Handing a project over

It is always nice for a project manager to see a project through from inception to delivery in reality this doesn't always happen many things can happen such as prioritisation or a new job for the incumbent project manager.

I always find handing over hard, and the main thing that you always need to remember is that it is not personal, I was always told not to fall in love with your project and that becomes more pertinent when you are handing it over, a new project manager will always have a different way of looking at things, and will interpret what you see as an issue as a risk and vice versa.

I break the handover in to 5 stages:

Stage 1

To make the handover as simple as possible the best method is to meet face to face with your replacement and talk them through high level what has happened so far, what the success criteria is and what has gone well so far, and where you see the challenges, this gives them an overview and some things to think about before you move on to the next stage.

Stage 2

Handover the governance providing plan,RAID logs, governance schedules and previous steering packs, to end this stage you should create your own governance document outlining how you are going to handover and what the key deliverable you need to complete to ensure the new PM has everything they need.

Stage 3

Introduce the new project manager to all the key stakeholders, do the initial introduction and let the new PM get to know the stakeholders and their thoughts on the project.

Stage 4

A week or two shadowing is useful, but both you and the new PM need to review this, as the new PM will be champing at the bit to get going and you will find it odd and maybe frustrating when you are not running the show anymore.

Stage 5

Provide ongoing consultancy, where possible provide support and consultancy where asked, but only when asked, the new PM is driving the project and you wouldn't like it if someone kept interfering with your new project.


As with all aspects of Project Management the secret to a successful handover is communication.

Lessons Learned and Wash Up's

Project delivered what happens next

When a project has completed there is still things to do, both for the ongoing development for the business that you are delivering for and for your own personal development.

All good project management books will tell you about the formal project framework requirements of closing a project although you will find it difficult to get engagement once a project has been completed, as the natural order is to look back rather than forward. However I firmly believe that to keep innovating you need to learn from things that don't go smoothly and to plan.

This week I have completed two different wash up activities, whilst both looking back at project delivery they serve different purposes one to help with strategic direction for a next phase of integration and the other to identify how a process improvement can be implemented better.

Executive Summary

A 2 page summary highlighting the following:

What the issues were

Solutions for the next stage

Working at this level, no need to go into detail, remember the sponsor should be aware of these issues and this is a recap. If you have kept a good RAID log through the project this activity is relatively easy to put together.

Detailed wash up

This activity brings together all the stakeholders who have been involved in the project and runs through the following themes:

Communication of project strategy and deliverable

Testing Procedure and feedback

Process Improvements

Actions to complete before fully BAU

From the wash up this week, there was an obvious problem identified as it was clear that the senior management who had signed off the change had not clearly communicated to the users what was happening and why, a vital lesson learned for my next project.

Assumptions- Be Careful

Introduction

It is important to document and get agreement of any assumptions that you make on your project, and it is absolutely essential when dealing with external stakeholders, particularly when providing professional services.

I generally find there are two types of assumptions that you need to document and be aware of resourcing and technical decisions.

Resourcing

At a start of a project there is a lot of excitement and promise of great resources that will be at your disposal which allows you to build a great project plan, however experience shows says this does not always follow through, particularly when the sponsor's next exciting project comes along.

Resource is always a big issue on any project and you need to fight hard to keep good resource.

Technical Decisions

A couple of examples here are when you are putting your business case together and for example you are offshoring some activity, you will need to document and agree that you are moving roles on a like for like basis, getting this understood and agreed early saves surprises for everyone later on.

In your technical planning you could make an assumption that your changes will be able to go into the standard release programme, change release managers are very protective of their schedule so again book your assumption in early.

Process

You can't totally guard against an assumption not being correct or agreements renegaded on, but to mitigate i carefully track the assumption agreed in a project meeting and then play them back in an email to the manager responsible, then add to them my RAID log and then perhaps more importantly check in on a minimum monthly basis to ensure the assumption still holds good.

Comments/Future Articles

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Getting close to delivery date

Unless your are very lucky, the normal scenario in any technology project, that when you are getting very close to the deadline day there will be still a lot of tasks to do and very likely there will be lots of pressure on achieving the target date.

Very often the target date will have customer implications or cost implications if it is not met.

As the project manager you will probably be under huge pressure, but you must ensure that the last minute chaos does not compromise all the good work that you have done so far.

