Program Manager Certification – 201/203 · 2014-10-27 · Certification Webpage . How the Program Works. You read a textbook, watch online lectures and videos and then practice

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Quick Links

201 - Managing Multiple Projects Course

203 - Presentation Training Course

201-203 Certification Webpage

How the Program Works

You read a textbook, watch online lectures and videos and then practice all the steps in managing a portfolio of projects and giving presentations to executives and project stakeholders. This “learn by doing” approach lets you become confident in your skills. - Course #201 teaches you the technical skills for managing multiple projects as well as the political skills required to work with senior executives. -Course #203 adds advanced communication/presentation skills and techniques for more persuasive presentations to executives, project managers, team members and other stakeholders. You have the option of giving presentations in live online video meetings with your instructor. They will send you a video of each presentation with their comments and suggestions for improving your program management and your presentation skills.

Work Individually with Your Instructor You will work one-to-one with your PMP-certified instructor by telephone, e-mail and online video conferences. You may begin a course whenever you wish and study from anywhere in the world. You set your own pace and schedule and you may take up to one year from enrollment to complete each course. Your instructor also provides one year of on-going support and advice as you apply what you learned to your work.

Instructor-led Online Training from Anywhere in the World

201-203- PROGRAM MANAGER CERTIFICATION

4PM.com3547 S. Ivanhoe St. Denver, CO 80237 303-596-0000www.4pm.com

“Learn By Doing” – Experienced Project Professionals Advance to the Next Level

You will master the best practice techniques for controlling a portfolio of projects and multi-project programs. You will learn the interpersonal and psychological techniques required to assess the executives with whom you work and then

tailor your individual and group communications to persuade and influence the management team. You’ll design solutions to problems and practice communicating with and persuading executives to implement your ideas. You may make live online presentations to your instructor and get feedback and coaching.

Main Page

http://4pm.com/program-manager-certification/

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Quick Links

Course Summary

Detailed Syllabus

Lecture Sample

Textbook Sample

Course Webpage

How the Training Works In a project case study, you will:

Analyze an organization’s portfolio of projects Persuade executives to support your improvement plan Present recommendations for addressing performance problems Present a risk management strategy for executive approval Assess the PMs’ skills, design a work assignment & reward system Analyze the portfolio, recommend priorities and resource allocation.

You can practice your communication, presentation and persuasion skills by giving presentations in live online video meetings with your instructor, just the two of you. Your instructor will send you a video of each presentation with their comments and suggestions for improving your project management and your presentation skills.

Work Individually with Your Instructor Through the entire Managing Multiple Projects course, you will work individually with your PMP-certified instructor by telephone, e-mail and in live online video conferences.

You may begin the course whenever you wish and study from anywhere in the world. You set your own pace and schedule and you may take up to one year from enrollment to complete the course. Your instructor also provides one year of on-going support and advice as you apply what you learned to your projects at work.


201 MANAGING MULTIPLE PROJECTS

4PM.com3547 S. Ivanhoe St. Denver, CO 80237 United States 303-596-0000www.4pm.com

“Learn By Doing” - Managing Multiple Projects with Individual Online Instruction

You will learn techniques for managing multiple projects and their project managers in reading and online lectures. Then you design solutions to problems and practice communicating and persuading executives to implement your ideas. You have the option of making live online presentations to your instructor and getting feedback and coaching. You improve your skills for managing multiple projects and gain confidence in your ability to communicate with executives, give professional presentations and think on your feet to answer questions.

Main Page

http://4pm.com/program-manager-certification/managing-multiple-projects-201/

http://4pm.com/managing-multiple-projects-lecture-sample-4pm-com/

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SKILLSSPROCESSES

You study whenever you want.

Your instructor is available by

phone, e-mail or video

conference if you have questions

about using a tool or technique.

They give you written and video

feedback on all your

assignments. You may practice

every technique in live, online

meetings. Your instructor plays

the role of the organization

executives and asks you

challenging questions.

Each session is filmed and you

receive a video of your

presentation so you can review

your instructor’s comments

about your body language, eye

contact, gestures, use of visual

aids, etc. You will achieve

marked improvement in your PM

and communication skills.

Your instructor provides 1 year

of on-going coaching & advice.

PERSONAL INSTRUCTION SPECIFICATIONS

For Experienced PMs

60 Hours of Work

Use a PC, Mac or iPad

Study When You Want

Study From Anywhere

Take up to 1 Year

PMI Registered Education Provider

#1147

Earns 60 PDUs/Contact Hours

Master the Skills to:

Analyze Project Processes

Design Improvement Strategy

Address Performance Problems

Estimate and Manage Risks

Build a Work & Reward System

Allocate Scarce Resources

Re-priorit ize Projects

Persuade Executives

Give Persuasive Presentations

Answer Questions Effectively

4PM.com

3547 S. Ivanhoe St.

Denver, CO 80237

303-596-0000www.4pm.com

MULTIPLE PROJECT SKILLS

PRPRACTICESKILLS

Practice managing multiple projects

and project managers, making

presentations to executives and gaining

approval of your recommendations

PRACTICE EVERY TECHNIQUE

You will work on a portfolio of projects in a case study and practice every tool and technique. You will learn to control a portfolio of projects; allocating resources, setting priorities and making adjustments to reflect changing business circumstances. You will master the political and consensus-building techniques necessary to gain and maintain executives’ support. You will design your meeting agendas, documents, speaking styles and the speeches you will use to persuade executives of your point of view and build support and consensus. With this process, you not only improve your portfolio management skills but you gain confidence in your ability to give presentations and think on your feet.

ENHANCE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Effective communication is a key skill for every successful project manager. If your presentations are not persuasive and professionally delivered, your credibility as a project manager suffers. If you wish, you may practice your delivery in live online conferences with your instructor. They will interrupt your presentations to challenge your data, plans and recommendations, just like executives do. Your instructor films these meetings and gives written feedback and coaching.

Main Page

© 2011 The Hampton Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without written permissions

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Welcome to Program & Portfolio

Management

Contents 1 - Critique of a Failing Program & Organization ........................... 4

2 - Portfolio Management .......................................................... 8

3 – Strategic Design & Positioning ............................................ 12

4 – Forecasting, Estimating and Managing Risk ........................... 18

5 – Managing PMs, Teams and the PMO ..................................... 22

6 – Portfolio Tracking & Trade-offs ............................................ 26


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Program and Portfolio Management Course Syllabus

You should have received the following materials:

Program & Portfolio Management e-book by Dick Billows, PMP

Course syllabus as a PDF file

Course Template as an Excel file

Password, user name and link to the online course

You will also need the following for the course:

Web video camera (use the camera on your PC or buy an inexpensive USB camera at your local office supply store)

Excel and PowerPoint software

Course Overview:

Program and Portfolio Management is an advanced course designed for experienced project and program professionals who are responsible for larger, complex programs and portfolios of projects for clients or their organizations. You will build on your existing skills, adding sophisticated techniques for conceiving and positioning programs and portfolios with executives.

You will master and practice the techniques for making professional presentations and handling question and answer sessions from executives. In four private role-playing sessions with your instructor, you will deliver presentations for persuading executives to adopt your recommendations and then answer their questions.

You will also learn skills for managing project managers, including a best practices project methodology that your subordinate project managers should use which will yield the information you need to manage a portfolio of project efforts. You will add skills for developing a high performance team culture despite crossing functional and organizational boundaries as well as techniques for work estimating and quantifying risks for the user/client executives.

Process in Each Course Module: 1. Complete the assigned reading for the module


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2. Watch the lecture video available online 24/7

3. Ask your instructor any questions you have via e-mail or phone

4. Complete the assignment as described in the syllabus and e-mail it to your instructor for feedback

5. Schedule the online, real-time role-playing meetings with your instructor (when applicable)

6. Get written feedback from your instructor within 24 hours.

Grading Criteria: You must complete all assignments and each of the four presentations with a “B” grade or better to pass the course. Your instructor will ask you to redo any assignment that does not meet that standard and will not grade new assignments until you have fixed all earlier assignments.


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1 - Critique of a Failing Program & Organization

1.1. Read chapter 1 in the Program and Portfolio Management e-book.

1.2. Watch lecture #1 “Critique of a Failing Program” on the course website.

1.3. Read case study #1 “A Failing Six-State Expansion Program” below.

1.4. Go to the course website and:

1.4.1. Review the Vailcrest organization chart on the top menu.

1.4.2. Review the Microsoft Project Schedule for the “6-State Expansion Project” on the Module #1 web page.

1.4.3. Watch the video “Meet the Executives” on the Module #1 web page.

1.5. Using the course template, we sent you with your syllabus and passwords, complete tab 1 for the assessment of the program, applying the techniques learned in the reading and lectures. You will:

1.5.1. Assess the program plan

1.5.2. Assess the program schedule

1.5.3. Make suggestions for saving the 6-state expansion program

1.5.4. Identify problems in the organization’s project management processes and make suggestions for improvement.

1.5.5. Send the template to your instructor for feedback.

Case Study #1 - A Failing Six-State Expansion Program

You smiled to yourself as you jostled forward toward the gondola that would take you 11,000 feet above Vail, Colorado. Very few people rode to program manager job interviews in a ski gondola. You fought your way through the jostling crowd of Christmas skiers at the base of the Vail ski run all in brightly colored ski clothes, their breath white with the cold.

The executive recruiter had warned you not to arrive at the Vailcrest corporate headquarters in formal business attire. The recruiter said ski clothes or a casual outfit would fit in with the executives who would interview you for the program manager position. As you pushed onto the cable car, you dodged the skis and poles carried by the other passengers and leaned back against one of the windows to enjoy the view.

Vailcrest Corporation was a wildly successful resort, and the sports medicine business was now expanding from its headquarters in Vail Colorado to other


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states with plans to grow into a multinational organization. The executive recruiter explained that poor project management was holding Vailcrest back. That's why they were looking for someone to come in and tighten things up.

The cable car began to sway in the wind as you got further from the base station and you grabbed the rail in alarm. However, none of the other passengers seemed the least bit concerned so you turned to look at the magnificent view of multimillion-dollar homes, hotels and condominiums that filled the snow-covered Vail Valley. Getting this job would be a major step up toward a senior executive position. The recruiter was clear; success on a couple of major programs would lead to a vice president’s position managing the portfolio of all Vailcrest’s projects. You were looking forward to meeting with Dan Morton, the President of Vailcrest.

You walked up the snow-covered paths from the gondola station toward the white stone headquarters of Vailcrest Corporation. The air was thin, not a surprise at 11,200 feet above sea level, and you found yourself a bit out of breath. When you got to the main entrance, a security guard had your name and directed you down a corridor into a small waiting room with a spectacular view of snow-covered mountains that reached at least 50 miles in either direction.

A voice behind you said, "Hello, I'm Joanne Summers, Dan Morton’s executive assistant."

You turned to see a blonde woman at least 6'3" tall with a deep tan and an athlete’s figure. She smiled and said, "Dan's out on his early-morning ski run and he asked me to give you some background. During your interview, he wants to discuss what you think we can do to improve our project and program performance, which has not been good. He wanted you to review this program plan and schedule for our six-state expansion," she said holding up the schedule, "and meet our executive staff. Dan's not only interested in the big picture; he also wants to know if our people are doing a good job of scheduling projects, utilizing their resources efficiently and maintaining control.” She handed you the 3-inch notebook and said, “Here is the plan for the six-state expansion.”

You took the thick notebook and nodded your thanks. Then you said, “My Project Office genius, Reno Hightower, will be getting into town this morning. Could you possibly set him up to talk with the project managers and some line managers in the organization?"

Joanne said, "Dan told me you might want that arranged. I will take care of it." With that, she smiled, led you to an empty office and walked off. You opened the notebook and began to read.

________________________________

Six-State Expansion Program Plan

Executive Summary


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We will increase revenues by expanding to six new “top tier” ski resort locations where we will provide our unmatched Vailcrest spa, restaurant and lodging services to a larger audience. In addition to the construction activities in the six new locations, the program will include a new website where customers can book reservations directly, mass mailing and Internet, radio and mail advertising campaigns and major improvements in the quality of service in our lodging, restaurant and spa services in all locations including Vail. Our services will become truly world class and delight our customers.

Activities/Functionalities:

1. Construct facilities with our signature European flavor and elegant continental touches.

2. Launch a website where customers can make reservations for all services in any Vailcrest resort quickly and efficiently.

3. Improve reliability in lodging, restaurant and spa services where the customer is never inconvenienced or forced to wait.

4. Initiate a recognition program to measure and get agents excited about their performance.

5. Introduce two types of surveys; one to research customer needs/wants and one to measure our performance and customer satisfaction.

Project Structure and Authority

The program manager shall have the authority to:

Select/remove/assign work directly to all team members at or below manager level regardless of the department from which they come.

Approve/veto the use of outside consultants by any stakeholder, team member or sub-group.

Enforce the recommendations of the customer service survey in all affected departments.

Despite problems in the past, the organization has adopted more of a matrix management style and utilizing resources across functional lines should prove much easier on this project than on previous ones (see risk factors).

Risk Factors

The project faces a number of serious risks. First, our competitors may respond vigorously to our six state expansion. They certainly will increase their advertising in the six markets we are entering as well as offer price promotions. Their exact competitive response is something we cannot anticipate but it could undermine our own marketing activities and prevent our revenue increase. As a result, we are planning massive mail, radio and web advertising campaigns.


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Second, our organization has a history of poor cooperation between departments, which has caused many projects to fail. Promises of cooperation have proven to be worthless in the past. This program requires a significant incentive bonus pool under the program manager’s control to encourage high levels of performance and cooperation from the departments and project team members.

The third risk comes from our historically poor ability to automate our management information. With six new locations, the need for accurate performance data becomes critical. If we fail in this regard, the project will probably fail as well.

Scope & Assumptions

Two key assumptions control the success of this project. First, we are assuming, and our market data supports, that there is sufficient demand to support new resort facilities in our six target locations. Second, the demand for premium, high quality lodging, spa and restaurant facilities will continue to grow worldwide.

