Centre for Project Leadership

‘Projects –Leading Them to Success’

Gordon BartlettThe Centre for Project Leadership is a Division of the Centre for Executive Development Pty. Ltd.

About projects

How a project should be run – best practices

Your Contribution

How to do it

Questions – wrap up

Overview

A project is defined as being a set of activities to deliver a unique change with defined parameters –especially time – and to a predefined scope.

Projects deliver an organisations strategy - and so doing them right is key to an organisations success

Project failure rates are high due to many factors

About Projects

The Challenge

Technology is rarely the cause of project failure…The organisational culture and it’s lack of project leadership are the real issues

2004

Failed Challenged Succeeded

2000

1998

18% 53% 29%

23%

28%

49%

46%

28%

26%

1996 40% 33% 27%

* Source: Standish Group Chaos Reports 1996 to 2009

2009 24% 44% 32%

Plan – if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there…..

The ‘right’ people – does your project need experienced leaders or will it allow people to learn and grow – very different approach

Control scope - Eat the elephant one bite at a time – don’t try to boil the ocean all at once

Measure – if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it!

Repeat good practices – practice makes perfect? – or Perfect practice makes perfect – have a Framework/methodology – best practices

Test – know what you want and define how you will determine success at the start of the project (Success/Exit Criteria)

How a project should be run

What is a Framework?

INITIATING

PLANNING

EXECUTING

CONTROLLING

CLOSING

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS ANALYSIS DOCUMENT TEMPLATES

PROJECT LIFECYCLE

FRAMEWORK

INITIATION

STAGE

PLANNING

STAGE

ANALYSIS

STAGE

DESIGN

STAGE

CONSTRUC-

TION

STAGE

TESTING

STAGE

IMPLEMENTA-

TION

STAGE

CLOSURE

STAGE

INITIATING

PLANNING

EXECUTING

CONTROLLING

CLOSING

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS ANALYSIS DOCUMENT TEMPLATES

PROJECT LIFECYCLE

FRAMEWORK

INITIATION

STAGE

PLANNING

STAGE

ANALYSIS

STAGE

DESIGN

STAGE

CONSTRUC-

TION

STAGE

TESTING

STAGE

IMPLEMENTA-

TION

STAGE

CLOSURE

STAGE

• An example…

6

What is a framework/Methodology

What is your role? – are you the project Sponsor? Project Manager? Know it, agree it and ‘do’ it (avoid role confusion)

Lead – provide clear direction and accountability for the project team – clarity generally defines a successful project (roles and responsibilities document such as a RACI)

Support and encourage – once you have put the right components in place, let them run without undue interference

Regularly review project goals – Business conditions and environments change – even on a short project the situation may require review and re-direction or even cancelling a project

Your Contribution

Document your scope –with clarity in goals and success criteria that can be objectively tested? eg: Project Management Plan (PMP)

The PMP is the consolidation of several activities, including:Ø Define scopeØ Plan qualityØ Develop scheduleØ Plan risk managementØ Estimate costsØ Develop Human Resources planØ Plan communications

How to do it?

Clear Roles and Responsibilities – select the right people for the roles and then provide a roles and responsibilities document, RACI, etc

How to do it?

Plan your execution, then execute your plan – create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and then define the activities to achieve the deliverables, order them, estimate the effort and duration, estimate the resources, create your schedule (not plan) and calculate how much it will cost and when it will be able to be delivered – NEVER provide a delivery date prior to this exercise unless you are prepared to ‘throw money at it’ and/or accept a lower quality at the nominated date (Triple Constraints)

How to do it?

WBS

Deliverable

Plan your execution, then execute your plan (continued)

Sample Schedule

How to do it?

Plan your execution, then execute your plan (continued)

The Gantt Chart

How to do it?

