Voices on Project Management

Dealing with vendors and customers provides a very good example of the peculiarities of human behavior.

As a project manager, you may feel obliged whenever you do anything for your customer. But when it comes to vendors you perhaps put yourself in a position above them and treat them differently.

Take this example:

In the IT industry we have a software engineering process group (SEPG) and software quality assurance group (SQAG) responsible for ensuring the implementation of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) processes.

Project teams follow the groups' instructions and do whatever is required to clear an audit. Once the organization clears the audit and receives a certification, no one cares about the processes anymore because of the following reasons:

1.    The project team feels unnecessary extra work was pushed on them by the SEPG/SQAG groups and the project team just wanted to be done with it.
2.    The project team feels that they are doing a favor to SEPG/SQAG by implementing the processes rolled out by them, and the SEPG/SQAG feels otherwise.

The best way to keep a sustainable process model is to mentor project teams about the importance of processes to their project. This compare to what we do with our client -- we work as a trusted advisor, providing consultation at each step.

When it comes to an internal project we start treating internal teams as a vendor and ask them to do whatever we need, it doesn't matter if it really adds any value to them. My suggestion SQAG/SEPG teams is that you shall treat the project teams as your client and act as a trusted advisor to them.

This is the only way you can have a sustainable model.

This is a guest post from Roger Chou, PgMP, of the Institute of Taiwan Project Management

Five years ago in Taiwan, there was a general lack of awareness about project management.

This led all of us in the project management community to some basic questions: How could we prove the value of professional project management teaching and qualifications to the country's leading opinion-makers? And how could we show that having as many qualified managers as possible would be good for business and therefore for society?

We decided to provide free project management training to business leaders, company managers, politicians and other influential people. All of these people knew enough about management skills and practices to take such an invitation seriously--and if it was free, how could they refuse?

In this way they would understand what all the Project Management Professional (PMP)® education providers were trying to achieve.

This became our strategy: influence the influential.

After getting first-hand experience of what it meant to be trained and to work as a professional project manager, participants started to endorse project management education and qualifications.

At the same time, we also facilitated numerous newspaper reports on major successful projects, including Taipei's Tower 101.

We also managed to get over 2,000 people--many of whom participated in the free training--to sign the petition for proper project management training sent to our main forum of elected politicians, the Legislative Yuan. Following this petition, we wrote an open letter to Taiwan's president about the importance of project management teaching and qualification.

One of the hardest places to introduce new ideas, practices, technology or anything that requires rethinking convention is within government departments. They see their main responsibility as implementing policy--discussions about or changes to working practices could be potentially costly distractions from an already sensitive process.

Despite the challenges, our efforts have paid off. As of January, all civil servants are now required to have professional project management training and qualifications.

While "influencing the influential" was a business plan specifically tailored to Taiwan's situation and needs at that time, we were nevertheless following our own professional management training.

As the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) indicates, identifying your stakeholders and satisfying their needs would be the first step to successfully managing change, regardless or how big or small that change.

The last hypothetical I posted, Is This Your Project Stakeholder? attracted a wide cross section of responses.

It made me wonder what you think of this real life experience (only the names have been changed):

Sebastian is a highly competent, upwardly mobile executive and your boss. He works 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and is a very detailed person. He proofreads everything, making copious corrections and is also studying for his second master's degree.

You have found the best time to approach Sebastian to discuss anything is after 8 p.m. when the office is quiet and he is working on his studies. In fact, at this time of night he seems to appreciate a brief chat.

The problem is you have a "life" outside of the office and feel 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. is a very fair day's work.

How would you approach building rapport with Sebastian to allow the discussion of important project issues and enhance your career prospects without waiting until after 8 p.m.?

I will review all comments and based on your feedback I will suggest some solutions in my next post.