Don’t Panic. It will probably be bad, but you’re a champ.

Lately, I have noticed that I know a lot of people whose natural reaction to a wrench is to panic. As a self-employed person and as a project manager, you would think I would be very prone to this same reactionary pitfall; but you wouldn’t want to work with me if I engaged in Chicken Little behaviors.

The key to sleeping at night is not to freak out at the – sometimes crazy – things that pop up in your well laid plans. Strategies for mitigation are myriad. Try these:

1) plan well in advance and write it down – you can’t plan for every contingency (and you shouldn’t; just make one path), but a plan is something solid that you can point to and identify where the cog was thrown. The best way to calm down is to identify the monster; then plan to kill it.

2) have resources/options in your rolodex – often the problem that arises to freak you out is that you have too much work and too few hands to complete it. Make sure that you have a few pocket aces that you can turn to when needed.

3) always have an escape hatch – if the worry is your clients pulling work, keep your pipeline stocked with people who know what you do well and have expressed that they could always use your skills. Keep in touch with these people and express that you are always willing; and if the opening arises, you’ll be there at the ready.

4) have a diversion – sometimes, what you run into is a delay. This is the worst for a project or timeline oriented person. We want to be on course and on schedule and sometimes we pack these too closely. If you simply can’t get a task done until something else happens, fall back on the list of things you either gave low priority or no priority to. Let everyone know that the project is off schedule and get all the “dead” resources on other tasks, then get yourself otherwise occupied.

5) breathe – you’ve made it through bad situations before. I don’t want to advocate ignoring problems, but I do advocate giving them only the appropriate level of life/death importance. You will wake up tomorrow. If you have to, remind yourself that there are people in Scottsdale, AZ without WiFi access. Your problems aren’t that bad.

6) step away and remember conversations – there are always important comments made by your superiors and peers that clue you in to the big picture importance of things and also let you know where you and your project stand in the grand scheme. Think back to whether you are on firm ground. How was your last review? Has your work been praised up until now? Is there a parachute around should you – gasp – fail on one thing?

7) don’t think about money – think about need. Are your bills paid? Do you have a roof over your head for the month? Is there food (even ramen) in the cupboard? Good, now go back to breathing and get a plan together for next month.

These are all very simple things that are not always easy but, applied in the appropriate situations, you should be confident. It looks and feels bad when you hear the bad news; but you’re a champ and will survive.

Calm Down Crazypants

-Bully

Why your due date is less important than my start date

I like to use certain phrases and words over and over. I am predictable. One of the things I like to say is “I’m a big proponent of…”

I’m a big proponent of forward-planning a project. Here’s why:

• You can give me due dates all you want, but I can’t guarantee I’ll meet them if I don’t know how long my tasks will take.
• I need to set up my plan with realistic goals in order to determine how to resource something.
• My initial project plan may well exceed your due date. Now I have to figure out how to make that work.

Given a specific due date, I need to make sure that my tasks start at the right times to fit into your requirements. In order to meet the goals, I may have two tasks that need to start at the same time that both require the same resource. This is impossible, so I will need to add a resource to make that possible. The old adage about throwing money at a problem holds true. If I need to make an ‘impossible’ deadline, I will tell you that it takes additional resources and I will tell you that takes money. You are pulling the third pillar, time, out of my tool kit.

Certain tasks cannot be started until others are completed. This is where project management really helps out. We can sit the team down and ask each of the members to estimate how long an individual task for which they are responsible takes and have a good idea of the total time one resource will be needed; but we need to remember that there is dead time where a resource is waiting on some other piece of the project to be completed before they can start the next task on their list. If the resources are salaried, you are paying for that downtime and it should be factored into cost analysis. Ordering of tasks should be done to avoid downtime as much as possible. This requires Start Time management.

All this is to say that delivery date is important, but much less important than the start dates when trying to build a cost effective and timely project.

Bully

Tightening Loose Project Management

You won’t use all of the tools some of the time, but you’ll use some of the tools all of the time.

I am working under a new contract and picking up management of their ongoing project. As I have said before, the project begins today. I was able to sit with the key players on the team and find out what tasks are ongoing and what tasks are new; but I don’t care what’s been done.

As a new member to the team, I am noticing that the management of projects in this organization has been much looser than I am usually comfortable with. I am not saying that I think that the previous project manager did a poor job, just that I have a different style. Upon presenting my preferred methodology and gaining some agreement, I began to develop the new plan.

It was encouraging to hear in the room that a firmer hand was appreciated. I tend to be an ‘involved’ PM from the standpoint of wanting to remain abreast of all progress on a frequent basis. I am not one to wait a week for an update when the tasks and subtasks are broken in to hourly chunks of time.

In this case, the organization has hourly subcontractors performing the work; so the easiest way to set tasks is by how many hours they are estimated to take. Hourly tasking is not the preferable method in most projects but, for the type of work and worker involved in this project, it just makes sense.

The chosen tracking mechanism in this case is what I refer to as ‘chunking’ (I know there is a real name, but chunking is fun to say). I determined to put specific subtasks, that must be performed by the same person, onto task sheets in groupings by topic; and the sheet is assigned a total duration in consultation with the responsible resource. This way the assignments are doled out in chunks and upon completion the task sheet is turned in and time accounted for. Knowing up front that the task sheet has an estimated duration, I can track the progress at intervals without having to ‘ping’ and rely on rough estimations of status.

We now are able to have a net plan that shows us general tasks, chunking sheets that show and track subtasks (as well as provide invoice matching), and a fairly clear idea of total cost and where additional resources are needed. Using this method, the project sponsor will be able to tell from the Project Proposal Document and simple weekly updating how far along the project is; and the functional member of the team will be able to quickly give an accurate accounting of how any change to scope will affect the time and cost of the project.

None of these things are necessary to get a project done, but using these two interventions:

• Hourly tasking for hourly subcontractors
• ‘chunking’ sheets for assignment tracking

should provide a quick way to tighten the rigging.

Bully