7 Steps to professional project leadership

A practical guide to delivering projects professionally using easy to remember steps and tools.

Ian K Shreer

• Publisher: IKS Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780648834229
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

While there is a constant focus on certifications and qualifications, the actual delivery practice gets missed. This book provides an easy to use and remember process that will take you on the journey to profressional project leadership. Bridging the gap between the academic and the practical application of the project leadership tool box. Enabling better and faster delivery, reducing waste while building an awesome brand along the way.

1

WHY?

For a long time I have believed project leadership is a profession the same as other professions. The small difference is that gaining experience in project leadership is ubiquitous, whether it is managing all of the responsibilities of the family holiday or building a new home, there are skills required for making sure we don’t make big mistakes. And believe it or not these two simple everyday examples include every facet of project leadership.

The key is knowing whether it is out of your depth or not. I have witnessed and supported a number of project leaders who were not aware that, without best practice (not method) in their tool kit, they might as well be on their own risk register, or whatever document they want to use for managing and understanding risk.

This book is about the long journey to find a tool kit that enables powerful and professional project leadership to shine through. It is predicted that poor project leadership can account for 90 per cent of government project overruns.

While these are big, hairy and well documented, these are not isolated. In 2011 I witnessed a project grow from $29,000 to over $300,000 purely because of the poor performance of the project leadership.

In the early 2010s I was working to uplift a delivery office which had a project that had overrun from $5m to $84m, yes that much. There are a number of factors that can contribute to cost blow-outs on these types of projects, however professional project leadership will assist in reducing the number of these events, and although there may still be failures I hope the impact is lessened through the process described in these pages.

There will always be projects – and programs for that matter – that will overrun by time and cost or just not deliver even the ‘minimum loveable product’. This is all agnostic of method and comes down to practice. For the past 10 years I have taken a keen interest in how projects are led, managed, run, mastered – whatever word you wish to use. What I have seen is a consistent leadership approach. Always with the best intentions although not always with the best tool box or skills to deliver in some tough environments. In 2011, due to a number of factors, including fate and the want for a lifestyle change, my wife and I relocated to Melbourne (Australia) from the United Kingdom. Starting again in a new country and building a career / reputation was a totally engaging process and what was interesting is that Melbourne, as with many major cities worldwide, is in a constant change cycle. Apart from creating opportunities for starting a new life, it also offered a testing ground for the skills I knew I had gained and had added to my tool-box, but couldn’t easily describe. It turns out this tool-kit is a full project delivery kit that can be used in a multitude of environments and industries.– it doesn’t matter if it is financial institutes, mining, utilities or education to name a few – there is a constant need for the embodiment of professional project leadership.

 

In an attempt to document, discuss and acknowledge some of the best practices I have witnessed, tested and practiced, this book exists as a means of assisting, in small ways, the reduction of waste that companies experience. While this is definitely not a ‘golden bullet’, in the correct hands these pages can provide the confidence and resolve to build success out of project leadership.

We need to think of professional project leadership as the ability to run a project from start to finish as quickly and efficiently as possible ensuring the best outcome, regardless of any framework or governance that is in place.

You can, but I suggest you don’t microwave a steak!!

Although I love a good steak there are good ways and bad ways to cook it. In the best BBQ books you will be told to cook the meat on one side for a number of minutes and then turn the steak and cook the other side for a different amount of minutes, ensuring that the BBQ is hot and making the perfect marks from the grill onto the steak. You just can’t get the same experience from a microwave. In fact if you have ever tried to cook a steak in a standard microwave you will find it cooked on the inside more than the outside, making the taste somewhat interesting.

So project methods are just the same as cooking methods – there are many of them, they need to be fit for purpose, and if you get it wrong you will ruin everything, although you may not know until you eat the food or worse, get into a middle of a project and find out the wrong practice was being used.

For many years there has been a want from all industry sectors to ‘delivery faster’; deliver more ‘value’ quicker. There has even been the mind set of – don’t worry about it being perfect just make it work for us. Interestingly in the early 2000s a small group of software engineers met in a ski resort (Snowbird) to work out a new way to deliver software faster and more, efficiently, use the investment that was being made.

 

This became knows as ‘Agile’ and quickly grew from a software development method to a project delivery method and in some cases a lifestyle. There is no underestimating the impact these engineers would have on so many projects, delivery’s and companies across the globe. I have been privileged to be part of a number of agile revolutions.

