Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Communication - the vital project management tool (LS's blog for week 2)
It is often said that 90% of a project manager’s work is in communication. A project manager’s ability to manage his stakeholders in his projects goes a long way in ensuring their success. And communication is the means to effective stakeholder management.
Project managers are not supposed or indeed required to be the end-to-end experts. For instance, they are not required to be the technical specialists in their projects; they are not expected to know the ins and outs of every technical and solution development. They are not the procurement guys, so they would not need to know about the ordering, contracting and the legal stuff. They are not the logistic people to manage the shipment of goods. However project managers are the vital agents that bind these individual parties together in a project through effective communication - by conveying expectations, receiving and giving updates, informing status, promoting and coordinating interraction, finding out problems, advising solutions etc.
While attending the AACE course, and participating in the group workshops and specifically while discussing about the group communication protocol, I was reminded of one of the projects that I participated in some 5 or 6 years back. That was a project I participated in as a junior project manager managing the delivery of a simple solution, as part of a large scale project helmed by a Senior Project Manager. The senior was a highly experienced PM with an impressive track record of successful deliveries coming into that project. However after almost a year, the project ultimately finished with -30% margin, and 3 months late with weekly status meetings attended by highly agitated customers for the final 6 months. The project manager had failed to communicate with firstly the product line that was having problems with a non-mature product, secondly with his engineers who were having difficulties meeting the schedule due to the product line issues and as a consequence to that, he also failed to communicate to the customer about the possibility of a delay. The weekly project update meeting that was mandated in the project plan was only called intermittently and for the rest of the time, the senior was assuming based on his experience that everything was under control. And he also reported his project according to his assumptions. By the time the project manager realized the issues at hand, and activated his mitigation plan, the issue had already snowballed. Subsequently, alternative solutions were sourced at a high cost, and project was finally delivered through with red lights flashing and sirens sounding.
Indeed, the learning for me was: for our AACE project to succeed, we have to get the communications right. I am not only referring to the “how” factor i.e. how to communicate, or the “when” i.e. when to communicate but equally importantly, the “who” factor i.e. who need to communicate, and who need to be communicated to. Because if the right persons who need to communicate are not communicating, and if only the wrong persons are communicating, then those are nothing more than useless opinions and noise. The right persons need to communicate and be communicated to in order to achieve the desired effect. That, by the way, is the reason I’ve chosen to remain quiet through the whole quandary we are having at the moment with the group. I realize if I were to add my share of opinions and suggestions to the already confused and uncertain state that we are in, I would only be adding more confusion to the mix. I believe the right persons with the decision-making power, i.e. the program & project leads who are in the position to steer the group forward should be the ones to dictate communication (and if necessary bring the rest of us into a controlled discussion).
With the above described impression still fresh in my mind, I have tried to do things differently in my work:
1. I stayed back in Jakarta and conducted an assessment/audit on the top projects conducted by my organization there. And I paid particular attention to the communication plans/ communication channels from the projects- how the PMs are communicating to their internal and external stakeholders. And how effectively they are keeping their stakeholders updated on their projects.
2. I activated a “dormant” KPI on our sub-regional PMO that requires them to track, measure and ensure that PMs provide regular updates on their projects toward the management. Measures implemented were tangible, measurable, and tied to incentives (and penalties).
3. I pushed for the implementation of the process that requires effective communication between the sales and delivery communities so that both are on the same page as far as the project is concerned. This is vital to ensure that what’s sold is doable, and is consistent with what ultimately gets delivered at the end.
4. In the latest round of project reviews which I usually conduct on a regular cycle, I paid attention to how PMs communicate with their technical leads, commercials, logistics, customers and suppliers.
Project managers are not supposed or indeed required to be the end-to-end experts. For instance, they are not required to be the technical specialists in their projects; they are not expected to know the ins and outs of every technical and solution development. They are not the procurement guys, so they would not need to know about the ordering, contracting and the legal stuff. They are not the logistic people to manage the shipment of goods. However project managers are the vital agents that bind these individual parties together in a project through effective communication - by conveying expectations, receiving and giving updates, informing status, promoting and coordinating interraction, finding out problems, advising solutions etc.
While attending the AACE course, and participating in the group workshops and specifically while discussing about the group communication protocol, I was reminded of one of the projects that I participated in some 5 or 6 years back. That was a project I participated in as a junior project manager managing the delivery of a simple solution, as part of a large scale project helmed by a Senior Project Manager. The senior was a highly experienced PM with an impressive track record of successful deliveries coming into that project. However after almost a year, the project ultimately finished with -30% margin, and 3 months late with weekly status meetings attended by highly agitated customers for the final 6 months. The project manager had failed to communicate with firstly the product line that was having problems with a non-mature product, secondly with his engineers who were having difficulties meeting the schedule due to the product line issues and as a consequence to that, he also failed to communicate to the customer about the possibility of a delay. The weekly project update meeting that was mandated in the project plan was only called intermittently and for the rest of the time, the senior was assuming based on his experience that everything was under control. And he also reported his project according to his assumptions. By the time the project manager realized the issues at hand, and activated his mitigation plan, the issue had already snowballed. Subsequently, alternative solutions were sourced at a high cost, and project was finally delivered through with red lights flashing and sirens sounding.
Indeed, the learning for me was: for our AACE project to succeed, we have to get the communications right. I am not only referring to the “how” factor i.e. how to communicate, or the “when” i.e. when to communicate but equally importantly, the “who” factor i.e. who need to communicate, and who need to be communicated to. Because if the right persons who need to communicate are not communicating, and if only the wrong persons are communicating, then those are nothing more than useless opinions and noise. The right persons need to communicate and be communicated to in order to achieve the desired effect. That, by the way, is the reason I’ve chosen to remain quiet through the whole quandary we are having at the moment with the group. I realize if I were to add my share of opinions and suggestions to the already confused and uncertain state that we are in, I would only be adding more confusion to the mix. I believe the right persons with the decision-making power, i.e. the program & project leads who are in the position to steer the group forward should be the ones to dictate communication (and if necessary bring the rest of us into a controlled discussion).
With the above described impression still fresh in my mind, I have tried to do things differently in my work:
1. I stayed back in Jakarta and conducted an assessment/audit on the top projects conducted by my organization there. And I paid particular attention to the communication plans/ communication channels from the projects- how the PMs are communicating to their internal and external stakeholders. And how effectively they are keeping their stakeholders updated on their projects.
2. I activated a “dormant” KPI on our sub-regional PMO that requires them to track, measure and ensure that PMs provide regular updates on their projects toward the management. Measures implemented were tangible, measurable, and tied to incentives (and penalties).
3. I pushed for the implementation of the process that requires effective communication between the sales and delivery communities so that both are on the same page as far as the project is concerned. This is vital to ensure that what’s sold is doable, and is consistent with what ultimately gets delivered at the end.
4. In the latest round of project reviews which I usually conduct on a regular cycle, I paid attention to how PMs communicate with their technical leads, commercials, logistics, customers and suppliers.
Labels: LingShen
# posted by Ling Shen @ 10/14/2009 09:29:00 PM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
Post a Comment
Thank you very much for your comment, we will try to reply your comment as soon as possible.