Here are 5 things to remember when you enter this period:

Replans and Timescales

The easy tasks have probably already been done, the straightforward test, the simple code or the basic job descriptions. Remember the last tasks always take longer than you think so plan and communicate accordingly.

Cutting Corners

Or to use its project language title de scoping, there will be the inevitable request from either the sponsor or steering group to see what can be dropped from the remaining project tasks. If you can it is a good idea to create a separate work stream to manage this activity including the documentation that de scoping will bring such as manual processes or new change requests. If you fail to document a key stakeholder will claim they were unaware of the decision or implications of the de scope.

Stay Firm

You know better than anyone else how your project is ran, how hard your team are working, as you reach the critical phase, lots of suggestions will be made on how to finish quicker and meet the deadlines, depending on the seniority of the stakeholder some will need investigating, however be firm and back your team, making changes at a late stage rarely pays dividends.

Other Workstreams

Make sure you keep up to speed with any other Workstreams in your programme, if they are also struggling with the deadline date, if gives you leverage in your planning, and it is good information to communicate to your team so they know they are not alone in being up against it.

Prompt communication

Make sure that any issues or risks that occur are communicated immediately at this time waiting for a formal governance structure is to late. Quick responses to progress requests also give assurance that you are in control.

What is a risk and an issue- Layman Terms

This may be very obvious to someone up to speed with Project Management speak, but it can be a bit of a mystery for those not.

The other week I heard an excellent analogy which makes it crystal clear.

If you are walking down a street and there is a pile of dog muck in front of you there is a RISK that you may walk in it, if you actually step it on, boy you do have an ISSUE.

In another every day scenario, when you are planning your holiday and you have a flight at 9, and you have to travel on the M25 you have a RISK you could miss your flight, if you then miss your flight you have an ISSUE.

You will often hear talk of mitigating risks, in the holiday example a good mitigation would be to book a hotel the night before so removing the risk of travelling on the M25.

Hope these everyday examples, help breakdown some of the project management lingo.

Please leave any comments particularly for any other subjects that could be demystified.

Who is important on your project

Stakeholder Matrix

In your initial project planning session you have identified your stakeholders, what you need to do next is to evaluate their importance and influence on the successful delivery of your project.

To do this I use a simple 4 quadrant matrix, which evaluates the stakeholder in simple terms, this is an activity you should do at the start of the project and then evaluate regularly as you go through the lifecycle of the your project, as you will often find new stakeholders come into play and need to be managed.


The Matrix



How to use the matrix

Look at all your stakeholders, and evaluate where they go

High-High A good example here would be your sponsor (note here if your sponsor doesn't have high interest you are in trouble.

High Interest- Low Influence Could be team members you are relying on to complete a task

Low Interest -High Influence Influencial person in the business but not close to your project, for instance finance director who holds the purse strings.

Low Interest-Low Influence Most interesting category as you could argue why are they a stakeholder if in this category, a good example here could be your IT department who you will need to find that elusive bit of kit but claim they need a 3 month lead time.


Key Uses of the Matrix

Governance

From your evaluation you can see who you would need to include in your steering meetings, regular working groups and in any weekly updates.

Communication

On a project I am currently working on, it has a long lead time and on my monthly review I noticed that I had no communication with a High Interest-High Influence stakeholder for the last month.

On evaluation they are still key to the project success, so it was a good reminder to drop them a note with a quick update and explain why they hadn't had the expected involvement just yet.

Summary

Stakeholders and their support are paramount to the successful delivery of your project, and this is a great tool to initially manage them and then continually evaluate them.

Project Planning- The Quick Start

One of the most exciting things of being a project manager is when you have a new project starting from scratch and you need to get a good understanding of what you need to do and how you are going to deliver it.

There are lots of methods that you can use, my preferred method is a very basic rapid planning tool.

Some methods suggest getting all the stakeholders together and creating the project framework as as a group. I prefer a smaller group  of the obvious key stakeholders and subject matter experts in their field to start and aim to cover off 6 key components.

• Desired Outcome
• Purpose of Project
• Stakeholders
• What do we need to do
• Constraints
• Timescales 

Desired Outcome

It may be strange but it it always good to check and document what the desired outcome of the project is, sometimes stakeholders are not sure other times they may vehemently disagree on what the project is trying to achieve.

