Strategic Project Management Made Simple

Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams

Terry Schmidt, Terry Schmidt

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470411582
• eBook ISBN: 9780470442937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

When Fortune Magazine estimated that 70% of all strategies fail, it also noted that most of these strategies were basically sound, but could not be executed. The central premise of Strategic Project Management Made Simple is that most projects and strategies never get off the ground because of adhoc, haphazard, and obsolete methods used to turn their ideas into coherent and actionable plans. Strategic Project Management Made Simple is the first book to couple a step-by-step process with an interactive thinking tool that takes a strategic approach to designing projects and action initiatives. Strategic Project Management Made Simple builds a solid platform upon four critical questions that are vital for teams to intelligently answer in order to create their own strong, strategic foundation. These questions are: 1. What are we trying to accomplish and why? 2. How will we measure success? 3. What other conditions must exist? 4. How do we get there? This fresh approach begins with clearly understanding the what and why of a project - comprehending the bigger picture goals that are often given only lip service or cursory reviews. The second and third questions clarify success measures and identify the risky assumptions that can later cause pain if not spotted early. The how questions - what are the activities, budgets, and schedules - comes last in our four-question system. By contrast, most project approaches prematurely concentrate on the how without first adequately addressing the three other questions. These four questions guide readers into fleshing out a simple, yet sophisticated, mental workbench called "the Logical Framework" - a Systems Thinking paradigm that lays out one's own project strategy in an easily accessible, interactive 4x4 matrix. The inclusion of memorable features and concepts (four critical questions, LogFrame matrix, If-then thinking, and Implementation Equation) make this book unique.

Part One

Are You Strategic?

The question “Are you strategic?” is simple. And so is being strategic—if you have the right concepts and tools and know how to use them. The terms strategic and strategy have multiple meanings. What I mean by being strategic is to consistently think, plan, act, and assess in a way that best achieves your desired results.

These first four chapters examine the power of Strategic Project Management, which is a blend of tools, concepts and techniques that combine to give you the edge.

• Chapter 1 explores what Strategic Project Management is and how it will benefit you.

• Chapter 2 introduces the Four Critical Strategic Questions for building the backbone of great projects. You will learn how to creatively use If-Then logic to develop sound plans.

• Chapter 3 invites you to join my workshop and explore a practical systems thinking tool for developing project plans that are powerfully linked to the big picture.

• Chapter 4 explains how to align your project Objectives with strategic Goals. You’ll also learn how to do quick and clean strategic planning that brings value at any level.

These concepts can be applied in both personal and professional arenas. By the time you reach the end of this book, you’ll understand how to be much more effective in all aspects of your work and life.

1

Thinking Outside the Bar Chart

Knowing is not enough, we must apply.
Willing is not enough, we must do.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My introduction to formal project management came in college when I built what must be the world’s biggest bar (Gantt) chart. This back-bending project deserves a footnote in project management history, if not a mention in The Guinness Book of World Records.

As an aerospace engineering sophomore at the University of Washington in Seattle, I took a part-time job that Boeing advertised as a “hands-on project management role” setting up the tracking system for the very first Boeing 747. This was during an era when project scheduling software was still in its infancy. Sounded exciting!

The true meaning of “hands-on” became clear on my first day when they handed me a big box of quarter-inch thick black tape and instructed me to install parallel grid lines on a mile-long white Formica wall in a tunnel under Boeing’s manufacturing facility in Everett, Washington. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a mile long. The Everett Boeing plant is one of the world’s largest buildings—you could fit all of Disneyland inside the building.

The top parallel line had to be seven feet high, so I stood on tiptoes to reach high and spread my roll of tape out horizontally across a mile. Then, I’d drop down eight inches and tape another mile-long strip. The bottom few rows required that I crawl, and for the very bottom row I sat on my rump and scooted along the cold concrete floor. So far, I didn’t exactly love project management work.

Much to the relief of my aching back, it was finally time to paste in the vertical grid lines, spaced a foot apart—one for each day counting down to aircraft roll-out. When I finished, the Boeing engineers began to populate the cells of my jumbo-sized grid with blocks of text, identifying tasks on the critical path that would integrate all of the things that had to be done to get this ground-breaking aircraft launched into the air.

I would arrive at work each afternoon after calculus class and head downstairs for my project management mission deep in the tunnel.

Being in that tunnel, my perspective was severely limited, until one day a production engineer walked me around the plant for a close-up look at the maiden Boeing 747. I reached out my hand to touch this wondrous piece of technology that was slowly coming together on the assembly line. The concentric ribbing of the partially finished fuselage looked like the skeleton of a giant dinosaur.

The engineer spoke with pride about how the 747 would revolutionize air travel and fulfill Boeing’s strategic vision of being the world leader in commercial aircraft.

When I understood the lofty vision, it was as if a light bulb switched on in my head. I was inspired. What I learned that day after emerging from the tunnel was that the real action was “thinking outside the bar chart” and out of the metaphorical tunnels, which is where projects start and where smart thinking can most leverage your results.

