December 31, 2009September 27, 2013 Linky

Reflections On Project Management Success In 2009

Project Management Success in 2009?

Being in the middle of summer, I took my kids to a lovely beach, called Clifton(see picture on the right), in Cape Town. While spending the day overlooking the beautiful ocean, I had time to reflect on the past year and specifically what project success I have accomplished in 2009.

There is no denying that it was a most difficult year. Yet, we all aim to be successful in what we do. Looking back at 2009, you can evaluate if you were successful, personally, professionally and with business projects delivered. There are a few simple questions you can answer:

What were your achievements on a personal level?
What did you accomplish in your business?
Did you have specific triumphs or project successes in 2009?
What highlights did you experience and why were they highlights?
What is it that you are doing well?
What can you improve and do differently in 2010?
Is your business profitable?What did you enjoy most/least in your business?

Write Your Own Report Card for 2009

By doing this you can write your own Report Card to assess your accomplishments. It will help you stay focused on the positive things that you have achieved in 2009 and that you can be grateful for.

To give you a glimpse of my Report Card for Virtual Project Consulting, I wrote down my reflections on the past year.

I established my own company, Virtual Project Consulting – providing project management consulting and social media solution services– for doing business online and locally.
I created and customized my own website that is also a blog in March 2009.
I did 40 blog postings on several topics and I am positioned to publish frequently and more consistently in 2010.
I created a Project Management Toolkit, Solid-as-a-Rock to empower business owners and service professionals with little or no project management experience to manage their own business projects and services to customers.
I created a Social Media Starter Project Kit to enable business owners and service professionals to become active in using social media tools to grow their business.
I became social media active by implementing a social media strategy with many free tactics for traffic generation, lead generation, business networking and growing my brand online. I also use Virtualpm as my social networking persona as it compliments the virtual project management services that I offer.
I learned constantly about Internet Marketing, running your own business and how to focus despite all the distractions you are bombarded with while being online.
I connected with numerous other project management experts, with social media teachers and many business and marketing gurus from whom I keep learning.
I am a guest writer on two websites/blogs, one about project management and one about Web 2 and social networking.
I started to make money, but most importantly, I created and established a business brand that I am passionate about, where I truly want to make a difference and hope to contribute authentically and add value to my client’s lives to help them grow their business in 2010.

Looking back on 2009, I realized how much I have to be grateful for. I did more research in the past year on internet marketing, social media and other topics that interest me than in the 5 years before that. Being an optimistic, but impatient person, I learned the virtue of patience and of having faith to keep doing what you believe in with diligence and skill. It really takes perseverance to become successful, but it takes a positive attitude to be happy in any circumstances.

Strategy for 2010

Do you have your business strategy for 2010 in place?

Do you have a Social Media strategy that gives you a plan, a strategic approach for social networking and many tactics to use to grow your business online, establish your brand and make more money?

Look at the Social Media Starter Project Kit!

I’m giving away the Social Media Strategy template for a limited time until 15 January 2010. Use the opportunity to create a social media strategy for your business as part of your overall marketing plan for 2010.

Thanks for the opportunity to share. Please feel free to share one or two of your own accomplishments and even 2010 resolutions…..

December 24, 2009December 1, 2015 Linky

Leadership – 8 Best Practices For Communication

Listening is the key to understanding in communication

By Phoenix R. Cavalier

Being very good at speaking to a person requires the ability to listen for understanding, to ensure what you said, is what someone else has heard. The number one reason for poor communication may be time management. Due to the fact many leaders are highly scheduled, it becomes easier to deliver a message and keep moving than to stop and take the time to communicate in a useful and clear manner. By applying some or all the best practices shared here, the communication skills you have may be sharpened, and the results you see will likely improve.

Leadership and Communication

Consider how you would apply these simple ideas adapted from You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone, Anytime Can Make a Positive Difference.

1. Start with a question

Be clear on what you want. If there was ever a time to “begin with the end in mind,” it is when you communicate.

2. Focus on quality, not quantity

Good communication is about quality, not quantity.

3. Speak with truth and compassion

In leadership communication don’t tell people what they want to hear. Tell them what they need to hear. Just make sure you tell them in such a way that they’ll listen. There is your view and their view, and often the best point of view lies somewhere in-between.

4. Focus on the listener, not yourself

There are three modes of communicating. They are being:

Self-centered,
Message-centered,
Listener-centered.

Leadership communication requires you to be listener-centered and that you put personal needs aside and become so familiar with the message you are trying to communicate that you can focus on and respond emphatically to the listener.