Purpose of the Project

As with desired outcome it is is always good to clarify, the project may be designing a new product but is the purpose to generate new sales or provide a vital add on for the existing product set.

Stakeholders

Many a project has been sunk by not involving the correct stakeholder early whose backing you need or may have some vital information that could have saved you a ton of time and money. You really need to be exhaustive in this process and don't just leave it to internal stakeholders, the need to engage with third parties is also key particularly in technology projects.

What do we need to do

The obvious key part of the project, as the project manager you will be completing a detailed plan to cover every moving part of the project, but it is a good idea to get a view of what needs to be done at the very early stage, this is also good for helping the stakeholders come up with a realistic timeline for completion of the project.

Constraints

The normal project constraints of budget, resources and technology will come up, but this is a good opportunity to identify constraints which can range widely from a key person being on maternity leave to a major migration project which the whole organisation has their eyes on.

Timescales

Sometimes these will be obvious such as mandatory change when legislation requires solution to be in by X date. However in lots of business driven change this will not be obvious, and some initial debate with the stakeholders over what is desirable and practical in terms of delivery date.

This session should taken no more than an hour and you should come away with some rich data to move your project forward.   

Taking over a project

One of the biggest challenges for a project manager, is to take over a project that has been running for a while, the high likelihood is that the project won't be in the best of shape, if it was in good shape you wouldn't be asked to take it over would you!

The first thing to remember is to have no pre-conceptions on what has happened before, take time to listen to all the stakeholders, find out what has gone well on the project so far and more pertinently what is not going so well. To take a learning from Stephen Covey, seek first to understand before seeking to be understood, you may well see very quickly where the issues are, and want to make immediate changes but these can be dangerous until you understand all the moving parts of the project.

It is unlikely that the project is stand alone and will probably sit as part of a bigger programme, so you will need to ensure you understand where your project sits on the critical path and where your dependencies sit.

Once you have grasped a good understanding of what is happening on your new project, share your thoughts and findings with your steering group, they need to appreciate the current position and validate they agree and support your initial findings and thoughts.

If the project is in a red status the Steering group will be keen to understand the plan to get it on track, be careful not to commit until you have all the facts, aiming to please the steering group early can come back to bite you.

The final piece of advice in your first weeks on the project is to build up incrementally particularly if you are asking the team to do different things, you can normally find something that can make the team's life easier and this will quickly get them on board.

Risks and Issues 

Why have Risks and Issues? 

The cornerstone to successfully managing your project is maintaining on a daily basis your risk and issue log, a good comprehensive list should take away the need for to do lists and then supplement all your reporting requirements both on an internal and external basis. 

It may sound excessive to review daily, but 5 minutes a day is far better than a tortuous 2 hour session every fortnight. It can then drive your to do list for the day.

What do you show your key stakeholders? 

Nobody likes to see a long list of risks with mitigation action points, for an executive summary you should concentrate on highlighting the top 5 risks, and where possible in a graphical format, I like to use the matrix shown below, with clear indication showing where your top risks sit on the matrix. A clear statement stating how many other risks you are managing is useful to give comfort that you are actively managing the risk log.

 

How to rate your risks?

I use the above matrix  but replace the words for numbers which translates into medium = 3 so a medium probability and a medium impact would gain a risk rating of 9, this is particularly useful when you are tracking movement in the risks, it is far easier to track a risk moving from a rating of 15 to 9 rather than moving from medium/very high to medium. 

What is the difference between a risk and an issue?

To be honest it doesn't really matter as long as you have it logged and you are actively managing the item. The general rule of thumb is that a risk is something which might happen whilst an issue is something that has happened. 

You can also have duplicate entries on both your risk and issue log, something may be live and you are dealing with it today, but particularly in a large complex project, an example is around communication, there is a high likelihood that you have an issue following a communication, but with many more communications planned for you need to have them clearly marked on your risk log.

Steering Packs

What makes a good steering pack 

The steering meeting is a very important part of any project governance this is your chance as the project manager to formally get direction for your project and approval for your efforts and progress so far.  
It also allows you to align all of the stakeholders, you have many discussions and views during your project lifecycle but this is the opportunity to get everyone aligned.   
  

