Journyx executives are in high demand for speaking engagements. In the near future, we'll be in Los Angeles, New York, Portland and Virginia. We'd love for you to come to one of our events!

You can always find the current list of upcoming events here!

In spite of an increased focus on competency in PM conferences, journals and online knowledge sources, organizations continue to experience project failures at the hands of incapable PMs.

Identifying common negative behaviors that can contribute to these failures might be the first step towards recovery:

1. Communication imbalance – communication consumes a significant percentage of a PM’s time so one would assume that this is a competency that even poor PMs would excel at. Unfortunately, some PMs treat knowledge \& information like power – sharing it with those they wish to curry favor with, and leaving everyone else in the dark. Other PMs have a case of verbal “Montezuma’s revenge” – this is equally bad as stakeholders are unsure what information is critical and what is minutiae. I covered this issue more extensively in the article “A dripping faucet or a fire hose – which most resembles YOUR project communication strategy?”

2. Neglecting stakeholders – As I wrote in “Don’t get blindsided by stakeholder influence” , PMs can get tunnel-vision by focusing purely on their direct customer or sponsor. While this individual might be the one signing deliverable acceptance forms and evaluating your performance, a good PM needs to practice 360 degree management – sponsor, stakeholders \& team.

3. Inaccurate or incomplete project control books – It doesn’t matter how heavy or light your PM methodology is (or even if you organization doesn’t have one). There’s a basic set of project data that should be kept current so to facilitate project tracking, control, monitoring and (if you win the lottery) transition. Having an out-of-date schedule is worse than having no schedule at all – at least a stakeholder doesn’t draw any wrong conclusions from a non-existent schedule.

Read the rest of the ProjectTimes article here.

Journyx CEO Curt Finch will present "Is An Agile PMO Possible?" at the Los Angeles chapter of PMI (Project Management Institute) this Thursday, March 10th.

Topic - Is an Agile PMO Possible?

It often seems that a lean, agile development environment will always be at odds with the structure and constraints of the PMO. A well-known author described the situation well in a recent article:

Many firms have committed so completely to PMBOK process flows and CMM best practices that many of the core concepts of agile development, such as "barely sufficient" documentation and change-friendliness, seem like heresy. In fact, I've had people in my Agile Project Management classes tell me that their perception of agile is that the key message is "everything you know about project management is wrong."

Yet it does not have to be this way. The agile PMO can bridge the gap between these two very important groups and help organizations to execute projects more successfully. While it does require a bit of change management, it is not as impossible as it seems and the benefits far outweigh the effort. This presentation will look at the skills and strengths that each team brings to the table, explore the value of working together and steps to creating a harmonious union.

Attendee Learning Objectives:

1) Participants will learn the benefits of Agile: It allows customer advocates to see what is being developed very early in the cycle, and corrections can be made as needed before it's too late.

2) Participants will learn the benefits of the PMO: While the agile worker is concerned mainly with innovation and fast delivery, the PMO can help to keep the rest of the organization informed as to what is going on.

3) Participants will learn practical steps toward an agile PMO: Agile developers might compromise by tracking their time to task in order to keep the PMO updated on their progress. At the same time, project managers can compromise by being flexible and willing to update plans and schedules as necessary.

4) Participants will learn the value of working together and practical advice and tips for creating a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship within their company.

Meeting Location:

Courtyard Marriott
6333 Bristol Parkway, Culver City, CA 90230

Register here!

Are out of control projects really a problem in most companies? According to the Standish Group, 70 percent of projects are over budget or behind schedule. Why is this?

IT projects fail because they are out of control, over budget or broken. Companies must figure out which of their IT projects are high risk and which ones are low risk. The best way to measure that risk is to track employee time spent on projects, while simultaneously estimating how much of the project is complete. If the project budget is 1000 person-hours and 50 percent (i.e. 500 hours) is used up -- but the project is only 15 percent complete -- then you know you have a high risk project, and a big problem.

Conversely, if the same project is 40 percent complete, but only 10 percent of the hours are used, then you have a low-risk project.

