According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMB0K), projects are authorized due to internal business needs or external influences.  Project end is reached when the project’s objectives have been achieved or when the project is terminated because its objectives will not or cannot be met, or when the need for the project no longer exists.

This leads me to today’s post.

Instead of finding the newspaper on my porch the other day, I discovered someone delivered a yellow pages book (business directory).  It’s been years since I actually opened a phone book.  There are no longer personal phone numbers in the book, only businesses.  Out of curiosity, I opened it to discover 1 in 4 of the advertisement being nothing more then ads to advertise in the yellow pages!  Did you follow that?  Advertisements to advertise.  I can appreciate the idea of continuing to print the phone book.  Anyone not having access to the Internet still needs to find a directory of businesses.  But after reviewing the quality of the product, it makes me question if it is time this thing went the way of the dinosaur.

All this time I thought the people receiving the phone were the customer.  They are not. It’s the advertiser.  The creation of the project (or business) of printing phone books use to actually satisfy a need or provide a public service. People needed to find people and businesses needed a medium to tell potential customers they existed.

We’ve addressed the original need to start the project.  What about to end it?  With the increased usage of Google and Bing, very few people actually read their phone books to locate businesses.  Until businesses advertising in the phone book believe the cost of advertising in that medium outweighs the benefit it provides, it will continue.  Sounds a little bit like the newspaper industry, doesn’t it?  There is a very similar parallel between the newspaper industry and the printed phone book industry.  They both believe or promote the scarcity of information.  That scarcity justifies cost.  To the contrary, we now live with an abundance of information.  That information is freely distributed and reaches a broader audience.

I find it ironic, printed on the phone book, the printer asks us to please recycle our “outdated” phone books.  To satisfy their request, this brand new phone book is going right into the recycling bin.  Though I do believe the end is near for the paper-based phone book, I have a recommendation for them.  Since this printing company has our address to deliver the phone book, why don’t they send us a letter asking if we would like to opt-out of future deliveries?  You tell me, are you more apt to read something you’ve opted-in to or something sent to you like spam?

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

A few years back, while studying for the PMP exam, I committed the formula for calculating communications paths to memory.

[N(N-1)]/2

So, what’s the big deal? Why is it so important? If you’re in the Project Management (or leadership) field, you know all too well how important communications is. I used to call myself a project manager. I now prefer to use the term project leader. What’s the difference? According to Warren Bennis and Dan Goldsmith (1997) there are 12 distinctions between managers and leaders.

• Managers administer; leaders innovate.
• Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why.
• Managers focus on systems; leaders focus on people.
• Managers do things right; leaders do the right things.
• Managers maintain; leaders develop.
• Managers rely on control; leaders inspire trust.
• Managers have short-term perspective; leaders have long-term perspective.
• Managers accept the status-quo; leaders challenge the status-quo.[*]
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line; leaders have an eye on the horizon.
• Managers imitate; leaders originate.
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier; leaders are their own person.
• Managers copy; leaders show originality.

In order to both innovate and do the right things, I listen and listen a LOT. (Some people listen; some wait to talk) I’ve watched executives and managers, who knew absolutely nothing about a subject, make uneducated decisions because they were too stubborn or proud to consult a subject matter expert (SME). Good leaders do not operate in a vacuum. They exchange ideas and information with people. Offer free information and it will come back to you tenfold. Listen to knowledgeable people and then make a more educated leadership decision.

Where does social media fit into the grand scheme of things? Old-school managers and executives who believe in the bureaucratic organization and status quo, tend to lean toward command-and-control or top-down management. That group is operating under the assumption people higher in the organizational chart know more. New-school leaders believe in social media. Why? It strips away all of the nonsense and connects people to people. They have real conversations as human beings. They educate and they listen with a freedom to connect at an exponential rate. They are not confined to the notion of an hierarchical organization.

My example is my current engagement, which I have been at for 13 months: Within my direct cross-functional organization chart, I have 28 contacts to interface with. There are no plans to increase the size of this group. [28(28-1)]/2 is 378 communication paths. Not too bad.

Turn now to option number two, social media like Twitter and Facebook. For arguments sake, I’ll say I have 200 followers on Twitter with a growth rate of 10% a month. (I’m actually have 450+ and counting)  Each Twitter Follower is a communications path.

[200(200-1)]/2 = 19,900 communication paths

After one month it would be projected to increase to 21,945 communication paths

Every Friday, people I follow on Twitter recommend others in the industry who I should consider following (#followfriday). Every week, I learn more about my craft and more importantly I get to form relationships with people all over the world. By bypassing the organizational structure to get my information, inbound communications is at a much higher velocity and is now flowing up through the organization.

Social Media helps you be a project leader.

12 distinctions between managers and leaders by Bennis, Warren and Dan Goldsmith. Learning to Lead. Massachusetts: Persus Book, 1997.

Thank you Laurel Papworth for the use of the Social Media Campaign image

* I recommend reading Fighting Status Quo by Pawel Brodzinski

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, Seeing Value From The Customer Perspective, if you think you need to deviate from a documented or understood process, rewrite or refine your process to account for the deviations. Merriam-Webster defines process as a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.  If you are unwilling to modify your process, the deviation is unworthy of being done.

