Day 98 — PM series 4/5: “Project Management”
For the past 3 days, we talked in quite amount about different perspectives of product management: Strategy, Marketing, Outcomes, and Metrics. All these aspects are important, but in order to fully realize the result, we’ll need to find ways to carefully execute the plan.
This is a 5-part series of my work experience/knowledge about product management, please check out the rest of the series:
In today’s article, let’s talk about “Project Management”, in the following structure:
- Why we need project management
- Common project management frameworks
- Managing many small projects v.s large & complex project
Why we need project management
Have you ever try things like losing/gaining weight, or make yourself sleep early everyday, or quit things like coffee or sweets, or go to gym everyday? It wasn’t always easy, is it? You might have researched on how to developing a new habit for new year resolution, you’ve probably heard of the common technique of “starting a diary” to help develop new habit. But heck, even starting a diary itself is developing a new habit, and it’s hard!
It’s not always easy to get from point A to point B, even when it’s just by ourselves with no one else involved; Simply monitoring our own progress is not easy already; imagine putting a bunch of people in a team, ask them to do the best they can for 6 months; how do we manage that? When we can’t even go to gym every 2 days for 2 months? Don’t worry, this article is about sharing skills and techniques on project management.
Getting things done might not be hard, but getting thing done fast, cheap, and well surely is not easy. If you’ve been following this #DailyAgileUX series, you’re probably familiar with the famous Project Iron Triangle :
Therefore, in order to maximize the result with limited risk, economical effort, and sustainable team morale, we’ll need to equip ourselves with all the project management skills we can get.
Common project management frameworks
Every project manager has their own style, but there are common elements for project management that needs to be taken care of. Whether it’s classical way to do it or more modern way to manage projects, some of the frameworks helps us identify things we need to do and assign proper resource. Let’s take a look at some of these famous frameworks:
PMBoK
If you’re a PMBoK certified project manager, you’re probably familiar with the framework below:
Most of the focal area in the figure below should be pretty straight forward and easy to understand, so I’m just going to expand to the areas that I was frequently asked about:
- Procurement: If your project require external resource/ purchasing (e.g. hiring a contractor), you’ll need to plan for the procurement process, because it takes time and involve other department in the organization.
- Risk: There are several types of common risk that need to be evaluate up front and come up with detailed plan to monitor and contain. For more details, check out my past article about Risk Management
- Integration: Project managers need to focus on not only the core product itself, but the ecosystem in order to plan for integration with other system or team.
PMBoK contains in-depth knowledge for PMs to learn from, and is known as a project-manager driven process; hence there’s some criticism around it’s not really a collaborative team focus type of framework, but merely focusing on PMs’ point of view.
PRINCE2
Another famous framework in the project management world is from PRINCE2, which is as the figure below:
Similar to PMBoK, PRINCE2 also divides different focal area (themes) for project managers to focus on. Though PRINCE 2 has the layer of principles, which are:
- Continued Business Justification.
- Learn from Experience.
- Defined Roles and Responsibilities.
- Manage by Stages.
- Manage by Exception.
- Focus on Products.
- Tailor to Suit the Project.
The benefit of adopting PRINCE2 is that it’s structure is more closely mapping to organizational structure, and the goal is for project manager to both see the project from senior management’s view, also get support from them.
SCRUM
Unlike PMBoK and PRINCE2, Scrum is a software product focused principle which separate the traditional PM’s work into two roles: Product Owner and Scrum Master (some might argue also Tech Lead). Let’s take a look at the responsibility of these roles:
As the figure below, Product Owner (PO) represent customer & business, and Scrum Master is a facilitator to help dev team (and sometimes UX) to self-manage those request from PO. However, Scrum Master doesn’t have the responsibility of product success or not; their main responsibility is to make sure the team get the support and running the right process. On the other hand, PO doesn’t have to worry about how the team is governed, but he’s responsible for the product success.
The benefit of SCRUM or other Agile frameworks, compared to traditional project management like PMBoK or PRINCE2, is that Agile way encourage the whole team to take ownership, and with the diversity of voice it allows teams to decide better. However, the benefit doesn’t come without a cost. The common problem with Agile frameworks is it’s not easy to apply to solving large and complex problems, and if the team is not very devoted or intelligent, it can easily break down.
