Project Management for Non-Project Managers

Jack Ferraro

• Editorial: AMACOM
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814417379
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Project Management

This practical guide reveals the project management methodology and processes that will give you the advantage to ensure your projects' success--and advance organizational goals.

As a seasoned project management consultant and instructor for the American Management Association, author Jack Ferraro has gained years of experience bridging the gap between project managers and functional managers to help countless teams improve their performance. In this book, he demystifies the jargon and processes of project management, encouraging functional managers to jump into the PM arena and arming them with step-by-step guidelines for mastering the most critical PM skills.

In Project Management for Non-Project Managers, you will discover:

• business analysis techniques,
• work breakdown structures,
• program sequencing techniques,
• and risk management methods.

Great managers are experts at getting bottom-line results, but often do not understand their role in the success or failure of their organization's projects. As projects become more strategic and collaborative, managers with even basic project-management knowledge are most capable of keeping projects business-focused.

By switching gears from passive bystander to active owner of project strategies, you'll keep your team's projects on track and, as a result, increase their business value.

PART ONE
The Critical Role of the Functional Manager in Project Success

CHAPTER ONE
What the Functional Manager Should Know About the Project Organization

If this book has caught your eye, you are most likely a functional manager working on a project that is not going well. Or, you face an upcoming project that must go well to prevent a serious negative impact on your professional life. If so, you have the right book.

Little attention is given to improving functional managers’ project management skill sets. Why? For one, many functional managers do not even recognize that a project management discipline exists. But best practices in project management, backed by research, have evolved over the past 40 years. These best practices encompass large and small projects in technology, construction, business process improvement initiatives, and more.

Another obstacle is that many functional managers reject project management methodologies, processes, and terminology because project teams either consistently miss their deliverable dates or overrun their budgets. This leads functional managers to underestimate the value of project management in general and feeds attitudes of “project management is a waste of time,” or “project management slows down the process,” or “project management is just a bunch of bureaucratic silliness.” Such attitudes create a formidable barrier between project teams and their business units.

In many organizations, project management’s focus is on controlling and reducing the money wasted on projects. Management implements project management offices (PMO), methodologies, and processes that require excessive documentation, reviews, and bureaucracy. Career paths are built for project managers who learn the science of project management but often lack skill in the art of project management. Little attention is given to how business area and project resources should be aligned to optimize team performance.

Despite these obstacles, functional managers must play an instrumental role in transforming an organization’s approach to be more customer centric, thus helping stakeholders achieve their desired results. This begins with creating an integrated project organization, the heart of which is a partnership between the functional manager and the project manager.

Who Is the Functional Manager?

You run a department or division, deal with personnel situations, and resolve day-to-day operational issues. At the same time, you participate in one or more projects. Your participation is necessary—you are an integral part of the project organization. Although your involvement in some projects may be minor, chances are that you are a key player in at least one of them. Balancing the many demands of your functional responsibilities and then adding project responsibilities can be overwhelming and, at times, seem impossible.

In traditional project management literature, a functional manager is anyone with management authority over an organizational unit—such as a department—within a business, company, or other organization. Functional managers are not necessarily affiliated with a project team, nor are they directly involved in the day-to-day management of the project. However, they are supposed to ensure that the team’s goals and objectives are aligned with the organization’s overall strategy and vision. And the functional manager is responsible for providing the project team with the resources needed to complete the project.

Traditional role definitions break down in real-life projects. Project sponsors are often removed from realities of implementation and become distracted by other priorities. Functional managers become more than just resource providers—they become a source of truth for requirements, of validation of a project team’s business process analysis, and of authority in measuring benefits. In reality, functional managers are not only stakeholders but customers of the project team and critical linchpins to project success.

Project teams often have problems integrating into matrix organizations. Overburdened teams become disconnected from the real project need when they lack an understanding of the customer’s business and work remotely from users. They use vernacular in meetings and documents that customers and users do not understand. Furthermore, maturing project management offices (PMOs) stake out organizational authority on how projects should be done. In today’s PMO-centric environment, project teams have little incentive to step out of their comfort zone and truly partner with their customer. Their management structure preaches adherence to budget, resource management, timelines, and following the PMO process.

In my first book, The Strategic Project Leader (Auerbach Publications, 2007), I promote the concept of a project manager becoming a project leader, partnering with functional managers and helping them drive strategic change. I continue to believe this is critical to project success. However, project managers today are still being commoditized and rarely have incentives to step out of their comfort zones. They are unlikely to take the personal risks necessary to see that a project performs effectively. It may get done, but the project will likely underperform, be late, miss critical functionality, and/or run over budget. This is due mainly to the failure of project managers to deal properly with project obstacles that were within their influence. Project teams and project managers often neglect to take a service-oriented view of their role. They fail to understand that they are the spearhead of change in their organization—change through projects initiated to meet the pressing demands of the organization.

