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Growing the business, the value Growing the business, the value proposition of Project Managersproposition of Project Managers

Exceeding Sponsor Expectations

Identifying the bottlenecks

Reducing the project delivery interval

Becoming the service provider of choice

Achieving higher customer satisfaction

Strengthening the weakest link

Steven C. Rollins, PMP

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Presentation Goals

To present a different approach to improving your job value as a Project Manager or Team Member.

Add to your understanding of how to grow your job value.

Learn new support mechanisms that will help you acquire and grow your value and the value of your employer.

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Do you feel Secure as a Project Manager?

According to Standish Group, a leading metrics consulting firm, a large number of IT projects fail every year – the economic waste is vast.

If you are a Project Manager, do you have any friends on the job that value you as a Project Manager? Do Project Managers really have any friends – on the job?

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What is the value of Project Management?

For the Organization - To deliver projects efficiently and effectively that meet or exceed business sponsor expectations regarding delivery time, total cost of ownership and quality.

For the Project Manager – To meet or exceed the expectations for project delivery, cost of sponsor ownership and quality in everything you do.

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Are you a Project Manager?

PMI defines a “Project” as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service.

Do you manage a checkbook?Are you a parent? Are kids similar to

projects? Their moods are!Do you manage people?

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What is your Value Today?

Take a moment and calculate your value as you see it today.

List the components that comprise your value.Place a dollar number on it that represents

worth to your employer.

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What is your “Real Value”?

• How do you define your value today?

• What are the components of your value now?

• Do you feel alone? What are you doing about this?

• Does your employer understand your value – as you see it?

• Anyone worth $1M today in value?

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If you are a Project Manager,what value are you?

Why do you do the work you do? Why are you selected for certain projects and not others?Why do people work for you? Why you?Who are your customers? Why you?Why ask why? If you are not valued then how will you make a living?

In 2001 - Over 1,000,000 people lost their jobs, why?

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Complex Decisions atComplex Decisions at

Multiple LevelsMultiple LevelsIs our project portfolio aligned with Is our project portfolio aligned with the business needs? the business needs?

Is there an opportunity to Is there an opportunity to finish early? Does the finish early? Does the business unit know this?business unit know this?

Can we take on this project?Can we take on this project?How long will it take?How long will it take?What will it cost?What will it cost?

What if Sally moves to What if Sally moves to another project?another project?

Are we meeting our Are we meeting our commitments?commitments?

What is the #1 project What is the #1 project in the department? in the department?

What program do we do What program do we do first? first?

What will be the impact if we What will be the impact if we miss our next milestone?miss our next milestone?

Are we at risk of not Are we at risk of not achieving our fiscal year achieving our fiscal year strategic initiativesstrategic initiatives

If only we had more budget If only we had more budget and resources to do the and resources to do the work!work!

Who is this guy?

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The “Project Management” Challenge

What would you do as a Project Manager, if Senior Management came to your department and questioned the value of your department to the Organization?

Your department was instructed to deliver “3” times the department expense budget for the next twelve months in documented $$$ value or your jobs would be eliminated.

How?

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True Story 40 person project management department for a large

telecom. Annual department expenses were $7M – Must find $21M. 12 months to save our jobs. Attitude change about work expectations. Constant search for project delivery acceleration opportunities

and/or project delivery delays. Found $22M in first 30days, changes implemented into

production in the first month. Returned more than $75M in hard dollars within 12 months. Cost of change to Enterprise and Organization = $0. Measure of Value for the PM Dept. = >$54M for the year.

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How do you define your value?

• Service – How do others see you?• Relationships – Are people naturally attracted to you

because of your professional abilities?• Money – Does money come your way easily?• Attitude – Happy at work?• Process – Efficient?• Skills – Solid in abilities?

If any of these elements are important to you, then how do you gain further improvement?

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Avoiding Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law – The amount of time applied to perform work, expands to meet the estimate.

Develop a mindset that meeting the project/task delivery expectation is the worst thing that will happen, then help your team to achieve it.

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Change the “Delivery Mindset”

Moved from “Process drives deliverables” to “Deliverables driving Process”.

Changing the focus from performing process to develop deliverables to focusing on what are the deliverable requirements to identify the processes needed to be performed.

The benefit of the “Mindset Change” is that only deliverable specific processes are worked, thus saving needless execution of unwarranted processes.

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Un-calibrated Project Team(s)Symptoms

Project Teams are not looking for delivery acceleration opportunities. Delivery date slips result from internal project team delays.

Frequent inter-project team contention for resources consumes unplanned meeting time for negotiation.

Project Team members don’t know what is expected of their delivery work from the person receiving it.

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Mentoring the Project team

Practice Management-by-walking-around (MBWA).

Share your skill and subject matter knowledge with your team members.

Use the PMO mentors for guidance and assistance.

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Enabling the Project Team As a Project Manager, you want your team to be enabled – to

take advantage of delivery opportunities to accelerate or avoid delivery threats. They must have cognitive skills to be able to identify the threat or opportunity, then the enablement to do something about it.

Move away from the process oriented approach with your project team. Moving towards a delivery focus will give your team the effect that they are responsible for the deliverable, not just performing tasks.

Seek out the PMO Methodologists for assistance to validate their expectations and yours. PMO Mentors can help you with learning and teaching the cognitive skills to your team needed to accelerate work.