Managing many small projects v.s large & complex project
Projects come with all sizes and shapes, and sometimes they don’t come alone. As a product manager, how do we handle multiple projects? What if the project is large and complex? Below is some experience and knowledge I can share:
Managing multiple small projects
When your attention is divided, it might be hard for you to always remember what’s happening and what need to be done. Personally I have a lot of experience in this field, and I developed some principles and techniques that I can share:
- Build trust first: It’s important to have some “trust saving in the bank” when you are in a situation that “somebody might be disappointed”. If you have trust with your counterpart, it’s easier to reasoning with them and explain what situation you’re in (when you cannot accept their request, or match their expectations).
- Negotiate: By building trust, you can get to understand the underlying reason for the request, and find a win-win situation for both side; you can push back either scope or timeline in order for quality delivery, or you can provide quick support but be clear about the limited resource and the risk of not thoughtful delivery. President Eisenhower was quoted, “The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” Whether you agree with it or not, since we’re not dealing with war or live and death situations, most of the important decision can be and should be thoughtful and can wait.
- Finding minimal but meaningful delivery: When your resource is tight and you’re obligated to delivery many things at once, the best you can do is to provide limited support to get the momentum going by identifying the minimal but meaningful delivery. Since you don’t have much resource so to iterate on solutions, it’s important to be crystal clear about what needs to be deliver with laser sharp focus. Spend enough time with stakeholders to make sure everyone agrees on a detailed plan. Ultimately, once you have something for them, the goal is still to find ways to go back to the negotiation table to change the situation.
- Flexible resource planning: By having a clear resource competency and aptitude matrix at hand, you can more easily adjust the resource allocation to ensure each project are properly allocated with limited amount of time. Also, the resourcing plan should be fluid so that team members can support each other based on the urgency of project needs.
- Learn when & how to say no: If you want to negotiate, you’ll need to know where the line you need to hold is. Understanding what your bottom line is will help you make better decision to reject unreasonable requests. Also, the better way is not to express an all-or-nothing message, try to find creative way to achieve some level of win-win. For example, if you can’t take on a new project now, can you ask them to come back in a month? Or can you just give them some quick advice instead of actual support? Tactics like these help maintain a good long-term relationship.
Managing large & complex projects
- Pre-planning: Have a series of conversation with stakeholders to understand the success/failure criteria. Most of the time, even a talented team can fail, because they are shooting for the wrong target. By clearly define what needs to be achieved and get agreement on scope & timeline upfront, you can ensure you project is set up for success. It’s also important to note that “stakeholder” means “anyone who has a stake in it.” Therefore, partners like tech team, legal & compliance, are also your stakeholders, and need to be consulted in the pre-planning stage.
- Prioritization: Always think about what’s the most important thing to take on first. For prioritization, there are many easy-to-adopt prioritization tools you can pick up; for example, 1) MosCoW, 2) Value vs. Complexity, and 3) KANO model.
- Risk management: Have a clear plan of risk management by identifying potential risks, grade them by probability and severity, and come up with principle solutions, and assign proper resource for it. To learn more, check out my past article about Risk Management.
- Stakeholder management: This is probably one of the hardest part in managing LCP (large & complex project). Given the large scope, there are many people you have to care/help/watch, and they might come in and out of the projects without your notice. Therefore, having a good framework to proactively manage stakeholders could be a make-or-break point of the project. To learn more, check out my past article about stakeholder management.
- Influence by practicing reciprocity: Some people call this “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” or “give-give-give, and take”. By offering something to your counterpart, it’s easier to ask for return. If you can figure out what’s important to them and not hard for you to help, provide those support, and save those small favors for later.
Conclusion
- Except for focusing on where we want to go (product management), how we get there (project management) is equally important.
- General frameworks like PMBoK, PRINCE2, or SCRUM give us a idea of where we should focus our effort, however using it wisely so that we don’t put the cart before the horse.
- When managing multiple project or large & complex project, carefully identify risk, and maintain flexibility on resource and scope is the key to success.
Do you have any experience in managing multiple projects or large and complex project? I’m eager to learn from you.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.