Project management has certainly benefited from technological advancements. These days software seamlessly handles the tedious task-management chores I used to do the old-fashioned way, by hand. Yet I am a big critic of project management as it is conventionally interpreted and practiced. Traditional project management focuses on task-level details and loses sight of the benefits projects aim to deliver. Thus I teach and practice my own more strategic version because the conventional approaches perpetuate tunnel vision at a time when we need to see the big picture.

So, regardless of the scope of your project or the size of your dreams, this book is designed to give you hands-on as well as minds-on tools to stay focused on the vision while creating executable plans that work.

Tackling the Big Hairy Issues

My clients are my best teachers. I’ve been fortunate to consult with interesting men and women all around the world facing every kind of issue you can imagine. All of them have been accomplished professionals doing important and challenging work.

I’d like you to meet some of my favorites. Their situations may appear very different, but from a broader perspective, there are some common overarching themes. Can you spot them?

• A satellite television provider needs more sophisticated ways to combat identity theft and fraud.

• An innovative, family-owned company that manufactures sophisticated, portable optical-electric equipment must ramp up to handle explosive growth.

• A pioneering web-based timeshare resale company chooses to reinvent itself to handle fierce new competition.

• A county assessor’s office needs to upgrade legacy computer systems and prepare for top leadership transition.

• A nuclear scientist must organize technical experts from several national research laboratories to recover and dispose of radioactive materials that could be diverted to make dirty bombs.

• The director of a social service agency caring for mentally and physically handicapped residents must solve the root cause of mysterious injuries to the residents.

• A Middle Eastern sheik needs to win the peace after winning the war against foreign-financed insurgents.

What’s common? Each organization faced a unique situation involving multiple players and tricky issues. Success required managing difficult political and organizational variables in addition to technical and cost factors. In most cases, the optimum path to the Goal was not apparent from the start; so a solution had to be thoughtfully created and skillfully implemented.

Their projects involved one or more of these dynamics:

• Hard to measure. Can’t easily kick the tires to track progress.

• High stakes. Important to the organization.

• Complex. Can’t always see a clear solution path at the start; must learn by doing.

• Consequential. Success brings benefits; failure brings pain.

• Ad hoc team. May require new players coming together as a team.

• Time pressure. You need to move fast.

• Multiple stakeholders. Involves and impacts many parties.

• Risky. You can’t control all the variables that the solution requires.

• Visible. People who count are watching and keeping score.

To be successful, all needed a Strategic Project Management approach, not the tactical task/schedule focus that dominates traditional project management. They needed an approach like that of this book in order to deliver the results they sought; and they succeeded by following the sound methodology you are reading about now.

Sound Familiar?

My presumption is that your work includes one or more of the dynamics listed above. How many of them sound familiar? If your own endeavors involve planning or executing important projects of one type or another, and if any of the dynamics listed above rings true for you, this book will benefit you immensely.

Based on hundreds of successful consulting projects conducted around the world, I’ve sharpened a planning process that addresses the tough issues, opportunities, and problems on your plate. The process you are about to discover will give you the insights you’ve always needed and sensed were missing from other approaches you’ve tried.

Along the way, I’ll make things as simple as possible without becoming simplistic. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the great American jurist and scholar, once wrote, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.”

The methodology is not complicated or abstract, though applying it takes some effort. But once you get the hang of it, the bright ideas in Strategic Project Management Made Simple will illuminate your dark project tunnels so you and your team can move confidently along clear paths to reach valued Goals.

Mastering Strategic Project Management

Today, we all deal with projects in one way or another, whether as sponsors, team members, project managers, or stakeholders. Your job title may not include Project Manager, but nevertheless managing projects is a given in any form of professional work.

Like it or not, being educated, competent, and hard working is not enough to ensure professional success, career advancement, and personal satisfaction in today’s world. Expertise in your own professional area is necessary, but not sufficient.

Today, every knowledge worker must be multi-skilled and quick to adapt new technologies as they emerge. Mastery of your own specialty is no longer enough because the most critical work requires collaboration across different technical disciplines, organ...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One - Are You Strategic?
• Part Two - Mastering the Four Critical Strategic Questions
• Part Three - Putting The Concepts Into Action
• APPENDIX Reference Tools and Resources
• Organization Turnaround and Best Practice Example (Fircrest School for the ...
• Develop or Update Strategic Plan (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—LLNL)
• Reinvent Your Department (Los Alamos National Laboratory—LANL)
• Strengthen Teamwork Across Functions (ARINC Director Action Group Task Force)
• Develop Information Technology Process Solutions and Algorithms (U.S. ...
• Design and Launch Sales or Marketing Initiatives (Avemar Cancer Treatment in Thailand)
• Close Out Projects with a People Focus (Washington Department of Transportation)
• Team Conduct of Operations (Los Alamos National Laboratory—Geographic ...
• Ongoing Support and Services
• Glossary and Usage of Terms
• About the Author
• Index