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Meet the Masterminds: Scott Berkun on Mastering Project Management

For nearly ten years, Scott Berkun managed projects and teams at Microsoft. He also worked in Microsoft’s engineering excellence group, teaching and consulting with development teams. He’s the author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management.

We asked Berkun for his advice on ramping up projects effectively, managing the common issues that arise, and how to finish any project on time and within budget.

McLaughlin: What's your sense of the current quality of project management in most organizations? Are we getting any better at this, or are we still in the Dark Ages?

Berkun: Most of the Western world has drinking water and electricity, and our trash is picked up every week. Those are all projects and they seem to be managed quite well. So it's hard to say project management is in the dark ages.

But good leadership is and always will be rare, and it's hard for projects to be managed well if the leaders of organizations aren't doing their jobs.

Teams rarely examine what happened last time, so it's not a surprise that they repeat many of the same mistakes.

McLaughlin: We all hear stories about projects that finish late and come in over budget. What can a project manager or team do in the planning phases to avoid those fates?

Berkun:The easiest way is to really study your last project. Examine what changed after the budget was made and consider how it could have been done differently. Teams rarely examine what happened last time, so it's not a surprise that they repeat many of the same mistakes.

McLaughlin: As a project manager gets ready to kick-off a project, what advice would you offer to help that manager get off to a fast start?

Berkun: Arrange to have coffee or lunch with each key person on your project team. Do it one-on-one for as many as possible, and when you do, talk as little as possible.

Find out what's most important to these people. Ask about what they do, their biggest frustrations with their last project, and how they think you can prevent those things from happening on the next one.

McLaughlin: What do you see as the key elements of an effective client communication strategy for a project manager to implement?

Berkun: The first would be to never use the phrase "effective client communication strategy!" Call it a relationship and everyone will know what you mean.

Second is to set expectations. If you say you are going to give a status report every Wednesday, actually do it every Wednesday. If you prefer getting email to phone calls, then answer your email promptly from clients.

Third, make sure there is an open channel for feedback your client can use to give praise or critique whatever it is that's happening. Never allow something you need to hear go unsaid because the channel wasn't there.

McLaughlin: When you assess a project, what's the first thing you look at to determine if the project is working as intended?

Berkun: The first question is, do the people on the team trust each other and care about the client? Often you have one, but having both is uncommon.

If you have both, the team is very healthy, can learn from its mistakes, and take the right kinds of risks. If either of those factors are lacking, that's the first thing I'd work to improve.

McLaughlin: For many project managers, handling changes in the scope of the project is a fundamental challenge. Do you have any advice for how to manage scope creep?

Berkun: Often the project manager doesn't have sufficient power to say no. This makes managing scope creep impossible.

From day one you have to know who has the power to say no and enlist those people in the decision-making process.

From day one you have to know who has the power to say no and enlist those people in the decision-making process. I'd never sign up to be a project manager for a project where I didn't have the power to say no for good reasons.

McLaughlin: You define politics as the skill of managing people and organizations. What can organizations do to help leaders develop and use that skill effectively and ethically?

Berkun: Evil politics and manipulations happen only if the person with the most power allows it to happen, or practices it themselves. On the other hand, if the boss is a fair person who communicates clearly, and rewards people for doing the same, it becomes much harder for subordinates to do much else.

If ever a group has evil politics and in-fighting there is only one person to blame: the person in charge, either because of his or her own destructive behavior or ignorance of the destructive behavior of others. I'm a big fan of Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule in this regard.

McLaughlin: If you could give just one piece of advice for improving the performance of a project team, what would it be?

Berkun: Well, project teams are made up of people, so it's all about relationships, trust, and shared goals. Everything else is secondary. Get those three right, and avoid being distracted by methodologies, forms, procedures, and the rest of it, and you'll be just fine.

McLaughlin: Thanks for your time.

Find out more about Scott Berkun at www.scottberkun.com.