Project pipeline management for HR

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in this video we're going to talk about the activities of project management what is some of the work involved in managing a project and how does that apply to hr that's coming up right now hi there i'm andrea adams and the host of hr shop talk on the show you get expert insight into all kinds of aspects of hr i encourage you to subscribe to the show by clicking on the button at the bottom of the screen or subscribe to the podcast to keep learning from my smart and experienced guests today my guest is steve lemix steve has decades of experience in project management and is a project management professional i came across his name when he was delivering project management training specifically to hr people and i knew at that point i wanted to talk to him we've already done one episode together and i'm excited about this one too hi steve how are you hi great yeah thanks for having me back yeah thank you thank you for coming on and i'm interested in this one we'll get into the nitty-gritty here so first question and i think i asked this question in the last episode but can you talk briefly about the models of project management and what you think is best suited for hr right now in industry there's a great debate between traditional waterfall project management which has been like i mentioned earlier has been around for decades you could argue centuries and then this new emerging project management approach called agile and a lot of organizations any organizations with or any projects rather with it component are starting to figure out how can we adopt agile into the mix so agile works great and where it's designed and really shines is in when there's it components on projects so to your question hr projects anything that involves i.t you may be seeing agile becoming more and more common in a lot of organization can you talk about the steps of project management first thing i do is i do what's called initiate the project so we get together with management early on before we plan the project so we sit down to find it capturing this thing called the charter you know what's in scope what's other scope what are we going to do what are we not going to do get everybody on the same page your number one job as a project manager is to set stakeholder expectations so this is one of your early attempts at this yes also in project initiation i figure out who the stakeholders are i have all the key players so i know who to go talk to when it's time to do requirements and define needs okay number one reason for project failure and it doesn't matter if it's i.t or any type is poor requirements gathering core requirements okay so it makes sense to find out who my stakeholders are early so i know who to go to get taught i know who to go talk to to gather requirements not doing that leads to something called scope creep yeah it's we've everybody's seen scope creep by scopes we define the scope and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and uglier and out of control that's great that meeting with management like how long does that take honestly if i if it was me the way i used to do them as i draft up a charter okay give it my best shot bounce it off management either physically or through email or maybe virtual and just have them react to it rather than trying to create it as a group yeah i would have them it's much quicker if they just react to it you know change this add that i don't like this i don't like that and then get your key managers to have them react to it edit it and away you go okay so i mean what in some projects you could be like a day or two yeah other projects it might be a week i mean huge you know politically sensitive internal projects you might be longer than that depends on your organization right public organizations might be a little bit slower but that's just the way it is okay so after initiation then what so project gets black or the project charter gets blast manages yeah we like it that's what we want you to go plan uh at that moment we're officially into planning which means then as the project manager i pull together what's called my matrix team my planning team which is usually a core of internal experts that are going to help me now plan the project which means when i sit down with my team i define the scope or at least bring them up to speed on the scope which was defined in the charter then we send our business analyst ideally if we have one we'll send our business analysts off to start doing requirements gathering which means they need that stakeholder list right that we did earlier hand it to them and say look here's the people we need to talk to i'd like to know your elicitation plan how you're going to reach out to these people and some might be interviews focus groups surveys questionnaires that's up to the va to decide how they're going to reach out to these various folks to get their needs yeah right so then what i want from that at the end of all of this for my business analyst is requirements document clearly to find requirements and ideally from everybody not to forget anyone right in the first step you created a charter what if the requirements you discover in the planning phase don't they are greater than what's basically allowable by the charter always happens okay good what you said almost always happens because don't forget charters i like to think of those are just almost gasses because i don't talk to anybody yet right okay all right i can guess what i think we're going to need in the charter so everybody's on the same page then we kind of verify it with requirements okay and it's not unusual at all to have char or charter level time and cost estimates to go right out the window yeah now i had one project where we had we thought it was gonna be four hundred thousand dollars in the charter we plan to end up being 2.6 million wow but i don't apologize for that because charters i don't know what's going on yet i haven't really planned the project so i don't get nervous if i'm the pm i i'll go back and say look you know we were wildly off here's reality let's talk uh when you get that massive difference in requirements versus the charity you go back to your management team and you say that wasn't realistic and at that point they're making decisions and they may have to make some hard decisions we can downscale the charter we can uh massage the objectives we can down scale the scope in the charter okay if you we find out is too big we wildly underestimated that's fine but i want management to know this so they're in control and they understand that they're making the decisions so what's the next step well there's a couple more parts of planning okay we talked about nailing down the scope of the team getting to be off running off doing the requirements concurrent to that i need to start creating identifying all the tasks which means create something called the work breakdown structure okay which generally is identified it's three things you identify your project phases and each of the phases what are your phase deliverables what are the things that you're going to produce like a requirements document or system design those are deliverables and then the last thing is what are the tasks all the steps required to produce those so it's like a road