Reward Process

The project team members and project managers working on the program are eligible for an incentive reward upon the successful attainment of the goals. They will share equally in one half of the performance reward fund (or .75% of the overall project budget). To reward outstanding achievement, the program manager will use the other half of the reward fund for spot bonuses. The program manager will determine the recipients, amounts and timing of these distributions that will not be announced publicly but kept as a secret bonus plan to avoid conflict.


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2 - Portfolio Management 1. Read Chapter 6 in the Program and Portfolio Management e-book.

2. Go to the course website for Lecture #2:

2.1. Watch lecture #2 “Bringing the Portfolio Under Control” on the Module #2 web page. You may also watch the optional movie on using MS Project to control a portfolio but it is not required.

2.2. Watch the video of the executives from Module #1 a second time to remind yourself of the portfolio management issues.

3. Read the case study “International Expansion: Corralling a Project Portfolio” below.

4. Read the confidential report prepared by your Project Office guru, Reno Hightower for additional background.

5. Prepare recommendations for improving the project processes at Vailcrest on Tab 2 in your course Excel template and send these recommendations to your instructor for feedback.

6. After receiving your feedback, prepare a PowerPoint presentation with an overview of the changes you recommend for how Vailcrest should initiate, plan, track and prioritize projects and include your preferred time for a live presentation over the web.

7. Reach agreement with your instructor on the date and time for the role-playing live web meeting. Using your PowerPoint slides, you will make a presentation to the Vailcrest executives (role-played by your instructor). Detail your recommended project process changes and priorities for the organization. You will also answer their questions live and deal with their objections. The goal is to secure a consensus on the improved project process changes and project priorities and agree on implementation.

International Expansion: Corralling a Project Portfolio

On the Friday of your first week at Vailcrest, you flopped onto your bed, too tired to even eat and fell asleep with your shoes on. The phone rang at 10:30 PM, rousing you from a sound sleep. You answered and heard a familiar voice.

Dan Morton said, “I just read your report and I am stunned that so many of our projects are headed down the crapper. Nothing is getting done on time. I know I told you to avoid conflict with the VPs but we need to get these projects done to survive. I just called all the VPs and told them to be in my office at 7:00 am tomorrow. I want you to show them where we are and where we are headed on all the projects. Then lay out how we should manage projects and which projects have to be cut. I want a survival strategy. Try and be persuasive; I don’t want any tantrums but we need to clean up our act.”


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You dragged yourself out of bed and fired up your PC. Best to get the PowerPoint presentation done tonight. The VPs were going to be a hostile audience but none of them knew how bad things were when you looked at the consolidated portfolio of all the projects.


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Confidential Report from Reno Hightower To: Boss

From: Reno Hightower

Subject: Conversations with line managers and project managers

I completed the assignment you gave me about talking to the project managers and the first and second level supervisors and trying to get a handle on how they do projects here at Vailcrest. In sum, this is the project management nightmare.

Everybody and their uncle can start a project whenever they want, and they do. Trying to borrow resources from other departments is impossible because they always get pulled off to work on new projects that have just been started in their home division. Martha and Horst are equally bad starting a project on a whim and setting impossible due dates. Everything is priority #1 for about a week before a new number one priority comes along with a high level executive frantic to get it done immediately.

But I looked into a couple of these number one priority projects, I found out that people worked on for about a week until the heat was off and then worked on something else and forgot about them if they didn't hear from the executive again. There are dozens of projects with a few hundred hours spent on them just laying idle now with no one paying any attention to them.

Dan Morton is better than the vice presidents only because he's friendlier and a bit more of a motivator. But he also starts projects on a whim, gets everybody excited about him and then forgets about them as he goes on to the next whim.

Linda is a little bit better than the rest of them in that she'll spend some time planning projects and take some responsibility for defining the scope. The others immediately delegate any kind of planning to administrative assistants who really don't understand what the top-level executives want. There are also no project plans or work estimates; all these people have are completion dates. So the project managers back into the due date for each task assignment to meet the executive’s completion date. The team members know before they start work that the dates are impossible to meet.

It's going to take me months to get estimates of the hours worth of work on all these projects and figure out which ones are actually going forward. People are terrified to tell any of the vice presidents that they aren't working on their number one priority from last month.


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My guess is these people have the resources to finish about half the projects they start. Because so much resource is wasted, they actually complete maybe one in four projects. Since they never define the scope, the executives change their mind about what they want every few days, which just adds more and more work to the project. No one would let me quote them directly, but on most projects they wait until about a month before the completion date and then decide what kind of crap they can put together by the due date.

In case you haven't gotten my drift, this is not a pretty picture.


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3 – Strategic Design & Positioning

1. Read chapter 2 in the Program and Portfolio Management e-book.

2. Watch lecture #3 “Strategic Program Design and Positioning” on the course website.

3. Read the case study “International Expansion Program Part 1” below.

4. Watch the video in Module #3 on the course website of the “Individual Meetings with the Vailcrest Executives” with their comments on the international expansion.

5. Assessment & program design:

5.1. Using the course template tab #3, prepare an assessment of each of the decision-makers and their buying perceptions and performance pressures.

5.2. Assess their political position and hot button issues using the videos of each executive and enter the assessment in the template.

5.3. Using the case study requirements information, complete a high level design for the customer service improvement program in the achievement echelons

5.4. Conceive one or more program measures of success. Then map the supporting projects into your achievement network. Each entry should be a measured business result (a deliverable) not an activity. Send this first part of the assignment to your instructor for feedback.

6. After receiving feedback, prepare a PowerPoint Presentation for persuading the executives to support your program design and send it to your instructor for feedback.

7. After you receive your feedback from your instructor, schedule a live meeting to present your program plan to the Vailcrest executives.

International Expansion Program Part 1

Two months later, you walked into your office at Vailcrest, enjoying the spectacular view of snow-covered peaks. You’d made important progress on the 6 State Expansion Project and in controlling the initiation of projects despite the executive group’s resistance to having a program manager.

However, as the 6-state effort neared completion, Dan Morton resumed his push for the international expansion program, talking about the “once in a lifetime opportunity” for Vailcrest. The chance to work on an international


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expansion program was exciting and even offered some great travel to the new sites. Dan talked about the overseas locations for the new Vailcrest resorts in: Cortina (Italy), Chamonix-Mont-Blanc (France), Zermatt (Switzerland), Kitzbuhel (Austria) and Whistler Blackcomb (Canada). All of them lacked, in Dan and Linda’s minds, facilities that could match a Vailcrest resort. Dan wanted a plan for the overseas expansion and he wanted it in time for tomorrow’s executive staff meeting.

As you sat down at your desk, you noticed an opened newspaper spread over the desktop. There was an article titled, “After Big Expansion, Vailcrest’s Service Stinks” circled in yellow. The article was about Vailcrest and some of the quotes the reporter had gathered from unhappy Vailcrest customers were highlighted in yellow:

“I was on hold for 38 minutes.”

“They referred me to three different people and none of them could solve my reservation problem…then the last one just hung up.”

“Finally, someone said they understood my problem and they’d do some research and get back to me. That was three weeks ago and I still haven’t heard back from them.”

“Their therapists missed three appoints with me. I’m never going back.”

At the bottom in the same yellow marker was the command, "Forget the international program…we can’t manage the business we have now. Call me ASAP---Dan”

As you dialed Dan Morton's extension, you thought about how devastating publicity like that could be to a resort like Vailcrest. No wonder he wanted to see you first thing.

Three minutes later, you walked into Dan Morton's office. He looked up at you across the mahogany desk and said, “It’s our systems. We grew too fast and we haven't given our people the right tools to do their jobs. When we had just the Vail location customer service was superb, but not now. It’s bad everywhere including VAIL! The latest customer survey was awful. Let’s give thanks that no one leaked THAT to the reporter.”

You said, “I haven’t seen it.”

Dan unlocked the lower desk drawer with a key and pulled out a thick, black-bound notebook. It’s all here and it's not good. He flipped to the first page and ran a finger down the list as he read:

47% of all customers rate our service as poor or unacceptable

Only 4% think our service is excellent

68% found a billing error when they checked out


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81% say they are kept on hold too long when making reservations

34% say our people are abrupt, rude or discourteous on the phone and in the restaurants, spa and hotel.

Dan went on, “In the focus groups, the customers said they like our competitors’ service because they treat them like valued customers, not an aggravation the way our people do. Plus, they never wait more than 30 seconds on the phone and can talk to one person about reservations in the spa, dining room or hotel. With us, they get sent to a different person for each problem or need.”

Dan looked up from the report and said, “Those oh-so-arrogant consultants who did this analysis finished up by telling me that… ‘Bad customer service is the primary cause of market share dropping from 61% to 53% over the past year.’ Although they did add that new products and cost cutting by the competition were also factors.” Dan sighed in exasperation.

You said, “We probably should assemble the executive staff to plan a strategy.”

A voice from the doorway behind you said, “It’s too late for that. Martha was found with slashed wrists in the Customer Service department… but the phones kept ringing so none of the phone reps noticed.” It was Martha Hobson, the vice president of hotel operations, standing there with her arms full of papers.

The Dan gave her a tired grin, “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Martha.”

Martha glared at Dan, “Yeah, the article this morning was real funny. Are my staffing, training and systems requests going to get some attention now? Will you stop the damn international expansion until we fix the mess from the last one? It is idiocy to think we can expand again. As importantly, my first and second level managers have to manage their units, not just work on projects for other people.” Martha shot you a nasty look with those last words.

Linda Tallmer, the vice president of sales stormed into the room with a newspaper in her hand, “I saw the article and we certainly have problems to fix but I hope no one is talking about slowing down the international expansion.”

Martha replied, “International expansion is deader than a door nail! So just be quiet for a few minutes. Our service is a disaster and we have to fix it fast.”

Linda swallowed her resentment and nodded.

A deep male voice boomed from the doorway. You turned and saw Dr. Horst Buchholz, the vice president of spa operations, who


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said, "All these projects are killing my management staff too. It is hard enough to manage people by phone in all these new locations. Why take them away from their jobs half the time to work on projects? No wonder our service stinks.”

Martha turned to face you, “We need that new reservation and customer tracking system now. I know you may have heard about other priorities but we will never solve this problem if it takes me six months to teach a new reservations associate the system. It’s difficult to find people bright enough to learn it and when we do, 35% of them leave within a year. It’s a tough job and all the overtime leads to more absenteeism and turnover. It’s a real death spiral.”

Horst added, "My therapists do excellent work but the administrative support for reservations, scheduling and even getting supplies is awful."

Dan nodded in agreement, “We should have paid more attention to those issues but growth and cost-cutting have been the Holy Grail. And they still are important. Funding all this is going to be tough and we have to make some progress quickly. You may have noticed in the article that I told the reporter that we were working hard to improve service in all our locations. I might have mentioned a six month time frame.”

There was a long pause and then Martha aimed a finger at Dan and said, “You promised much better service in six months? That’s crazy!”

“What did you want me to tell the reporter…We’re doing nothing? That we like having angry customers?” Dan replied.

Horst said, “So do you want us to build new systems and processes or fix the old ones for the 17th time?”

Martha smiled and dumped her thick stack of paper onto Dan's desk and pointed at you, “Here’s what we want; new screen displays and better report layouts. It’s the ‘one-stop shopping’ system we’ve been requesting for years. Give us those capabilities and we’ll do the job. It’ll cut the learning curve and make training my people much easier. These changes will let us solve problems without redirecting calls. It’ll cut waiting times and let my people give customers the right answer without having to dig in the files. It also includes the reservations and staff scheduling system that both Horst and I need.”

You reached for the stack of documents and flipped through and asked Martha and Horst, “Will the system changes alone do it?”

Martha answered, “No, we need better training programs, a better call system, lower turnover and more staff. I need to get back to at least the staff level I had before expansion and maybe even 10% above that.”


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Horst said, "Turnover is a killer; all these new people have no loyalty. Working at Vailcrest is just the next job for them. We need to raise their pay."

“Ouch,” Dan said. “I have to keep costs pretty close to the current level or we’ll have cash flow problems. Won’t the new system make your people more productive so you can improve service without additional staff?”

After a long silence, Dan looked at each of the executives and then turned to you, “We need to fix this mess here in the US and still start the international expansion.”

As Horst and Martha groaned and Linda cheered, Dan looked hard at you and asked, “Can you tie this all together?”

You nodded and said, “Let’s start now in the conference room.”

After 4 hours of brainstorming, you had the following list:

1. New rewards system for Customer Service reps tied to performance (88% calls handled without a customer calling back about the same problem)

2. Management team and board approve 5 locations for international expansion

3. Reservation reps trained so they can answer 90% of the inquiries about hotel reservations, dinner reservations and spa treatments and reservations

4. More authority for reps to make on-the-spot decisions

5. 90% of customers can speak to one Customer Service rep and get action on any problem

6. International building sites or existing structures for remodeling located and approved by management committee

7. Better workload balancing by time of day with the correct number of people staffing the phones so customers aren't put on hold for more than 30 seconds

8. Reps should have just one screen to work with, not have to look at 10 different screens from 10 different systems

9. Reps must be able to see customer’s complete reservation and problem history quickly (less than 10 seconds after getting customer ID or reservation number)

10. Reps must have one screen/form to trigger action anywhere in the company and the customer data must automatically transfer to this form so the rep can finish the action request while on the phone with the customer

11. Service will get worse before it gets better


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12. We must be able to test a rep's ability to meet the performance specs on the system, not just on a written exam

13. 15 call types account for 90% of the call volume

14. Hotel staffing must be better matched to peaks and valleys in occupancy of rooms and restaurants

15. Spa staff must be better matched to peaks and valleys in our reservations

16. Less than 1% of the customers should have an error on their bill at checkout

17. When surveyed, the vast of majority customers (92%) should tell us our staff treated them perfectly.

Dan Morton looked at the list and said, “That’s fine but I won’t abandon the international expansion. Give me a program that includes fixing these problems and opening and marketing the five new international locations. We will discuss it as soon as you are ready.