Regularly review project progress (measure) – to ‘execute the plan’ the project needs to regularly assess its progress against the schedule, budget and other project areas.Typically this is done by a report which the PM defined around his/her requirements. The PM needs to define the report around the requirements of those that will read and action itTypically these reports use RAG (Red/Amber/Green) status to visually show the status of components

How to do it?

Track basics like Assumptions, Restrictions/Constraints, Dependencies, Risks, Issues, Actions. – There are many things that can determine a projects success and these need to be tracked, reviewed, treated, monitored and closely scrutinised.Assumptions:

• when you create your business case and projects scope (along with just about any other item in a project), you almost certainly make assumptions on which your decisions are based. Document these and continually review and test them throughout the project lifecycle.

How to do it?

Track basics like Assumptions, Restrictions/Constraints, Dependencies, Risks, Issues, Actions (Continued) –Risks/issues:

• These need to be actively and continually managed for a project to be successful. Actions to mitigate/resolve need to be taken as seriously as any other activity in the project. Don’t forget ‘positive risks (opportunities)

How to do it?

Track basics like Assumptions, Restrictions/Constraints, Dependencies, Risks, Issues, Actions (Continued) –Dependencies:

• If the project is part of a larger program or related to other projects, then managing the links (dependencies) between components can be critical.

How to do it?

Target and regularly review project goals

Ø Targeted success CriteriaØ Conduct Portfolio Management reviews where all current projects are

compared and the overall business benefit of each comparedØ Business conditions and environments change – even on a short

project the situation may require review and re-direction or even cancelling a project

Ø Be prepared to cancel a project if the business case no longer stacks up – Do NOT look at ‘Sunk Funds’ but rather what the project will cost to complete versus the benefits that will flow

How to do it?

& ObjectivesProject Goals

Select your people well and develop them –one key mistake made by most organisations is that the project becomes ‘all important’ forgetting about the development of their staff who run this project, and then the next, and the one after that. “Those ignore study history are doomed to repeat it.

Leadership capability of project participants – is a clear component in defining whether a project will be successful. Leadership can be defined by looking at the characteristics of a good leader which fall into 2 areas:-

How to do it?

Managing Self

ü Manage ambiguity

ü Make crucial decisions

ü Hold self to account

ü Build trust and credibility

ü Demonstrate personal commitment and courage

ü Build self resilience

ü Be disciplined

ü Be consistent and maintain focus

ü Encourage feedback on own performance

ü Manage energy

ü Define and manage personal brand

Leading Others

ü Articulate the project vision, goal and objectives

ü Establish key accountabilities, roles & responsibilities

ü Set clear KPIs with team members

ü Test ‘buy-in’ to individual and team KPIs

ü Develop appropriate strategies to meet objectives

ü Reward and recognise performance

ü Identify and manage key dependencies between teams and individuals

ü Hold critical conversations with key stakeholders

ü Manage stakeholder expectations

ü Build alliances in order to influence & persuade

ü Develop team capability by Coaching & feedback

ü Hold others to account

ü Delegate effectively

ü Identify key risks

Key project leadership capabilities are clustered into two broad development areas:

Leadership Capabilities

Audience Level Focus

Ø Project Director / Program Manager who have extensive project management and leadership experience, but need to develop advanced leadership skills as well as hone current leadership skills

Ø Senior Project Managers who have extensive project management experience and some exposure to or potential for leadership

Ø Project Managers who have project management fundamentals but who must understand the importance of managing self as the first step in leadership

Program Levels

ManagingSelf

LeadingOthers

ManagingSelf

LeadingOthers

Foundation

ManagingSelf

LeadingOthers

Intermediate

Advanced

Gordon BartlettDirectorCentre for Project LeadershipEmail: gbartlett@cpla.com.auMobile: +61 438 244 115www.cpla.com.auLeadership and management development for Project Managers

also

Dr Denis BourkeEmail: dbourke@cpla.com.auMobile: +61 (0)425 224 943

and

Peter FarleyEmail: pfarley@cpla.com.auMobile: +61 (0)412 970 202

Questions –Wrap Up