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Project Managers: The Value of Understanding Technology

by Sonal Shah

Image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/36973966@N00/130164091" mce_href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/36973966@N00/130164091">$ydney</a> via Flickr

Image by $ydney via Flickr

BRIDGING THE COMMUNICATION GAP THROUGH TECHNICAL AWARENESS

Many project managers are extremely successful in their role by simply managing a project plan and checking off tasks as they become “100% complete”. They’re able to manage teams, create budgets, assess risk… pretty much perform all of the basic and yet complex project manager duties. And more importantly, they’re able to do these things without having to dig too deep into the technical details. They can lean on the technical lead to solve all of the technical issues.

But what would happen if that same project manager took it one step further to truly understand how all of the technical pieces fit together? What if they took the time to understand the technology and how it related to the project that they’re managing? Would that add value to the project as a whole? Would the project team have a new found respect for the project manager? Would managing upper management’s expectations become easier?

Yes, Yes, and Yes! I’m a firm believer that understanding the technology of a project that you’re managing truly elevates you from a task manager status to a “real” project manager. But what does “understanding technology” really mean? Some would argue that you’re not really a “technologist” unless you’ve done your time putting in countless hours of education, cranking out millions of lines of code, or surviving a production outage lasting longer then 30 minutes. Then, and only then, can you call yourself a technologist. In fact, after those battle wounds, you can even run a data center out of your cube or hang an endless supply of network cables as victory medals.

But wait a minute; I’m not trying to be a developer, a technical lead or even a systems architect. I’m simply trying to get a project delivered on time and under budget, so why does being technical add any value to my ability as a project manager?

Ahem…no offense, but have you spoken to a techie lately? It’s like trying to interpret what Chewbacca was saying in all of those Star Wars films. Folks, that may be it… you’ve gotta be able to communicate with the people that you’re managing. Managing a project means managing people and if you’re both speaking two different languages, you’re in for countless hours of frustration and lost productivity.

Of course I’m not implying that all PMs out there should rush to become a “Chewbacca,” I’m simply suggesting that investing the time to understand the project that you’re managing – technically – will be worth your while for the sake of managing and delivering the project. Understand the technical issues and their impacts on each other or the project as a whole. Understand what it means when an application can start on a physical piece of hardware but shows no signs of life on VMware. Know what it means when you start getting error messages or warnings that you need to “increase the file descriptor size” on your Web servers.

If you can take some time to not only understand these technical issues, but also regurgitate them, then you’ve added value. How?

  • By improving communication with vendors to escalate the right service requests as needed
  • By effectively communicating with the project team to understand status, technical issues and to help prioritize their tasks
  • Competently assess risks and determine more accurate mitigation plans
  • Proactively arm management with the right information about their current or future infrastructure
  • Ask the right questions when screening candidates to work on your projects

Most importantly, you can bridge the gap between what’s perceived as the “task manager” versus a true project manager.

You have to know when to let the technical team troubleshoot an issue or when to lead them to the solution. You have to know when to ask the questions… no matter how stupid you feel. And you have to know that you can only hide behind a project plan or a status report for so long. At some point you have to step up because as the project manager you are responsible.

In the end, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or rather a techie, to be a good technical project manager. You can spend your life as a PM trying to find the ultimate task tracking tool — or you can plunge into the universe and mingle with the Chewbacca’s… even if it’s a galaxy far, far away!

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Tying Performance Metrics to Business Strategy

by Travis K. Anderson, MBA, PMP

no2id_elephant_big1In the previous article, “Close the Gap between Projects and Strategy”, Johnson discusses drawing the gap closer between projects and strategy. Now we explore an article by Breakthrough Performance Management, which is about tying performance metrics to business strategy.

Executive managers ask for reports that show performance measures. Technical or key performance indicators are often displayed using dashboards and scorecards as a means to evaluate the health of the strategic plan. The problem presented in this article is that most organizations have a disconnect between corporate strategy and day-to-day activities. Therefore, organizations can measure performance, but they can’t manage it.

Breakthrough Business Performance indicates that some attributes that lead to the failure of executing strategy are poor definition, non-tangible, not clearly communicated, and measurement not focused on key drivers. Organizations are invited to adopt a discipline that links strategy execution with key business processes through the management of 1) objectives, 2) initiatives, 3) resources, 4) risks, and 5) incentives. The theory is that organizations can manage performance by tying performance metrics, initiatives, resources, and risks to strategic objectives.

Some projects are required to use Earned Value Management (EVM) to manage performance on large scale high risk endeavors. EVM is a methodology used to integrate scope, schedule, and budget and uses objective performance measures to monitor progress. There are two types of effort that are measured, level of effort and discrete. Level of effort is often the administrative support such as general project management and other overhead type functions. Discrete effort involves the more tangible key drivers or objectives required for delivery at the end of the endeavor. A well designed earned value management system requires the responsible control account managers to clearly define the initiatives by depicting the particular objectives in a work breakdown structure dictionary. The dictionary will also house some of the high level risks or assumptions that may impact the outcome. The resources are presented in a basis of estimate artifact that explains the rationale behind the costs related to the initiatives. All of the appropriate scope, schedule, and cost artifacts are captured into one project management plan and performance measurement baseline as the basis for performance.

Using project management software tools such as Primavera P6, Deltek Cobra, and other enterprise systems have proven useful to organizations to obtain a more formal method of achieving best practices for measuring and managing performance. One caveat is that investing in a specialty tool sets also means that organizations must invest in specialty experts to operate and maintain the system. The trick is striking the right balance between measurements vs. management. Integration management just happens to be one of many hats that project managers wear throughout the life of a project

References

Breakthrough Performance Management: Tying Performance Metrics To Business Strategy.

(2005, January). Business Credit, Retrieved October 12, 2008, from EBSCO MegaFILE
database.

Project Management Strategy

  1. Linking Business Strategy to Project Strategy
  2. Moving from Corporate Strategy to Project Strategy
  3. A Theoretical Framework for Aligning Project Management with Business Strategy
  4. Close the Gap between Projects and Strategy
  5. Tying Performance Metrics to Business Strategy
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