Read an Excerpt
Introduction
Thinking About Your Project
Communications in a New Way
Today, business is changing faster than ever, and most of
those changes are being implemented through projects
that require even stronger project management. Demand
for project management methods and skills has driven
the dramatic growth in organizations such as the Project
Management Institute. However, just using sound project
management methodology will not guarantee successful
projects, as many project managers have learned to
their dismay.
Why Isn’t Good Project Management Enough?
Too many project managers have been in the situation where a project,
which was a technical success from a project management perspective,
was viewed as a business failure from the point of view of
an operations group. How can that be possible—to be a “technical
success” and “business failure”? In the Information Technology
world where it frequently happens, it means the software application
works as advertised and therefore is, by definition, a technical
success. However, the user groups either don’t use the application
correctly, or they don’t use it at all! As a result, the project never
produces the projected business value—and is considered a business
failure.
This book is designed to help you overcome that daunting
hurdle and several others that are caused by the wrong communication
strategy. I will show you in a step-by-step way how to use
communications to deliver a successful business project and bring
the business benefits promised.
Why Are Project Communications
So Important?
As recently as twenty years ago, the only time you might come
across the use of project management techniques was in the development
of high-technology products at places like NASA or in engineering
or heavy construction. Outside of the military, aerospace,
defense, electronics, and building industries, project management
tools and techniques were rarely used, and then only portions of
those available were put into action. Even in companies and organizations
where project management methodology was well established,
the focus on communications was minimal. Usually, these
companies were building large capital projects where people could
often see and mark progress. Also, people had different expectations—
when they moved into a new building or plant, they fully expected
things to be different—and better! In today’s era where more
and more projects are centered on information, progress and other
factors are not so clear. And the expectations are different. People
expect the project to allow them to do the same work, only faster
and easier. Managing expectations is a key driver for effective project
communications.
Another piece of data about the importance of communications:
My company, MCA International, was conducting a series of
workshops for the project managers for an oilfield services company
with locations literally all over the globe. In conducting these
workshops, we worked with over 500 project managers representing
over thirty countries. As part of the workshop evaluation, we
asked these project managers to assess what made projects successful
and what caused projects to fail. The number one success factor
identified by this diverse group was communications. When we
asked for more details, what we learned was that when communications
were strong among the project team members and between
the project team and the customers within the energy companies,
the projects were nearly always successful. If the projects failed,
poor communications was always identified as a critical factor in
pinpointing what went wrong.
The other key success factor these project managers identified
was the support and engagement of leadership in their projects. It
seems that all project managers recognize the need for leadership
backing, but are often frustrated in their efforts to get it. That is why
the second chapter in this book, titled Preparing the Leadership, is
right at the front of the book. It will demonstrate how you can keep
the company leadership interested in your project from beginning
to end. With vigorous project communications, your chances of
success soar and your frustration will fall off dramatically.
What Happens If You Ignore
Project Communications?
To illustrate the consequences of ignoring communications in managing
expectations, I would like to relate the personal experience of
one of my clients. His team was installing a new software application
for traders who buy and sell commodities. He had used most
of the communication techniques you will read in this book, and
things had gone very well. However, my client found himself in the
same tough situation that all project managers find themselves in
at one time or another. It was a long project coming into the final
months. However, because the project team began to get sloppy
with its communications, the traders’ expectations were not being
managed carefully, and a storm of resistance to the new software
began to build up. Unfortunately, if something wasn’t done quickly,
the final few months threatened to undo all the goodwill that had
been built up over the previous 18 months within the commodities
group. While many of the issues that caused the resistance were
more complex than is necessary to detail here, the critical failure factor
in this instance was a basic flaw in his communication strategy
(the earlier reference to “sloppy”). The project manager and his
team had fallen into the habit of communicating with the business
users only through email. As most of us know, between the tremendous
amount of daily email (most of it barely necessary) coupled
with spam, most people will ignore email after a while, particularly
if it is seen as simply “a status update.” This is what happened to
this project manager. So how did he fix the problem? First, the team
worked together and, instead of relying on only email updates, he
built a new and more hearty communications plan (see Chapter
10: Developing the Communications for the Project) that provided
several “rich” communication events such as brown-bag lunches
and town hall meetings (richness is explained in more details in
Chapter 5: Common Elements for All Communications) in addition
to email updates and personal phone calls. We also created a series
of very targeted messages to key commodity traders who could influence
others on their team. These changes, and some other technical
fixes, helped him to finish the project with the amount of
goodwill that the project team deserved based on the terrific job
they had done.
