Guest post by Erika Flora

Years ago, I heard this great quote that has really stuck with me and become somewhat of a mantra. It is as follows:

There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.

General of the Army George C. Marshall

Staff Sgt. Conrad Begaye recognized for bravery under fire in Afghanistan - by US Army Africa via Flickr

What a fabulous concept! Often, we are so worried about our own jobs and careers that we don’t take the time to think about those around us and make sure we help them get what they want. Ever since I started making a conscious effort to really “let go” of who gets the credit, my work attitude has completely changed. In addition, the way my team and others around me view my work has completely changed. They realize that I am their champion, and they work hard to perform to the best of their abilities. Rather than spending time worrying about whether executive management sees all the great things I am doing, and position myself accordingly for that next great promotion, I focus on mentoring others and helping those around me get recognized for their hard work. I actually spend part of my work week thinking about how I can bring visibility and kudos to the efforts of my teams.

Too often, when employees are surveyed in their companies, many of them say that they feel their work is not valued or that no one has told them in the last six months that they appreciate them. How terrible! The best thing we can do for our coworkers, direct reports, colleagues, and project teams is to find creative ways to show them our thanks and make sure everyone in our company knows that they are making a valuable contribution. We all love to get praised for our hard work. Make sure you are taking the time to proactively do that for others.

Many companies have put great examples of this concept in place. When I worked with Pfizer, they implemented something called a Pfish program where you could send a Pfish card to a colleague for a variety of reasons (being a team player, going the extra mile, or even just making your day). Every week, the people that had received a Pfish card were entered into a raffle for a gift card. However, the very best thing about the Pfish card program was that the recipient’s boss was copied on the email that they received. It was a really fun program and one that made employees feel special and appreciated.

However, you don’t need a company program to show your appreciation for others. Here are some really easy things you can do to make a big difference in the lives of those around you – Submit your project team for an internal company award, external “Project of the Year”, or other award. There are lots of professional organizations that look for a variety of award submissions and, many times, are excited to get new submissions from companies or people they have not heard from before. Log onto LinkedIn and write unsolicited recommendations for people you have enjoyed working with. Send a short email to a coworker’s boss thanking them for going the extra mile on a difficult project. Start a “Thanks a latte!” newsletter that thanks your team members by name and post it up at work, maybe even leave a small Starbucks gift card on their desk before they get into work. The more creative and silly, the better! You will be surprised by the results. It seems counter-intuitive, but we as project managers end up shining the brightest when our teams shine. What other examples have you seen or done to brighten the day for those you work with and help them get the kudos they richly deserve?

Erika Flora, PMP, ITIL Expert
erika.flora@GoBeyond20.com
www.GoBeyond20.com

…an effective scheduling technique that enables project managers to truly plan a project instead of merely stringing tasks together to an end date. True planning calls fot a great deal of thought that should go into executing a project and steer it towards success. But to do that, we need to first understand project failure.

Hi,

I’m new to PMstudent and I’m developing my interest in Project Management.

Currently, I am involved in a task of trying to identify possible deliverables for an Alternative School Program with an objective to help young people unleash their intelligence and positive energy to rebuild their communities and lives through the program. Can anyone suggest possible Deliverables for this program?

The Alternative School Program is designed and targeted towards young, low-income people between the ages 18-25 where they can work towards their high school certificate while learning job skills like building affordable houses for other homeless and low-income people. Strong emphasis will be placed on leadership and community service.

I am asking about what the deliverables of this particular project could/should/would be since I’m new to Project Management and the word ‘Deliverable’ in particular. I would like to know exactly how to identify deliverables properly for my projects and how to arrive best at the deliverables myself.

I would also like to know about deliverables for a project to set up the Alternative School Program. I’ll be starting a degree program in Project Management next year and would like to start learning right now.

[Editor:  I want to thank Aniekan for having the courage to post in order to learn about project management! This sounds like an excellent endeavor.

My first comment is to not get caught up in terminology yet.  If you have someone who you are working for, be sure you understand the initial goals from their perspective.  Make a list of what you will do and will not do as a part of this project based on those high-level goals.  You can write this up as a preliminary scope statement, but there are many ways to go about all these things.

