Developing Your X-Ray Vision to Succeed with Projects
You have started a new project, which is already underway. It may well be a new organisation. As a project manager the expectations placed on you are sky-high. The project could already be delayed by two months. You know that there is no time to lose. Stakeholders expect you to get a grip of the project situation.
As discussed in a previous article, a big challenge is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Somehow you need to transition to the state of knowing what you don’t know, then to knowing what you know! This gives you a sound basis for managing your project. The know-how you seek covers:
The status of the project, including how it was set up
The terminology and acronyms used in the project and the organisation
The capability of the project team members individually and collectively
The technologic steps or leaps that the project needs to undertake
The product development strategy and whether it is sound
The organisation’s power structure
The organisations systems, tools and processes
How different engineering disciplines work together
Who knows what?
Customers, suppliers and development partners
…. to name a few
This foundation you can build by skilful questioning; an ability you can develop throughout your career. These questions are targeted at what the organisation does know collectively. Accelerated self-induction capability is indeed a skill, which transcends a learning curve.
There is, however, a second potential challenge. What about what the organisation does not know about itself and the actual project that you have been assigned to? These can be thought of as oversights or blind spots. These could lurk under the surface for months before you realise that your project is badly affected.
Let’s take a look at three “sights” you could develop in order to enhance your probability of project success. These sights will give you a substantial advantage.
The first “sight”: Oversights
Oversights are blind spots, which can be described as weaknesses or hazards. They can contribute to the failure modes of the project. One surefire way to avoid failure modes is to identify oversights and to do it as swiftly as possible.
Getting familiar with project failure modes is an extremely useful way of being able to identify oversights quickly. In general, we can predict that oversights might exist in the following areas:
The organisation’s overall ability to set-up, execute and deliver projects
The project’s business rationale and robustness of the business case
The benefits that could be extracted from the project – a positive potential
The development team’s lack of awareness of architectural weaknesses
System interface mismatches or incompatibilities
The problem with oversights is that they always emerge eventually, but usually at a time when it is too late to recover the situation. The project schedule, cost and quality may already be affected negatively before discoveries are made.
Super PMs know about such potential hazards the minute they walk through the door. They are adept at seeking out through observation and skilful enquiry. They discover fast and solve effectively.
The second “sight”: Insights
Whereas oversights are negative phenomena, insights are positive. To a large extent, insights are about developing a deeper understanding. Developing insight into a product, a technology, a project or an organisation normally happens naturally over time. However, a smart project manager deliberately accelerates the acquisition of insights.
As with understanding oversights, gaining insights requires that the project manager forms and builds his internal network of relevant people. His first port-of-call is the project team themselves. However, functional heads or team leads on the engineering side are often indispensable allies and sources of information.
Some specific areas where insights can be developed, include:
The real status of each development stream
Where technical novelty and challenge lies
Teamwork – how good or bad is it, and to what degree is leadership required?
Risks
The effectiveness of the project management system
The effectiveness of the product development system
The effectiveness of reviews
Organisational politics and power structures
Where does real technical excellence lie? – you need to leverage off that
Is there natural momentum in development? Or, does it need a major push?
Is the requirements definition comprehensive and clear?
How feasible is the product development and the project itself?
These areas should be hit-list targets for gaining deeper insight. The project manager must also gauge to what depth he or she needs to go.
The third “sight”: Foresight
Our final sight that we should be critically aware of is foresight. This is the ability to see how the project will unfold – firstly, naturally on its current trajectory. Having established an understanding of oversights and having gained deeper project insights, a project manager is able to naturally gain foresight. Identifying oversights and gaining insights is like “project intelligence”. This is similar to military intelligence in a conflict situation. Developing foresight should also include scenario analysis.
Armed with a superior view of the project, the project manager is in a far better position to strategise and to steer the project towards a successful conclusion. What course of action must be taken to improve the project’s success probability? What are the opportunities that can be exploited and what risk must be avoided?
This project management objective of gaining foresight is closely linked to a philosophy I call “offensive project management”. This is an approach where, as a project manager, you force yourself to look ahead. Specifically, you are trying to find the way towards the end goal in the fastest and most efficient way possible. This means moving somewhat away from a reactive mode towards a more proactive mode. One might typically establish planning views for:
1 month
3 months
6 months
…. with more emphasis both on strategy, planning and risk management.
Conclusion
When landing on a new project, the natural tendency for a project manager might be to “go with the flow” and follow the current path of the project. As we have discussed, there is significant risk that there may be numerous oversights that are baked into the project. Alternatively, there may be known impediments and weaknesses that are ignored or lack ownership. Oversights should be identified through discussion, then overcome.
Gaining insights into various aspects of the project and the organisation is extremely useful. Together with identifying oversights, this gives the project manager a solid foundation for steering the project.
We lastly discussed the third “sight”, that is, foresight. The effective project manager has great predictive capability and can see things happening before they naturally do.
Being aware of the three “sights” and focusing on them, effectively gives super PMs “X-Ray vision”. They can see through what lies at the surface. Having such a superior view and overview of the project boosts the chances of project success.
