PM Network – 6 Rookie Mistakes

"You only get one rookie season.  So, I hate that we lost, but this was one of the best games I’ve ever played in.”
                                                                                                - Chris Paul

I’ve been reading the April issues of PM Network and PM Journal, two key PMI publications available to all PMI members.  I’m going to interrupt my regularly scheduling programming to comment on a couple of articles that I found noteworthy.

The first, “6 Rookie Mistakes,” is by Ashley G. Richardson and is in the April issue of PM Network starting on page 44.  (I’ll cover the other article in a subsequent post.)  PM Network is not exactly the reference for scholarly or deep content, but Richardson identifies a half-dozen truly devastating mistakes that can derail any project.  While she labels her list as rookie mistakes, I don’t believe any of these are limited to rookies, but any PM who makes one of these mistakes should be truly embarrassed.

I’ll tease you with a couple of quotes, but urge you to read the whole article.  “Sometimes managing the team’s personalities can be more challenging than dealing with the tasks – especially if a member unwilling to pull his or her own weight is dragging everyone else down.” (46)  “If your organization lacks a set of standards around risk, seek out others who have done similar projects within the organization or find a more seasoned professional willing to provide guidance.” (48)

The nature of my blog is such that it has been much more focused on the “hard” or “technical” side of PM skills rather than the “soft” skills (something that will eventually transition).  There are a lot of PM bloggers out there who provide good advice on soft skills;  I saw an opportunity to add content where there wasn’t as much commentary.   But the soft skills are generally much more visible, harder to master and weakness is more severely penalized, so every PM needs to master both types of skills.

One thing I would like to know, though I wouldn’t expect to find this in a PM Network article, is how Ms. Richardson arrived at this specific list of six mistakes, especially if there is research backing the importance of these in particular.

I won’t ask you to embarrass yourself by posting a comment of your own rookie mistake, so I’ll instead ask what rookie mistakes you’ve observed and what happened?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Project Change Management – Process Overview

"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.”
                                                                                                - Robert C. Gallagher

Now that we have the confusions and dilemmas of change management behind us, it’s time to drill into the change management process. 

The one thing you can count on to stay the same when running a project is that there will be change.  Yet, the PMBoK (5^th ed, p60) identifies nine knowledge areas and change is not in the name of any.  And change is not in the name of the five process groups.  There is no process that says “Plan Change Management.”  If change is so prevalent, what is the process and where is it documented?

Some examples of change include:
·         We need to complete the project sooner.
·         We need to reduce the project budget.
·         We need to add this feature to the project scope.
·         This person has resigned, but we still need to complete the project.

In fact, there are eight broad areas where change can occur:  Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, HR, Communications, Risk, Procurement and Stakeholders.  This list, no coincidence, corresponds to eight of the PMI knowledge areas (PMBoK 5^th ed, p60).  But there is no “Deal with scope change” or “Handle HR disruption.”

As any practitioner of project management quickly learns, everything is connected to everything else and nothing happens in isolation.  It’s like there’s a seven dimensional pyramid (eight nodes), where there are 28 connections between the nodes.  (This concept also applies in communications management and communications planning related to the project team size.)  This means that if, for example, you need to complete the project sooner, that has a potential impact on all seven of the other knowledge areas that needs to be evaluated (and each impact to one of those has a potential impact on the other seven, etc.).  So, a “Deal with scope change” process cannot be done in isolation from time, cost, quality,….

Thus, we have, in the wisdom and experience of the PMI, the ninth knowledge area:  Project Integration Management with the process Perform Integrated Change Control.  This is the only practical technique for addressing project change – holistically across all areas.  But “perform” omits “plan” and “evaluate.”  It’s still not complete.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll drill deeper into the change process and how it works.

Has it occurred to you before that change management and communication management have this mathematical relationship?  What consequences can you foresee from this?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.