Читать книгу Your mom’s best friend’s project manager! Key skills for a successful career in project management and management - Семён Колосов - Страница 5

Planning for the ideal PM is not just a Gantt chart. First and foremost, for him, it’s a process. A thought process. When planning, he looks at the entire project from analyzing the current situation to the ideal end result. This allows him to assemble a plan of action that will lead to the outcome with the highest probability. That is, to sign up for a plan that is impossible not to execute. Or realize on the shore that you need to change the terms or not do the project. You’ll never hear from the perfect PM, “Why bother planning? Things change so fast” or “There are too many inputs and scenarios, you can’t plan here.” He will consider all aspects of the situation and prioritize scenarios. He will choose the best plan of action and how to work with the plan to adapt when it is implemented.

Evaluation and verification

In a perfect world, the ideal PM is involved in sales, preparing a project estimate and a commercial proposal that leaves no chance to the client. He takes into account all factors related to the project and creates accurate estimates that help in planning and decision making. In the real world, a job estimate can be passed to the PM from sales department, another PM, etc. The project may be new, obscure, or have specific requirements. In such a case, I want the PM to know how to prepare a detailed estimate. Verify the functionality, cost and team, consider the risks and not overpromise. And if there is no experience, could organize the estimate using methodologies or with the help of other team members and experts that allow to make a realistic estimate in different scenarios, highlight assumptions and constraints. I think a 20% deviation from the initial estimate is acceptable, but you still want everything to be perfect. Often novice project managers can’t understand what to estimate because the scope is unclear or there are a lot of inputs. An ideal PM in such a situation fixes the project boundaries himself and describes the constraints. In his evaluation, it is always clear what scope or result is being evaluated, what can affect the evaluation and what needs to be clarified for a more detailed evaluation.

Goal setting

The ideal PM knows that goals need to be real and clear, and then SMART and other tools that help you move organically toward the goal and revise them as needed. Real goals means actually leading to the desired result in the shortest path. I often see aspiring project managers perfectly articulate framework goals, but can’t explain why this is our goal. Or because of insecurity, they make a big list of goals and can’t prioritize them. Especially if the right goal is ambitious and the degree of responsibility rises. An ideal PM doesn’t set goals like “for all good and against all bad” or “because they said so”. He knows how to distinguish fake goals from real ones and communicate this to the team in clear language. Moreover, he tries to make sure that his goals in the project are achieved by all parties: the client, the company and all team members. Therefore, he can organize communication and find an approach to help formulate the goals of each side of the project. Needless to say, this is an agile process and the goals are not carved in stone. Let’s not forget the times we live in.

Planning horizons

As the big goal is broken down into a chain of smaller goals, short-, medium-, and long-term planning emerges. Our handsome PM lives and thrives in these horizons. He effectively does short-term planning based on medium-term plans. Everyone understands the weekly and daily plan and keeps the project plan up to date. He does medium-term planning competently, assessing risks and timelines correctly. Informs the team of key milestones and mid-term project plans. He can plan a long-term project plan. For long-term projects, he uses the “surging wave” method, when the plan for the immediate period is as detailed as possible, and further on it is quite top-level. Even if it is the realization of a new project from scratch and a long-term roadmap is needed. He works out plans without fanaticism. The depth and detail of the plan is always directly proportional to the incomprehensibility and complexity. This skill is a good basis for strategic thinking, which is very useful for career development.

Work Breakdown Structures

The ideal PM breaks down complex project plans into smaller, manageable elements, making it easier to plan, allocate resources, and control tasks. Work Breakdown Structure or WBS is the organization of project tasks and activities in a hierarchy where each larger task is divided into smaller subtasks and activities. This structure provides a clear view of the order in which work is performed and its interrelationships and dependencies. The point is to break the project down into subtasks until a level is reached where each subtask becomes manageable. The ideal PM doesn’t crush the entire project down to the smallest tasks by instruction. He uses the world’s most effective tool – common sense. If the decomposition covers the whole project, has a clear hierarchy and interrelationships are logical and clear to the whole team, then there is no need to go further into detail. As always, everything depends on the team and the complexity of the project. First of all, WBS is done to get clarity of planning. This way, at the start it is possible to notice unobvious risks, actualize the necessary resources and blind spots of the project.

Risk management

The credo of the ideal PM is that risks cannot be eliminated, but they can be managed. He is not afraid of risks. He assesses the probability of risks and the effect of the consequences, prioritizes them and puts their treatment in the plan. In short, he identifies, plans, minimizes or eliminates risks on a project on time. Without giving cognitive distortions a chance. The cooler person is not the one who sees more risks in advance, but the one who sees the most devastating risks he can influence. The greater the ambition, the greater the risks. This has a direct impact on responsibility. That is why it is very important to work with risks in a focused way. Otherwise, you can make up so many ideas that you may not even be able to start the project. Working with risks is one of the foundations of planning. An ideal PM has a lot of experience and knowledge. Therefore, his head is full of cases with the most common risks and strategies for responding to them. If you don’t have enough cases of your own, you can always find those who do. They can suggest new risks and help with the assessment of current ones. The main thing is to soberly add them to the risk matrix and not add fuel to the fire of anxiety. In any communication, the ideal PM always uses the word “risks” along with a suggestion of what can be done about them. Sometimes you need to take a risk, but if the risk works, it is important to have an experience, not a total fiasco and psychological trauma.

Priority management

Priorities are linked to goals and are also subject to change. Priorities are a matter of choice. The ideal PM knows how to make the right choice at each point in time to maximize value. He or she not only knows prioritization techniques, but can describe the logical process of why a particular choice was made and what can change. Working with priorities affects the customer, the team, and task completion. That’s why it’s important to communicate the mechanics of prioritization in advance and transparently communicate why they have changed. So that everyone on the team prioritizes based on team principles or project goals, rather than on a whim. A cool PM knows that the word “priorities” didn’t exist before and if you have to choose one of the three most important priorities, he knows how to consciously do it. With all information and data, the ideal PM uses a visual hierarchy. He places the most important tasks or figures at the top so that everyone always knows what is most important right now.

Strategic thinking

I’m probably nuts, but the ideal PM knows how to live from the future to the present. For him, the word “strategy” is not “understanding where we want to go, what plan and approaches to use” and certainly not a document with a written strategy. It is a process of managing strategic tasks and decisions. It requires an understanding of the place and role of yourself, your company or project in the future. Understanding what should be done now, what decisions should be made in order to have a favorable position and competitive advantage there, in the future. No matter how ideal a PM is, he cannot predict the future and accurately determine the end point. It’s about working with the future on different horizons to understand how it’s changing and what you need to focus on in the here and now. What balance to choose between strategic actions and operational actions. So first the strategic process, then the strategy, and then the planning and approaches that need to change with the changing future. Often aspiring PM confuse planning with strategic process, but not our ideal PM. After all, he always thinks with a sequence of “Why?”, “How?”, “What?”. By the way, with these skills, he can build a personal life strategy. Therefore, he will always grow in all areas faster than others.