So What Will You Get from This Book?
This book will give you the foundation of all communications,
whether written or oral. Chapter 5: Common Elements for All
Communications covers the basics for all types of communications
and helps you build those communications for the maximum effect.
Throughout the book, you will see a wide variety of tools,
templates, and techniques to help you prepare and deliver these
communications for a wide range of audiences and purposes.
In Chapter 12: Using Communication to Handle Risks, you
will see how effective communications can help you manage an assortment
of risks. This is important because new technology has
increased business risk and, consequently, the requirement for high
degrees of project management competency in communications. It
has raised the ante for project success due, in no small part, to the
extraordinary investments companies have made by implementing
new technologies and systems. Now the management teams of these
organizations are demanding the same Return on Investment (ROI)
that they would expect after building a refinery or any other major
capital project.
A good illustration of the growing acceptance of project management
methodology is the phenomenal growth of the Project
Management Institute (PMI), the world’s largest nonprofit professional
organization that promotes the art and science of project
management. Founded in 1969 with fewer than 100 members, by
1979 membership was still only 2,000. By 1990, the organization
still had less than 10,000 members. However, by the turn of the
century, membership had swollen to 50,000. As of the writing of
this book, PMI boasts over 150,000 active members residing in 140
countries across the globe.
Business Project Management
The wide varieties of demands placed on organizations today quite
naturally affect your individual approach to work. If you want to
survive and thrive in these changing times, you must be effective in
both your field of expertise (the ordinary work you do) as well as
in your ability to rally with others to solve problems, pursue opportunities,
and effect change (the project work). That requires competency
in both project management and communications. Most
people would have a tough time trying to figure out the link between
project management and change management (change management
is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and
organizations from the status quo to a desired future state; the
current definition of change management includes both change
management processes and individual change management models,
which together are used to manage the people side of changes)
as disciplines. Project management is seen as more of a methodology
with defined tasks, hard deliverables, and standard techniques.
Change management, on the other hand, is seen as the “soft” side—
the people side. Project managers who have thought about change
management usually think about it as communications, including
posters on the wall, and maybe some training. However, ask most
project managers some pointed questions such as, “What is the
most difficult part of your project?” and nearly all of them will respond,
“People!” If you follow up with another question, “Why
are people the hardest part?” they will usually respond, “Because
they always resist the changes that my project requires.”
If that is generally true, then maybe there is a link between
project management and change management. But most project
managers are probably like me: We think in processes, meaning we
like a systematic set of steps to reach a predictable conclusion and,
while we multitask, we do much better with methodologies such as
the approach proposed by the Project Management Institute, or
PRINCE2 developed by the Office of Government Commerce in
the United Kingdom, than “flying by the seat of our pants.” This
linkage is called “Business Project Management.”
So this book will show you how to link project management
methods, as outlined by the Project Management Institute (PMI),
with change management methods and how communications impacts
each phase of a project. The book will follow the four phases
of PMI’s methodology and show you how to build them together
at each phase.
Finally, throughout the book, you will find a series of reminders
that will aid you as you work your projects in the future.
They will allow you to recall the major points to consider without
the effort of reading the book again or trying to figure out where
those points are in each chapter. I believe that will allow you to
replicate your success over and over again.
