MyProjectTracker – The Blog

Any customer will deliver the above question on delivery of the first estimate for a project. The nice ones will give you a wry smile but most, if not all, will give you an incredulous look of disbelief at the outrageous estimate that you have just given them. How can what they’ve asked for possibly give them an estimate of this scale – the audacity of it all!

I have found that this is especially true if this is the first job a client has asked you to undertake or quote for. Those who have been with you before may challenge an estimate, but are more likely to accept it provided you have delivered for them in the past and gave value.

Project Estimation – Make It More Than A Guess!

Hand on heart, how many of us have given unsubstantiated quotations/estimates for work without doing a quick due diligence (quick being the time it takes to give a valid quote and not a guess!). I know that I have and have been burned as a consequence. I’m sure you have done this as well.
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The human body is an amazing creation. It works in total harmony to allow us to engage with life as we desire. When things go wrong, it tells us – the central nervous system sends a warning or alert to our brain and tells us that we have a problem that needs fixing.

We take the medicine. We go and see a doctor. We rest up for a while… whatever it takes, we sort out the problem and move on with life.

We don’t ignore the warnings.

We make sure that we take as good a care of our bodies and minds as we possibly can. We are in tune with ourselves instinctively.

Effective project management is the same. In order for the “whole” to work, we must understand each part of the projects make-up and how they interact with each other towards success.

If we use the human body as an example, the project manager is the brain. It is the project managers responsibility to be in tune with the rest of the team and to be aware of things that are possibly not going according to plan.  The rest of the body is the remaining elements of the project management process and the team engaged to make it happen.
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The end of the project has been reached.

During the course of the project, things went well and things went badly. This is the nature of the beast.

There have been numerous meetings during the project and indeed after to reflect on what happened and why it happened in than way.

• Actions have been taken to address what went wrong.
• Actions have been taken to share what went right within the project with other project teams so they can benefit.

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I loved Inception. Clever concepts, great story and just generally a really enjoyable film. Without giving anything away for those who may not have seen it, the various dream levels are where “it’s at!”.

So it is with project management.

We have a project to deliver. We understand what we need to do, what the budget is and when we have to do it by.
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Project managers often have contention with line management when it comes to the allocation of project team members. The skill of the project manager to overcome this contention will directly effect the overall success of the project planning process and indeed the project as a whole.

If the project manager can get a line manager “on-side” from the off-set through early engagement and active communication, in turn the line manager will ensure that the project manager gets the right information needed to resource plan correctly.

Why is this important in project planning?

Simply put, the project manager is reliant on the line managers resources to make the project a reality. The line manager understands;

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“In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.”

The leader of the A-Team is Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith. Hannibal has a very unorthodox but effective style of management. As a leader, Hannibal displayed a number of distinct qualities:

Dedicated to the Cause:
Sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit, the A-Team, strive to clear their names. Project Managers can learn many lessons from this. Despite dealing with a different challenge each week, the A-Team always remain focused on the end goal.

Become a Master of Disguise:
Hannibal styles himself a “master of disguise“, though his skill lay not so much in how convincing his disguise was, but in his ability to assume any role and convince others that his role is genuine. This applies to the best Project Managers. Project Managers must often play many roles: Negotiator, Mediator, Judge, Juror and sometimes even Executioner.
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Project managers the world over, at some point, end up in conflict with the line managers of team members working on a project. This can be especially true when the resources working on that project are operationally focused.

A project resource could be scheduled to attend a critical workshop when suddenly, there is a production based problem and that person is called away to deal with it. The workshop is suddenly pointless and the project manager is aggravated!

When it comes to a “battle” between a project manager and a line manager, the latter will generally “win” when it comes to identifying where the resource ends up unless he or she is over-ruled from on high – which takes time and energy. The other issue for operational people is that, if they are called on for an operational reason, the chances are something is going wrong and customers are being effected so it will generally take priority anyway.

So how can a project manager plan for this?

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A project sponsor is a prerequisite before embarking on any project in your business. In smaller businesses or projects, the project sponsor can be the project manager or business manager responsible for implementing the piece of work. This would be typically true in smaller consultancies.

Where do I find my project sponsor?

Let us assume that you need a project sponsor for a program of work who is not the PM. Perhaps you are looking at replacing a financial system in your company and a project sponsor needs to be appointed.

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Project planning is something that requires time and focus.  Effective project planning goes along way towards completing a successful project with a positive outcome.

Whether you plan using the infamous gantt chart, write the plan down in a notebook, pop it into a spreadsheet or use a project management tool, the accuracy and detail behind that plan will determine how well you run your project.

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Project issues are inevitable in any project that is undertaken by you or your business. You will have done your best during the project planning phase to mitigate against the risk of project issues, but they will happen.

When they do, you have to decide when to communicate the project issues out to the rest of the project team and/or the customer depending on whether this is something that will affect their view of the delivery.

If you communicate to early i.e. “cry wolf” and the project issue never occurs, then the team may not be as believing the next time an issue happens and you flag it. They certainly won’t be if this happens a number of times.

If you communicate to late then the team and most certainly the customer will ask you why you didn’t let them know if good time to see if the situation could be addressed. The customer is far more likely at this stage to push back very hard if the issue is going to cause a project change that is going to incur cost to them or a delay to the deliverable date.
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