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4 – Forecasting, Estimating and Managing Risk

1. Read Chapter 3 in the Program and Portfolio Management e-book.

2. Watch lecture #4 “Forecasting and Managing Risk” on the course website.

3. Read the case study “International Expansion: Numbers and More Numbers” below.

4. Use the data on the course webpage for Module #4 to develop:

4.1. Tab 4a in your course template for analogous and parametric estimates.

4.2. Tab 4b in your course template for PERT estimates for your program.

4.3. Complete these estimates and send them to your instructor for feedback.

5. Read the Case Study “International Expansion: Risk Management” below.

6. Use tab 4c in your course template and the data on the Module #4 webpage to develop a set of risk analyses and responses for the programs. Complete the course template and send it to your instructor for feedback.

7. After getting feedback on the risk analysis and responses, prepare a PowerPoint presentation for Dan Morton and the executive team that covers both the order of magnitude estimates and the risk analysis. Also, prepare detailed risk responses for each of the 4 major risks and be prepared to persuade the executives to act on the response plans.

8. Send this to your instructor and schedule a live meeting to present your cost and duration estimates and risk responses and answer the executives’ questions about the estimates and risks.

Program Numbers and More Numbers

With the customer service program design accepted by Dan and the other executives, you worked late for another night planning the projects that would be in your program. A soft tap on your office door startled you and you looked up.

Dan Morton leaned in the doorway, smiling and said, “You gonna move a cot in here or go home sometime? I think you need to get some help.”


19

You leaned back thinking for a moment and then said, “I do need some help and frankly I shudder to think about the battles we will have as Horst, Linda and Martha run some of these projects, but we have no one else. What we need is a Project Management Office with 5 project managers to make this happen.”

Dan grimaced, “I hear you. But with the budget constraints, we can’t be moving high-priced project managers to Vail and, unfortunately, there aren’t too many experienced PMs in town. Can you make do with local talent?” Dan said with a challenging grin.

You thought for a moment and decided that training your own PMs might be the best anyway. You grinned back and said, “Certainly! Is the PMO approved with 5 PMs?”

Dan laughed, “Absolutely, with just one condition. You can’t run just the customer service program. I want you and your project office to take over all the projects in the organization.”

You said with a smile on your face, “That makes sense and will avoid conflicts over priorities. The thing is I am going to have to deal with Horst and Martha as their peer. Maybe the portfolio management job should get a VP title?”

Dan smiled back, “That will set off a firestorm now. But after you pull off this whole thing, I promise you’ll get the new title. For now just use your persuasion skills.” Dan laughed and walked out.

Over the next week, you recruited your team of project managers to direct the projects within the International Expansion program. Two weeks later, you returned to work on a Monday after a long holiday weekend with your legs and feet sore from a too long hike along the Colorado Trail. As you hobbled toward your office, all five of your project managers were waiting in the hall.

Mary, who was managing several training projects, pushed her way to the front and said, "We all need help on estimating work and duration. I need estimates on the course development projects I have. But the tasks are all brand new.”

You nodded your understanding and said, "Using PERT estimates is probably the best technique for both gathering the data and building some commitment to the numbers from your people. The way you should gather the data is to sit down with each team member and review the work package for their task, like training the people to use the new system at a specified level of accuracy and productivity. Then ask them to make three estimates of the amount of work it will take to reach their assigned achievement. Ask them to make a best guess estimate of the required number of hours of work, a pessimistic estimate and an optimistic estimate. Then we’ll put those numbers together and analyze each of the tasks. We’ll probably use a 70% confidence level on the estimates for the training classes but give me numbers for 70% 80% and 90% confidence so I have that data for my presentation.


20

Jake, who managed the construction and facilities component of the project, said, "I need help with the remodeling of the computer room. I need estimates that I can use in the contracts with the various subcontractors we're going to use. I've got framing contractors and people to install cables for an Ethernet network in each of the locations. I've also got paint crews to liven up the customer service areas at each location.”

You thought for a moment and said, "Jake, you'll need to use parametric estimates. We’ll get construction industry standard rates on hanging computer cables in office spaces as well as rates for the number of linear feet of framing you want the framing contractor to erect and the number of square feet of surface the painters will have to cover. Then using the plans for each of our locations we can develop parametric cost estimates."

Miles, who was staffing the PMO said, "I've got reams of data on the actual cost of previous projects. What’s the best way to make it useful for the PMs as they do the initial order of magnitude cost and duration estimates for the new locations?"

You replied, "Go through that cost data looking for projects or parts of projects that were roughly similar to our high-level achievements of one of the upcoming projects in this program. Then we can do our estimates by making adjustments for the relative complexity of our projects compared to that historical data. After you find the data about one of our high-level achievements, you'll also need to put together the adjustment factors quantifying whether our current project is more complex and costly or easier and cheaper than previous projects. As an example, say I find data on a system development effort like the one in our program but it is half the scale. We’ll make 50% adjustments to that data to make an analogous estimate."

International Expansion: Risk Management

You walked out of the four-hour risk identification meeting with six pages of notes on your yellow pad and a stern warning from Dan Morton not to waste a lot of time or to delay the programs with academic research into risks. You agreed to perform risk management in proportion to the benefits it would yield and promised to propose a risk management plan for the customer service and international expansion programs when you presented the program estimates to the executive staff.

Your first step was to meet with the stakeholders in the international expansion to identify the risks in a brainstorming session. You worked hard during the meeting to keep the conversation at a high level and at the end, you had a list of identified risks with which to begin work:

1. Vailcrest’s competitors respond vigorously in all of our new international markets with “Buy French/Italian/Swiss/Austrian/Canadian” ad campaigns while at the same time improving their own service and successfully defending


21

their market share. The impact might cut our first year revenue by 50%.

2. The effort to repair our existing information systems fails and we are required to stop and acquire new software systems and integrate them. The reservation system for hotel, spa and restaurants is one part of this problem, the billing and accounting systems are another. This risk will add 9 months to the achievements of improving our service to our guests.

3. Employee turnover in our facilities increases to over 20% annually, adversely affecting our efforts to improve customer service. New employee training delays the achievements in this area by 4 months.

4. Lack of interdepartmental cooperation results in missed assignment due dates and planned resources not being available for project assignments as managers pull them off to do work in their “home” departments.

You assembled quantitative risk analysis information on the above risks from small groups of experts that included your experienced resort operators, IT consultants with industry experience, as well as resort marketing experts.


22

5 – Managing PMs, Teams and the PMO 1. Read chapter 4 in the Program and Portfolio Management e-

book.

2. Watch lecture #5 “Managing PMs, Teams and the PMO” on the course website.

3. Read the case study “International Expansion: A High Performing Project Management Office & Team” below.

4. Complete tab #5 in your course template and send your instructor the following, along with a zipped copy of your latest portfolio):

a. For each of the project managers in the case, assess their locus of control and their ability to think strategically and scope with cognitive complexity. Also, assess their technical ability.

b. Based on that assessment, describe the type of project (or project office role) that would be appropriate for each individual, selecting from the inventory of projects in the portfolio.

c. Design a reward system for the project managers in the PMO.

International Expansion: A High Performing Project Management Office & Team

A week later, you sat at the head of a conference table with the project managers you had recruited and said, “We’ll skip singing the Star Spangled Banner and get right to work reviewing your draft project plans before we submit them to the executive committee.” As you continued your introduction, your eyes swept the new hires.

Mary Bannister sat to your left. She was a human resources type who had been running course development/training projects over the past ten years and knew how to transform the learning needs supplied by her clients into course materials for the classes she then delivered. (Dr. Horst Buckholtz gave Mary very high ratings for the contract work she had done at Vailcrest over the years).

Cliff Lundquist had performed one-person training projects as a consultant for 5 years at Vailcrest and for 10 years doing training classes in the resort industry. Cliff received average ratings from Martha who was his main client.

Paul Rhyne had been a consultant doing operational improvement projects. He had 3 years experience in the Colorado ski resorts working with IT


23

departments. The only complaint you had heard about Paul was that he got bored with simple or repetitive assignments.

Chris Olson had been in the Vailcrest business community for 10 years and was a popular choice to run small projects. Chris was exceedingly personable and an amusing facilitator.

Sue Scone was a recent master's degree graduate in project management with no practical experience in training beyond an internship with one of Vailcrest's competitors.

You concluded your remarks by saying, “This program is a big one and everyone in the industry is watching us. Your individual projects are all critical.”

“So it’s just like every other project?” Mary asked.

“A little enthusiasm, please,” you kidded. “We need a project budget and staffing for the entire portfolio of projects. A real key is training our people to use the new systems and improve performance and guest satisfaction.”

“How’s the system different?” Mary asked.

You answered, “It’s got more bells and whistles than Santa’s sleigh. All the guest reservation and history files will be available on-line in one system, no more moving between several systems. And supposedly it’ll be a lot faster and easier to use.”

“We’ve heard that before,” Mary said.

“This time I think we’ll get it,” you answered.

Chris said, "That's a great song title. Maybe I should open in each of my classes with a couple of musical jokes about … ‘This time I think we'll get it’… to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

The group all laughed and Chris's remark brought a smile to your face too.

“So why this big meeting?” Mary asked. “We’ll just follow the usual procedures. When they get the system up, we’ll adjust our course materials for the new system and teach the courses. I think a two day session for each rep will do it and if we have 12 in each class, the three trainers will have to hold . . . 31 classes. So that’s 62 days of training or about 20 days for each trainer. Give me 10 days to change the course material after IT gives me the new functionalities and we’re set. Tell ‘em we need about six weeks.” Mary stood up and turned to leave.

You interjected, “If you’d read the program strategy document I sent you, you’d know that we’re using a different approach. We are going to measure project results.”

Mary sat back down and Cliff said, “We’re professionals, you can’t measure our work. Besides, they’re not hiring Nobel Prize winners in Customer Service. We’ll give ‘em good training. How they do on the floor is not our fault, it’s their fault.”


24

Chris said, "I always get great ratings and they always want to stretch one of my two-day training sessions to four days."

“I understand,” you said, “But things have changed and popularity is not going to be enough. Here’s how we’re going to measure success on the training projects for the various departments using the new systems.” You picked up a piece of paper and read, “As an example, the goal is 90% of the guest service reps can answer the 20 most frequently asked customer reservation inquiries in less than 60 seconds using the new system.”

“What are the 20 most frequently asked questions?” Paul asked. “We’ll need those to structure the training material, design the test instruments and enable us to group the questions by category and give the trainees a big picture view of the new process.”

“Right, we’ll have to find out,” you answered.

“How do we test them; on-line, a multiple choice test or role playing?” Sue asked.

“We’ll have to work that out too and make it part of the plan I submit to the management staff for approval,” you replied.

“So what do we teach them?” Cliff asked, “I haven’t even seen the list of features.”

“We’ll have to learn it,” Paul interjected. “But we should approach things from the point of view of the customer problems the reps have to solve, not the system’s features.”

Mary snorted, “Paul, you talk in circles. Poor Sue here doesn’t understand anything you say!”

“I understand,” Sue answered. “It’s just that I’ve never done this before so it’s hard to decide how to do it.”

“What if only half of them pass the test?” Cliff asked with a worried frown. “Are they gonna fire us because the reps don’t understand what we taught them?”

“No, but the success or failure of our projects is critical to the overall program success,” you replied.

There was a brief silence and then Mary said, “I think maybe we need to list what we need to do, then recalculate the due date.”

“No,” you replied, “We start by defining success and how we’ll measure it.”

“We are professionals who don’t need to be micro-managed,” Chris said with a nasty look in your direction. “Don't you trust us?”

You responded, “Measurements of your work and progress are not micro-management. Far from it, you are accountable for an end-result, not all the steps to reach it. You decide those steps in your project plan.”

Cliff said, “I want you to approve all my steps so I won’t be blamed if the project fails.” Mary and Chris nodded agreement.


25

You looked at Cliff and said, “Just like your team members, you will be responsible for the results of your work.

“Does this mean you won’t be coming by my team’s cubicles every day to see how we’re doing on the project?” Chris asked.

You answered, “Right, I’ll be looking at your status reports each week, not micromanaging you. Now let’s get to work on this chain of achievements we have to step through to hit that 90% pass rate on the test.”


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6 – Portfolio Tracking & Trade-offs 1. Read chapter 5 in the Program and Portfolio Management e-book.

2. Watch lecture #6 “Portfolio Tracking and Tradeoffs” on the course website.

3. Review the data on the protect portfolio on the webpage for this assignment prepared by Reno Hightower of the Project Office. Analyze the situation in the portfolio after the Customer Service Project is added. Use Tab #6 in the course template for the analysis and then send it to your instructor.

4. Consider:

4.1. Changing priorities

4.2. Hiring additional employees

4.3. Canceling/postponing projects

5. After receiving your instructor’s feedback, prepare a PowerPoint Presentation and schedule a live meeting with your instructor to present the state of the portfolio and your recommendations on priorities to the Vailcrest executives. The goal is to secure their agreement on a modified portfolio and priorities.

©2010 The Hampton Group, Inc. All Right Reserved. May Not be Reproduced in any Form Without Written Permission.

Program & Portfolio Management

CONTENTS - BEST PRACTICES - EXCUTIVE STRATEGY - FORECASTING - MANAGE PMS & TEAMS - TRADEOFFS & CONTROLS - PORTFOLIO

Pages 1


By Dick Billows, PMP, GCA

9th Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Richard A. Billows. All rights reserved.

Published by The Hampton Group, Inc.

For credit card orders: The Hampton Group, Inc. http://www.4pm.com

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Denver, Colorado 80237-1122

800-942-4323

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Microsoft is a registered trademark and Project and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft

Corporation. Screen shots reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

All other product names and services identified throughout this book are trademarks or registered

trademarks of their respective companies. They are used throughout this book in editorial fashion

only and for the benefit of such companies. No such uses, or the use of any trade name, is intended

to convey endorsement or other affiliation with the book.

