From Designer to Design Manager

Managing Projects

Tiago Varandas

Published in

Masters of Experience

20 min readJan 23, 2017

This paper explores the field of Project Management from the perspective of a variety of sources.

*This essay was originally written as a paper during my masters course at Hyper Island in the Digital Experience Design program, crew one.

Introduction

Firstly I will gather and summarize different definitions of Project Management.

I will highlight some issues that may arise during a project, and how to react to them.

I will explore different models and frameworks, from the most traditional to the most emerging ones.

I will reflect on ethical issues to consider when managing a team.

I will try to clarify practical skills needed for a good Project Manager.

Finally I will share my thoughts reflecting on my exploratory journey during the Master Program of Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island, including project experiences and how could I have improve them based on my learnings from interviews with industry leaders & peers, and academic articles & books.

Background

Project Management (PM) is a subject with several definitions in the Academic field, depending on the Industry and complexity of the project.

Project Management is indeed becoming more and more complex. If before projects were made in one single location within one organization, nowadays we have multiple distributed projects running at the same time in multiple locations.

Globalization of markets and competition necessitate integration of global managerial and business processes in corporations.

This corporate integration is achieved by people working from geographically distributed sites in a given project.

Corporations expect organizational teams to cooperate on an international scale, dealing with business problems with a global impact. ( 1999, Elsevier Science )

With these challenges a Project Manager should empower people, be open and when necessary embrace failure and do it for the team.

In fact, in the 20th century, one of the most popular management themes was teams. The so called “team spirit”.

A bit of background, from the first attitude of simply paying attention to employees as people by Elton Mayo in the 30’s to the most recent days of companies like Google offering free gourmet food, laundry services and workspaces like playgrounds.

But quickly this language of humanistic management in the mouths of efficiency-driven managers were desolate echoes of the real thing — mere empty clichés. ( Steve Denning, 2015 )

By my personal experience when working with Google, I can confirm this feeling. There are nap rooms, for example but we never feel comfortable to use them, because we are aware that we are being paid by our time, and there’s work to be done and a goal to achieve, although the free gourmet food can make a difference for our well-being and consequently to our productivity.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s “team spirit” was not enough, with focus on problem solving, enabling people get on with the work without interruption.

That’s when Project Management gain different definitions being fragmented in several methodologies such as Agile and Scrum, removing impediments and regularly delivering value to customers in the face of mind-boggling complexity.

( Steve Denning, 2015 )

Definitions

‘At its most fundamental, project management is about people getting things done,’ says Dr Martin Barnes, APM President 2003–2012

Project Management is about defining clear goals and objectives, managing expectations within the team, clients, users, stakeholders and ultimately guarantee success.

Ron Rosenhead defines a eight-step process to ensure success:
Define your project, clarify project roles, identify and reduce risks, don’t forget the people, develop a robust project plan, deliver what you say you will deliver, deal with project changes and stop ‘‘project dribble’.

According to Chirlean (2008), project management consists of “facilitating the planning, the scheduling and the control of every activity that has to be done in order to achieve the project’s targets”.

Elearn (2005) defines project definition as the first stage in a project, where the aim is to draw up specifications establishing its size, scope and complexity.

For Crawford et al. (2006), definition is also the first stage in the project lifecycle. Thus, its approval and subsequent development of the plan mark the start of carrying out a project. In the same way, Känkönen (1999) refers to definition as the process prior to making a decision on whether or not to proceed with a project.

Project Management is pretty much about the process, which is believed to be a key factor in the success of a project (Känkönen, 1999)

Project Management is therefore more then set goals, assign people, track progress and celebrate success.

Project management is the process of organizing the way that changes are implemented efficiently within an organization. ( mindtools, 2015 )

Based on these definitions I can conclude it requires an holistic view, by having a big picture of things.

It requires a specific personality of pro-activeness, authenticity, motivation, realism, with objectives, sense of belonging, flexibility, diplomacy, trust, respect, creativity and be able to delegate.

In his more pure form Project Management is simplified in the “Golden” triangle where the scope of a project comes down to time, quality and budget ( APM, 2015 )

The Project Management Triangle ( Source adapted from: APM, 2015 )

Reflection

By my personal experience as a Designer in Interactive Design Studios, the Project Manager became what I like to call an Invisible Friend.