I’ve had a vendor tell me they didn’t need to document their processes because they were agile.  (Notice the lack of an uppercase A in Agile).  Leveraging Agile concepts does not mean a lack of documented process.  IF the customer tells me they see the greatest value in delivering documentation, what is this vendor going to respond with?  Sorry, we won’t deliver value?  If you use Waterfall, you may be used to generating more paper.  You have to consider documentation on a case by case basis.  Some customers have legitimate needs for documentation and other have wants.  Now go back and read that last sentence again.  Needs…Wants…

I personally like to go light on documentation.  What I need and what the customer needs are usually two different things.  That being said, I like to understand the rules (governance) before I start anything.  The Microsoft Visio document I included in my last post was a good example of a high level governance (functional flowchart) document. After completing the flowchart, I then detail each activity in a separate document.  What is the input and output?  Is there a formal deliverable associated with the activity? The idea behind the separate document is you won’t need the flowchart to describe the process.  For those who have successfully navigated a SOX audit, you know what I’m talking about.  But I digress.  The flowchart activities I documented are not groundbreaking.  The process in this case is an Agile Scrum process with a few defined quality assurance decisions points.  You do not need to go into the Nth degree to understand this process.  Identify some touch points where the vendor and customer interface.  Identity some decision points.  That’s it!

I’ve done these flowcharts for several customers.  I’ve created them for both Waterfall and Agile development approaches.  If you’re looking for a free Microsoft Visio template, which you can edit at will, you can download it here. I zipped it to make downloading easier.  If you’re looking for other free templates or worksheets to use on your project or program, you can download them there.

What do you think?  To document or not document.  That is the question. I welcome your comments or feedback.

Regards,

Derek

I recently sat in a meeting between a vendor and client, where the client was attempting to communicate their need to route new work deliverables to an existing Change Control Board (CCB). The contractor came back and said they believed the CCB in this case would not provide value and perhaps it should be bypassed.

Note to all vendors: Just because a process does not appear valuable to you, it does not mean the process does not provide value. The use of the CCB provides a (formal) control point helping to prevent unauthorized work and cost overruns. This goes further then just having a client billed for unauthorized work. Any work done without prior authorization has a risk of negatively impacting project schedule, cost, or quality. The mere act of doing unauthorized work impacts the scope.

I don’t care if you’re using Agile, Waterfall, or other methods to deliver value.  What is important is you understand your process and what mechanisms provide the greatest value to the customer.

If you think you need to deviate from a documented or understood process, rewrite your process to account for the deviations. If you are unwilling to change your documented process, the deviation is unworthy of being done.

I created the Visio diagram (above) a few months back to help both the customer and vendor visualize what we were trying to accomplish.  The challenge was implementing Scrum in a very formal and controlled environment.

I certainly recognize many don’t have such a formal process.  Instead of CCBs, you may call them Product Backlog Review Meetings.  Counter to this, you may have a very fluid and simple software development life cycle (SDLC).  If so, you still need to understand your process and you still need to communicate with your customer.  Understand what their highest priorities are and deliver.

I’m Derek, a project manager and technology geek who lives and breaths general project management, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and technology.  You can follow me on Twitter @derekhuether or if you really liked this article, subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Over the course of the last 15 years, I’ve really expanded my personal brand.  I started out as a full on Tech Geek.  I launched my first startup in October of 1996.  Yes, when the Pentium 133 was the latest thing.  It was a good ride.  Sure, the company died off after 10 years of business but I got my exit and I learned a lot.  Two things I learned.  One, I like to interact with people.  Two, I don’t like to interact with people when they don’t want to interact with me.  Let’s not waste our time here, people.  Who would you rather have a conversation with?  [1] That guy or gal who walks around the room pushing his business card into everyone’s face.  Or [2], that guy or gal who you know has similar interests or passions as you.

After leaving the hardware-and-software-geek world for the application development world, I found a niche with project management.  I loved the idea I could help solve a problem (deliver on time, on budget, within scope) when given the opportunity to do so.  I could identify a need and provide a solution.  The need to talk project management when dealing with Businesses, Government Agencies and Educational Institutions led me to get my PMP® Certification.  The need to empower my development teams led me to get my Certified Scrum Master Certification.  The need to optimize my work throughput led me to champion the use of a Personal Kanban.

All of these are all mere tools in my toolbox.  But, when you put them all together, they start to describe my personal brand.  I’m a guy who believes in transparency, technology, and information dissemination.  I deliver products with passion, commitment, and skill.

So, what’s the paradox?  I’ve been writing The Critical Path for a while now.  Since it’s launch, I’ve grown more and more passionate about things other then just project management.  I really have two options.  [1] Launch another blog with my personal perspective and focus The Critical Path on my professional perspective. [2] Expand The Critical Path to include more about my other passions.

I love going on Twitter and finding a thousand personal brand experts or social media experts. (That’s kind of a joke)  But, what I believe in most is the wisdom of the crowd.  I would love to see what you have to say.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below.