All rights reserved. The text of this publication, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any

manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-96302

ISBN: 0-9679761-5-4

Copyright page Http://www.4pm.com

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Pages 1

Chapter Contents

Contents1- BEST PRACTICES 5

OrganizatiOn Of the BOOk 5PrOgram and POrtfOliO managers 6PrOject executive’s thOughts: 7PrOject manager’s thOughts: 7PrOject team memBer’s thOughts: 7

skills fOr yOur suBOrdinate PrOject managers 7strategic Planning & POsitiOning skills in WOrking With executives 8

achievement-driven PrOject management 8the PmBOk® and BeyOnd 9techniques fOr yOur PrOject managers tO use 10Best Practices at the executive level 10cOntrOlling PrOject initiatiOn, PriOritizatiOn and allOcatiOn Of resOurces 10Best Practices at the PrOject manager level 11

BrOadBrush PrOject Planning 12BrOadBrush Planning cOmPOnents 15examPle PrOject 16scOPe and assumPtiOns summarized in the BrOadBrush Plan 21PrOject charter: authOrity structure 21

WOrk BreakdOWn structure 22WOrk BreakdOWn & dynamic schedules 23

#2: EXECUTIVE STRATEGY 27

fast fOOd PrOject management revisited 27strategic executive management 28

multiPle PrOjects & their executives 29echelOns Of achievement 30the activity traP: sPecificatiOns versus end results 34strategic PrOject POsitiOning 35

POsitiOning elements 35decisiOn-makers 38PerfOrmance Pressures 40Buying PercePtiOns 41POsitiOn analysis 43strategic Oyster 46adding tO Our POsitiOning infOrmatiOn 47POsitiOning strategy 48

reaching higher 49Planning With executive decisiOn-makers 52Planning sessiOn tactics 53reaching fOr the strategic Business result 54activity traP invitatiOn #2: estaBlishing trade-Offs 55Buying PercePtiOn adjustment 55this PrOject’s tOO Big and Outside yOur Business 55detailing dOWn 56ending the sessiOn and setting uP access fOr the next One 57

adding tO the Oyster 57reaching fOr higher-level decisiOn-makers 58influences Outside the Pm’s cOntrOl 58

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Chapter Contents

amOunt Of OrganizatiOnal change 59setting the PrOgram strategy 59With the strategy set We initiate & charter 59designing the requirements netWOrk 61exPanding a thread 61

mOs and high-level achievements(hla’s) 64exPanding the thread 65requirements netWOrk With three levels cOmPlete 68gOing tO the fOurth level 70cOmPleted netWOrk 72incOrPOrating methOdOlOgy cOntrOls 73achievement netWOrk intO WOrk BreakdOWn structure 73

PrOject charter 73PrOject authOrity and accOuntaBility 74crOss-functiOnal PrOjects: the Pain and the jOy 75line managers and crOss-functiOnal authOrity 76Why line managers hate PrOject managers 76PrOject manager’s fantasy authOrity 77Balancing factOrs 78range Of crOss-functiOnal authOrity 79matrix management 81designing authOrity & accOuntaBility relatiOnshiP 82the authOrity maPPing 85

change cOntrOl PrOcesses 86measured achievements tO the rescue 88

strategic PresentatiOn 88

chaPter summary 89

#3: FORECASTING 90

games and cOmmitment 90Where We are in the PrOcess 91Why We engage Our team in estimating & risk assessment 91

WeBsite PrOject: draft schedule 92Why estimate WOrk? 92PrOs & cOns Of scheduling With WOrk vs dates 94WOrk estimating PrOcess 95WOrk statistics 96three WOrk estimates 97sWag estimates 98 PrOductiOn standards 100delPhi estimates 102creating a cOmmOn PersPective On the task 102OPtimistic and Pessimistic factOrs 103generating the estimates 104delPhi examPle 104

summary Of WOrk estimating techniques 106Which technique dO We use? 107risk estimating temPlate 107statistical calculatiOns 108statistics WithOut theOrems 108standardized nOrmal deviates 109cOnfidence levels 110

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Chapter Contents

risk assessment 111critical Path in Our draft schedule 111slack On Our high-risk tasks 112frOnt lOading resOurces 113mitigatiOn strategies 113summary 114

#4 MANAGING PMS & TEAMS 116

What are high-PerfOrmance teams? 117intrinsic mOtivatiOn 120assignment design 120team memBer caPaBility 121caPaBility, PrOBlem-sOlving, exPerience and standards 121Ways Of dealing With cOmPlexity 124

lOcus Of cOntrOl 125assignment matrix 126intrinsic mOtivatiOn 126incentive mOtivatiOn 127Pre-existing 128PuBlic 129earned 130legitimate 130valued 131

incentive mOtivatiOn 132mOtivatiOnal grid, micrO-management & lOW-level authOrity 132

mOtivatiOnal OPPOrtunities 132leadershiP and micrO-management 133cOntrOlling leadershiP BehaviOr 133mOment Of truth #1 – revert tO micrO-management 133mOment Of truth #2 – encOuraging Bad neWs 134schema 135Building a team culture 137summary 137

#5: TRADE-OFFS & CONTROL 138

authOrity structure 142PrOject charter and change cOntrOl 143revised Plan 145

neW critical Path 145delay 145slack 146 resOurce utilizatiOn 146

trade-Offs 147sOftWare stePs 148aPPrOval PrOcess 148estaBlishing the PrOcess 148duratiOn trade-Offs 149adding leads tO reduce the duratiOn 153Budget trade-Offs 155risk trade-Offs 157

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Chapter Contents

high-risk assignments 159slack insurance 159frOnt lOading resOurces 160

PrOject aPPrOval PrOcesses 161executive fantasy land 162the eager PuPPy dOg 162the used car lOt 162savage Beast 163

Our end result 164tracking PrOcess 165status rePOrting 1664-cOrners status rePOrts 168Our WeB PrOject 168

first status rePOrting cycle 168earned value` 169

status rePOrt tWO 172tracking gantt Week 2 172earned value taBle Week 2 173change in scOPe 175critical Path Over-run 176adding resOurces 178Week three Of the PrOject 179Where Our PrOject stands 181PrOject clOse-Out and lessOns learned 181Pm PerfOrmance develOPing the team 182summary 183

#6 PORTFOLIO PROCESSES 184

enterPrise mOdel 186assessing the POrtfOliO Of PrOjects 187POrtfOliO cells 188alPha tier POrtfOliO 190Beta tier POrtfOliO 191Omega tier POrtfOliO 192delta tier POrtfOliO 193theta tier POrtfOliO 193

the cOntrOl tOWer 194flight Plans fOr every flight 195Pre-flight 196radar tracking 196POrtfOliO management fOundatiOns 196imPlementing the ePm PrOtOcOl 197crOss-functiOnal PrOcesses 197POsitiOning 198PriOritizing techniques 200resOurce utilizatiOn 200POrtfOliO yield 201strategic yield POrtfOliO 202

multiPle PrOject techniques 203the PrOject-Based OrganizatiOn 204cOnclusiOn 205

aBOut the authOr 206

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Pages 5

Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Organization Of The Book

1- Best PracticesTo avoid kidding ourselves in the remainder of this book, we’ll measure success on a project or a program as finishing:

◊ On time◊ Within Budget and◊ Delivering the expected business value

By those exacting definitions, most organizations succeed on less than 30% of their projects or programs. This book is about the techniques that program and portfolio managers must use to raise that success percentage above 80%. When we report on the project performance of client corporations, many executives remark that projects and programs weren’t as difficult 10 years ago as they are today. They’re absolutely correct; several things have changed that make them more difficult.

First, in many organizations the project density has increased four or five-fold from when they started using projects. As a result, the proportion of people working on several projects is much higher than it was even a few years ago. In many organizations the hours demanded for project work exceeds the supply.

Second, market and competitive pressure have required a sharp increase in the number of cross-functional projects, those which involve several functional units to achieve a strategic result. The days of cozy little projects where the entire team is from one department make up a smaller proportion of the organization’s portfolio of projects. The organization’s resources are stretched with the launch of so many projects.

To handle those two factors and raise the success percentage to the 80-90% level

we need a battery of techniques. We also need changes at three levels in the organization:

◊ Executives’ initiation and control of projects & programs ◊ Portfolio/program managers’ allocation of resources to maximize the

return on investment◊ Project managers and teams following the best practices which give

us the processes and data to improve performance. ◊ We’ll cover executive level techniques for: ◊ Controlling the initiation of projects with processes for justifying new

projects based on the business value they will produce. We need to sell the idea of executives giving up their prerogative to start a new project whenever they wish.

◊ Prioritizing the projects based on their business value yield.◊ Allocating human and other resources based on those priorities.◊ Managing projects and programs to maximize the business value

produced, shifting resources to better yielding projects as priorities change and new projects emerge.

We’ll cover program, portfolio and project management office (PMO) techniques that are the foundation for strategic control:

◊ Project managers need techniques to assemble and direct cross-functional teams whose members are working on other projects and also have “real” jobs.

◊ Project managers need to make good assignments, accurate estimates and closely track project progress, identifying problems early, not when it is too late to resolve them.

Organization of the Book To cover all those techniques, the book has the following sections:

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Pages 6

Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Program And Portfolio Managers

Best Practice - these are the techniques you will need to instill in your subordinate project managers. This is the foundation necessary for controlling a portfolio of projects, strategic planning and the process. We quickly review the project management basics of planning, using project management software to build a project, scheduling and budgeting, assigning work to project team members and tracking actual results.

Multiple executive sponsors - we delve into more advanced techniques for analyzing the business situations, quantifying and measuring the business outcomes our executive wants and building a high-level achievement network to reach those outcomes.

Initiating Projects – we cover the techniques for controlling project initiation in the organization including business benefit specification, resource requirements and prioritization

Estimating & risk assessment - we’ll focus on the mechanics of developing accurate work estimates for each assignment in the project plan. We’ll use this work estimating process as a foundation for team member commitment to their assignments. Additionally, we’ll use these work estimates as our platform for assessing risk in each assignment and the project as a whole.

Trade-offs – with the foundation of the preceding chapters, we’ll discuss the techniques for quantifying trade-offs between the 4-corners of a project. We’ll use the software to quantify the alternatives for shortening the duration, decreasing the budget, lowering risk and lowering the project’s achievements. These processes support effective executive-level decision-making during the approval process as well as the day-to-day operation of the project.

High-performance teams - we’ll discuss building high-performance team cultures with effective assignment and reward processes. Our focus will be on letting each project team member know exactly what end result we expect them to deliver and how we will measure and reward their success.

Project Management Office - we’ll explore the techniques for reporting progress, identifying problems early and performing variance and earned value analyses. We’ll learn to model solutions, providing the executive with detailed alternatives for recovering from problems and taking advantage of opportunities.

Portfolio management – the book concludes with a chapter on managing a portfolio of projects. We will cover project office functions, allocating resources, managing resource pools, prioritizing projects and achieving strategic balance in the project portfolio.

Program and Portfolio ManagersThis book is intended for people who operate in project-dense organizations where many projects are underway simultaneously and a relatively high proportion of people are working on multiple projects. In this environment, executives must manage portfolios of projects, allocating from resource pools based on priorities and the strategic results the projects will produce. Project managers (PMs) must work cross-functionally and deliver business results from their projects. Project team members are working with multiple project managers and balancing the conflicting time demands put on them by each one. In this overview, we’ll discuss how we supplement the basics of project management to cope with the unique world of complex, cross-functional projects.

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Pages 7

Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Skills For Your Subordinate Project Managers

What’s Going on Where the Rubber Meets the Road?

Let’s take a look at an example.

An executive, a project manager and a project team member trudge down the company hallway. Each silently asks themselves the same question, “Am I gonna succeed on this new project?

Project executive’s thoughts:I have no idea what the team is actually doing. Sure, I can look at the 1,357 tasks in the project plan but it’s a techno-geek maze of acronyms and things I don’t even want to understand. They tell me things are going fine but if that’s true, why do they keep asking for more people and extending the completion date? Well, I can’t spend forever on this project. I’ve got others that are in the same shape and the pressure for better and better performance never ends. I don’t really know what any of these projects are going to do for the organization. The best I can do is hope they all fit together to impact the business in a positive way. I guess I’ll keep shouting the completion date, June 30th, and maybe they’ll be done by October.

Project manager’s thoughts:This executive changes my project’s goal and scope every time the political winds shift, which is twice a week. Some of the project team members think they were assigned to the project as punishment for past offenses. Others think the project is a battleground for inter-departmental wars. Several were sent to my team because their home departments are more productive without them. Everyone sees my project budget as a grab bag they can dip into whenever they need funds for a new toy. But when the scope changes, the budget is cut and the completion date

suddenly become sacrosanct and cannot be altered.

Project team member’s thoughts:I’m on five different projects and spend most of my time guessing about what each of the PMs wants. I don’t think they really know what they want and so the completion date estimates are a joke. One thing’s certain, if any of these projects go down the tubes, I’ll be the one left holding the bag. Don’t they realize I’ve got a real job besides working on all these projects?

Skills for your Subordinate Project ManagersManaging these type projects is not easy, even for experienced managers. The range of skills required for managing these projects is broad and includes the following:

◊ Strategic thinking techniques for seeing the business situation◊ Tactical dexterity in coordinating people’s skills, schedules and the

task dependencies in the project ◊ Leadership styles appropriate to the task, the people and the PM’s

ability◊ Solid financial, statistical and risk management skills◊ Mastery of the project management software techniques for planning,

scheduling, tracking and reporting ◊ Political and communication skills to gain the approval of project plans

and the commitment of team members.

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Achievement-driven Project Management

Strategic Planning & Positioning Skills in Working with ExecutivesTo control the people and money devoted to projects we need hard-edged measurement tools, not subjective definitions of success. We need to build program and project plans that use equal parts of creative thinking and hard-edged quantification. When your strategic planning with executives is done, your project managers will have an achievement structure that has a measured outcome against which the sponsor will compare the actual results. The structure also allows your PM to define the measurements that will be used to judge each team member’s success. Everyone from the top to the bottom knows the performance expectations.

