Commonly held beliefs about the likelihood of projects ‘succeeding’ advocate the increased attention to the ubiquitous Gantt chart, adherence to methods and a thorough and profound understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the project team from Sponsor down. Leadership and motivation too attract significant amounts of attention in the various bodies of knowledge. There are training courses, interventions, development programmes, centres of excellence, seminars, coaching programmes and so on all devoted to tuning the capability of our professional project and programme mangers.

 The various competence frameworks have highlighted the need to consider not just the Skills and Knowledge components but also the ability of the individual to be able to a) contextualise those skills and that knowledge but also b) be able to demonstrate certain behaviours that enable them to be deployed to greatest effect within that context.

 Let us give you an example; a plumber comes to your house to replace your gas boiler. They understand the basics of pressure, water, gas and electricity sufficiently enough to replace your boiler. They can solder two pipes together, knock holes in walls and generally make a proper job of the replacement. If they leave muddy footprints up the hallway, park their van on your roses and swear and blaspheme throughout the process we might conclude that they are in fact incompetent due to poor behaviour.

 They are unable to convert knowledge into competence.

 When organising a meeting, it is perfectly possible to simply email out an agenda, organise the room and coffee and biscuits and when the attendees turn up, have a thoroughly unproductive and wasted session. Correct behaviour might include seeking involvement from the attendees, asking them to help construct the agenda, seek to understand what can be done prior to attendance, who should actually be there, what objectives should be set, etc. After the meeting we would write concise minutes, circulate them and follow up actions (amongst other things). Most effective project and programme managers will do this as a matter of course. Some though may not.

 Simply sending emails is not a satisfactory form of communication – indeed some would argue that it is not communication at all. That a lot of people do these limited things is not that they do not know any better but simply that they do not behave as if they do.

 As a general rule it is relatively simple to perform diagnostics around skills, knowledge and experience. It is far more difficult though to identify those components of behaviours that we need to focus on to raise the game of otherwise knowledgeable professional project managers.

 If we are hoping to take otherwise knowledgeable professionals ‘up a notch’ we must do more than simply assess their behavioural characteristics. We must provide a real and appropriate portfolio of interventions to ensure they are supported in their development. The six million dollar question though is what? Some of the pitfalls that lie in wait are that

•  A projects’ apparent ‘complexity’ rises as a function of the number of stakeholders. We are all taught that stakeholders represent the key component of most undertakings and rightly so. Mostly though once again our tools are geared up to help analyse them. Thereafter the manner in which they are influenced and engaged is largely left unanswered.
• In order to act upon one’s own behavioural shortcomings it is necessary to be aware of them. This is not going to be an easy question of diagnosis. This is not something that will be obvious. It requires attention to detail, observation, agreement, perception and a willingness to be assessed in a live environment by others. Only once we have recognised our own shortcomings can we attempt to build our self management, awareness of others and therefore enhance our relationships.
• Project managers must be able to recognise the difference between urgent and important. The phone ringing is urgent it compels us to answer. The personal conversation we are having face to face with someone when the phone rings is important. We do not interrupt one to do the other.
• We do not see Project Managers as leaders, visionaries, strategists or potential board members. We see them as agents of change limited by the Time Cost and Quality triangle. We do not promote them into a main board role because we largely see their current role as an operational one not a strategic one.

 We can start to build these observations into a range of opportunities that might start to help. We need to consider tackling them on many levels.

 At an organisational level we need to understand what it is that inhibits the leverage of our best project managers into board roles? How can the valuable capabilities of these individuals be honed to make them somehow more acceptable to their peers?

 These are part of the reasons why we do project management training and development and why it is imperative that organisations are pro-active in this and embrace the benefits that can accrue from such interventions.

In order to understand the true worth of a project and whether to carry on with it (or indeed even start it in the first place) it is not helpful to simply consider the costs. If the benefits exceed the costs then there is no reason why the costs cannot increase. What is important is that the benefits continue to exceed them.

 In holding a review the organisation (and sponsor) are seeking to verify that these two components remain out of balance.

 When we check the costs it is vital to also check the benefits also. We have things called cost centres where all the relevant costs are accumulated and stored and inevitably pored over, analysed, checked, reviewed, re-checked and so on. What about the benefits? When was the last time we saw a benefit centre?