map of all the tasks and deliverables for the whole project that's called the work breakdown structure i do that with the team i also do a risk register to identify you know possible risks foreseeable risks and then it's time to sequence so sort of the last major part is now i sequence the task to create my project schedule on a calendar which now i can start putting dates to things right okay so at this point then i would also then of course do my time and cost estimates well before i'm sequencing so i do my time and cost estimates then i sequence so at the end of this i've got my time i've got my schedule created i've got my project budget for my estimates and i've got my scope defined so my time cost scope my triple constraint i've got those defined so those are the key things that get approved in a project plan and then after project planning comes once a plan gets approved officially blessed by management you get the green light they say start go which means now we move into execution which means the work starts yeah so the team executes they do the work they start producing deliverables and doing the tasks concurrent to that as a project manager i'm monitoring and controlling so my job is to go around with the magnifying glass and make sure everybody's on track and doing their things i'm looking for any variance against my approved time cost scope baselines and almost always there is variance so then the question becomes what do you do about it and how you bring it back on the plan and i just insure that all the way through till final end deliverable gets signed off on so execution goes from when the plan gets approved all the way through to final and deliverable gets approved and signed off by your key managers and sponsors okay and then the last part close out which most organizations do a terrible job of this my old company we didn't do a very good job at all which means there's two main parts of clothes that i close any contracts with vendors if i have vendors if it's only internal people i don't have to worry about this but if i have vendors coming in under contract i close those out those are legal documents so i have to deal with procurement to do that and then do contract or administrative closure which is disband project offices sell equipment possibly performance reviews of staff most importantly post mortems and lessons learned reviews which is hugely helpful to find out what went right and what went wrong for next time and ideally i learned from miss previous mistakes right you said that uh the closeout is usually done badly uh not at all or not at all at all well michael company we used to just tear off onto the next exciting project we make the same silly mistakes over and over because we didn't do those final post-mortems and lessons learned reviews right so there's huge value there and i would say there's huge value if some if something important happens is those reports just don't get thrown into a drawer never to be seen again right ideally those should be stored on a share drive where everybody now moving forward can access those right do you do them now yes oh yeah oh i've learned the hard way yes those are used oh yes those are valuable okay all right those are key okay so in hr we're often you know our boss comes to us and says hey do this and do it fast and and maybe that's the same outside of hr but often it's also a weird and absurd request so i have two questions is that common and uh how do you manage it it's very common and to your point it's not just hr it's all projects across all organizations part of your job as a project manager is set and manage expectations right right so when management wants the project done for and free of my job is to gently push back and say look why don't we sit down and define the project first yep then we'll plan it with the team properly find out what is really going to cost how long is really going to take what's a reasonable scope and you know boss you and i can sit down and come to agreement on this so we're on the same page then we'll bless the plan you bless the plan and then we'll start the work right what i see far too often is there's very little planning if any we just roll up the sleeves and start the work and then you're like a dog going around trying to chase your tail trying to first of all define the project once it's already started yeah so it's an absolute recipe for coke creep where you know scope just gets bigger and uglier because we haven't defined it up front it's hard to push back on your boss do you like have any tips suggestions yeah evidence that we can pull out of our pocket and say hey well first of all you need to know that it is your job to gently nudge back and once they push i'll call it nudge i need to nudge back to management part of your job as a responsible project manager is you're the reality checker right management can dream up all the stuff they want done for free yesterday but my job is to figure out how and sit down plan it properly you know do it i'm not going to beat it to death do it fast plan it properly then go back to management negotiate now are is management first of all used to this probably not are they going to like this probably not okay is it your job yes it's absolutely your job as a project manager and i'm not saying no i'm going to go back to management with options and say look boss you know you're saying you know 100 000 in six months i'm saying two hundred thousand dollars in nine months let's talk right right let's see if we can come to agreement somewhere in the middle i can prove why it's two hundred thousand in nine months i know you want it done in six months and a hundred but let's talk let's see if we can negotiate this yeah you know you say that um managers don't usually like it when you push back like that and i imagine you've had to do that a lot lots a lot did you for the number of times you've done that have you learned any you know tricks to make that go better yeah hard numbers the world management lives in be able to prove it you can't just go in and say i think it's going to be 200 000 in nine months because that's what my gut says you're gonna have to come and improve it on paper which means you're going to come in with you know schedules that you can prove and say x number of weeks you need to come in with spreadsheets and say here's the dollars here's why here's my rationale and explain it to them then we talk then we negotiate let's say no i'm not saying no i'm not going to do it or it's impossible i'm just saying you want this i'm saying that let's negotiate something in the middle that's realistic and achievable if you've found this helpful subscribe to see all the episodes and comment have you been asked to deliver a project in an unreasonable space of time how did you deal with it let us know in the comment section below is there a most important step in project management and if so what is it three things i would i would answer three key things to me the absolute cornerstones of successful project management one is the charter yes sitting down to define the project what it is and what it's not before you plan yeah so everybody sort of launches from the same spot yep second thing i would say absolutely key is the work breakdown structure okay absolute cornerstone of a solid project plan is being able to identify your phases your deliverables within each phase and all the tasks okay as everything springs from the wbs thereafter right all your time and cost estimates spin out of the work breakdown structure and where your resources get assigned spin out of your work breakdown structure and your schedule is sequencing of the tasks from the work breakdown structure okay so that's that's the second most important is probably the key one equally important risk management managing risk throughout the project all through execution proactively managing risk pmi has an interesting statistic on that they say that if you are proactively managing risk every team meeting every time you get together with a team you review the risk register and forward scan to look for possible risks up to 90 percent of risk and before seen and managed speaking about risk what are some risks that we should be considering or thinking about well to answer that i mean there's different types of risk there's what's called known unknowns which are foreseeable predictable risks and there's unknown unknowns okay so it's like 90 10. 