He/She should be a good facilitator. Is present to make sure everything is in progress, on track, and has a more active role when unexpected situations appear.

He/she should be able to manage conflicts and be the “glue” between team and clients.

In my opinion the role of a Project Manager can be eliminated or perhaps distributed amongst one small team.

Nowadays to create a startup we might need just 3 key elements. Someone responsible for Business, other person for Design and other for Development. These 3 persons can assume the role of a Project Manager when working on their MVP ( minimum viable product ).

When the team grows, the need of a person with that specific role of a PM become more essential.

In my experience at Hyper Island when we work as a group with an average of 5 elements, we didn’t created a “PM” role, but we all assumed responsibility for managing the project, although the process went smoother when we had someone responsible for time keeping, or someone more pragmatic making the call to converge in order to move forward with the project.

These characteristics became clear that are part of a Project Manager personality.

It’s a framework and a person that make sure things are moving forward.

Other think I noticed, is that it helps to have the calendar planning on the wall. Make us aware in which stage of the project we are.

Issues & Solutions

There are several issues that can appear during a project, and we should be able to come up with solutions in order to solve them.
The lack of motivation for example can often arise, therefore the PM should define daily or weekly goals to tackle this issue.
Sometimes a stronger or louder voice in the room can hinder and try to manipulate decisions. The PM should make sure that every voice is heard.

Other common issue is the lack of resources. A project might scale up or require certain skills that the current team doesn’t have, and is the PM duty to surround this situation, or by outsourcing certain tasks or by bringing contractors ( freelancers ) to join the team and collaborate.

In my personal experience as a freelancer these has benefits and constrains. In one side, there’s the benefit that the freelancer brings a fresh perspective to the project and possibly new methodologies and new processes.

Although this can be quickly transformed into constrains, where the core team has already a process in practise and is not necessarily receptive to a new one.

Other constrain is understand the culture of the core team. It takes time and effort to catch-up on a different work culture.

The lack of trust is also a common issue. If a team tackle certain task without knowing the reason why, and the thinking behind, that can generate some frustration.

It is the job of the Project Manager to provide clarity and nurture a culture of transparency.

By doing so he/she will win respect from the team, and most likely they will trust the process.

In the first project at Hyper Island we were surprised by the strengths of people but also by their limitations. A solution we adapted in the next projects with new elements in the group, was to share beforehand what our strengths and constrains were, based on the feedback we had received in previous teams, following ‘The Johari window’ (Luft and Ingham). By doing this people were prepared for the behaviour of the team members, avoiding surprises.

Other issue is the constant change of a project.

A project is always evolving dynamically and likewise, project leadership is situational. In a project, the leader is required to have cognitive, social, and emotional intelligence in order to assess the situational and organizational needs and adjust the pace of leadership accordingly (Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 1989).

Reflections

Some major issues that I encountered during a project at Hyper Island was related with communication. When decisions are made without all the elements of the team present, can generate some frustration and consequently hindering the atmosphere within the team.

To avoid this situations is important to setup a strong culture beforehand.

Is the role of a Project Manager to nurture this culture by establishing certain rituals such as Check-ins, energisers, feedback sessions and setup the physical space to be propitious for collaboration.

Also, a poor planning often results in time issues.

Something we learned at Hyper Island was to plan ahead. Drawing a calendar on the wall with the days we had, so we would be aware how much time we could spend in each task.

The calendar would be a framework, and the task written in post-its to be easily swappable in between the days, and adapt to the circunstances when necessary.

Project Management has been fragmented in different models and frameworks. From the most traditional to the most emerging ones.

Which one to use, depends of the type and dimension of the project.

One of the most used conceptual frameworks is Experiential Learning through the Kolb cycle (1984)–concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation where reflection plays a fundamental role.

Agile disrupted the traditional model, so called waterfall.
If the traditional model was based on a hierarchical approach, agile is based on a collaborative one.

According to the Government Service Design Manual an agile project is about creating fast iterations of products based on the feedback of real users.