Enter the functional organization, your department or division. As the manager, you are responsible for taking delivery of the project team’s output and using it to produce the benefits your executives envisioned. Burdened with the daily meetings and conference calls regarding your regular job, you now have an entirely new organization to deal with: the PMO, the project team, the cross-functional team. Whatever its name, this organization is likely not to be ingrained in your day-to-day work or your span of control. Whether sourced with internal or external resources, this organization is one of outsiders. They report to another command structure, often with different objectives: to get the project completed on time and on budget and then to move on.

Adding to this, you most likely have already seen a project nightmare (or several) unfold before your eyes in your current organization or in a past workplace. And now project charters, schedules, and countless other project templates from this organization are rapidly filling your inbox. You may have a chance to glance at them with limited attention while you’re multitasking on conference call after conference call.

As a consequence, you are not wired into this project organization. You might as well be on Mars, receiving distant radio signals from Project Earth. The result is a gap in provider/customer knowledge, relationship, and unity. I wish all project managers would overcome these obstacles and make it easier for you to connect with the team, but don’t hold your breath. You are the one who must take a step to solve this disunity. And you can. By reading this book, you are already taking an important step toward working more closely with your project team and becoming integrated into the project organization.

The Challenge of Integrating the Project Team into the Organization

One common reason for project failure is the inability of project teams to work closely with the organization or “business” to successfully deliver project results. The functional manager plays a key role in an organization’s ability to structure customer-focused project teams, and this customer focus in turn plays a crucial role in ensuring that the project team understands the business problem or need. The challenge is getting members of the project team to see the big picture and how their work is affecting the organization’s overall long-term goals.

Throughout this book, I use the terms “project organization” and “project team” very carefully. These terms are not interchangeable. Although traditional project management literature uses “project team” to include an array of stakeholders, in this book the two terms are distinct.

A project organization is defined as a temporary organizational structure that is unique to a specific project. This organization includes members of the project team, various key stakeholders, customers, users, advisors, and sponsors.

The project team is a group of individuals who are ultimately responsible for delivering the project deliverables. Those may consist of a new software system; system enhancements; a new product; or a new business process with systems, organizational changes, training, etc. Leading the project team is the project manager.

Standing in the wings is an advisory team composed of individuals who must be consulted to ensure that the change being introduced by the project is acceptable. Members of this team may include regulatory advisors, legal experts, and other functional managers whose processes will be impacted by the project.

Then there is the customer team. This group consists of those individuals responsible for using the project deliverables in a manner consistent with the organization’s business practices to achieve the defined benefits that led to the project being initiated in the first place. This is where many projects fall down. The sponsor is the financial backer and has the organizational authority to get significant resources committed to implementing the change. Too often, we think the sponsor is going to oversee the details associated with achieving the benefits of the project, but he or she is not likely to be involved in the tactical project decisions that will, over the course of months, greatly affect how beneficial the project will be. The critical component of the customer team is the functional manager: someone who will ensure that users comply with new processes, adopt the systems that are delivered, and provide the thought leadership on how this change will impact other aspects of the organization. A functional manager or a group of functional managers is responsible for achieving these benefits.

Functional managers do not simply supply resources to the project. They are a critical component of the project organization, the component that ensures benefits will be achieved. They are co-conspirators in shepherding the needed change within the environment, increasing revenues, reducing costs, improving cycle times, complying with new regulations, and improving customer satisfaction. As a functional manager, you must accept your role as the spearhead of change and work in close partnership with the other spearhead of change, the project manager. This is your call to action.

In order to make this partnership work, the functional manager and project manager must share the same goals, have mutual respect for one another, and have a common understanding of how to achieve the project’s objectives.

The solution is establishing a customer-focused project team that creates an integrated provider/customer relationship. And you must take this step yourself. You cannot rely on your project manager, PMO, or sponsor to integrate this project team into the project organization. They see their roles as something different.

The Project Manager

You are probably aware that project managers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are experienced with the organizational dynamics of your organization, while others are oblivious. Having a certified project manager is no guarantee that you have a competent leader.

Project management certifications are similar to technology certifications in that they attempt to measure a project manager’s knowledge, skill, and experience. The most popular industry certification, by sheer numbers that exceed 500,000, is Project Management Institute’s (PMI^®) Project Management Professional (PMP^®) certification. Among PMPs, the most represented areas of interest for continuing education is information systems.¹ This is not surprising, since the project management industry has grown up alongside the information technology industry.

Project management certifications have been beneficial to both practitioners and employers. Many project managers are motivated by the competitive edge offered by certifications, as they can lead to advancement, increased pay, and job security. And trade organizations that support project management certifications have seen continued growth as project management expands.

Don’t be intimidated by these certifications or their holders. Project management certifications use a body of knowledge or framework of knowledge as a basis for the certification. Some certifications focus on knowledge and level of experience, while others include more emphasis on ...