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Featured in Seth Godin's
Bull Market 2004

Sign-up for Project Integrity Day by sending a blank email (no subject and no body) to project.integrity.day@getresponse.com. You will get a response with a tel number. More details will follow. There is no charge for this.

Eight P's of Project Integrity

You might ask, "Where did these come from?" Good question. I made them up. But there's a method to my madness arrogance. We assess integrity situationally. We see it in one setting and not in others. We also assess integrity as it regards those things we care about. So, looking at projects I began looking at what could be out-of-integrity. That it nicely fit into a list of words all beginning with "P" makes it easy to remember, even if it is suspicious.

1. Purpose
   Why are we doing the project? or For the sake of what does it matter that we succeed? Purpose changes or evolves through time. We learn; conditions change; clients' views change. We must talk about purpose to maintain integrity of purpose.
2. Promise(s)
   What is it specifically that we will produce? One way to think about a project is as a collection of promises that when fulfilled will satisfy the customer and the purpose of the project. Promises may need to change as the purpose changes. Further, as we learn, we see we can make better promises than those made early on. Revisiting our promises produces integrity.
3. Process
   How will we go about delivering on our promises? We've all learned there is more than one right way of doing something. What looks good to begin may not work at all. Further, we may agree to all do something one way, but find that we are not following through.
4. People
   There are two issues here:
• Are people well-matched for the roles they are performing?
• Are you doing all you can to have them succeed in those roles?
5. Planning
   By now you know my position is that planning is an on-going activity on projects. Are you doing that? And, are you embracing planning as an opportunity to incorporate learning and innovation on your project?
6. Practice(s)
   Each organization has makes their own declarations about the (best) practices that support successful projects.
• What are those declarations?
• Are you doing what you say?
7. Performance
   You can't improve if you are not measuring. What are the measures you say are important to project success? Are you measuring? Are you informing? Are you investigating and taking action based on those measures?
8. Place
   Is the work setting conducive to what we are doing? For instance,
• Is the setting clean and orderly
• Is material presented appropriately?
• Is it a safe place to work?

We'll use the Eight P's of Project Integrity as the basis for our work next Friday. In the meantime, begin observing your project with these distinctions. Look for both what you are already doing well and where you see what you could be doing better.

I'll write you again on Monday.

posted by Hal at 2:22 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Discuss Project Integrity Day

I've started a discussion topic for the upcoming Project Integrity Day at the QuickTopic message board. Use the link above to get there, or use the Join the Discussion link in the horizontal navigation bar under the title of the weblog, or in the left-hand navigation panel. Follow the instructions.

Project Integrity Day is an experiment for addressing a usual situation facing project managers. I want to hear what you are expecting, what you want to accomplish, questions about how it will work, comments, assessments, and reactions to what was produced for you and your team.

Please drop by. Thanks.

posted by Hal at 8:55 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Project Integrity Day - January 17

Even the best projects drift. The typical project management tasks can be consuming. We spend our time attending to budgets, schedule changes, status reports, change orders, and expediting. While we know what we believe, what we understand to be best practice, and what we've promised to our team and our clients, as we deal with the day-to-day issues we begin to stray.

Chris Argyris, Harvard Professor and author, claims we have an espoused theory and a theory-in-use. We will set out to bring our theory-in-use in congruence with our espoused theory. For the upcoming Project Integrity Day, I won't make any judgements on the appropriateness of anyone's espoused theory. The aim for the day is integrity.

How will it work?
We will all get together on a conference call. Really. (I've done this before. Trust me.) There are eight areas that I propose we examine to bring our projects into integrity. (I'll elaborate on the Eight Ps of Integrity in tomorrow's posting.) Each hour starting at 10:00 AM EST we will have a short conversation about one or two of the areas of project integrity. I'll ask conference participants to offer a situation that they see is out of integrity and the action that could rectify the situation. I'll invite five people each hour to offer examples and the balance of listeners to comment as they see fit. We will end the call by agreeing to go off to take action. At the top of the next hour we will review the progress made and then go on to the next topic.

By end of day Tuesday, January 17, I will post the registration process for the teleconference. Please don't ask me about it before then. The whole process will be free to participants except for the long-distance phone call. I will set-up a tele-bridge (robust phone line) for the call. (I'll cover the costs of reserving the line.) All you need to do is get ready.

I'll continue to make postings on Project Integrity to help you prepare for the event.

BTW, I'm inventing this as I go. For those of you daring enough to go along for the ride, we should have a good time.

posted by Hal at 8:07 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

David Curling maintains a project management website PM Forum® that gets more than 1.2 million page requests/month. He also publishes a monthly newsletter Project Management World Today™ Heads Up Newsletter with more than 5,000 subscribers and a weblog PM Connect. PM Forum is a great resource for project managers. Of particular value are Max Wideman's commentaries, dictionaries, and primers. Check them out.