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Synchronizing Project Teams

Does the work force understand the correct order of work they must perform each day?

What happens if they don’t. Who then chooses the new order of work?

Can we imagine what our work culture would be like if we could apply our energies correctly, all the time, to our work, each and every work day?

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The “Deming” Work Bench

CustomerSuppliers

CustomerSuppliers

Standards, tools, processes

Inputs Process Outputs

En

trance C

riteria

Ou

tpu

t Criteria

Accept AcceptCreating the deliverable

Yes Yes

No No

“Rework”“Rework”

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Project Manager Techniques to Grow Your Value

Project Status Meetings – Use peer work status reviews to flush out opportunities, threats, bottlenecks to work task delivery in a non-threatening manner.

Open up access to the project schedule for your team and others to have visibility to help the team accelerate and/or avoid delivery threat. Develop team member abilities to recognize work acceleration opportunities and/or delivery threats within the team work plan and/or from other dependent projects.

Find ways to save work time as time is usually saving money. Saving time on delivery work is money in the Bank of Value – for you and those working with you.

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Project Manager Techniques to Grow Your Value(continued)

Create a learning environment within your team that fosters self-motivation to solve the project puzzle. People are more productive when they are self-motivated.

Create an information network through the PMO to learn about other events in other projects that may lead to opportunities or threats to your project before they become public knowledge.

Create the Champion Role Model – Everyone wants their work output to be acceptable. Set the stake in the ground for what is best or acceptable for others to see. This will define “Goodness”.

Keep asking “How can I (we) be better?”.

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Where do Project Managers find help?

As you approach delivery deadlines in your personal and work lifes, where can you seek help when resources are inadequate?

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Where Do You Find Outside Help To Grow Your Value?

Use the “Program/Project Management Center of Excellence (PMO)” to raise your awareness for opportunities and threats to your Project…Project Delivery MentorsMethodologistsProject Portfolio ManagementResource Portfolio ManagementBest PracticesMetricsPMI Local Chapter

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How many of you have a PMO to help you?

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The “Project Management Office”

Center of Competency for Project Management excellence. Primarily focuses on supporting project delivery efforts

everywhere with effective portfolio management of delivery projects, resources involved and assets impacted.

Manages “best of category” knowledge for project management components with focus on delivery knowledge.

First to learn of delivery opportunities and threats from project status reporting as it affects the overall organization project portfolio.

The “Best Friend” of a Project Manager.

Why does a Project Manager Care?

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Continuous Loop of Direction, Validation and Adjustments

Enterprise Strategy

Business Unit Delivery Strategy

Project Management

Office

Dir

ecti

on

Prioritization

Feedback

Feed

back

Project Status Reports, Time Sheets, Project Schedules

Governance Review Board

Governance Review Board

QA/QCProgram/ Project Managers

Feedback

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Value Proposition of the Project Management Office

• Portfolio Management Support• Information Repository – Ensure Data Integrity• Project Rescues• Project Management Mentoring• Project Prioritization Management• Resource Management/Portability• Operations Planning and Forecasting• e-Commerce Project Information Management• Project Management Processes & Methodology• Training in Program/Project Management• Project Accounting and Financial Analysis• Project Document Library/Knowledge Management• PMI/PMP or Company specific PM Certification• Project Assessments• Project Management Community best friend!

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Many of your clients have a PMO today

Find out how you can best utilize the Client PMO to help you add more value to the your Client’s business and to you

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Project Managers working together with the PMO in “Growing the

Business”

PMO working together with the Project Managers in “Growing the

Business”

Where do you add value?

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Adding Value through the PMO that is delivery focused

If FY00 IT Budget is $100M for development projects that are expected to produce $400M in business revenue and:100 projects are planned to be delivered in FY00 IT actually delivers 125 projects in FY00 that result in an

additional $100M in business revenue IT has exceeded business unit expectations because they

assisted the business units in making money much earlier than expected!

Planned Budget $100M = Planned Revenue $400MActual Cost $100M = Actual Revenue $500MIncreased productivity = Increased profitability without increased costs

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Adding Value! - Continued

o Assume the PMO Project Portfolio is currently at 100 projects in development and 20 awaiting startup.

o Assume the average Project Budget is $500K and the average duration is projected at 200 work days. Thus the Portfolio has a $50M tactical value.

o If the PMO could save the enterprise 10% on budget and time per project (average) per fiscal year, how important would this be?

o 10% improvement would mean the Project Portfolio would save $5M over time and allow for 10 additional projects to be started earlier than was expected provided resources are available…in the same fiscal year. In other words, adding value when none was expected.

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How do you define your value - Now?

What are doing today that you did not realize have value for you and your employer? What is this worth in delivery, dollars, relationships?

Compare your notes on your new value and compare your thoughts to what you had earlier considered your value to be.

If your job value cannot be improved from today’s perception in your mind – what does that mean? Should you be looking for a new job? How about a new career? Should you begin the search for continuous improvement – for you?

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Next Steps

You can adapt this “way of life” now at no cost to you!

Begin reacting to each person as if they are one of your most important customers.

Help others understand this concept. Keep at it! Keep searching for value. Getting there is

a journey with many turns and with some roads going nowhere. If you never try, you will never know!

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For Further Information

Contact Steve Rollins, PMPSteve.Rollins@EPM-Solutions.Com

816-347-9976