When we fail to develop strategic project blueprints with our user/client, sponsor or boss, we wind up with projects where we argue about whether or not we were successful. We also wind up with projects that drift from objective to objective as the weeks go by. Possibly worst of all, the people working on these projects are uncertain about what they’re expected to achieve. Developing this strategic blueprint is always the most difficult part of the planning process. The development of measured achievements is not just a fill-in the blanks technique. You need to ask the executives the right questions and see the business situation through their eyes. It is this step that you as program or portfolio manager will either perform yourself or closely review the PMs work.

Achievement-driven Project ManagementAchievement-driven projects with their unambiguous measures of success and achievement networks are the center of the organizational PM process. These projects are part of a portfolio of projects for a user/client or our organization. Project executives allocate resources across the projects in these portfolios and

assign priorities. In the portfolio management process, we treat each project as an investment, carefully tracking its yield for the executive’s organization and balancing the overall portfolio to achieve strategic business results (value) for the executives. When we consistently give our users or clients business value from their projects, our firm or department is successful.

Consistent success requires project executives and project managers who think strategically and develop projects aimed at the user/client’s business results, not our technology. The project team members, whether they’re borrowed across departmental lines or our subordinates, must clearly understand what is expected of them and how their work will be measured before they begin.

All the processes in AdPMÔ are based on measured achievements. They drive the entire project and are the heart of an effective assignment process. Because we build projects from a spine of objectively measured business results, we have the ability to exercise much better control over the scope of a project. As importantly, these measured results give users/clients and portfolio executives the ability to consider the quantified trade-offs between the project’s business results, it’s budget, it’s duration and the odds of delivering the first three as planned (confidence level). These trade-offs are crucial components in improving the yield of the portfolio of projects and increasing the level of user/client control and satisfaction.

Usually, users/clients or sponsors are presented with only one plan for doing a project, with one duration, one budget and one objective. They also hear this one best way project plan presented by a PM who’s there to fight for his or her plan, not offer options and alternatives. Is it any wonder that executives don’t feel in control of the project strategy or that they often make arbitrary cuts in the budget and duration?

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: The Pmbok® And Beyond

AdPM lets PMs plan projects with four quantified corners: the MOS, budget, duration and risk. Using the 4-corners trade-offs, we plan and manage projects with the ability to constantly consider quantified trade-offs between these four dimensions. If we change one of the 4-corners, it has an impact on at least one of the other corners and we can quantify that impact.

Using the 4-corners technique, we might describe a project as follows: We have a 70 percent chance of achieving the following: improve the percentage of customers who rate our service as excellent to 50 percent, for a budget of $1.5 million and a duration of 230 days. While developing these four corners takes some effort, the end result gives portfolio executives a very convenient way to assess what they’re getting from a project. They can also work with us to explore options for modifying any of these 4-corners.

As an example, if we cut the project budget, either the MOS™ goes down or the level of risk (the odds of delivering the MOS™ for the budget and duration) goes up. We might have started with a 70 percent chance of delivering the MOS™ on time and on budget but after the budget is cut, those odds drop to 40 percent. The power in this approach comes from being able to quantify the effects of every change we make in the project.

Quantifying these trade-offs is far superior to project management styles where only one or two of the dimensions of a project are measurable (usually due date and budget). Changes in cost or duration will impact how much the project achieves for the business and/or the odds of achieving it. But if we haven’t quantified these trade-offs, no one knows the impact of cutting the due date or budget.

By planning projects strategically and quantifying alternatives, project managers lay the foundation for users/clients and executives to exercise strategic control over the

project. This positions the PM as much more than a scheduling clerk or technical expert. It is also the foundation for a strategic partnership with the executive, which dramatically increases the odds of project success.

This AdPM process also provides the portfolio executives with a very powerful method of tracking the project’s progress. Because the entire structure is built on measured achievements, there’s little ambiguity about whether or not we have succeeded. Our status reporting also takes the form of 4-corners trade-offs where we quantify alternative solutions to problems we are encountering or opportunities that arise. Everyone clearly understands how we’re going to measure success and they also understand, in quantified terms, the impact of every change made to the project. In a sense, everyone is in the same small box together.

The AdPM methodology lets us avoid many of the problems that plague cross- functional projects. Portfolio executives and users/clients can always make changes to projects but they do so with the full knowledge of the impact those changes will have on the four corners of the plan. Because of the tight focus on measurability, everyone understands precisely what they are buying before work starts, which is the best way to meet their expectations. Every member of the project team has a clear understanding of the measured results they are expected to produce. They also understand the relationship between their assignment and the higher-level achievements.

The PMBOK® and BeyondThe AdPM methodology we have discussed and what we’ll detail in the chapters that follow, relies heavily on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®™) as developed by the Project Management Institute, Inc. But as you’ve read, we

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Techniques For Your Project Managers To Use

will extend these basics to provide a set of skills appropriate for today’s project management environment.

As we reach beyond the PMBOK® we’ll build project plans in PM software, calculate the budget and schedule as well as track progress toward business relevant outcomes, budget and duration. We’ll use the PERT, CPM and Gantt tools but we’ll build project plans for managing professional people who are making complex business judgments and decisions. Where we enhance the traditional knowledge most is in our heavy focus on the measured approach to strategic analysis, goal setting and assignments. We’ll place very heavy emphasis on crafting project team member assignments where people know what a good job is before they start work.

With this general overview in mind, let’s get started on reviewing the basics of project management.

Techniques for your project managers to useYour effort in program/portfolio management will begin with teaching a project methodology and best practices processes in the organization. You will need to persuade the executive team to use new processes and convince your project managers to use a new methodology on all of their projects. Consistency is of critical importance because you need to be able to efficiently review a relatively large number of project plans. You also want to be able to consolidate all of the projects in your program or portfolio so that you can look at resource utilization across all of the team members and projects. Having data is obviously critical and consistent project planning processes and consistent project scheduling and tracking are vital.

You may inherit project managers who use a variety of different techniques to manage their projects. You need to train them in the best practices methodology that is the subject of this chapter. You also need to teach them a consistent approach in their project management software. For most environments, the best-selling project management software is probably appropriate and so this chapter is based on discuss building dynamic rather than static project plans using Microsoft Project® software.

Best Practices at the Executive LevelThe best practices begin with the processes and decisions that take place at the executive level in the organization. Your implementation process will, in almost every organization, require changing the behavior of the executives. Instituting best practices at the project level is simply not sufficient. Organizations that have spent a great deal of time training their project managers in best practices techniques still fall short on their project success rates because problems in prioritization, project initiation, and resource allocation can cripple the efforts at lower levels.

Controlling Project Initiation, Prioritization and Allocation of ResourcesA very typical situation in organizations is that there is no control over project initiation and anyone in management, and perhaps some technical staff members, can start a project whenever they wish. This creates chaos in the organization because more projects are started than the organization has resources to finish. Project managers and executives compete for resources. The people assigned to project teams are torn by the demands for their time by multiple project managers.. They very often wind up burning out their best people when workloads are excessive (70 to 80 hours a week) for long periods of time.

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Techniques For Your Project Managers To Use

Accordingly, a major process change is almost always required to install controls on the project initiation faucet. You need to build initiation controls into the project management protocol that accompanies your consulting engagements. The opening section of this two-page document is a description of the process that everyone has to go through to initiate a project. The executive wishing to initiate the project identifies the business value that the project will generate in a statement of work (SOW) or other document. This is in the form of the measure of success technique that we’ll discuss later in this chapter. Basically the executive is identifying in measured form the achievement the project will deliver. That achievement is not defined with words like “world-class customer service.” It is defined with measures such as “Less than 1% of our customers have to contact us about a problem more than once to get it resolved.” That is a measure of the performance of the customer service department, the systems and the work processes. It provides an unambiguous metric for determining whether or not the project has been successful. Executives will also use the metric to compare one project against another project that people want to initiate. Projects with the best business benefits to cost relationship are the ones the organization approves.

Along with approving the project, a steering committee will assign that project a priority for using resources. Projects that are assigned to the highest priority tier have the first call on resources. Lower priority projects have to wait for the resources to finish work on the higher priority assignments. As new projects are approved by the steering committee, they are also assigned a priority number and may “bump” previously approved projects.

The initiation process also includes management of the overall resource allocation. While we will devote a chapter to this process, it is a simple mathematical process.

If you have 25,000 hours of time available for people to work on projects over the next year then you can’t initiate more than 25,000 hours worth of projects. So you will initially allocate all of the available hours, or you may leave an emergency reserve. Then any new project that is approved has to take resources from a previously approved project. The very simple idea is to not initiate more projects than you can finish. The practical result is that projects that are approved for initiation with low priorities will not get resources immediately and will have to wait. If projects with more value are approved these lower priority projects will move down the priority structure and may even be knocked out of the current year.

Best Practices at the Project Manager Level Your project managers will follow a consistent methodology that is scalable to fit the needs of the project. You don’t want to burden small projects with excessive techniques nor fail to control a larger effort. But regardless of the sophistication or simplicity of the techniques used on a particular project, they all will follow the same life cycle:

◊ Measure of success and high-level achievement network all based on measured business outcomes

◊ Dynamic project schedule using work estimates and predecessor relationships to control the sequence

◊ Clear accountability for measured results for each task in the project plan

◊ Weekly tracking based on estimates to complete, produced by each team member for all in-process tasks

◊ Weekly re-forecasting of budget and duration with solutions modeled for all variances.

That’s the sequence of steps; now let’s investigate this methodology in detail.

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Broadbrush Project Planning

This review will set us up for exploring advanced topics in executive management, strategic planning, work estimating, modeling trade-offs and portfolio management.

Broadbrush Project PlanningWhen we begin defining the scope during project planning there are a number of traps we must avoid. One trap is to dodge the difficult process of deciding exactly what the project will produce. PM’s avoid this difficult end results thinking by focusing on what needs to be done, the activities to be completed. This is much easier but it leads us into the activity trap. It’s a temptation any PM can fall into. We receive a project assignment, think about the first thing that has to be done and start work, figuring that we’ll talk about the next step when we come to it.

Sometimes, we cloak our descent into the activity trap by writing a long and flowery mission statement for the project. This does no harm unless it is a substitute for making the hard end result decisions up front. In this situation, people read the mission statement and always find something they can agree with so we blindly dive into the details of the activity trap.

Unfortunately, the activity trap snares so many PM’s that it is one of the leading causes of project failure. The activity trap wastes resources and frustrates project team members by continuously changing assignments as the plan evolves. The lure of the activity trap, that bottomless pit, has ruined countless project management careers. PMs get away with it on small projects where they are expert on almost every detail but it dooms them to failure when they try to manage larger efforts.

A story may help illustrate the point and also provide us with a metaphor for Achievement-driven Project Management.

Let’s consider a troop leader guiding a group of kids on a hike through the woods. They’ve been in the woods all day and are on their way to meet up with their parents. The troop comes upon a river and the parents are waiting on the far shore.

A troop leader with an inclination for the activity trap will stand near the water’s edge and try and decide what rock to jump on first. Various kids will have suggestions for the rocks they want to jump on first, based on what color rock they like the best or which rock has the most water breaking over it. The parents on the far shore are also happy to shout their suggestions as to which rock the troop members should jump on first. River crossing specialists among the parent group extol the virtues of granite rocks. A few parents talk about the need to be at dinner by 6:00 pm. Last of all, leaders of competing troops wander past and offer their suggestions about which rock to jump on first with claims that their idea will be faster and more efficient. A white-haired man turns and walks away, shaking his head in disgust.

With all this pressure, the troop leader stands with his toes just inches from the water thinking about what rock the troop can jump on first. The troop leader picks a rock and yells to the kids, Come on kids, follow me. Let’s jump on this brown rock. The troop leader lands on the big brown rock and waits for the kids to follow. Poor little Hermie has short legs, falls in the water and is carried downstream as the other kids jump for the brown rock. The troop leader instantly decides to leave the rest of the kids and go after Hermie. While the troop leader’s gone, some of the kids jump onto other rocks. Unfortunately they make several different choices and by the time the troop leader returns with a sodden Hermie, the rest of the kids are scattered across half a dozen rocks in the river. As the parents scream worried instructions from the far shore, the troop leader reassembles the group. Then he starts thinking

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about what rock to jump to next.

More often than not, this troop will find itself half-way across the river with nowhere to go but back. Here we have the classic activity trap. Now let’s start over and see how a strategic project manager would avoid it.

We have the same hubbub of parents, competitors and experts shouting ideas about the river crossing and how the troop has to get across in time for dinner. They provide ideas about the first rock and maybe even the second rock to jump on. But our strategic troop leader focuses on end results. Ignoring suggestions from the kids, parents and the competition, the strategic thinker talks to the parents about the end result they want to achieve. The white-haired man who walked away in disgust returns.

Some of the parents shout that they have dinner reservations for 6 pm so the troop has to get across the river quickly. Others are concerned that little Billy can’t fall in because he’ll ruin his new jeans. But the strategic troop leader also ignores these issues and asks some strategic questions. Do you want to get all the kids across the river or is it more important for us to get across quickly? The parents agree that they want all the kids to get across. The white-haired man smiles and nods.

The strategic troop leader then suggests a Measure of Success. The end result we’re looking for is -- All ten kids on the far shore. The parents quickly agree. Then the strategic troop leader says, How important is it that none of the kids fall in and get wet? The parents debate the issue for a while. Then the white-haired man says a few words and there is general agreement that none of the kids should get wet. By now the parents are ignoring the suggestions shouted by the kids and competitors. The troop leader has engaged them in a strategic discussion and given them the opportunity to make strategic decisions that make the tactical suggestions

seem trivial and irrelevant.

The strategic troop leader says, So we will measure the success of this river crossing by ‘All ten kids on the far shore, dry’. The parents look at the white-haired man and all nod agreement.

The strategic troop leader now has executive agreement on a Measure of Success. This strategic level conversation focused attention on the end results that the parents wanted and did not allow the conversation to deteriorate into the activity trap.

Now our troop leader has a clear and unambiguous end result from which to drive the entire project plan. Next the strategic troop leader does something unusual. Instead of selecting the first rock for the troop to jump on, he looks all the way across the river and selects the last rock they have to stand on to jump to the far shore and stay dry. Next, our project manager picks the rock that they have to be standing on to jump to the last rock he has picked. Continuing this process, the troop leader plans the entire crossing backwards before the crossing begins.