5. Simplify the message

The only thing people have less of today than disposable income or time is attention. With excessive demands on limited attention, effective leadership communicators harness the power of the sound bite. They make concepts easy to understand and repeat.

6. Entertain to engage

For a leader to be heard and understood, he or she must break preoccupation and grab attention, in other words, entertain. That means a leader captures and holds the attention of those being addressed. You can’t bore people into positive action.

7. Feedback and feed forward

The best way to make sure another person has heard and understood what you said is to ask them to repeat it back to you in their own words. You could say, “I want to make sure I explained that clearly. Would you please tell me how you understand what I’ve said?”

8. Tell a better story

Telling a story is good, but being the story is better. The congruency between who you are and the stories you tell as a leader create credibility. The purpose, however, isn’t to be speaker-focused, but to use personal experience and story as a bridge to build connection.

Take the Next Step: Put This List in Your Pocket!

Make this list part of your day – an easy and simple way to power-up your communication competence in leadership. Get started now!

Write the eight best practices on a piece of paper small enough to carry with you for one week.

Glance at your leadership communication best practices list before a meeting, gathering, or brief conversation to keep them top-of-mind.

After one week, reflect on how your interaction with others has changed; you may be pleasantly surprised! You will see how does effective communication play a part in leadership.

As a leader it is your responsibility to create opportunities for understanding, and to invite creative dialogue. Lead people together and the whole team will succeed, including you.

Source: www.lqsolutionsvault.com with ideas adapted from “You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone, Anytime Can Make a Positive Difference.”

If you are a leader and you have a story to share, please leave a comment.

Another leadership article: Vision Requires Logic And Emotion

December 20, 2009September 27, 2013 Linky

Make projects work for your business!

Where the business owner and service professional learn more about project management skills, project management tools and templates and project management methodologies for managing business projects.

An effective way to speed up results with business projects is to apply a simple Project Management framework to deliver your projects on time, to budget and with desired quality.

For solutions to:

WHAT project management is,
WHY your business needs projects,
HOW to do project management,
WHEN to start a project and
WHO must do the work

Discover a basic tool to successful project management, download the Project Management Toolkit for all your business project management needs.

Take Action today and start making a positive difference to your business.

December 11, 2009September 27, 2013 Linky

What Is Project Success?

Why excellence in project management is not enough

By Robert Buttrick

The only reason for undertaking a project is to add value to an organisation in pursuit of strategic objectives. A project, which does not do this is useless or a sink for scarce resources.

Projects, however, do not directly create value. Projects deliver new capability to an organisation, but it is the organisation itself, which creates value by using those capabilities. Value creation (benefits realisation) usually happens after a project has been completed.

If a project is truly a vehicle of change which will add value, it must have:

Alignment: It is aligned to the company strategy
Priority: It has high priority relative to other change initiatives which may use the same resources
Positive impact: It impacts somebody’s budget, somewhere in the organisation either by decreased costs or increased revenues.

Define project success in project managment

When talking about successful projects we must understand what the word “successful” means. Success is too often interpreted through the differing eyes of stakeholders.

Successful project management ensures the delivery of a specified scope, on time and to budget. It is related to how efficiently a project is managed. This should be assessed during the project closure review, documented in a project closure report and measured by timeliness of delivery milestones, adherence to budgets and quality. This is associated with the role of the project manager.

A successful project realises the business objectives it was set up to achieve as stated in a business case^a. It is related to the effectiveness of the project in meeting the objectives set. The post implementation review (post-project review) assesses this. Measures of success here must be indicative of the business objectives being achieved. This review therefore has to happen some time after the output of the project has been put into use. It is associated with the role of the project sponsor^b.

A successful company drives towards its strategic objectives whilst fulfilling expectations of shareholders, managers, employees and other stakeholders^c. Measures for this are at a corporate level and should be financial and non-financial (e.g. balanced score card). This is associated with the role of the Chief Executive.

What actually counts is whether the organisation, as a whole, is successful or not. The likelihood of business success is increased if the projects undertaken align with the organisation’s strategy. Success can be enhanced if best practice project management is undertaken. The aim is to ensure the linkage from successful project management to successful projects to a successful company remains effective.

How to measure and realise benefits

For benefits realisation and measurement to be effective therefore, an organisation must have:

A business strategy and goals communicated in sufficient detail to be useful to decision makers: this will facilitate strategic alignment
A business plan, which explicitly demonstrates how the company’s resources are to be used in operating the organisation in its current state and investing in future capabilities in order to achieve future benefits;
Measures by which the whole organisation can monitor its progress towards strategic objectives and may be used to aid prioritisation decisions.