Write those high-level things you will do in the form of outputs...products or services.  There may only be a few.  Then break down these items by thinking through what it will take to produce them.  Keep breaking them down until they can be effectively managed and executed.

In the end, you will probably find that some of the high-level things are deliverables for the project, and some are lower-level things you came up with.

This is a simple way to do it that I laid out based on my (very limited) understanding of your situation.  There are many other ways to approach it.  I have found, however, that it is best to approach a new subject like this one step at a time.  Great project managers take decades to grow.

Please, everyone else lend your advice to our new friend as well. Thanks!]

As a Mom, it is important to know exactly where everyone is at any given time, how long they are going to be there, and what they are doing while they are there. Other than that, it’s pretty simple.

As a Project Manager, it is important to know exactly what task each project resource is working on at any given time, how long they will be working on that task , what they are doing and why they are doing it. Other than that, it’s pretty simple.

It’s said there are no new project management sins, just old ones repeated. It’s also said that we don’t learn the lessons from past projects and this must be true, otherwise why would we keep making the same old mistakes?

Project management as a whole has paralleled somewhat the changes we have witnessed in photography. Project management also has been a skill for the few, with the barrier to entry being quite high. However, the barriers are being reduced and the chance for abandoning “point and shoot” project management is here!

Kimberly Wiefling is on a leadership blogging kick this week over at the UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley’s “Art of Project Management” blog.

In an article at Projects@Work, Tom Mochal discusses how enhancement work not directly related to a project should be added to the managed portfolio…

A 10 minute video today on Critical Chain Project Management. A good introduction!

Anita Wotiz is the guest blogger this week over at the UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley Project Management blog. She published great post titled “An unrepeatable success?” Read it here.

It was great to hear about the project, specifically the lessons learned and trying to relate them to my own experience.

I wouldn’t write the first set of factors off as things that can’t be duplicated. Sure, it’s easier in some cases because these things fall into your lap, but these can be influenced to some extent. Paraphrased:

1. Good team (competent, cooperative) –A PM can sometimes influence who works on their project, and ensure they are competent. Cooperation and team spirit is largely influenced by the PM, in my experience.
2. Exciting work –Not every project is glamorous on the face of it, but the PM can and should figure out how to position the product being created to the team by selling them on how much value it will add for the end users, and how their individual and team contributions make it possible.
3. Full access/utilization of previous work –Again, this usually doesn’t fall in your lap, but it’s amazing to me how many project managers don’t spend enough time during the planning phases trying find previous work that can be re-used. Many seem to want to re-invent the wheel with each project.

As for the other factors, paraphrased:

1. Don’t constrain the project to a preconceived solution –Three points; I see this so many times, where the sponsor and stakeholders have a preconceived notion of what the solution should look like before they even fully understand the problem! Granted, sometimes there are real constraints that are necessary. I think it’s human nature to start coming up with possible solutions very early in the process, and difficult to avoid. Personally though, I’ve found the best results come from forcing yourself to focus strictly on the need/problem during early planning, including the charter, preliminary scope statement, and initial requirements gathering processes.
2. Good WBS creation and decomposition, bottom-up estimating –Bingo! This agrees completely with my experience about what helps make a project successful. I’ve had a lot of luck in the past using a delphi-style method of estimating, where we go through each task in a room with the experts who will be performing them, and each person writes down an optimistic, likely, and pessimistic point estimate. I take all the estimate sheets afterwards and roll them together, ask about any outliers, and can usually come up with pretty good ranged estimates with a solid grasp on standard deviation and confidence levels.
3. Management cost/time buffers available –I agree that it’s critical for the sponsor/customer to realize that buffers are there for a reason…they are not just downtime or waste, they are crucial components of a good project that can handle the inevitable risks that will arise.
4. Collaboration –It sounds like Anita was able to get the whole team to collaborate on scheduling by using post-it notes on the wall. I think that is excellent, although alternative methods may work just as well to have the team collaborate on schedule and task dependencies.
5. Iterative Development –This is a benefit I’ve used and seen in my projects too. If you can push out iterative releases that are functional, you can start getting feedback from the customer and make subsequent development based off a real foundation, instead of a theoretical one. Writing code to specs is one thing, but if you can immediately test it against an initial release of the pieces it has to integrate with, you’re way ahead of the game.