Once again, the troop leader reviews this strategic plan with the parents. This enables the parents to exercise strategic control over the course the troop will take without having to get into those micro-management details. Not only does our troop leader have a much higher probability of successful crossing, but the parents now have the ability to exercise strategic control over the project and unambiguously track progress. Even better, all the kids understand what the end result is supposed to be and how they’re going to achieve it.

This silly example illustrates the process of conceiving a plan with the project’s users/clients. This is the most difficult intellectual task in project management.

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But it’s worth the brain damage because it’s the foundation for executive control, portfolio management and clear assignments to every member of the project team.

After we have successfully avoided activities in the overall project scope, we need to avoid the same trap when we detail the rest of the project. Thinking up a long list of activities to put in the project plan is very easy. It comes naturally to people, particularly to people who are very task oriented and those are the folks who wind up as project managers.

When we’re presented with a complex project situation, it’s very normal to think about what we’re going to do, particularly, what we’re going to do first. Because of this to do approach, many project plans are simply very long to do lists. Not only are these very cumbersome project plans but all they deal with is minutiae, not important business achievements. As work starts, project managers with these monstrously detailed plans can’t keep them updated with the inevitable changes. Two weeks into the project they have no tool to manage what’s going on. But perhaps the biggest problem with activity lists is that they deny the project the creativity of the project team members. When we give somebody a to do list, they take responsibility for doing the items on the list. This is pretty obvious. What’s not so obvious is the fact that when we give a person a to do list they don’t think about ways of doing it faster, cheaper or better. They feel accountable for completing the items on the list but take little, if any, responsibility for the achievements the project should produce. Project managers who manage with activity lists are micro-managers and they deserve what they get in terms of low commitment and poor creativity from their project teams.

Measured achievements are very difficult to conceive. We must think long and hard to build a project plan with measured achievements. We have to think through what

we’re going to do and then see the end result of that activity. Finally, we need to conceive a measurable definition of good work for that end result. What benefits do we get from all the brain damage? First, our project team members know what a good job is on their assignments, before they start work. This happens so rarely on projects that our project team members may be somewhat surprised when we tell them exactly what we want. This saves the project team members from having to guess what we want and it also substantially reduces the amount of time we have to spend in status meetings explaining to people what they should do next. The reason why more people don’t use measured achievements is because they are difficult to conceive. That’s also why we’ll spend a fair amount of time learning the process.

Distinguishing measured achievements from activities is a difficult intellectual challenge. We want every person working on the project, from the PM on down, to be accountable for one or more measurable achievements, not activities.

When we conceive a measured achievement, whether it’s an MOS™ for an entire project or an achievement for a team member’s two-week assignment, it has to pass two tests. First, it must define what a good job is. Second, it must tell us when we are done.

So, Make the customer service system user-friendly , is an activity. What’s a good job? When are we done? The activity doesn’t answer either of these questions. When we transform it into, User can access a customer’s history in less than 15 seconds, we have an objectively measurable and verifiable result. It is a clearer, less ambiguous assignment than the activity. Now let’s convert a series of activities into measured achievements.

Above we see activities, all of which are means to an end. On the right, we see the

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Broadbrush Planning Components

achievements into which we might convert them.

The first activity on the illustration is install new communications system. To convert it to an achievement, we need to do some thinking about its business purpose. What is the point of installing a new communications system? The business purpose is not to have new phones, new wires and a new switch. We talk with our user or client about the business benefits they hope to get from the new communications system. It’s from this discussion that we may discover that the business benefit the user/client wants is to decrease the number of internal memos by 50 percent. That is a measured achievement.

Training is a part of many projects. We have an example in the illustration that’s typical and seen in many project plans. Again, we need to think about the business purpose of this training. Training often has the business purpose of increasing employees’ capability to do their jobs. How can we measure an improvement in that capability? Well, a test is not a bad idea and we might conceive a measured achievement such as answer 98 percent of the customer service test questions correctly. That is a measured achievement.

Very few people can hear about a business situation and directly conceive measured achievements. The normal process is to think about the activities involved and translate these activities into end results. As an example, we may be talking with a client about a physical security issue and the discussion takes a turn into training problems among the company security guards. Now we don’t want to get into a discussion about the details of the training course; that would be falling into the activity trap. But we do need to talk about the end result of that training, the business purpose, which is that 98 percent of the guards can correctly validate access passes. We have transformed an activity into a measured achievement by

thinking about what the end results of the activity will be.

Learning to consistently convert activities into measured achievements takes practice so let’s do a few more.

Another example might be the installation of a piece of equipment, the djx-432. Installing equipment, regardless of how expensive or time-consuming, is an activity. The end result that the customer wishes to buy is a 60% reduction in their user’s complaints about response time. Training people or designing a new report are also activities that we need to transform into measured achievements. Often we’ll find that the achievement is something that requires effort on the part of the client’s personnel and our personnel.

Another way of thinking about this is when we talk about activities, we’re looking at things through the eyes of the person doing the system design, training or equipment installation. When we talk about measured achievements, we are looking at things through the eyes of the person who will reap the benefit of the activity, our user or client.

Broadbrush Planning Components The idea is to create a 1-2 page document that covers the strategic information required for the organization to decide whether or not to authorize initiation of a project. The key to this process is to avoid those delicious technical details that quickly drag us into the activity trap. Our focus during a Broadbrush planning process is to provide the project executive or client with the opportunity to make the strategic level decisions about the end results that the executive wants to

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buy for the project’s budget. Our focus is on the measured business-relevant outcomes, not the details of how we will achieve them. We also want to secure the project executive’s decisions on cross-functional authority that support the way we’ll manage the project team. We keep the document short and high-level so we engage the executive’s attention. They have neither the time nor the desire to review long, detailed project documents. We can develop the formal plans or contracts after the strategy is approved.

The Broadbrush project plan is never long but requires thought, decisions and agreement on four things:

◊ The Measure of Success (MOS™) - an unambiguous measurement of the project’s outcome (Answer 90% of our customers’ inquiries in 120 seconds or less with no more than 5% callbacks on the same problem).

◊ The High-level Achievement Network (HLA™) - a hierarchical network of measured achievements that leads to the MOS™.

◊ Assumptions - a few key assumptions about the outside world that, if not true, will cause the project to fail.

◊ The authority structure, rewards and project culture - specifications about ways in which the PM will make assignments, hold people accountable for their assignments and reward outstanding performance.

Your organization may also require other narrative documents but the above elements are critical for controlling projects and achieving success. They are the strategic foundation for a project.

Example projectLet’s step through an IT project example and apply these ideas.

We discussed the activity trap earlier but it is such an obstacle to strategic thinking

that we need to go into it in more detail. The deadly lure of the activity trap, those delicious details and the desire of everyone to get started, defeats most efforts to clarify the strategic results of the project. The executive or user has told you what they want and they usually have a few ideas about features and the first several steps. Now it’s time to get going on that project plan. If we let activities rather than measurable business successes drive the project, we fall headfirst into the activity trap.

Everyone has a list of good ideas and activities that we can translate into a project plan, usually a long to do list. We can hope that these activities improve performance and hope the result satisfies the boss. But there’s entirely too much hoping in this approach. In the activity trap, the project manager has no way to measure when the tasks are successfully completed. How does the PM decide what tasks to include or how much to invest in each of them? Politics and power alone will determine what’s in the project and it will forever be a moving target.

But the main problem is that none of these activities are linked to a business outcome; A Measure of Success. The PM never asked the executive for a measurable definition of project success. So now the PM is in a situation where success will be defined as the project progresses or at its conclusion. Worse, the definition of success will be a moving target and people will change it to move the effort in directions they favor.

The project manager and the executives have fallen into the activity trap, adding activities they want rather than driving the project plan from the measures of success. They buried themselves in the minutia of tasks rather than focusing on the end result. They added tasks to the plan because they sounded good or have been used before. This project plan also has some hidden and potentially dangerous

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assumptions. Someone somewhere has a business problem in mind that the project should fix.

Our example starts with a project manager arriving at a user/client’s office.

Ah, Pat thanks for coming to my office, Dana, the Customer Service Director (CSD) said, turning to lift a four inch stack of papers from the credenza.

Pat reached down to prevent the papers from sliding off the desk, then noticed that there were yellow marks all over each of the pages. No problem, how can I help?

Well, my people are having a heck of a time with the reports and screens in the customer service system. It just takes forever to figure out the customer’s problem. We need to revise many of them and my people and I spent two days last week identifying the changes we want made.

Pat flipped through the sheets and quickly decided that almost all the reports and screens in the system would have to be modified.

Pat has been around long enough to know that regardless of the quality of the work done on the modification, the odds of having a satisfied client at the end were just about zero. Sure, they could make all the changes but then neither the CSD nor the project team would be focused on delivering a business-relevant outcome. This would be the classic activity trap project. Pat would start work instantly and the stack of papers would provide very precise technical specifications for the work to be done. But from bitter personal experience, Pat could also envision that the project team would complete all these modifications and enhancements and find that they had not addressed the Customer Service Division’s business problem. When the project was done, the result would be a user/client who viewed the project as a failure. What Pat needed was a Measure of Success (MOS) for the project. This

MOS had to be a measurable business result, relevant to the CSD. Once the MOS was identified, Pat could drive the entire project toward achieving it.

Pat also recognized that the Customer Service Director was accustomed to defining projects in terms of activities so it wouldn’t be good to offend the CSD by pointing out the flaws in the project planning. The CSD was a good user/client and Pat didn’t want to cause offense. So Pat decided to ask some careful questions about the business purpose to try and get the planning back on track. Let’s go back into the meeting and see how Pat does in the next session with Dana, the Customer Service Director.

Pat says, Thanks for doing all the work in marking up the reports and screens with your changes. We can certainly make all of them for you. It would really help me if you tell me a bit about the overall problems your CS reps are having. When I first came in, you mentioned that they’re having a difficult time figuring out what problem a customer is calling about. What exactly is the issue?

A faint look of irritation washed across Dana’s face, Well we certainly have a number of issues to resolve here in my division and your role is to give us better screens and reports.

Pat nodded and smiled at the CSD, thinking that there was no choice. Pat could back off on the questions, start work on modifications and avoid irritating the CSD. But when the project was done and it wasn’t any easier for Customer Service Reps to diagnose a customer’s problem, Dana would be really irritated. So Pat decided to press on with the questions.

I certainly understand our role. All I’m saying is that if I understand the end result you want to achieve, then I can do a much better job of supporting you. Can you

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tell me the specific difficulties your Customer Service Reps are having and how you measure the problem?

Again a faint look of irritation came into the CSD’s face. This is not really any concern of yours but we are averaging 3.5 minutes per customer call. And most of that time is spent trying to decide what the problem is, what we did to the customer previously and how to fix it.

Okay, Pat said, so the business purpose of these changes is to reduce that 3.5 minute call time?

Exactly right.

How much do you want to reduce the 3.5 minutes? What is the target for average call time?

Well, that’s a tough one. The more we can lower the average call time, the less time our customers will spend on hold. And spending less time on hold will mean that we have fewer angry customers.

So the business objective we’re trying to reach is to reduce the amount of hold time your customers experience?

Dana smiled tiredly and said, That’s really the tip of the iceberg. Errors on customer bills from the Finance department are causing lots of customer complaints. You’ve probably seen the requests we’ve made about them working to reduce their error rate. You’ve also probably heard about the number of phone calls we have to transfer between departments. More than half our customers have to talk to two or three different people before getting to somebody who can solve their problem. All that contributes to the fact that less than 15 percent of our customers think our service is good. But that’s really beside the point, we just need to have these reports

and screens modified.

By taking a bit of a risk and asking some questions that the CSD did not want to answer, Pat has unearthed several alternative MOS. The smallest project was the activity trap project of modifying the screens and reports. Reaching a bit further, Pat could drive the project toward reducing the 3.5 minute average customer call time. Reaching still further, the project could aim to reduce the amount of hold time. The project could also reach for reducing the number of customers who have to speak to more than one employee. Finally, the biggest project of all would be aimed at improving the customer’s evaluation of the company’s service.

How far should Pat reach? That’s going to depend on a number of things including Pat’s strategic position with Dana, Pat’s assigned work and politics in the organization. If Pat is in a consulting role, this conversation creates the possibility of selling a large and strategically significant project to the client. If Pat’s an employee of this organization, this conversation might allow Pat’s department to bundle a number of smaller efforts with low odds of success, into a large project with a relatively high probability of success.

We will work through some advanced tools and techniques for dealing with this situation and selecting the right project in chapter 3. But for now, this strategic discussion with the CSD will improve the odds of project success, regardless of how far Pat is able to reach. Even if the project is limited to the modification of screens and reports, Pat can still make better assignments to the members of the project team because of this understanding of where the user/client wants to go.

Let’s assume that Pat, and possibly Pat’s boss, work through the strategic situation and combine these issues into one large project. The Measure of Success is improving the surveyed level of customer satisfaction to 75 percent of customers

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rate the service as good or excellent. With that Measure of Success approved, the next step is to develop a high-level achievement network.

Measure of Success and Constraints

We need to drive projects from one, quantifiable Measure of Success (MOS™). Driving a project plan from the success measures keeps the focus where it should be, on achieving the result. By working with the user/client or project sponsor to define success before the project starts, the PM is in a much better position to control the project. This technique makes it difficult for project plans to be filled with people’s hidden agendas or the goodies they want. It prevents project teams from getting bogged down in so much detail that achieving the desired result is obscured or forgotten.

There is one other piece of a measured achievement and that is the constraint. The constraint is the bad stuff that can and will happen when we work hard to improve some performance measure. The constraint should be measurable and is very specific to the particular business situation. Oftentimes when our achievement is to reduce costs, the constraint will be the impact on customer service, quality or timeliness. When our achievement is to improve customer service, the constraint might reasonably be a limit on the amount of operating cost increase. When our achievement is to decrease the average length of time we spend on the phone with a customer, the constraint might take the form of a quality constraint (i.e., the number of customer callbacks about the same problem). With the constraint we are informing the project executive of the boundaries within which we will operate.