If you have real-time, accurate, per-project cost data available to your entire management team at all times, it provides a built-in alert system that notifies you early on that your project is broken. Now that you’ve detected the problem much earlier than you otherwise would have, you can take corrective action. You’ve discovered a hidden problem earlier than your peer managers who are not tracking time could have. Now, you can fix the problem more quickly and cheaply.

When you find out a project is broken early on, you can do something about it – like cancel it, put different resources on it, or change the scope. But in order to do this, companies must have accurate cost data – accurate time data – which allowed them to find the problem early.

Read more great articles like this at SoftwareCEO

It's seemingly impossible to avoid multitasking in today's busy world. The constant bombardment of emails, phone calls, and appointments quickly begin to pile up, so to combat this we attempt to juggle more activities at once. I instinctively answer the phone as I'm driving home from work or respond to an urgent email while I'm reading a report, but are these the best solutions to my problems?

Mounting evidence suggests that multitasking is the enemy of productivity. Though it may lead us to think that we're being more productive, we're in fact thwarting performance ability and significantly lowering quality of work along the way. While we can all recognise how multitasking affects the texting driver, the negative impact of multitasking in the workplace is not as immediately apparent.

A 2010 study in the journal Science tackled this issue by examining just how the human brain handles multiple simultaneous activities. Research suggests that when a person performs a single task, the goal-oriented areas of both frontal lobes work to engage the task together. When an additional task is added, the two lobes divide responsibility and each hemisphere focuses on its own objective. While our two lobes can work collaboratively to accomplish an independent task, they must divide to accomplish anything more fragmented. ¹

With just two frontal lobes at our disposal, however, humans cannot simultaneously handle more than two unique tasks. When a third task is thrown into the mix, the brain has no choice but to replace one of the initial undertakings.

This means that humans are capable of multitasking to a small degree. That tiny degree, however, is significantly lower than we frequently demand and covers just two fundamental activities. Though it may be possible to read a report and keep track of the time concurrently, one of the initial tasks must be abandoned if further cognitive effort is required. If checking the time leads to thinking about the weekend, for example, then you might as well say goodbye to that report.

We are limited by our own brains, and yet today it seems that people have no choice but to juggle tasks in order to get anything accomplished. So how does multitasking translate into the workplace? In an NPR interview in 2009, Stanford Professor Clifford Nass reported that "multitasking, especially among those who do it the most, is at the very least ineffective and at the worst, harmful." ² The more a person multitasks, it turns out, the worse they become at focusing on individual tasks. Multitasking not only impedes current productivity, but threatens the individual's ability to perform work in the future as well.

So what can we do to combat this everyday occurrence? Even now you may be reading this article after a few tangential searches, or perhaps you've been checking your Facebook account every few sentences to see if anything new has appeared. Multitasking seems an unavoidable tool in today's busy world, yet its benefits may be nonexistent. Here are a few practices that may help you focus on your work and keep your tasks rolling:

Read the rest of the article at Project Smart.

Double Booking

I had just finished a call with our resource manager. My resource on the Laramie project was double-booked. I needed to deliver the news to our client.

“Hello John, this is Dan over at PM Pro.”

“Hi Dan, what’s up?”

“John, we may have to delay your Go Live date.”

“Why is that?”

“We are having some resource challenges.”

“How is your challenge my issue?”

“Well, our resource on this project accidentally got double-booked.”

“I repeat, how is your mistake my issue?”

“John, this may actually help us both.”

“Oh? Please explain.”

“I had you on a fast-track to Go Live, but now with this delay, we can slow down and think through our workflow one more time.”

“Well, Dan, my management just told me this week that we must Go Live on schedule or we will lose any additional funding for this project.”

John knew he had me. Part of our strategy with this project was to sell them add-ons after they were in production.

“Okay, John. I hear what you are saying. I will work with my management and determine what can be done.”

After the phone call, I felt foolish and angry. He was right. Our double-booking of a resource was not his issue. I was angry about being in this unpleasant situation and I felt foolish for trying to convince him this could work to his benefit.

