Managing a project can be the most fun you’ve had with your clothes on! I can’t think of a career path that pretty much means that you are constantly working at the forefront of change.  However, anything that’s fun does have its dangers so it’s important to stay safe.

Here are my five golden rules to project management that have I’ve picked up over many years.

Rule 1:  Get inside the head of your sponsor.

Many underestimate the role of the sponsor in a project.  Manage your sponsor well and you’ll reap the benefits. Sponsors aren’t there just to agree the initial brief with you. It’s your job to ensure they have an active role in the project from start to finish.  Remember, very often in a fast moving business they will be key to ensuring the project goals are still viable.  Sponsors should be working with senior stakeholders to sell the benefits of the change your project will bring and letting you know about how changes in the organisation may impact.  So my advice is to meet with sponsors at least once a fortnight to make sure they understand where the project is at, but you also understand how the business is feeling about the change.

Rule 2: Agree how and when you will communicate and stick to it.

Some people believe that it’s impossible to over-communicate.  I completely disagree!  If you’re knocking out e-mails and reports on a daily basis, most people will be trying to work out how to get your e-mails directly into the spam folder by day 3.  So at the outset, agree your communications plan and stick to it.  Some people key to your project may not want to be bothered unless there’s a change to the plan.  So be it.  No one will thank you for flooding their inbox!

Rule 3: Revisit your plans constantly.

A common mistake people make when managing a project is to create a plan and set it in stone.  This is like agreeing at the age of 7 what all your birthday presents will be until you’re 18!  Planning for a project is not a one off event.  This should be an activity you and your team work through on a regular basis.  Planning can be a bit dry at the best of times so my advice is to try and make it fun and involve as many of the team as you can so they all feel part of the process.

Rule 4: When a task is estimated to take longer than your gut feel would expect, get a second opinion.

As your experience as a project manager grows, you’ll begin to develop a very natural instinct to guestimate the length of time a task should take.  So when you get a view that a task is going to take longer than you think is reasonable (or shorter), don’t be too quick to accept, be sure to get a second opinion.

Rule 5: Log your decisions.

If you’ve agreed a way of doing something that is pretty fundamental to the project be sure to record when you did this.  Typical projects last several months and you can bet your bottom dollar that whatever you all agreed as a sensible approach in month 2 may not be remembered so well in month 6!  So my advice here is to set up a very simple template so you are able to record key decisions very quickly.  Also include when they were made and who made them.  Keep this log in a shared area so that anyone can look at them.

The importance of managing your risks – the 5 things you really need to know…

The first thing we think about when managing a project is probably not managing your risks. I think this is because we’ve all been conditioned to think risks are somehow negative things that we should avoid labouring on. Therefore it’s not unusual for less experienced Project Managers to lay out risks at the start of a project, and then do some sort of courtesy update on them every month or so.

Get your strategy for managing your risks right and you are well on the way to becoming a great Project Manager. You can get whole books on this stuff but I think they’re only 5 rules for becoming really good in this area:

Rule 1: Get all your risks out on the table.

As an output of effective planning you should identify all the risks that could impact the successful completion of your project. And don’t get hung up here about the number of risks you’ve identified, however small. Think about this, if there were only 1 or 2 risks to a project why the hell are you there for?

Rule 2: Present your risks well

Some of the risks you articulate will get to the top of the organisation for resolution. So avoid emotive language or any statements that could burn bridges with future stakeholders.

Rule 3: Prioritise your risks.

This one’s really simple. Establish how likely your risk will be (try doing this on a scale of 1 to 5) and what the impact will be if the risk happened (again using a scale). This way you’ll quickly understand the risks that need to be managed most urgently.

Rule 4: Work with the business to understand how your risk will be mitigated.

This is your route to getting airtime with business managers and ensuring the risks your are most concerned about get the profile they deserve. The best Project Managers out there will attempt to lay out some mitigation for a risk internally, but then call a meeting to ratify these with the relevant business managers impacted by the project. The output of this session will be a universal appreciation of the risk and a high quality piece of mitigation that everyone buys into.