Going back to our scout troop crossing the river, the MOS and constraint were, 10 kids and the scout leader on the far shore, dry. The constraint in this example was, dry. The bad stuff that can happen when crossing the river is that people get wet.

When we constrain the crossing achievement by saying everyone will be dry, we are probably increasing the duration of the project. If the parents had approved a lower level of constraint, substituting alive for dry, we were probably going to cross the river a lot faster. It’s far better to get agreement on how much of the bad stuff is allowed before a project manager makes a commitment to duration. It’s also exceedingly valuable to have the user or client pick the constraint level before we start work rather than wait until the project’s done.

Now let’s return to our customer service project and the MOS of 75% of the customers rate our service as excellent. Depending on the details of the business situation, likely candidates for the constraint might be: no increase in divisional operating expense, or no more than three additions to head count. You might think of alternative constraints but let’s use that last constraint and move on to the High-level Achievement network.

High-Level Achievement Network (Requirements)

The MOS is not the last measured achievement we’ll develop but it is the most important and the most difficult to conceive. With executive approval of the MOS, the project manager begins building a high-level achievement (HLA) network. If you remember the story about the scout troop crossing the river, the high-level achievements are the main rocks we’re going to step on. They are measured business results, not activities. We don’t think about how we’re going to do the work, we identify the major measured results, the HLA’s that will carry us from where we are now to the Measure of Success.

Let’s continue with our case study and see how a project manager handles the development of the high-level achievements, using the measure of project success the executive has approved.

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The project manager will talk with a number of people, including executives to develop the high-level achievements. Each of these discussions starts with the PM acquainting everybody with the MOS, 75% of the customers rate our service as excellent with no increase in CSD head count. Just like we did with the crossing example, we want to think about the last rock we have to be on before we can leap to the far shore, dry. We know that the rocks we must jump on will probably include; cutting the billing system errors, cross-training the customer service reps, reducing hold time and improving the percent of customers whose issue is resolved

by the first person they speak with.

The project manager works with people from many other departments because these achievements are not just from the IT department. The completed high-level achievement network with the HLA’s™ sub-divided is below. This is a very simple looking document, reflecting a great deal of thought. When the executive or user/client approves this network, we can proceed with the rest of the Broadbrush plan.

The High-level Achievements are subdivided into two or more sub-achievements. These achievements will be the basis or spine of the Work Breakdown Structure we’ll develop using the project management software.

As you can see, we have sub-divided the Measure of Success into four high-level achievements. The last rock we need to stand on before being able to reach that MOS™ is 75 percent of the customers have their issue resolved by the first employee they speak to. That’s the last rock before the MOS™. Before we can stand on that rock, we are saying that 80% percent of the customer service representatives have to score 90% or higher on a test of answering customer questions on the new system. Before that, we need less than 5% of the out-going customer bills have an error. Finally, we need to reduce hold time to less than 30 seconds. You’ll note that each of these is a measured achievement and collectively they form our strategy for reaching the Measure of Success. None of the high-level achievements tell us what we’re going to do, they simply tell us what we have to achieve.

There are some projects where the high-level achievements mathematically add up to the Measure of Success. Envision a situation where we have a Measure of Success of reduce the processing cost per invoice to $6. The high-level achievements leading to that Measure of Success might be:

data entry cost less than $3, processing cost less than $1.50, mailing cost less than $1.50.

In this example, the high-level achievements add up to the Measure of Success. Our Customer Service example is not that simple. Our user/client wants the end result to be that 75 percent of the customers rate our services as good or excellent. That same executive is making the strategic judgment about what components

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are necessary to reach that achievement. We may do a great deal of market research to decide what achievements will lead to this level of customer satisfaction. Alternatively, the executive may simply make a judgment based on knowledge, education and experience. However, once these judgments are made we have a project plan with clearly measurable results.

You may be asking, how can a project manager be responsible for the level of customer satisfaction? The answer is, they cannot. Whether they are an internal person or an external consultant, the project manager is not responsible for the project’s Measure of Success. The project manager may actually have to deliver one or more of the high-level achievements, but it is the user or client executive who is responsible for the project’s Measure of Success. It is appropriate for the executive to make the strategic judgments about what ingredients are necessary to reach it. The project manager has helped the user/client conceive a strategy for a cross-functional business result and also substantially increased the odds of having a successful project.

Scope and Assumptions Summarized in the Broadbrush PlanThe scope and assumptions section of the Broadbrush plan is the place to identify potential issues concerning resources and politics as well as the things the project won’t do. It’s hard to unearth all the assumptions associated with a task. Uncovering the assumptions underlying an achievement is much easier. Below are a few strategic assumptions. Note that we’ve stayed at the strategic level and avoided those pointless assumptions like, everyone will do their task on time. Instead we have focused on strategic assumptions that, if wrong, will cause the project to fail. Earlier we discussed how an executive makes assumptions about the ingredients necessary to reach an MOS™. Here is where we state them.

This 1 page document is intended as a decision making tool fir executives. We keep it short so people will read it. But the broadbrush plan does not take the place the place of the additional project planning documentation and contracts that your organization may require.

In our customer service project, with its MOS™ of 75% of customers rate our service as good or excellent, our strategic assumptions will aim at what the customers want. Looking back at the high-level achievements, we are assuming that in the customers’ minds, hold times of 30 seconds or less are consistent with excellent service. The same can be said of the billing error rate of 5%. We state these few assumption so people can see the strategic basis of the project. These assumptions give the user/client executives a choice. Either live with the assumptions or test them before proceeding.

With the assumptions, scope and a high-level network of achievements, we can complete the Broadbrush plan by proposing to the user/client the authorities that we will need to manage the project.

Project Charter: Authority StructureIt’s time to do a little thinking on the general subject of authorities, leadership style, structure and culture. From the high-level network diagram of our customer service project, we see that we have high-level achievements in several different operating departments. When we sub-divide the HLA™ we may involve people from more organizational units. Some of the achievements may even be delivered by people from other organizations.

Now these people don’t all work for the project manager as his or her subordinates. If this were true, the authority issue would be easy to resolve. The PM would

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Work Breakdown Structure

already own the team member’s time and be in a position to evaluate and reward their performance. But strategic level projects rarely draw their teams only from the PM’s subordinates or even from people who report to the same boss as the PM.

So our authority section is aimed at making these cross-functional authority and accountability relationships work. We’ll devote significant time to this issue later in the book. For now, we want to focus on the PM’s authority to directly assign work and the authority to reward performance in some fashion, not necessarily monetarily. We’d like to avoid going through the team member’s boss to make our assignments and we’d like to be able to evaluate and reward performance, even if that reward is just the PM’s public praise.

We ask for these authorities now, during the planning phase, because our chances are far better than if we wait until we have a problem with a team member. In the Broadbrush plan we’ll ask for authorities like, team members will work a specified portion of their time on the project (i.e. 20 hours a week) and within that block of time the PM will assign work directly to them. At the conclusion of each assignment, the PM will write a performance evaluation that will be considered in the person’s next performance review.

These aren’t great authorities but they are better than we usually see on projects. We also cover the authority to approve changes to the project, usually accompanied by rules that specify what size change can be approved by the PM, stakeholders and the sponsor.

With this last component of the Broadbrush plan approved, we’re ready to move on. In many situations much more elaborate and lengthy documentation may be required, including; a legal contract, a formal statement of work (SOW) or a lengthy

business case. Our Broadbrush plan does not replace these documents, it’s simply a convenient 1-2 page tool we use to gain agreement at the strategic level with the executive decision makers. It also provides an outline for the larger documents we may have to produce. More on this later but, for our review, we’re ready to move on to the software.

Work Breakdown StructureWith our strategic plan approved by the sponsor we’re ready to dive into the software. And dive into the software is what most people usually do, completely abandoning the idea of measured achievements. Instead of viewing the work breakdown structure as a to do list, we need to view it as our tool for managing the project and the assignments within it. On very small projects we can list all the activities and be reasonably accurate in identifying everything that needs to be done (i.e. a small system enhancement project or planting your herb garden). But as the complexity and the number of people on the project grows, it becomes impossible to anticipate every activity that needs to be done.

Now, many users and clients are accustomed to seeing monstrously long and highly detailed work breakdown structures. It’s not unusual to see a 3-4 month project with 1,000 or more lines in the work breakdown structure. While this may look impressive at the start, and may convince people that we are really in control of what’s going to happen, this is a fantasy.

What happens to these monstrously detailed work breakdown structures? They create project plans that are very time-consuming or impossible to maintain. In fact, it takes so much time to update the project plan each week that we don’t do it. This leaves us with no tool to manage the project. We may have impressed the

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Chapter 1- Best Practices Section: Work Breakdown & Dynamic Schedules

user or the client at the beginning with all the details but we have not positioned ourselves to exercise control over what’s happening, to spot problems or fix them.

Even worse, these monstrously detailed work breakdown structures undermine the commitment and accountability of the project team. If we assign the people a to do list, that’s what they take responsibility for completing. Without much thought, they complete the list of items on our to do list and have no sense of responsibility for the achievements that should result at the end of their work. Only the project manager is responsible for end results in this scenario. We want project team members to feel accountable for producing a business result and solving the problems they encounter along the way, not just completing a checklist.

We do have standard procedures we follow in system development, application testing or new product development. But all of the steps in a standard procedure don’t have to be in the project plan. We can craft an achievement of completing the required steps and leave the details to the system development manual or the procedure manual where they belong.

Not everybody can successfully complete a large achievement without detailed instructions. For some members of our project team, assignments of two or three days are probably appropriate. For other team members, small assignments will not engage their interest or commitment. As we’ll discuss later, we have to craft assignments that are the right size for each of the people on our project team. But the answer is not to give everybody a highly detailed to do list.

You may be saying to yourself, “They won’t know what to do unless I tell them.” If we want people to follow a standard operating procedure in completing their assignments, as is often the case in systems development/installation or new product development, we should make adhering to the procedure one of their

achievements. But this doesn’t mean that the entire procedure must be written into the work breakdown structure. As an example, if an organization has systems test procedures, we can assign a programmer the achievement of meeting all of the systems test requirements on page 26 of the development manual. We don’t need to list all those required steps.

In sum, we want to design the work breakdown structure as a listing of the assignments we will make to people on our project team. This will give us a small project plan at a relatively high level which people will be able to look at and understand. As importantly, we will be able to update it in 10 or 15 minutes per week and always have the up-to-date version of the project plan from which we can answer people’s questions. This approach is far better than developing a monstrous project plan which may impress people at the beginning but which proves useless in managing our project, reporting status or in developing solutions to the project’s problems.

With the Broadbrush project plan complete, we have the foundation for developing a task network. The Broadbrush plan provides us with a high-level chain of achievements, each of which ties to the project’s overall Measure of Success. The next step is to split these summary achievements into sub tasks, creating a work breakdown structure (WBS). From our authorities approved by the sponsor, we have a general idea of the people or departments to whom we will be assigning achievements and those ingredients come together in the WBS.

Work Breakdown & Dynamic Schedules

We’ll tackle the use of project software in the following sequence: Enter the work breakdown structure (WBS) and develop our hierarchy

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of summary and sub tasks Create a predecessor network Set up the project resources Assign people to achievements and estimate duration Estimate work Perform trade-off analysis Secure project approval Track actual results and solve problems.

Throughout this process, we’ll use the software as a tool to manage the project, not as a word-processor to list all the micro-tasks. Accordingly, we’ll create a work breakdown structure (WBS) of people’s assignments. Then we’ll network these assignments with predecessor relationships and let the software calculate the duration of a task based on the hours of work to be done and the hours of work we expect our people to complete each day and week (their capacity). This lets us with a project plan that is based on work and capacity data, not dates plucked out of the air.

You may be used to entering start and finish dates into the software. For complex projects a far superior technique is to use resource-driven scheduling where we enter work estimates and each person’s availability and let the software figure out the start and finish dates. None of our tools for tracking or problem identification will work properly if our project plans aren’t built on this type of data. Project managers with records of consistent project success use project plans built on data. Those who routinely finish late and/or over-budget pluck their dates from the sky.

Our process in developing the work breakdown structure is quite similar to the steps we followed when we sub-divided the Measure of Success into high-level

achievements. Now we will further sub-divide them into smaller achievements. The process we’re going through is the top down design of the work breakdown structure. We will continue sub-dividing achievements until we reach achievements that are reasonable assignments for the individuals on our project team.

What’s the appropriate size of an achievement? That depends on the individual’s capacity and experience, as we’ll discuss in depth later in the book. For now, a few general rules are useful:

◊ For professional staff working on your project plan who have been in their present jobs for six months or more (and are thus technically capable), assignments of about two weeks are reasonable.

Trainees, those new to the company or experienced people in new jobs, should have assignments that are less than two weeks. As they gain experience over the course of the project, these people should be able to handle larger assignments.

There are assignments that you may not be able to sub-divide to the two-week level; those contracted with an outside firm, for example. These should have a measured achievement as the contract’s end result and they may have durations of several weeks or months.

In our sub-division process we are continuing to develop measured achievements and we need to think of them in two ways. First, we assign achievements to individuals. The achievement should present a reasonable challenge without being out of reach for the individual’s capability. Second, each line in the work breakdown structure will represent a piece of our budget and schedule. In other words, each WBS task will be tracked against the plan. Given that we get status reports weekly, there is not much sense in having the majority of the tasks in the WBS structure take less than a week because on one Friday these tasks will not have been started and the next Friday they will be finished. So we’ll never track them in process. If we keep these ideas in mind, we’ll craft small work breakdown structures with most

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assignments taking longer than a week. That kind of WBS will prove to be efficient tools for presentation, monitoring and control.