Agile practices, grew out of a need to manage projects characterized by complexity and uncertainty with responsiveness and adaptability.(Daniel J Fernandez, 2009)

Scrum is part of Agile Methodologies and aligns well with human-centered design and design thinking initiatives.

The so called Scrum master becomes a Facilitator, removing any impediment, coaching without a “Boss” attitude.

By breaking down the project into sprints, helps the team to tackle different tasks.

Agile Project Management doesn’t come just on the execution level, it can also be applied in predevelopment stages of innovation.

Organizations recognize the importance of the predevelopment stages of innovation because it is through these stages that business opportunities are identified, evaluated, and ideas are either fully realized or missed [Cooper (1988)

Koen et al. (2001); Kim and Wilemon (2002); Poskela (2007)].

Cooper [1998] defined the predevelopment stages of innovation as the first three steps within the 7-step process of the new product development:
1- Idea,
2- Preliminary assessment,
3- Concept,
4- Development,
5- Testing,
6- Trial
7- Launch.

The methodologies of modern project management are highly analytical, usually requiring automated tools to support them on large projects.

Models

Let’s review some of the most popular ones:

APF

APF — Adaptive Project Framework
Define project goals, and learn from every stage of the project, improving along the way.

Benefits Realization

Defines success as achieving a desired benefit.

CCPM

Critical Chain Project Management
Creates a chain of tasks and reserve resources for those tasks.

CPM

Critical Path Method
You identify the project’s most essential tasks, and estimate completion dates, dependencies, milestones and deliverables.

ECM

Event Chain Methodology
Helps recognise and plan for potential risks.

Kanban

Produces a slow and steady stream of deliverables through continuous workflow.

Lean

High-value & High-quality work with less manpower, money, and time.

Lean Six Sigma

Lean with Six Sigma’s statistics-based process improvement.
Teams eliminate waste to get things done.

Prism

Projects Integrating Sustainable Methods
Blends project planning with environmental sustainability measure.

Prince 2

Projects in controlled environments
Ensures that every project has business justification.

Process-based PM

Guarantees every project furthers the company’s mission.

XP

Extreme Programming
Features short development cycles, frequent releases, and open communication with stakeholders.

Six Sigma

Focus on quality, reducing defects or bugs.

Waterfall

Breaks projects down into a series of sequential tasks.

Scrum

Emphasises productivity, focus and collaboration.
Teams work in short sprints maximising efficiency.
It’s the team who decides the priorities.
Ideal to deal with newness & Innovation, where time is not so relevant.

1 0 Tips to run a Lean Startup

by Lean Evangelist Kees Van Nunen

1. Make your assumptions explicit
2. Talk to your users
3. Build an MVP
4. Try to structure your experiments well
5. Accept failure
6. Pre-plan your pivot or persevere meeting
7. Always try to use data
8. Keep on asking ‘Why?’ ( 5 why’s )
9. Ask yourself what you need to learn today to be successful tomorrow
10. Focus on acquisition early on

Models & Frameworks

Most of these methodologies are part of the Agile Framework.

According to the Agile Manifesto, it values Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, responding to change over following a plan. ( agilemanifesto.org © 2001 )

We can see some initiatives such as “The team canvas” a tool for leaders, facilitators and consultants to organize team alignment meetings and bring members on the same page, resolving conflicts and building a productive culture, ( http://theteamcanvas.com )

Since we are in exponential grow, Lean methodologies had gain more and more adepts, aware that disrupting innovation might occur in every industry at any moment, and they need to be flexible to react and adapt to new circumstances. Christensen (1997)

Agile adapts to change and trends. Creates a dynamic team with focus on collaboration and flexibility.

Agile is now used in more development organizations than waterfall, and in 2009, 86% of all Agile development was based in Scrum. ( Control Chaos )

The common roles in Scrum are Product Owner, the team and the called Scrum Master.

Scrum Master

3 main questions

What did you do?
Obstacles?
What are you planning to do?

Reflections

When we have a long project that can go to 18 months, lot of things can happen, such as new technologies can come along, new trends, new societal behaviours.

An Agile Process is aware of this change that may occur during a project.

