Managing the project: die or survive?

Recently I took a shared taxi ride back to Heathrow Airport with a good friend who has worked in IT since floppy disks were actually floppy. Today he works in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and sells complex end to end robo-operations solutions that require sign-in from a wide variety of stakeholders. His larger sales need to be project managed over 1-3 years. His approach is very people centric. With them on-board he can solve most problems.

We left early, as he anticipated traffic and were dropped off at Terminal 2 bang on schedule much to our driver's delight as he had another customer waiting for a pick-up. Our taxi driver was a 26 year old Afghan, married to a British born Turkish lady. There was a full, frank and friendly exchange of ideas the entire way along the "stop and start" M25. We all discussed and solved the problems of the world, particular those of Afghanistan and the gig economy in those ninety minutes. It was the most fun I've ever had in traffic.

And a metaphor for my opinion piece. The journey and the conversation turned out to parallel the forces that shape a project manager's life.

Just as strategies exist to mitigate traffic; similar to the project management world, one unexpected event can result in gridlock or a tailback. 

Good project managers understand "gridlock” is inevitable and good project planning incorporates strategies to respond to the unexpected. Issues will arise and delays will happen, an experienced project manager has the ability to get things back on track as quickly as possible by focusing on what is important to win the trust, hearts and minds of the stakeholders and contributors. That often means the difference between hitting and missing deadlines or blowing out budgets.

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself if you are having difficulties managing project bottlenecks:

1) What tools and strategies do you have in place to ensure that the lines of communication are open keeping all your stakeholders in the loop? Have you any type of strategy grid for dealing with stakeholders, managing dependencies, (manager A will only support it if B pays for it), or deals where multiple parties need to work together to produce a winning result.

2) Risk. Many people don't understand risk. They fear trivial risks and ignore the elephant in the room. How well thought through is your project risk strategy and do your executive committee or project stakeholders agree with it; on the record. Have you brought it up specifically in a meeting or it is a line item buried in a document they have only ever skimmed.

3) Visibility. I recently had a meeting where the CTO was cracking a whip for change as fast as possible. Data was promised, there was no time to waste. A week passed by nothing happened. We chased, still nothing. The CTO wrote a 2 line email resigning and within 2 days had another job posted on LinkedIn. Hard to foresee these events, and they happen. But what could you see move clearly if you were looking? Coding bottlenecks, testing?

4) Alerts and escalation. Knowledge is power. And time is unrecoverable. The quicker you are notified of issues and changes the quicker they can be addressed. Good alerts along with an agreed escalation process and timescale can mean solutions are found in days not weeks or months. When there is traffic, sometimes nothing can be done except sit and wait a while, how do you refocus to use this time productively and catch up when possible.

5) Culture. What's the culture of your organization when it comes to expectations of project delivery and the sacrifices or inputs required? Are people going to answer emails on a bank holiday weekend? Work into the small hours? Who will do this more readily? Who will draw the line and make themselves unavailable? These people are you resources too as well as developers and suppliers.

How many wars have been avoided by people talking? We shall never know. But some problems can be anticipated and foreseen and the wise anticipate them.

Would you agree?