPA-B, PMP, PgMP, the vice chair of the PMI Program Management Office Community of Practice.

Mr. Letavec advises you to be selective in your evolution. “Align your team around three to four key focus areas. Become proficient in these areas, and as the business changes and as project needs change, you can use your PMO charter as the guidepost,” he said.

2. Reconsider Your Reporting Structure

Research conducted by Forrester Research and PMI found that PMOs reporting to the vice president of business, the CFO or the CEO are seen as bringing more value to the organization. PMOs reporting to the vice president of IT or to the CIO have more challenges in proving their value, the report said.

When the leadership team doesn’t understand the value, it won’t provide the necessary budget, support and talent the PMO needs to succeed, Michael Cooch, global director of project and portfolio management at consulting firm PwC, in London, England told PM Network^®.

You may not have the power to realign your reporting structure, but you can certainly make the case for doing so in a way that sheds more awareness on the value your PMO brings.

3. Align with Organizational Strategy

The Forrester Research found that PMOs focused on tactical operations are turning to aligning projects with business objectives. It showed that 51 percent of PMOs in the IT/IS industry measure project alignment to business objectives as a key measurement of success.

Aligning with current organizational strategy is also helpful in the event of new ownership or leadership. “Use this as a time to implement simplifications and to align to the new direction,” said Cinzia Gussoni, ITIL, COBIT, PRINCE2, PMP, a global portfolio manager based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Tie the new strategic priorities to the existing PMO and proactively prepare a roadmap to suggest possible changes, she said.

4. Measure Appropriately

PMO officers should generally think about four to eight measurements that define whether or not they are delivering value. These should not be confused with process-oriented key performance indicators, but rather clearly indicate if the PMO is doing its job, said Mr. Letavec.

Aligning measurements with organizational strategy can help PMOs stay on pace with the changing face of business as well as with what executives value the most.

5. Invest in Training

PMO staff members need training not only in current project management practices but also in current PMO practices.

There are countless books, seminars and online offerings, as well as some relevant PMO-oriented events, said Mr. Letavec. He is co-chair of the annual PMO Symposium.

Assessment, change, measurements, positioning and training are all things that can help your PMO continue to bring value and things that can help highlight your PMO’s value. It’s up to you to help it adapt and remain a vibrant business asset.

Agile-Minded

Today’s project manager faces many challenges. Demands and pressures have increased due to competitive environments, complex solutions and changing technology—further complicated by economic conditions.

To deal with these challenges, a project manager needs to rethink traditional approaches and consider a more flexible one. Effective project management not only requires a mastery of traditional techniques but also the knowledge, wisdom, and ability to bend, throw out or rewrite the rules when the situation requires it.

Being more flexible in your mindset helps you adhere to the philosophies behind the agile approach to project management. Gartner predicts that this approach will be used on 80 percent of all software development projects by the end of the year.

“A key benefit from using an agile-minded approach is that communication is greatly enhanced with my clients at all levels,” said Eddie Merla, PMI-ACP, PMP, principal, Duende Project Management Services. “I constantly find myself encouraging my clients to find their voices, thereby enhancing problem-solving skills and innovation to deliver value sooner.”

Are you flexible enough to adapt to significant demands, changing business environments and external pressures?

Rigid vs. Agile The chart highlights some key differences:

Objective	More Rigid Mindset	More Agile Mindset
Plan the work of the project	Leads the project team to develop a detailed plan upfront; this plan becomes a contract of work for the project team	Facilitates processes to “plan to deliver features” in short iterations with pre-defined timeframes—no contract of work is required
Execute the work of the project	Leads the team to deliver the work of the planning contract	Facilitates processes to allow work to be performed in short client-driven iterations
Schedule the project	Leads the team to create well-defined activity-based schedules	Facilitates processes to allow iterations of fixed durations that always end when “time is up”
Manage change	Protects the scope of the project using change management processes	Facilitates the environment to allow the  team to self-manage change (formal project change management does not exist)
Manage the customer	Manages the customer through the contract of the project; customer is usually removed from the day to day work of the project	Creates environment to allow customer to be part of the team, not outside of the team

Agile project management techniques question and challenge the traditional project management status quo. These include utilizing user stories instead of requirements; fixed-sprint durations rather than fixed scope; low-tech communications such as whiteboards and notes stuck to the wall, rather than formal communications documents; and stand-up meetings instead of traditional project status meetings.

“The agile-minded approach encourages healthy discussion among team members where none existed before,” said Mr. Merla. “One financial clerk on a recent project confided that for the first time in 10 years, she felt that her opinions and ideas were valued.”

“My clients often report that the stand-up meeting provides incredible value by focusing on just enough information to make forward progress,” Mr. Merla continued. “Using an agile-minded approach as a consultant provides mutual benefit by delivering value in smaller increments sooner. The client sees results sooner and my worth as a consultant increases.”

What habits can be embraced by the flexible project manager?

1. Question everything—To become effective and more agile as a project manager, learn to ask simple but powerful questions. Challenge the status quo.
2. Relate to innovate—Expand your vision, experiences and networks to uncover novel approaches to your work. Harness this exposure to become more creative and innovative.
3. Fail your way to success—Use experimentation to discover what works and to improve your ability to adjust and adapt. Fail in small steps to achieve the big successes.
4. Communicate thoughts and ideas—Unleash your creativity by giving it a voice. Agility cannot be enhanced if important thoughts and ideas lay dormant without expression.
5. Deliver value frequently—Become indispensable by delivering tangible value frequently. Harness your leadership power to deliver more than asked and sooner than expected.
6. Change incrementally—Make small incremental changes consistently over time to achieve quantum leaps in productivity and agility.
7. Connect with your purpose—Connect with your purpose for enhanced creativity and agility—and to release those hidden reserves of personal power within you.

The flexible project manager is uniquely positioned to become indispensable to an organization. By employing these seven habits, you can make a difference. Each of these habits can be used not only to make projects more agile, but also to make individuals more agile-minded.