Note on the work breakdown structure below that each of the high-level achievements has been sub-divided and some have also been further sub-divided. Everything on the work breakdown structure is a measured achievement although there are several different kinds. Row 4 is an approval achievement, The customer service director approves the design. There are also achievements that make reference to procedures. Row 12, Systems test passed might sound like an activity, however, if we have test procedures in our organization, then passing them is a specifically measurable achievement. None of these measurable achievements tell people what to do but they do tell people what end result is expected of them and that’s what a good project assignment does.

This WBS may seem too small to you and you may be right. But there is absolutely nothing to prevent us from further sub-dividing it when we see that an assignment is too big for the individual assigned to it. We strive to keep the WBS small because smaller is better. Look at this WBS as if you were a user/client or a project team member. Can you understand what’s in the project and what the business purpose is? Do you see how the PM is approaching the business situation? Do you understand how the pieces fit together?

If you answer yes to these questions, we have a good WBS.

This work breakdown structure may be very different from what you’re used to. It sets up a project manager to hold the people on the project team accountable for end results, not the process of getting there. Is this kind of project manager taking terrible risks or being a touchy-feely, do-gooder who trusts people too much? Not really. Project managers who hold project team members accountable for their end

results are PM’s who get the most from the people on the project team. This is a project manager who trusts people to a reasonable degree. Within the scope of the achievement the PM has crafted for the individual, we trust the person to deliver it. And remember, it’s the PM who controls the size of the assignment and the degree to which each team member will be trusted.

A micromanaging PM trusts no one and feels that everybody has to be watched very closely because they will do the wrong thing or a bad thing if left unchecked. Think back to micro-managing bosses you may have had. How much enthusiasm did you bring to the job? How much accountability did you have for the end results? The answer is probably very little.

Micromanaging as a PM style also limits the number of people and the size of projects that a PM can manage successfully. The micro-management technique collapses once the micro-manager doesn’t have more expertise than every team member. To successfully micro-manage, you need to know as much or more about the work than the person doing it. If you don’t, the recipient of the micro-management gets pretty resentful of that style. Again, think back to a time when you had a new boss who knew less about your job than you did. What was your reaction when this person tried to micro-manage?

For all these reasons, we find that successful project managers on large projects are not micro-managers. Within the limits of each person’s capability, successful project managers specify end results and leave it to the individual to figure out how to get there. This approach yields some interesting benefits. Team members find work on the project more rewarding and they feel encouraged to use their creativity. This difference in the level of enthusiasm and commitment can be worth a great deal. We must avoid the pitfalls of micro-management when we design our work

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`You

Quick Links

Course Summary

Detailed Syllabus

Course Webpage

How “Learn by Doing” Works You will:

Prepare a meeting & presentation and get your instructor’s feedback Learn how to “type” different personalities Prepare a presentation that’s tailored to these different personalities Give a presentation to a group of people (played by your instructor)

and lead them to consensus Take over 3 failing meetings and lead each group to a successful

conclusion.You will practice your communication, presentation and persuasion skills by preparing reports and presentations. You have the option to give these presentations to your instructor in live online video meetings. Your instructor will send you a video of each presentation with their comments and suggestions for improving your communication and presentation skills.

Work Individually with Your Instructor Through this entire Communications course, you will work individually with your instructor in video conferences over the Internet, by telephone and e-mail.

You may begin the course whenever you wish and study from anywhere in the world. You set your own pace and schedule and you may take up to one year from enrollment to complete the course. Your instructor also provides 1 year of on-going support and advice as you apply what you learned.


203 PRESENTATION TRAINING

4PM.com3547 S. Ivanhoe St. Denver, CO 80237 United States 303-596-0000 www.4pm.com

“Learn By Doing” – Practice Presentation Techniques with Individual Online Coaching

You will learn to select the best presentation techniques, styles and media to communicate with different types of people in various situations. You will design your meeting agendas, speaking notes and the presentation media to build consensus and persuade people to your point of view. You have the option of delivering presentations live to your instructor in our private online meeting room from anywhere in the world. Your instructor will film your presentations and give you written feedback and coaching on the content, your use of media and your presentation skills, like eye contact, gestures, body language, etc. You not only improve your presentation skills but you gain confidence in your ability to think on your feet.

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`

SKILLSSPROCESSES

You study whenever you want.

Your instructor is available by

phone, e-mail or video

conference if you have questions

about using a tool or technique.

They give you written and video

feedback on all your

assignments. You may practice

every technique in live, online

meetings. Your instructor plays

the role of management and

asks you challenging questions.

Each optional live session is

filmed and you receive a video of

your presentation so you can

review your instructor’s

comments about your body

language, eye contact, gestures,

use of visual aids, etc.

Your instructor also provides you

with one year of on-going

coaching & advice as you use

these techniques at work.

PERSONAL INSTRUCTION SPECIFICATIONS

For Experienced PMs

60 Hours of Work

Use a PC, Mac or iPad

Study When You Want

Study From Anywhere

Take up to 1 Year

PMI Registered Education Provider

#1147

Earns 60 Contact Hours

Master the Skills to:

Run meetings

Persuade People

Speak Like a Professional

Think on Your Feet

Answer Questions Effectively

4PM.com

3547 S. Ivanhoe St.

Denver, CO 80237

303-596-0000www.4pm.com

PRESENTATION SKILLS

Practice running meetings and giving

effective and professional

presentations.

DEAL WITH DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES

You will work on a case study and practice every communication tool and technique you’re learning. You will develop the ability to identify different personality types, including your own. Not everyone gives information the same way; nor do they want to receive information the same way. So you will learn how to communicate with different personality types to get your message across, gain consensus, manage conflicts and enhance your professional status.

ENHANCE YOUR PRESENTATION SKILLS

Effective communication is a key skill for every successful professional. If your presentations are not persuasive and professionally delivered, your credibility suffers. Each assignment includes preparing to run a meeting or give a presentation. You have the option to practice giving these presentations in live, online conferences with your instructor, just the two of you. They will film your presentations and give you written feedback and coaching on the content, your use of media and your presentation skills, like gestures, eye contact, speed of speech, etc. With this practice and feedback process, you will not only improve your communication skills but you’ll gain confidence in your ability to give professional

presentations and think on your feet.

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Syllabus 203 Professional Presentation Skills

#203 Professional Presentation Skills

Contents Course overview ......................................................................................................................2

Learning objective ...................................................................................................................3

Grading criteria and earning education credits .........................................................................3

Course Syllabus ............................................................................................................................3

Course materials ......................................................................................................................3

Course modules ......................................................................................................................3

Module One: Overview of Professional Presentation Skills ....................................................3

Module Two: learning to create and use visual aids like PowerPoint .....................................4

Module Three: assessing your audience to improve the design of your presentation ............4

Module Four: communicating with groups ...........................................................................5

Module Five: tying it all together and final presentation .......................................................5

Approach to Professional Presentations Professionals who are consistently effective communicators and who can persuade and influence others through presentations are not necessarily great public speakers from the start. They gain confidence by practicing their communication skills. Most importantly they have good techniques for:

• Sizing up the audience they will be speaking to:o Determining the personality types who make up the audience and how they like

to receive informationo Designing a communications plan for the presentation that meets the needs of

the various personality types who will be in the meetingo Delivering the information and ideas in ways that will appeal to the various

personality types in the meeting

Syllabus 203 Professional Communication Skills

• Designing visual aids that help convey the information and also hold the audience's interest

• Using effective interpersonal skills, body language, eye contact and gestures to make themselves attractive to the audience and make them willing to listen.

Course Overview Professional Communications Skills is designed for experienced professionals who want to enhance their skills in making formal presentations, leading small group discussions, communicating clearly with executives, subordinates and team members. The course blends reading assignments in several textbooks, lectures, written assignments and four live presentations which you will deliver privately, working with your instructor over the Internet, and which will be filmed for analysis and feedback.

You will begin by learning the basic techniques of effective communication. You'll learn about eye contact and body language and the physical aspects of giving an effective presentation. Then you'll apply those ideas in your first presentation, working privately with your instructor and filming it for analysis and feedback.

Next you'll learn about using visual aids to support your presentation. We’ll focus on PowerPoint in both the reading and lecture and then you will prepare a PowerPoint presentation and deliver a talk using the PowerPoint you have created. After the presentation you will receive coaching and feedback from your instructor.

In the third module, we’ll explore techniques for assessing your audience so you can deliver information in the way they like to receive it. We’ll explore various personality types, talk about how you should deal with them and how you should convey information to them. You’ll watch videos of individuals and practice determining their personality type by observing them talk.

In the fourth module we’ll move on to communicating with groups of people. You'll apply the same personality typing but now applying it to small groups of people rather than just an individual. You’ll watch movies of groups of people communicating and analyze them for effectiveness. In the assignment you'll take over the meetings that have not gone well and communicate with the attendees effectively.

In the fifth module you'll tie all the knowledge and techniques together and give a 15 minute presentation with a question and answer session at the end. You'll use your communication skills and techniques to identify the personality types you're dealing with and design a presentation and visual aids to persuade them to reach consensus about the conflict issues.


Learning Objectives You will gain professional level skills in analyzing an audience and developing quality presentation materials and delivery skills for speaking in front of others. An important element of the course is repeated practice sessions giving presentations. Practice develops self-confidence and conquers nervousness in public speaking, which are obstacles for most people.

Grading Criteria and Earning Educational Credits You must complete all assignments in the course and receive a grade of B or better to pass the course and earn Professional Development Units (PDUs) from the Project Management Institute (PMI). Your instructor will ask you to redo assignments that do not meet that standard.

Course Syllabus

Course Materials PowerPoint Presentations that Sell by Adam Cooper(Amazon).

Type Talk at Work: How the 16 Personality Types Determine Your Success on the Job by Krueger, Thusen, Rutledge. You need a USB camera with microphone for live presentations (with microphone). Newer PCs have these built in. If you must buy one, your local office supply carries them for $50 or less.

Course Modules

Module One: Overview of Professional Communication Skills 1. Read PowerPoint Presentations. Read chapters 1-4 2. Read Type Talk Chapters 1-5. 3. Watch Module #1 lecture “Introduction and Overview” and the “Body Language” videos

covering body language, eye contact, gestures and expressions on your course website. 4. Assignment - Deliver a live, 10 minute presentation on one of the following topics

without any visual aids, handouts or materials: a. Keys to a successful management career b. Keys to a successful project management career c. Most important challenges facing your country today d. Suggest a topic of your own.

5. Send your instructor a one paragraph e-mail summarizing the subject you're going to discuss and suggest several times that are convenient for you to deliver this 10 minute presentation. Your instructor will confirm a mutually agreeable time and send you a link to log in to the presentation and instructions for your USB video camera.


6. After the presentation you will have a copy of your live presentation. You will receive written feedback from your instructor on how you did as well as areas for improvement.

Module Two: Learning to Create and Use Visual Aids Like PowerPoint 1. Read Read PowerPoint Presentations. Read chapters 5-11 and appendix B 2. Read Type Talk Chapters 6-17 3. Watch Module #2 lecture “Presentation Visuals” on designing and delivering PowerPoint

presentations. 4. Watch the lectures on the 4 most frequently seen personality types. The lectures comes

at the end after you have observed the persons in three situations. 5. Develop a PowerPoint presentation on one of the following topics and send it to your

instructor for evaluation and feedback a. Key steps in designing and constructing a deliverable that you select b. Four keys to making a successful sales call c. Five secrets to my success d. The seven best things that happened on my last vacation.

6. After you receive your instructor's feedback and make any necessary changes to the presentation, schedule a mutually convenient time for your second live presentation on camera, using the PowerPoint slides your created. The idea is to apply the feedback from the first presentation so you improve.

7. Your instructor will again send you written feedback and coaching suggestions.

Module Three: Assessing Your Audience to Improve the Design of Your Presentation 1. Read Type Talk Section II: The 16 Profiles at work. 2. Watch Module #3 lecture “Personality Types” on your course website. 3. Using the information in the reading or the link to the online questionnaire, identify you

own personality type and write a brief analysis of how your type can cause communication problems.

4. Watch the “Assignment Video,” which are 16 short videos of 5 different individuals each exhibiting different personalities (you can pause it during the “flip over” between people) and send your instructor an e-mail with the following data

a. Number of the video b. Extravert of introvert c. Temperament d. 4th letter of type (that is very difficult) e. Brief note on how you would communicate with each of these individuals.


Module Four: Communicating with Groups 1. Review the 16 personality type in Type Talk 2. Watch the Module #4 lecture “Small Groups” lecture videos: SP, NT and SJ on the

challenges of different types of leaders working with groups of mixed personality types. 3. Watch the Module #4 “SJ Assignment,” “SP Assignment” and “NT Assignment” videos on

failed group meetings and send your instructor an email write-up of how you would have handled the meetings and what you would do to get the meetings back on track.

4. When you get your instructor's feedback, schedule a mutually convenient time for your fourth presentation. In live, three 5-minute sessions, take over the meeting from the leader in the failed group meetings and apply your communications plan for moving the meeting ahead and to answering the questions and comments from your team as role played by your instructor.

5. Your instructor will send you written feedback on each of these three sessions.

Module Five: Tying it All Together and Final Presentation 1. Review the 16 personality type in Type Talk 2. Watch Module #5 “Z Technique Lecture” and “Summary Lecture.” 3. Watch Module #5 “Vailcrest Executives” and “Individual Meetings” which are group and

then individual videos of the four executives of the Vailcrest Corporation. They are debating corporate priorities and whether to expand internationally or improve their existing service.

4. Your assignment is to lead the executives to a consensus decision. 5. Start by typing the executives and determining the best way to communicate with them.

Document your analysis and send it to your instructor. 6. Prepare a PowerPoint presentation to persuade the group and reach consensus on one

of their strategies. Also lay out your communication strategy (group meeting, individual meetings, two at a time, advanced reading, agendas etc.). Send this to your instructor.

7. Your instructor will send you feedback on the PowerPoint and communication plan and then schedule a mutually agreeable time to deliver a 15 minute presentation with a question and answer session with the executives.

8. Your instructor will send you written feedback on your work.

Documents

Program Manager Certification – 201/203 · 2014-10-27 · Certification Webpage . How the Program Works. You read a textbook, watch online lectures and videos and then practice