Oftentimes, when we have unpleasant news to deliver to a client or stakeholder, we are the face and voice of our company. Today I lost face. Tomorrow I will be better prepared. I had a new experience to add to my Dan the Project Manager Man tool belt.
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There are several issues at play here: resource capacity and availability, negotiating skills, management decision-making and personal development. How would you have handled this differently? Which issue should be addressed first?

About the Author:

Dan Vickers PMP
Project Manager/Program Manager/Implementation Leader
CS STARS LLC (a Marsh Company)

Dan Vickers, a project leader at CS STARS, has worked with a wide variety of clients in multiple industries: Banking, Insurance, Staffing, and Manufacturing. He began in project management in 1996, was certified as a PMP in 2003, and has led hundreds of projects from start to finish. He works in a fast-moving, multi-client, multi-team environment delivering risk management software solutions to clients across the country at CS STARS. He currently performs program management for numerous projects in an effort to efficiently impact the organization’s bottom line. In addition, he leads project management webinars to other project managers from around the world. Managing multiple projects simultaneously and effectively is his way of life.

Make plans to join us this Thursday for a webinar in conjunction with Project Times on "5 Critical Components of Project Success".

According to a Gartner report, 15% of all technology projects fail because of high cost variance. Another 18% are unsuccessful because they were substantially late. This means 1 in 3 technology projects fail. Why such a dismal success rate? All project managers know this simple fact: Project Success is Difficult. But is it as simple to define what changes are necessary to increase project success? During this webinar we will explore five ways to improve your odds of successfully completing projects on time and on budget.

Find out more and register for the webinar here!

Avalanche

It had been a long time since we had such a drought in new projects. Bothersome projects were getting closed, resources were being released, and the project paperwork was being completed. A few new projects were starting, but nothing of real significance. I got caught up on training, organizing my desk, and filing my expenses. I read through some project management publications and even began to plan a ski trip.

And then it started. Sometimes a single phone call is all it takes. It was Carol. She was changing positions and needed me to take over on a complex project. While on the call with her I got an email from John – one of our primary data analysts. He had turned in his resignation. His last day was in 1 ½ weeks. He is on four of my projects. Soon afterwards I found out that an important but unhappy client had just been given a promise by one of our senior management team members that required a quick turnaround of a potentially complex project.

Within a matter of minutes I had gone from somewhat bored to almost frantic. Earlier in the day, I had felt prepared for the next wave of projects. Now I felt disoriented and overwhelmed. I was scrambling to make sense of my tasks and priorities.

Taking over in the midst of a complex project requires preparation and research above what is needed when a project is starting from scratch. Losing a key resource on four projects can cause delays and uncomfortable calls with clients. An unsubstantiated promise of a quick turnaround for a troubled client creates anxiety all around.

The avalanche of new tasks was building. Before reaching a state of panic I decided to make a few lists. I made a list for each project indicating the team members, their roles, and the project deliverables. I set up calls with senior project resources for the complex project, calls with the resource manager for the four projects in transition, and an immediate team meeting for the troubled client.

I grabbed a diet soda, set up project folders for each project, and began to gather the information needed for each project. The moving mountain of tasks rumbled for some time but within a few weeks, the tasks for each project were being managed.

Project avalanches happen. Organization and persistence are the primary tools to stay in front of the tasks. Proven processes are the lifeline that helps in times of trouble.

I canceled my plans for a ski trip and gave thanks that I was in Texas where large mountains and actual avalanches are rare – and hopefully the project avalanches will not happen very often.
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Have you ever been avalanched? What has helped you to be better prepared?

About the Author

Dan Vickers PMP
Project Manager/Program Manager/Implementation Leader
CS STARS LLC (a Marsh Company)

Dan Vickers, a project leader at CS STARS, has worked with a wide variety of clients in multiple industries: Banking, Insurance, Staffing, and Manufacturing. He began in project management in 1996, was certified as a PMP in 2003, and has led hundreds of projects from start to finish. He works in a fast-moving, multi-client, multi-team environment delivering risk management software solutions to clients across the country at CS STARS. He currently performs program management for numerous projects in an effort to efficiently impact the organization’s bottom line. In addition, he leads project management webinars to other project managers from around the world. Managing multiple projects simultaneously and effectively is his way of life.