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Project Management 101: Strategies for Success

By Billie G. Blair

Project managers have a wide range of responsibilities and face a number of challenges, in a variety of areas, on a daily basis. For example, you have organizing, hiring, coordinating and monitoring functions, and there are specific challenges that relate to each. To provide an overview of the project manager’s role, let’s look briefly at each of these four fundamental functions for project managers.

Primary Project Management Functions

The project organizing function involves creating the basic template for conduct of the project tasks, and regularly focusing, changing, and refocusing the project organization design according to performance needs. The challenge here is to plan thoroughly before project initiation and, as refinement is required during the project, to make changes without hesitation or regret. Although this process builds upon the original project proposal design, there must still be thorough development of the project template at project origination.

The hiring function naturally follows project organization and requires: Selecting the right people, using formal personal assessment processes for each, if at all possible; developing and initiating a thorough performance evaluation process, and; faithfully using the evaluation process to retain good people and weed out poor-performers.

Each of these steps is critical to the appropriate functioning of the project. It is often assumed that finding good people is enough to ensure project success; however, the other two steps are of equal importance and should be given particular emphasis. If you haven’t had the experience of creating performance evaluations before, it is advisable to consult with experts on this process and to engage their assistance.

A coordinating role for the project manager is required to assist with both the organization of the project and its maintenance, as well as the interface and development of project personnel. The challenge of the coordinating function is to keep the project on track and moving forward at a steady pace, while taking the time to pay attention to the human intricacies related to the project’s success.

The monitoring function includes establishing the metrics management design for the project; collecting data related to on-going progress/accomplishment; analyzing the meaning of that data; and acting upon data input with adjustments and recalibrations of project functioning. The challenge of project monitoring involves an ability to both acquire “good” data (that is, data that are not spurious), and to study the data carefully to derive the full meaning.

Key Questions

To ensure long-term project success, it’s important to ask the right questions at the outset. Devise a set of questions that relate to your four areas of responsibility and that represent all components of the project.

The key questions below have been time-tested by successful project managers. Use them as a guide to formulate your own questions. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve developed the right questions to ask, the next step is to find good answers to the questions to initiate the project and establish direction. With thorough preparation, in both asking and answering key questions, project success is all but guaranteed.

Organizing

• What is the primary goal of the project?
• What is the most reasonable organizational structure for this project to function well?
• How can I evaluate the organization design, prior to implementing?

Hiring

• What positions are needed for the project’s success?
• How will I find people who are both qualified and motivated? And, how will I know that for a fact?
• What are the comprehensive evaluation processes that are linked to project goals and that will monitor progress and detect performance insufficiencies?

Coordinating

• What schema will best assist me in coordinating all project functions?
• How can I chart maintenance functions?
• What processes can be developed to assist with human interaction, contributions, and teamwork on the project?

Monitoring

• What metrics should be used to monitor critical project processes?
• Who will be responsible for gathering the data and who for analyzing it?
• What use will be made of the data analyses? Will changes be instituted as a result and, if so, how will these be accomplished?

Staffing Scenarios

Some companies operate under matrix management plans and therefore transfer people into projects from the parent company as these are implemented; others rely on the hiring of additional people specific to actual project needs; and still others conform to a contract requirement that consultants and client personnel are to work with contractors on projects.

Those projects that combine contractors with consultants and client personnel are the most complex, both from a management perspective and from an organizational behavior and human dynamics perspective. In managing “combined-personnel” projects, it’s critical to swiftly establish an organizational culture that is specific to the project

In other words, it will be necessary for the project manager to clearly define operational procedures and to use organizational formation strategies to re-bond all personnel specifically to: The current project—setting aside previous loyalties for the duration of the project; the project manager, as representative for the project; and the performance goals of the project.

Creating a new organizational culture is challenging even if project personnel are from one organization; however, a whole new level of challenge, similar to what is experienced in mergers and acquisitions, must be met when it is necessary to bring contractor and other personnel together with people from the client company.

In our consulting practice, we frequently see winners of major contracts who are asked to use client personnel as part of the project team and to ensure integration into project work. This happens, for example, in instances where military contractors engage in product development contracts. It is not unusual in these cases for the military client to ask that some of their people (often specialists in the areas of acquisitions/procurement, quality control, and security) join the on-site project team. It is absolutely necessary to the success of the project that these “combination” projects are organized well and administered carefully.

In addition to the development of a specific organizational culture, for a combined-personnel project, you must also pay special attention to the determination of roles, role responsibilities, boundaries/ limitations, reporting responsibilities and cross-responsibilities, and project interface/liaison.

It is very important for project team members to understand their roles, know their reporting responsibility and, where cross-functional reporting responsibilities are necessary, that these are set out in written form.

It will also be necessary to clarify how the interface between the client and the contractor will be established and how it will work in practice. Liaison and interface are usually the responsibilities of the project manager, but that should be clearly spelled out.

A project manager’s role is a challenging one and requires equal measures of good organizational ability, good people skills, and the technical capacity to judge both individual performance and project milestones. The role requires dedication to everyone’s best interests and the delicacy of an astute politician.

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Billie G. Blair, Ph.D. is President and CEO of Leading and Learning, Inc, which delivers learning solutions for individuals, businesses, and institutions through rapid-return developmental processes geared to high-performance and innovation for the organization. Find out more at www.leadingandlearninginc.com.