We can easily name a few products that change the concept of what they set out to do initially, such as Instagram who initially was suppose to be a an app to photograph labels of wine bottles, and became purely a photo sharing app, because that was the use people were given to the product. Agile methodologies can deal with these changes.

Looking back to the projects we did at Hyper Island I can say that most of the time we worked in a scrum way.

With student projects to been done in a short period of time it make sense to adopt sprints to move forward with our project.

In all the projects we didn’t had an hierarchy, keeping things very flat, and in the initial conceptual stage of the projects we didn’t had roles.

We only had the need for roles when we were in a more executional phase of the project.

Ethics can be viewed as having four components. Firstly, it is value oriented and primarily concerned with what is most important in life.

Secondly, there is the study of virtues and vices and how one chooses to live his or her life.

Thirdly, there are specific rules that dictate the right or the wrong conduct, and the fourth component consists of autonomy, rights and obligations. ( Helgadóttir, Hildur, 2012 )

Ethical issues may arise even before the projects starts.

Is the briefing that we are about to tackle or the product we are about to design unethical. Not worth it to bring to life from the moral point of view? Not consistent with our values? Is always something we should reflect on, and measure the consequences.

For every project there’s people involved, clients and collaborators, each one with different interests.

It might exists certain information to keep confidential, and is the job of the PM to guarantee this. For that there are template contracts that he might use, such as NDA’s ( Non disclosure agreements ).

Other important ethical issues that might arise are purely related with Human relations and less appropriate behaviours such as lying, corruption, racism, bullying, sexism, manipulation, serving their own interests.

A project manager should act carefully with this situations in a fair way.

PM might deal also with natural Human limitations such as working late hours that might originate burn outs, or when someone have responsibilities of taking care of sick or eldering family members

Everytime there are Human limitations, the PM have this arduous task to find the right balance between the progress of the project and the well-being of people. PM should be aware that agenda pushing might affect budget or quality of the final product, so all the consequences must be measured and evaluated.

Wellbeing in software development teams has been seen as important but not as important as getting the products ready.

The natural question we can make is how people deal with this uncertainty normal on agile methods

Does limiting workload and team empowerment has an impact on performance and stress?

According to a Forrester study they discovered that empowered teams cope better with stress. Finally, no statistical difference was found in stress and empowerment between Scrum and Kanban teams.

Within a Human-Centered Design approach most of the projects nowadays rely on Research and Insights that come out of it.

When this Research is invented, this can put in cause all the credibility of the organization and have serious ethical consequences.

When the product is released into the world is important to give credit to all the people who participated.

Not giving credit can be unethical and even offensive to all the people who put energy on the project.

When working on the MOE Collective, our international crew of Experience Designers working across the globe to create meaning through design, was important to define what kind of clients we would want to work but most importantly the ones we didn’t want to work for ethical reasons.

Here, some companies we refused to work for:

Tobacco Companies, fast Food Companies, Companies involved in violence or discrimination, Oil Companies, all in all evil Companies.

A common issue in the real world is when people have families to feed or houses to pay, and they end up in the position of having to work for projects they don’t believe and go against their values.

It’s important that the PM believes in the project from the ethical point of view, only then he/she would be able to inspire the rest of the team and defend their values.

There are certain practical skills that a person needs to be a good Project Manager.

The most important one is certainly communication. A good PM should frequently ask questions and be a good listener.

Should have a diplomatic behaviour and be able to deal with conflicts, being aware when they are about to arise.

Should be able to schedule, manage meetings and have all the documentation necessary, ready for the meeting.

In these meetings should understand body language of the participants, using his emotional intelligence and be able to facilitate to make sure conversations don’t move away from the main topic.

Emotional intelligence is defined by Salovey and Mayer (1989) as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own, and others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s own thinking and actions.

On the project level, should understand the core of what needs to be done breaking it down as much as possible with clarity and objectivity.

The PM should have a good overview of the status of the project. On the macro, but also on the micro level.

A PM should be realistic about the resources available and don’t over promise.

All in all a common understanding is fundamental.

Be able to understand the desire of a client, but also be able to understand the constraints of their team. Only with this vision, he/she would be able to provide guidance to the project and have a participatory role in workshops & rumbles with the client.