Rule 5: Evolve your risks

Risk management is a living thing. Don’t be afraid to add new risks when you update your plans and likewise, if you’re managing well, items that existed at the start of your project will either be way down the priority list or no longer a risk at all.

My point is that as a society we’re much more demanding now and we want things sooner and better than ever before.

I think the same is true when approaching projects. In the good old days, it would be pretty acceptable (in fact expected) to spend a big chunk of time in a project understanding business requirements, and then estimating how long it would take to address them. From time to time you’d end up in some sort of loop of playing and replaying back solutions until you get it just right. And then of course a key sponsor may leave and someone new might have a different view of the world!

Spending a large amount of time on defining a solution is a luxury few businesses can afford now. But more importantly, from my perspective this traditional way of doing things often got us into some bad habits where we ended up over-engineering a solution because you simply had that time available.

So now we see more and more businesses opting for what’s being called an ‘Agile’ approach, where requirements and deliverables can be a lot more dynamic.

I think this is exactly right for the world we live in today Businesses are needing to adapt very quickly; what was right as a solution 6 months when an idea was conceived may need serious tweaks to it in order to complete in the marketplace today.

‘Agile’ approaches such as Scrum allow customers to see the output of their ideas faster than using a more traditional methodology where many months could pass before anything is visible.

So I think the move to ‘Agile’ is merely a reflection of the society we live in. We’ll will find it increasingly difficult to metaphorically “wait for our photos to be processed”. Rather, let’s accept business requirements for what they are – a living breathing collection of thoughts that continues to evolve in order for businesses to stay competitive.

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with these paths at all, and of course let’s face it I can’t see a time when we’ll ever not need these clever men and women. However, we’ve started to embark upon an unprecedented age – an age where businesses will need to be constantly reinventing themselves to stay one step ahead of the competition.   Actually, more precisely, an age where “it’s OK” for businesses to do this without compromising its values.

Of course, this is already happening. My take is that the frequency of this will accelerate and all sorts of businesses will routinely use “change” as another item in their toolbox to get ahead.

The word “change” is now being adopted into business speak. Rightly so I say. I can see a time soon where there’ll be a massive cachet associated with good people that can manage a change project smoothly. All we need then is a hit TV drama series all about Project Managers working on amazing change agendas in the field. I’ll put my name forward for the lead role..!

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There’s a commonly held belief that you somehow need to be a technical guru to stand any chance of a career as a Project Manager.  Well actually in my experience some of the most successful Project Managers are those with little in the way of a technical background. Yes I said it!

Instead, in my experience, what you need much more of is the ability to coordinate and manage people to make things happen.  Most of us are pretty good at this when we put our minds to it, and basically that’s your most important qualification.

Another key skill for a successful Project Manager is the ability to communicate well.  So what I mean here is the ability to explain things clearly and concisely.  Sometimes this could also mean breaking complex things down into simple chunks to help everyone understand what is going on.  Most of us actually do this everyday and we’re pretty good at it.  Don’t think so – well think again.  If you’ve got children, you’re always helping them interpret some of the complex things happening around them. Or if your have family or neighbours belonging to an older generation you will probably be helping them interpret the fast moving world we live in today.

Another skill that good Project Managers have is the ability to interpret and manage risk. Ok this sounds like something that we don’t do in everyday life. Wrong!  We probably do this the most and we’re very good at it! Let’s take the process of deciding to buy a lottery ticket.  What you’re actually doing is calculating the probability and impact of the risk happening in nanoseconds. You’re then making a judgment.

For example, by spending a pound on a lottery ticket you’ll subconsciously consider the probability of winning (extremely low) but then you’ll look at the impact of winning (extremely significant); in many peoples’ minds, the combination of these two factors makes buying a ticket worthwhile. People sometimes refer to this as the risk/reward ratio.

The secret of great Project Managers is really doing the things I’ve talked about really well.  So be weary of all the project management jargon out there, most of us are more than half way to becoming great Project Managers without even realising it!