Without these three fundamentals, business-led, or benefits-driven project management has little to tie into, regardless of how well each individual project is managed or directed.

GLOSSARY EXPLAINING TERMS USED:

BUSINESS CASE: A document outlining the justification for the initiation of a project. It includes a description of the business problem (or opportunity), a list of the available solution options, their associated costs and benefits and a preferred option for approval
PROJECT SPONSOR: Individual or group within organization that provides the financial resources for the project.
STAKEHOLDERS: Individual and organizations that are actively involved in the project or whose interests may b positively or negatively affected as a result of project execution or completion; also some-one who exert influence over the project and its results.

References

This article is adapted from Part 2 of The Project Workout, 4th edition, Robert Buttrick, Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2009.

Do you think your business projects are creating value? Please share your thoughts……

December 9, 2009March 25, 2018 Linky

5 Steps To Leadership Success

What is your Leadership Style?

By Deanne Earle

Have you ever been asked to take on a poorly performing team, department, or project in chaos? Do you leap in like the caped crusader to save the world or are you overly consultative in an attempt to make friends and influence people? We know how challenging these situations are and we also know they can be exceptionally rewarding.

Follow our 5 steps to set the scene, quickly establish credibility, build trust and maximise the chances of success with your leadership skills.

1. Get Clear

If you’re not clear on what it is you’re being asked to do how will you be able to do it? Forget about the rumours and put aside your own thoughts and opinions for the moment because Step 1 is to have absolute clarity of your role by asking the following:

What is it exactly that you’re being asked to do? Do not presume to understand from the first explanation.

What role are you being asked to play? Tough guy, motivator, sort-out, clean-up, deliver, or all of these and more.

Why are they asking you? What is it you do that makes you the choice for this role?

What’s the timeframe? Constraints? Dependencies?

What is the line of accountability, level of authority, and scope of responsibilities?

Important Note – if the person asking you to take this role cannot answer these questions find someone who can. Get clear on your reporting path and purpose. Without this success will be severely limited from the start.

2. Agenda(s)

Find out who has what agenda and why. What are the motivations behind this need and how do they relate to the scope of the challenge at hand? Having this information will help you identify and fill any gaps in the brief and round-off Step 1.

3. Initial Thoughts

Based on Steps 1 and 2 you can now start adding the gossip, grapevine hearsay and corridor conversations you’ve picked up to begin forming your own initial opinions, ideas and thoughts. Many of these will be questions, which you’ll work to answer in Steps 4 and 5. It’s important to reserve judgement and for any opinions to remain fluid until you’ve got all the input because at this stage you’ve only been spoken to by a higher authority and you haven’t yet spoken with your new team.

4. Active Listening

Critical to a successful outcome is consulting with those you’ll be working with. The best way to do this is with 1-on-1’s. Preparation is imperative for effective leadership:

Clear your diary and make 1-on-1 times with everyone. Set expectations via communication:

Why you are the chosen one.
Set the scene about your role. Stick to the facts
Purpose of the 1-on-1
Input you expect from each person. Make it clear this is a collaborative session and their opportunity to contribute. You need their input on:
- what works well now
- what doesn’t
- what they see as issues and risks
- which things they believe can be improved, why and how
- what level of involvement or contribution they’re prepared to have / give
- what expectations they have of you

Conduct each session from a base of integrity. Approach each on as a blank canvas and with an open mind. Be firm yet fair. Create a collaborative atmosphere. One where trust can be built through honesty and transparency. Let each person know this is a level playing field and that they have as much, or more, to contribute as you do.
Let them talk getting their frustrations out while making sure to bring the session back on track if necessary. It’s their opportunity to be constructive and proactively contribute, not just a moaning session.
Make lots of notes. Paraphrase back what they say to ensure you have understood their meaning correctly. Where you know something is not possible or never going to happen, tell them. There are things you can and cannot influence so don’t lead them up the garden path.
Keep asking ‘what else?’ until you can see in their body language and hear in their words that all is out and on the table.
Wrap up the session with a definitive statement about what will happen next.

5. Plan for Action

Now it’s time to consolidate what is actually going to happen, who will do what, the milestones that need to be achieved and their timeline, and what approach you’re going to take to deliver it all. It’s important to invest time and effort here as:

you don’t want to destroy the momentum and trust created in Step 4 by paying lip-service to your new team
everything you plan needs to remain aligned with the original brief you’ve been given.