Every project is a run against time. The PM should be able to make a schedule, and prioritize certain tasks when necessary, adapting to different situations and maintain a flexible approach when dealing with different people.

The persistent exertion of the leader role should characterize every project manager” says F. Buşe, Simionescu and Bud (2008). According to them, project managers and their subordinates should exhibit at the same time an attitude of collaboration in order to fix the problems.

Nowadays, luckily we have several tools that make the life/job of a PM much easier.

These are digital tools that strongly improve Communication. Some of these tools are Get flow, invision workflow, what’s app, Slack, Hip Chat, Peak ( Automated Newsfeed for Better Team Performance ) that let people focus on their work while automatically keeping everyone in the loop.

Other popular ones are Trello and Asana for example.

Most recently there’s a trend of agregators of communication channels, by bringing all your communication channels into one place such as meldium & Front.

Sqwiggle can be used for instant video communication where you can see and be seen.

Blossom — Agile Project Management that lets you focus on your work and do Continuous

Delivery with simplicity, Aha.io as a Visual Roadmap and the newish Workflow by InVision, a visual way to manage your design projects without interrupting your design flow.

Now, you can manage your project screens and statuses from one single location, easily see unread comments, get previews of screens without leaving the page, and notify team members when changes to screen status are made.

What all of these tools bring is a possibility to manage projects virtually, making possible to efficiently build remote teams, ideal for global projects, or projects with a considerable high scale.

Reflections

By my experience using Invision for example, what facilitated is the less need of formal meetings. A PM instead of spend time organising status meetings, can now log in on the Invision platform and see what is done and what needs to be done.

The client can also be added to this platform making the project very transparent, collaborative and constructive from all the parts involved.

In my opinion a good PM should be goal oriented and passionate about the project and their team, never forgetting to keep a sense of humor.

When necessary should be able to set roles by empowering team members, making them feel responsible and with ownership over the project.

Should be patient and help people understand their expectations.

It should focus on the goal of the project, but always giving opportunity for people to step up, and express their opinion.

With humility should tackle different tasks to guarantee a good job flow within the team.

Product Manager

What is his role?

Vision & Strategy
Execution & Impact
Communication & Visibility
Honesty & Culture
Ownership

( Michael Siliski, Director, Product Management, Google Play, 2014 )

Based on the knowledge gained from the literature and research there are several ways I could improve previous experiences/processes.

In terms of communication what we can do as an improvement is always leave room for questioning and being an active listener.
Time is precious so we should be concise and ask for confirmation when making decisions. Is important to spot problems but is even more important to identify solutions.

I would create an open culture, that inspires positivity, empowerment, with space for feedback, where “NO” is a no no, and Critics must be constructive.
KPI’s are not always necessary around profit. There are different ways of measure success.
Roles are important, but shouldn’t be so fixed. It’s important to keep flexible and find the right skills that better match with the tasks that need to be done.

Selecting a Project Management methodology can be one of the most difficult parts and can have real impact on the fate of the project.

Normally the Project Managers’ criterion for choosing a methodology for any project is mainly based on an expert’ s opinion, past working experience, government rules and regulations, organisation, senior management, stakeholder’ s preferences and client location. All of these can have positive or negative impact on the underdevelopment projects.

In order to make the most of these established methodologies, a combine, mixed approach is required to get the best possible results.
( Iman Attarzadeh, 2008 )

Conclusion

Like in all creative/innovative projects there’s natural chaos. By learning these frameworks we would be able to not just deal with it, but make the most out of it.

Controlled chaos can certainly be very fruitful.

As a Designer I’m naturally more Doer and maker. By reading more about Project Management I learned that I shouldn’t directly jump in do things myself, instead I should collaborate/hire different doers and be more Manager of a Project.

Focus in “orchestrate” different Doers towards a goal. Make sure they are happy and love the project and embrace the mission in order to inspire other Doers to join the team.

Project Manager is in my humble opinion like a Maestro. By being a Doer Project Manager, I will be able to understand all the constrains and possibilities that tasks require, creating more empathy with the team members and consequently be a better Leader.

I started this paper simply as a Designer, and I finish as a Design Manager.

Thanks Judi ;)

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