Money Heist - Project management angle!

It has been some time that I have written something but when I recently finished watching all the seasons of the famous Netflix series Money Heist, I could not stop myself from thinking about how parallel the projects that we deliver at work are from the drama that was portrayed in Money Heist.

Now, I am going to warn you here that if you have not seen this series, you may not know some of these characters but I am quite sure that you could relate these to your projects. Please be aware that I might have accidentally also revealed a few surprises from the series here so continue at your own risk :).

I think project management is not a profession but more of a skill-set that one should possess as everyday one is delivering projects all around, in both professional and personal lives. It is very easy to projectize anything that you do and then follow the structured method of project management activities. For this article, we will stick to the five phases of project management as described in PMBOK (Project management Book of Knowledge published by PMP). Enjoy the ride!

Initiating

In the series (starting from season 3) the project scope was to rob "Bank of Spain" and get all the gold out. The sponsors of this project were Berlin and Palermo. While, they had the basic idea of how to go about with the project, they lacked one key person who can deliver on the idea. Here comes the "project manager" called the Professor. He had already shown lot of experience in managing the successful robbery of Royal Mint of Spain in the previous 2 seasons. He already has a reliable team who would follow his plan and execute the project. The sponsors also have their own team members who would help with the plan.

The initiation of the project starts with a lot of discussions and the part where Berlin and Palermo spends hours in convincing the project manager on why this plan should be executed. They play to his strengths, which are being creative, loyal and extremely detail oriented. In real life though, many a times the project managers are chasing the project sponsors for approvals on their project cases but let us stick to a bit of fantasy and what would really happen in an ideal project environment.

The sponsors here also use existing methodologies to explain the strategy of how the project can be executed by relating it to Aikido, a martial art that uses an enemy's force to create an advantage. It is very important to use existing practices like SCRUM, AGILE, HYBRID, WATERFALL, ETC. to determine the strategy and plan of attack when it comes to project execution. By relying on one of the structured proven methodology, the confidence of the project manager and the project team increases multifold and provides clear direction and structure when it comes to project execution.

Planning

In this series, the Professor is shown as someone who has taken a long time to come with each minute detail of the plan and is also seen conducting regular workshops and meetings to discuss the plan in detail with the project team. It is important that the project manager is clear about the plan and is able to share and discuss the plan with the project teams. This method of directing the team is quite waterfall in nature due to the kind of project which was delivered here. In a more agile environment, the Professor would have taken everybody's opinion and run the project more collaboratively.

Another interesting aspect of this project planning what that it was a risk based approach. Each and every step of the plan was determined based on the question "what can go wrong?" and having a mitigation plan for each probable answer. For example the project manager in this case had devised a "Paris" plan, just in case someone gets captured and is presented in the court. Each and every step of the plan was listed and resourced for, with all the team members trained and informed, to mitigate the risk of a project team member been captured.

Also, during planning stage the professor ensured that there are enough opportunities for team bonding through social gatherings and building a comradery among the members.

Executing

Then came the meaty part of the series and just like in real life the execution of the project was full of drama. Some of the key aspects from the series which could be related to real life are,

• Team members - Mental health

One of the most spoken topics during the last (almost) 2 years is mental health and how important it is to ensure the smooth running of projects and overall organizations. It is extremely important to address this, especially in a high pressure environment. With deadlines looming and with limited resources, many people working from home could not really cope and the lines between work and personal life blurred.

There are many examples of this in the drama series where some of the team members felt the extreme stress and were not able to manage it and had serious breakdown. Again, it is a drama series and extreme situation. I this this is a very serious matter which cannot be addressed as a joke. One thing, however could be determined is how the series provided with some examples to assist with coping of mental health of team members. For example, celebrating milestones and important events was very important to the team and it was constantly shown in the series. Also, supporting each other as team members was a key element of ensuring that the mental health of everyone is kept in check.

• Team dynamics

Projects are delivered by people and no two people are alike in the world and that is what differentiates us from the robots. There were ample examples in the series where the team dynamics came into the play. It could be the romance between Rio and Tokyo or the tussle between Denver (Husband) and Stockholm (Wife) or it could be between completely new team members who are onboarded like Manila who bring their own backgrounds and experiences to the table. Truly speaking these were the ones which were creating most drama for the series. Real life is not television and hence there are so many mechanisms used to ensure that the team members are able to respect and work with each other in a professional environment. Ensuring that the team dynamics is managed critically is important to successful delivery of the project.