Taking all the gathered inputs you can now add your own ideas and opinions to develop a truly collaborative plan. Your delivery style is also critical. Always start how you mean to continue while also being prepared to adapt as situations change. Don’t forget to share the plan! Maintain the momentum you’ve created and maximise the opportunity for success by communicating what is to be done and the part everyone has to play in it. This clarity of purpose ensures buy-in because everyone in your team needs you to specify their Step 1.

These 5 Steps are repeatable and work every time. Use them with each new leadership role or situation and we know you’ll maximise both your and others success.

If you have questions or need further assistance to create this type of change in your business, contact info@unlikebefore.com

For more Leadership articles…

December 6, 2009September 11, 2016 Linky

Make Projects Work For Your Business!

8 Project Management Methodologies and Standards

You will find a more current article on PM Methodologies and Standards here: 7 Facts on Project Management Methodologies and Standards

I have decided to do a series of postings about Project Management methodologies and Project Management best practices. The purpose for this is not to replicate information that is already out there, but to inform, equip and empower business owners and service professionals about the project management profession and how to put it to use to sustain and grow their business.

As an introduction to this I have 8 questions to help define what a methodology and a standard is based on a summary of the best information I could find and that I know from experience. I would then like to encourage the reader of this post to contribute in the form of comments towards more methodologies and standards that can be covered here (and I encourage you to link to sites that you recommend as worthwhile reading on these topics.)

1. What is a methodology?

A methodology is a set of methods, processes and practices that are repeatedly carried out to deliver projects. It tells you what you have to do, to manage your projects from start to finish. It describes every step in the project life cycle in depth, so you know exactly which tasks to complete, when and how.

The key concept is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that, you will gain efficiencies in your approach.

2. What is a standard?

A standard is “a collection of knowledge areas that are generally accepted as best practice in the industry”.

3. What is the difference between a methodology and a standard?

Standards give you industry guidance, whereas methodologies give you practical processes for managing projects. Standards are not methodologies, and vice versa. The two most popular standards are PMBOK and Prince2.

4. Why use a methodology?

A Project Methodology should help you by giving you a clear process for managing projects. After you have customised it to perfectly fit your environment, your methodology should tell your team what has to be completed to deliver your project, how it should be done, in which order and by when.

5. What should be included in a project management methodology?

When you buy a project methodology, it should give you:

A core set of processes to follow for delivering projects
A set of templates to help you build deliverables quickly
A suite of case studies to help you learn from past projects
An option for customizing the methodology provided
The ability to import your existing processes into it

6. What a project management methodology will not do?

A Methodology is not a silver bullet. It will not fix projects by itself or guarantee success and an efficient, effective experienced project manager is still required to deliver projects successfully. Remember that the finest carpenter’s tool-box will only be as good as the carpenter. No methodology will be 100% applicable to every type of project. So you will need to customise any methodology you purchase to ensure that it perfectly fits your project management environment.

7. What are the benefits of using a methodology?

By using a methodology you can:

Create a project roadmap
Monitor time, cost and quality (project triple constraint)
Control change and scope
Minimise risks and issues
Manage staff and suppliers

Of course, you will need to use the methodology that is most suitable to each project you undertake. For smaller projects, you will only want to apply lightweight processes and when managing large projects, you should apply the heavyweight processes to monitor and control every element of your project in depth.

But if you can manage every project you undertake in the same way, then you will gain efficiencies with your approach, work smarter and reduce your stress. You will also give your team a clear understanding of what you expect from them and boost your chances of success.

Flick - Cappellmeister — Flickr – Cappellmeister

8. A few project management methodologies examples with short descriptions:

PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE) is a project management method. It covers the management, control and organisation of a project.
Method 123 Project Management methodology, also called MPMM (Project Management Methodology Manager) is based on the worldwide project management standards PMBOK and Prince2 and contains all of the project management templates, forms and checklists needed.
Ten Step Project Management Process is a methodology for managing work as a project and it’s designed to be as flexible as you need to manage your project.
UPMM Unified Project Management methodology based on suite of knowledge management tools.
AdPM – a best practices project methodology.
MBP- Managing by Project from X-Pert Group. Programme and Project Management methodology and services.
MITP – Managing Information Technology Projects. IBM’s established project management delivery method.
Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) is a set of principles, models, disciplines, concepts, and guidelines for delivering information technology solutions.

Please add more project management methodologies that you have used and tell us more about them.

For related Project Management articles, click here.