90 is the known unknowns of the 10. so you can have technical risks budgetary risks resource risks political priority risks vendor risks right so smart project managers will identify the key categories of risk depending on my project like an i like an lms system rollout you could probably identify you know 10 12 14 categories of risks and then a great team exercise is then with the team sit down and try and identify specific risks that might happen which then you assess them probability and impact typically probability on a scale of one to ten impact on a scale of one to ten like some risks are more likely to happen but more severe if they do happen right other risk would be really high probability but a really small impact you know i suppose a risk on an lms is that your you know your technical resources is safer are taken away too soon oh put money on it yeah you'll lose resources you could have budget cuts you can have requirements change and evolve you could have key stakeholders change their mind you can have key stakeholders leave or get promoted and somebody comes out with different priorities yeah right you could have technology risks right if it's vendors involved you can have vendor risk you could have procurement risk you'd have contracting risks okay so what most frequently and maybe you've alluded to this either in this episode or the last one what most uh frequently causes disaster in projects was it scoping yep scope creep we've already talked about scope creep and the number one reason for scope creep is poor requirements okay and the number one reason for poor requirements is you can talk to everybody up front to find out what their needs are right so avoiding that by doing good requirements gathering up front uh talking to all the right people to gather their needs prioritize those needs and then plan the project based on everybody's needs helps avoid scope creep okay another key thing i would say is gold plating which happens a lot especially on it projects which happen in hr projects what i call the g-whiz stuff let's add cool stuff oh let's build this yeah let's build that client's gonna love this that's gold plating gold plating is a choice right scope same end result scope gets bigger and uglier gold plating you choose to add cool stuff uh scope creep is where you don't talk to everybody up front which is poor requirements gathering i would also say some of the other big boo-boos you can make is we've already talked about poor risk management not looking forward at the horizon also just playing poor planning or lack of planning because we want to jump in and get doing the doing right and i would also say the number not doing your number one job as a project manager is setting and managing expectations keystone stakeholder expectations all the way through from initiation all the way through to close out right you know it's like time if i don't set expectations it's like trying to describe a cloud right management looks at the cloud team sees one thing management sees something else customer sees something else so we need to make sure everybody's on the same page around expectations i think that's something that hr is probably pretty familiar with is the amount of expectations folks have i mean i i think we kind of live and breathe that so maybe we would get that part maybe maybe not i don't know when do you need project management software yeah that's yeah good question to me to me and i get this ass all the time is like you know if i buy microsoft project for example now i'm a project manager well my thought is okay if i buy microsoft word does that make me tom clancy right so it's a tool it's a tool that i can capture my already done plan that i've done with the team yeah i plan carefully with the team then i capture my plan i plug it into the software to generate reports and play what-ifs but you don't manage projects with software you manage projects face-to-face with your people and you generate reports and you can play what-if scenarios and look at budgets yeah on the software so it's a tool to help support you as you manage the project it helps you capture your gantt charts your schedules management loves to see gantt charts and schedules it helps you capture your costs you generate pretty reports yeah right but you don't have to have software to manage products you do it on paper yeah it's pretty but you can it'll be just as effective if someone wants to learn to do project management where should they go the resources on the internet are it is a waterfall pun intended but like it is there's so much out there yeah i would probably do it in staged approach first of all do i need to be certified as a project manager or am i part part-time you could um take a course you could shadow somebody as a you know as a deputy project manager or as an observer just to learn the other thing read there's lots of great books out there on project management you know means some of those books are i hate to say like project management for dummies that's a great book it's fantastic it's exactly what it's designed for it's the basics right okay uh the other thing is you can join organizations like jordan pmi yeah become a member go to chapter meetings go to conferences and start to educate yourself and so that was supposed to be my last question but my other question is at some point you talked about the charter and uh the work breakdown structure and you know there's a bunch of other documents do you know of a place they can get stuff like that for free yeah you know where i'd look first internal to my own organization most almost all organizations right now typically in it or if you have a pmo go to them and i can guarantee they will have standardized templates for your organization 95 of the clients i deal with now they already have internal templates so go visit your it folks go to visit the project management people if not google okay look on the net there's tons of them out there there's all every template you can find there's different flavors and versions oh yeah i'd start internal first yeah and then go from there thanks steve i loved that and as i mentioned earlier steve and i did another episode and a link to that one's right here thanks for watching and see you next time