In the January edition of the newsletter, out to subscribers today, Curling mentioned Reforming Project Management in the section Project Management World Today January 2003 - Notices, Papers and Reports.

posted by Hal at 3:44 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

I had the pleasure to reread Mary and Tom Poppendiek's manuscript of their forthcoming book Lean Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Leaders. While the authors are aiming at the software community, their message is relevant to all of us doing project management -- particularly those of us involved in reforming project management. Mary and Tom are currently sharing the manuscript online with an invitation for readers to offer their comments. At the end of January they turn the manuscript over to their publisher. I understand at that time they will be removing the manuscript from their site. Don't wait 'til publication. Take a look at it now!

I particularly enjoyed reading Chapter Six: Build Integrity In. The integrity message is often oversimplified as "Walk your talk." Good advice; not followed. The authors go way beyond the simplistic advice by examining models, cases, and introducing distinctions of their own. While I promised not to quote them 'til they turn over the manuscript, I can't help but call attention to their unique distinctions: perceived integrity and conceptual integrity. Take a look at Ch. 6; you won't be disappointed.

So...reading Mary's and Tom's manuscript reminded me of the simple acts of integrity. I've decided to set aside Friday, January 17, 2003, to work with readers to bring their projects into integrity. I'll write more about it over the next few days. In the meantime, clear your calendars for next Friday. We've got some work to do.

posted by Hal at 8:37 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Leadership is a shared responsibility in project management. Really. I know we often don't see it that way. The truth is our designated leaders can't be everywhere at once. They can't see where leadership is needed. To succeed on our projects we can't wait for the designated leader to act. We must take it into our own hands.

I've called for simple leadership. In my reply to a reader's comment I offered five dispositions for leaders:

1. Embrace uncertainty
   We can't know the future; stop acting like we can.
2. Anticipate learning
   The longer the project the more we will learn.
3. Anticipate failure
   If it must go right, then rethink it, because it just might go wrong.
4. Produce strength of relationships
   Nothing else really matters to human beings than being connected to other people.
5. Serve those being led
   We get the greatest results when we take care of ourselves and the world at large.

There's plenty of good advice on leading simply. Perhaps the leading thinker on thinking is Edward deBono. He offers these thoughts in his book Simplicity:

Complexity harms everyone. So simplicity is everyones business. So why not let everyone help out?

We can each help out...providing leadership where it will do good. deBono offers these ten steps:

1. You need to place a high value on simplicity
2. You must be determined to seek simplicity
3. You need to understand the matter very well.
4. You need to design alternatives and possibilities.
5. You need to challenge and discard existing elements.
6. You need to be prepared to start over again.
7. You need to use concepts.
8. You need to break things down into smaller units.
9. You need to be prepared to trade off other values for simplicity.
10. You need to know for whose sake simplicity is being designed.

Offer simple leadership on your projects.

posted by Hal at 10:29 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

A series of comments on Friday's posting prompted me to search out simple approaches to leadership. The article Want to Lead Better? It's Simple by Jill Rosenfeld caught my attention. (So, it's almost three years old; so what...that's what's great about Fast Company!) Rosenfeld interviewed Bill Jensen, author of Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage in a World of More, Better, Faster. She began this way:

Why aren't leaders better at being leaders?

Because they pretend that the challenges of leadership are rational and tactical, rather than emotional and conversational. Many leaders believe that if they just "pull the right levers," the organization will move in the right direction. But the most critical factor in the success or failure of any plan is whether conversations with the leader have some impact on what people do. It's during those conversations that people decide how to apply their time and attention.

There's another problem. Most plans are organized and communicated according to marketplace logic. But people don't listen to marketplace logic; they listen for meaning and purpose. Attention can't be bought. Attention is rich and complex because it comes in many forms: time commitment, recognition, guidance, caring, assistance in new skills. Before any interaction, ask yourself, "How do I want to make people feel?" Put yourself in their shoes. The role of a leader is to create an experience that will inspire people to take action.

Bill Jensen was interviewed by the folks at LeadershipNOW. This Q&A caught my attention:

Q: What's the big "Aha!" that begins your book?

A: Companies are horrific wasters of our time. Most employers and Teammates -- even the well-intentioned ones -- make things far too complicated and actually make it hard to work smarter.

Read the balance of the interview here.

Back to Rosenfeld's article...Bill Jensen says, "To simplify, you have to clarify. And the best way to clarify a new strategy or change initiative is to communicate in the form of a story." He identifies four steps for turning a plan into a compelling story:

1. Start by defining the conflict
2. A story needs to have a theme
3. Transitions move the plot along
4. The climax is the moment of truth

Call for simple leadership.

posted by Hal at 10:03 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

 

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