The premise of agile is to deliver in parts, other wise known as timeboxed, and iterative rather than the ‘big bang ‘approach that ‘waterfall’ project delivery facilitates .Which as it suggests delivers everything at the end. Additionally it promotes a more personal and connected way of working with a project team, with things such as ‘pulse checks’ rather than status reports.

 

The challenge that I have seen, which I mentioned earlier, is present in both a standard project delivery model and an agile model. The process I am working through in this book is relevant to all methods and therefore agnostic. Over the past 25 years in project and program leadership, I have witnessed at least two ‘agile’ revolutions. From the qualifications I have acquired and the courses I have attended, I am now fully aware there is a missing piece of the puzzle about managing a project that you don’t get taught by passing an exam or attending a course. From what I have experienced and witnessed the missing component is the practice that brings the method to life. These pages are dedicated to the practice, and as much as it is intended that the practice is agnostic of method, you will see echoes of many methods as you read through the practice.

Having worked in a number of different industries and roles, I have had to build my own toolbox of skills to be successful in any given situation. Most of these skills have now been rolled into a nimble and fit-for-purpose acronym which I have found can fit almost all situations in project leadership. I use this daily and it has never let me down. In fact, I recently took on a short contract to assist an old friend and used it to rectify the project that was on its second round of struggles.

From my early years in the Royal Air Force (RAF) I have found solitude and safety in acronyms that mean something in practice. The first one I was introduced to over 29 years ago was C.R.E.F.F. This is the live and die practice for military airborne logistics: C – Centralised Control, R – Regulation of Despatch, E – Even Flow, F – Full use of carrying capacity, F – Flexibility. Apart from being highly entertaining at parties (you can imagine right?) I have been able to introduce this into my everyday working practice after leaving the RAF. However, while this was great for logistics it didn’t really fit the bill when it came to project leadership and the elements that need to be monitored or setup or controlled. Did I hear a sigh when you read centralised control? I am fully aware that a ‘command and control’ approach is what some companies are trying to move away from and I am considerate to this approach. With that in mind what you will read in the following pages is a much more leader driven approach to taking control over the old-fashioned approach.

Now back to C.R.E.F.F. It is this last word that got me thinking about the practice and what it is that I am looking to learn when I see great project leaders. What can I learn and what can I take away from these highly accomplished and mostly relaxed people in high-pressure situations?

The military has some high pressure of its own and the calmness that comes from knowing what to do and when and where to draw from best practice, or that tool kit, is exactly what keeps the institution working the way it does.

Stumbling across C.O.N.T.R.O.L

Many years after leaving the air force I found myself in a position heading a project management office in Australia. Here I was in full recruitment drive looking to build a highly functioning team. One of the benefits of a role like this is to be able to step back and look at delivery differently and assess what it is that really makes a Project Leader great. I set about pulling together a brief that was easy to follow and worked a bit like a check list to filter through the applications.

C -Do they Captain their ship?
O - Do they Organise their team?
N - Do they manage their finances - know their Numbers?
T - Do they plan well - Time amd planning?
R - Do they manage Risks, Actions, Issues, Decisions and Clarifications - RAID-C?
O - Do they carry out Organisational Change Management (OCM)?
L - Did they Learn lessons?

 

In the conversations and interviews and reading the hundreds of applications I could see where project leaders did exactly the above in spades. I could also see where some missed the mark. Now there are some soft skills that may be missing in this list, such as communications, and although it isn’t called out explicitly, it sits neatly in change management. So far this list has worked well for me – project leaders I have coached and mentored, as well as helping several companies I have worked with figure out what professional project leadership looks like. One of my good friends, and an executive sponsor for a big program I had to health check, was really appreciative to understand in a simple way what they should expect from a professional project leader, which is what the program needed.

Pulling this list together and turning it into an acronym of its own created a much wider picture which allowed me and my team to put a training program together to cover these items. At the end of the recruitment drive and training I was very proud to say we left a lasting legacy of competency and success.

What you are going to read over the coming chapters is a coming together of many years of experience, not all mine, and some truly tried-and-tested techniques and practices that give a head start to the tool box.

For the past few years I have had many opportunities to prove the practice and most recently I have used these techniques to rectify a number of large, unstable and struggling programs back into a working, delivery-focused state.