Again, here when required the project manager intervened and took decisions. Like for example when there was a fight between Tokyo and Palermo, the Professor took the call to keep Tokyo in charge. Sometimes hard decisions are to be taken to ensure the success of the project which is the sole purpose with which the project manager works.

• Competing stakeholder priorities

Both Berlin and Palermo in this case had other priorities apart from the execution of the project. While Berlin had his wife and his son to deal with and in his blind faith shares the plan with his wife who then betrays him, Palermo has a big ego and he wants to ensure that the plan is executed by him because he was one of the original thinkers of the idea. Both these reasons create massive disruptions in the execution of the heist (project).

This can happen in real life too. Other priorities can come into the play and people personalities, especially when they get passionate about something may play a role in the execution of the project. It is the job of the project manager to ensure that such stakeholders are wisely managed and where other priorities create disruption, raise concerns or deal with the consequences as they occur to keep the project in track.

In this series, the Professor did all that a project manager would do. He raised his concerns about Berlin sharing the plan with his wife and how that could be disruptive. He also warned Berlin about Palermo's ego and was ready to manage it during the heist. He also dealt with the consequences of these priorities coming into the way of the executing the heist.

• Change

If only we could have lived in a world where all projects could be delivered without managing any change at all but it is impossible to do so. Each project delivers an outcome which always has an impact and changes something for the organization which requires proper change management. There is also a constant change based on which the project has to pivot keeping the end goal in mind.

In this project, the project manager was also acting as a change manager. In real life, it may or may not be possible. Again, due to the nature of the directive nature of project manager, he was also a bit of a controlling in nature and was able to take change decisions on his own. Most importantly, he shows his crisis management capabilities when he sees no other option but to enter the Bank himself and puts Sierra in charge of finding the gold outside while he is inside. This is also an example of showing leadership qualities and executing a well documented execution plan.

• Other projects and their impact on current project deliverables

In an organization, there are always other projects which are happening and there is a good possibility that those projects might compete for the same resources or their outcomes might have an impact on your current project deliverables. This is a no brainer.

But how good was the series to show how other projects that Berlin got involved in led to having an impact on the current heist.

• Involvement of compliance and risk stakeholders :)

Because of my current role, I could not emphasize the importance of involvement of the compliance and risk stakeholders in the project. While in the heist, the police and army were more about stopping the project from getting delivered, ironically in real life also some of these stakeholders are looked upon nothing less than show stoppers.

This is one area that I have to talk serious and keep the jokes aside. It is very important to consider the risks associated with operations and compliance when executing projects especially in a regulated environment. This is also an area where it is going to be very difficult to draw any parallels between the drama and real life.

Monitoring

One of the important aspects of ensuring successful project delivery is having the right monitoring controls in place. There are many examples in the series which shows how important the monitoring is. For example, the constant calls made by the Professor to the authorities to ensure their activities are monitored and the calls routed to other offshore countries so it could not be traced. Having cameras setup in important areas to keep an eye on the hostage and site movements. Constantly keeping in touch with the team members and ensuring regular checkpoints and calls scheduled by the Professor for every 6 hours.

All these could also be project controls used in practical life. Generally in real lives, there are the project manager's favorite reports which are created on regular intervals (sometimes it feels like the PMs are only documenting reports in different systems for different stakeholders) to track the status of the project and seek assistance with any issues that might arise and may impact the delivery of the project.

Closing

A well executed project always calls for celebration but more importantly the outcome of the project is the key. I would not call the heist (project) well executed as there were lot of big losses (I will not mention who) and many sacrifices made but was the outcome achieved. Oh well, I don't want to be a spoiler here. I would say that the Professor did the best he could in the circumstances and the resources available to him, like any Project Manager in real life.

It is important that the project is well closed by the project manager and the series shows good example of ensuring that all the loose ends are tied up by the Professor and that the heist is closed properly.

I hope you enjoyed the article and it provided some insights on practical aspects of project management. I am keen to hear from you on your thoughts and if you have any other examples where you can draw parallels, I am all ears!