• Be clear in what you are asking for

Time is likely to be constrained and you will only have limited opportunity to get across what you need, so make it very clear at the start of the pack the key issues and questions that you need to ask and get agreement, if you put this later in the pack the steering group will get distracted by data and probably exhaust the available time on trivial matters rather than confronting the issues you need to address.

• Keep the information clear and concise

The best way to avoid distraction is to keep the information very clear and concise use bullet points with minimal text and try to use pictures and diagrams where possible.

• Ask what the Stakeholders want to see

You can spend hours producing a wonderful pack which you are very proud of, but then you are left doubting if anyone ever actually reads what you have produced, it is definitely not  a weakness to ask a simple question on what your stakeholders want to see in the pack, if you do get the stock answer  "everything is fine as it is", complete the review yourself and start to leave bits out, sometimes the best way to find out what people really want to see is to take something away, then they tend to shout! 

• Get it out nice and early

To give yourself a chance of getting a good productive steering meeting, is to get the pack out nice and early, there is nothing more frustrating than receiving meeting documentation 10 minutes before the meeting is about to start, one of the key benefits of getting the pack out early, is that you can get some early questions/ clarification points raised early this helps you understand the priorities of particular stakeholders and with some quick action potential conflict could be avoided. 
It is also good to get the pack out on a Friday, at the end of the week the number and pace of meetings tends to drop so even if your pack doesn't get read immediately then you stand a good chance of it going into the weekend reading pile.
    

• Show that you are managing hygiene factors

Nobody is denying that plans, budgets and RAID logs are an important part of your project framework but the executive have employed you as a competent project manager and unless you require a decision these should run in the background, include them as an appendix if they are required but you need to again ensure that you don't lose valuable steering time debating if a risk rating is correct or if a milestone should be moved forward or back a day!

• If the sponsor cant attend reschedule

Steering by default has to have the sponsor in attendance, the meeting loses all effectiveness without as the attendees start to speculate on what the sponsor may want to do! If the sponsor cant find the time for Steering or keeps cancelling either find a new sponsor or project!         
                                      

Working with your BA

The relationship between the Project Manager and a Business Analyst is one that can be complex but if works well can create a great project team and that will result in excellent project results.

Communication

It is always best in my experience to keep the BA fully up to date with the project as a whole not just on their specific piece of work, not only does it make them feel part of the project but it helps them understand some of the pressures you are under as a PM, and they may also be able to give some valuable input into the other areas of the project.


Challenge the Assumptions

The role of the PM is not just to tick off the milestones and document the deliverables but to ensure that the project delivers to the highest possible quality, on each part of analysis the project manager should act as a critical friend reviewing the analysts work and challenging their assumptions.


Clarity in Expectations

As in all aspects of management you need to be very clear in what you are expecting and keep to your agreed scope, give clear timelines and with all project planning give yourself some contingency to allow the BA deliver on time.

Existing/Contract Resources

Whilst there is some excellent contract BA's around, the best BA's I have worked with have all being long time in the organisation, they are the ones that have seen it all before, have the knowledge of the organisation and its systems and will importantly know the hidden pitfalls of delivering complex change.


Next Week- Creating the perfect Steering Pack

Starting on a new project

It is both exciting and daunting when you start on a new project in a new place, before you do dive in to your project there are three key things that you need to understand and investigate, and by taking this time it will help you as you move into setting up your project.

The Organisation

Yes, you have done your research online, maybe talked to a few people and had at least one interview, but once you are in the door you only then do you find about the organisation, just observing how people act in their day to day activities tells you a lot, do people come in early stay late, is there a buzz around the office, is there lots of social chit chat etc

Stakeholders

The same observations can be made around key stakeholders, how do they greet you on first introduction, how easy is it to get into their calendar, how long if at all do they respond to your emails, the early weeks interactions will give a very strong guide to how you will work with these individuals through your project.

Politics

At every interview you are always told they do't exist, but in every organisation they do, it is important to work out what everyone's real drivers are, who gets on with who, and who you really need to get on side to get things done, and don't be fooled its not always the sponsor.

Do something simple

When you start somewhere new you are bound to have something in your kitbag nobody has seen before, particularly if you are joining an established team/organisation, you might think it is simple and everyone knows it but it is amazing that the smallest of things can impress new colleagues.

Next Week

Working with your Business Analyst, if you don't want to miss it add your e mail address above