As much as the vast majority of the practice could be considered logical and obvious, it is the ability to use the practice when needed that makes the difference. We all know how to cross a road – doing so when it is safe is the important practice we need to adopt.

There will be occasions through these pages where we will be answering some obvious questions. This is what reverting to best practice is all about and as much as it may seem obvious at the time, there will be occasions where it will be a nice reminder of how to approach something

To help with understanding the premise of each of the process steps I have added good and poor examples of each discipline at the start of each chapter.

Enough about me, lets get started.

2

Captain your Ship

Through the ages the world and many industries have been littered with the remnants of failed projects. Projects fail for a multitude of reasons and under different circumstances. One of the core catalysts for a number of other shortcomings is leadership. In this sense I mean the ability to communicate, listen, trust, take ownership and support the team and stakeholders.

Here is an example of leadership that could have been better.

Who failed?
The Galactic Empire (Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope)

What were they trying to do?
Build a world destroying weapon (the Death Star)

Why did they fail?

There was no single event that caused the project to fail – it was poor leadership. Key elements that contributed to the overall failure were:

• Workers not having a stake in the outcome. There was little to gain for the engineers other than to stay alive.
• Employees not having a voice. There was literally no way of receiving feedback from the ground up and very little communication from the top down.
• No tolerance for failure. This was central to people not speaking out and informing leaders that there were issues.
• Improper training. Almost all of the protection forces were woefully underprepared or tooled, almost all die immediately in any given situation
  
  In this case the Death Star project was running behind schedule due to resources being delayed and work not being completed as quickly as expected. During the build phase the schematics had been stolen and provided to a competitor, these schematics showed a vulnerability that was ultimately exploited and the Death Star was destroyed. The truth here is that somebody knew of the weakness and due to the leadership not being tolerant they had no avenue to speak out.

What can we learn?

When a leader has an organisation driven by fear and with little regard for the wellbeing of their team there is likely to be poor performance and even more likely a split in the goals people are working towards. Not having a clear goal or plan makes people nervous, it is human nature to want to know ‘what next’, ‘what will happen if’.

As a leader, setting a tolerant and transparent team environment is key. There will always be people who know more than you. Listening to them and making informed decisions is one aspect of a leader that would have potentially saved the Death Star – not that we would want that.

Making sure team members have the correct tools and know how to use them is highly relevant to the performance of the project. It is hard to gain confidence with inadequate tools or skills.

An example of great leadership

On the flip side of poor leadership there are some amazing examples of great leadership we can learn from. Below is an example:

Who was the leader?

Captain Richard de Crespigny

What was the scenario?

Although not specific to a project as such, Richard de Crespigny was the captain on Qanats QWF32, an Airbus A380, with 440 passengers and 29 crew on board from London to Sydney via Singapore. Four minutes after take-off out of Singapore one of the engines suffered an ‘uncontained’ failure. The incident ended with the aircraft being successfully landed at Changi Airport without a single injury, however the story goes a lot deeper than that and shows extraordinary leadership in incredible circumstances. It isn’t just the captain’s skill that makes this a leadership story of the ages, it is the way he managed the situation. It so happened that he was being assessed on this flight and he had to take control of the situation when there was a potential he could be undermined, by more senior officers, in the cockpit. Ensuring everyone knew their role and responsibility, giving clear instructions, receiving feedback from all sources and making calculated decisions during the incident showed great calmness, training, skill and oozed leadership. The most impressive thing about this event and his leadership is that he didn’t stop leading when the aircraft was safely on the ground and the passengers were safe, nope not this dude. He carried on taking ownership of their safety at the hotel and with all the media attention, offering his private number to anyone who needed assistance during the aftermath.

What can we learn?

From this event w...

Table of contents

• Half-Title
• Full-Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 - Why?
• 2 - Captain Your Ship
• 3 - Organise Your Team
• 4 - Numbers - Know Your Numbers
• 5 - Time And Planning
• 6 - Risks, Actions, Issues, Decisions & Clarifications (Raid-C)
• 7 - Organisational Change Management
• 8 - Lessons Learned
• 9 - The End!
• 10 - Appendix A - Risk
• 11 - Appendix B - Issue Register
• 12 - Appendix C - Clarifications
• 13 - Appendix D - Standard Report
• 14 - Appendix E - Stakeholder Map
• 15 - Appendix F - Key Responsibilities
• 16 - Appendix G - Change Impact Assessment
• About The Author