 What needs to be known about these benefits that may accrue sometime in the unknowable uncertain future? Next time you are on a project think about what might need to be recorded to ensure that they are properly understood in a way that can be reconciled against the costs.  We would suggest the following

• Description of Benefit – a narrative that helps us to understand the scope of what we expect to get.
•  When the benefit is expected to occur and over what period will realisation take place – benefits are rarely obvious immediately. IRR, NPV, Payback and other financial analysis works just as well with benefits as it does with cost.
•  Measure for the realisation of the benefit and how it will be carried out – how will we measure the true value and particularly how can we measure it. Don’t forget to carry out an ‘as is’ evaluation as any improvements need to be measured against something.
•  What costs are directly associated with the benefits concerned.
•  The project that will deliver the outputs that will deliver the benefits.
•  What risks might be associated with the journey to achieving the benefit
•  Who will own and be accountable for the achievement of the benefits.

 If you record these at the outset you will be well placed to account for the reasons for the project and be able to demonstrate its viability.

Question

“To be an effective Project Manager it is essential to have knowledge of the project topic – only civil engineers can be PM’s for civil engineering projects”

Yes

Do Project Managers need to have specialist technical knowledge? I would argue that they do. That is not to say that they need to understand the minutiae of the detail but a good solid background experience and a broad knowledge of the technical products will turn a so-so project manager into an excellent one. I have spent thirty years running projects of various shapes and sizes but mainly in the software and services industries. Should I be appointed to a similar sized construction project? I will be able to do it, eventually, but it will probably cost more, be riskier and a lot more stressful for all concerned. A project manager with experience and knowledge of the job in hand will be able to

• Hit the ground running, they will be able to formulate plans, build a delivery coalition and be able to understand how efficiencies and excellence can best be achieved
• Have credibility amongst the team and other stakeholders. This may exist in someone new to the discipline but it would be a brave client who commissioned a new nuclear power plant from a firm whose project managers were excellent at software projects and nothing else
• Converse sensibly with contractors and others about the problems that they face and help to convert these into a sensible contractual solution
• Identify and predict major risk areas with far more effectiveness than someone without these attributes, this will save time, money and too many ‘blind alleys’.

There are dangers of course, the primary one being that of the PM who simply has to get involved in all the detail, slowing things down, duplicating effort and not extracting the best for the team. There are also grave dangers where too much experience and knowledge mean that we keep re-inventing the problems of old and get ‘stuck in a rut’. Like most things it is a balance, whilst some knowledge is useful for the reasons identified above, too much knowledge can get in the way,

No

So now I’m intrigued. Was the manager of the T5 project an expert in luggage conveyance systems or an expert in modern building methods. Or thinking on, perhaps they were an expert in aviation transport logistics or even retail outlets. For that matter, expertise in restaurant management or even anti-terrorism security may be of the essence.

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t matter.

Only the simplest of projects involve just one technical discipline or topic. By far the majority of projects have a myriad of such specialisms and to imagine that the only person who can manage such projects is someone with recognisable expertise in all of them is clearly ridiculous. Apart from any other considerations, which project could afford anyone with this many qualifications?

Project managers manage projects. They do not manage departments, or teams of individuals, sharing the same expertise. If they did then they would be “Functional Managers” and as students of organizational theory can explain, these resemble “Project Managers” in the same way that chalk resembles cheese.

The management of projects is about the management of the overall objective. It is about delivering the big picture by bringing together all the pieces that make up that picture. By necessity the role requires a broad perspective, sometimes referred to as a “helicopter view”, of the overall endeavour. The management of individual specialisms relates only to how these individual “pieces” fit together and involves defining their input, asking after and supplying the necessary support and interfaces they need, and then verifying that they have completed the work satisfactorily. The minutiae of how individual specialists achieve their objectives is something the project manager is drawn into at her or his peril. Not only is it an impossibly big task for all but the simplest of projects but it involves “landing your helicopter” and all the narrowing of perspective that this entails.

In fact, such a scenario is a common cause of strife within projects when the technically expert Project Manager concentrates only on those project elements that coincide with their own technical discipline. It ensures some project elements are neglected whilst upsetting the specialists in question who resent being micromanaged.

The full story of T5 is yet to be written but it does seem that the teething problems were not due to technical failures within any discipline mentioned above. The failure seems be associated with a failure to recognize the need for training of staff. There was a piece of the jigsaw missing: the sort of thing that stands out only when viewed from above. And while you are in your helicopter, “any sign of my suitcase from up there”?