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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Today’s new breed, eXtreme projects are different. They feature high speed, high change, high complexity, high risk, and high stress. While traditional projects follow the classic model of ready, aim, fire, eXtreme project managers succeed by shooting the gun and then redirecting the bullet while not loosing sight of their moving target. eXtreme Project Management provides a practical guide for leaders working under high risk and high pressure while producing the desired bottom-line results. Based on Doug DeCarlo’s extensive experience in working with more than 250 project teams, his eXtreme project management model is built around an integrated set of principles, values, skills, tools, and practices proven to consistently work under conditions of rapid change and uncertainty. eXtreme project management is based on the premise that you don’t manage the unknown the same way you manage the known. It’s a people-centric approach to high performance that makes quality of life a fundamental part of the project venture.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
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Contents
Foreword by James P. Lewis
Preface: Out of the Darkness
Acknowledgments
The Author
Introduction: Into the Light
How eXtreme Projects Are Different
Ready, Fire, Aim
How eXtreme Project Management Is Different
Changing the Paradigm
Part One: The New Reality
1 Developing a Quantum Mind-Set for an eXtreme Reality
Is There a Method to Your Madness?
Linear Lunacy
Newtonian Neurosis and the eXtreme Project Manager
Self-Diagnostic Tool
Do You Walk Your Talk?
It’s Jazz, Not Classical Music
Toward Peaceful Coexistence
Conclusion
2 The eXtreme Model for Success
Two Keys to Success
What Is a Project? A New Definition
What Is Project Management? A New Definition
What Is an eXtreme Project?
What Is eXtreme Project Management?
How Is Success Measured on an eXtreme Project?
Who Holds a Stake in Success?
What Are the Elements of the eXtreme Model for Success?
Putting in Place the Skills, Tools, and Environment to Succeed: The 5 Critical Success Factors
Part Two: Leadership Skills for an eXtreme World
3 Leadership Begins with Self-Mastery
The Project-Crazy Organization
The Formula for Self-Misery
The Formula for Self-Mastery
Taking It to a Higher Court
4 The eXtreme Project Manager’s Leadership Role
The eXtreme Project Manager’s Role
Stakeholders: The eXtreme Project Management Context
Your Role as Process Leader
Nine Reasons That eXtreme Project Managers Fail
You Are More Powerful Than You May Realize
When Commitment Is Not Obtainable
5 Principles, Values, and Interpersonal Skills for Leading
The 4 Accelerators: How to Unleash Motivation and Innovation
The 10 Shared Values: How to Establish the Trust and Confidence to Succeed
The 4 Business Questions: How to Ensure the Customer Receives Value Each Step of the Way
Developing Interpersonal Skills for an eXtreme World
Principles of Effective Communication
How to Negotiate
How to Resolve Conflict
When All Else Fails
6 Leading the eXtreme Team
Process Values
Characteristics of Teams
Establishing the Core Team
Creating the Conditions for Successful Teamwork
The Keys to Running Productive Meetings
Facilitation Skills
Decision Making and Problem Solving
How to Earn the Right to Lead the Process
7 eXtreme Stakeholder Management
The Stakeholder Challenge
Business Values
The Stakeholder Universe
Managing Your Stakeholders
The Role of the Steering Committee
How to Combat the Phantom Approval Virus
Managing Change: You’ve Built It, But Will They Come?
Business Question 4: Is It Worth It to You?
Part Three: The Flexible Project Model
8 Visionate: Capturing the Sponsor’s Vision
Getting Answers to Business Question 1: Who Needs What and Why?
The First Sponsor Meeting
Beginning Work on the Project Prospectus
The Second Sponsor Meeting
9 Visionate: Establishing the Collective Vision
Preparing for the Third Sponsor Meeting
Go or No Go: The Third Meeting with the Sponsor
Getting Ready for the Scoping Meeting
Conducting the Scoping Meeting
After the Meeting
10 Speculate: The Planning Meeting
Preparing for the Planning Meeting
The Twelve-Step Planning Meeting Process
11 Speculate: Postplanning Work
Assessing the Project Management Infrastructure
Estimating Financial Requirements
12 Innovate: Learning by Doing
The Underlying Dynamics
Time Boxing
Applying the SCORE Model
The Goal of the Innovation Cycle
13 Reevaluate: Deciding the Project’s Future
What Reevaluate Is Not
The Reevaluate Process
14 Disseminate: Harvesting the Payoff
What Happened to Business Question 4: Is It Worth It?
The Turnover Point
The Stabilization Period
The Project Review Meeting
Benefits Realization
Part Four: Managing the Project Environment
15 Real-Time Communication
What Are the Basic Communications Needs of Stakeholders?
What Are the Hallmarks of a Viable Real-Time Communications System?
What Specific Real-Time Features Do You Need?
Where Do You Find Affordable, Quick-Start Solutions?
What Are the Technical Considerations for Planning and Running Virtual Meetings?
What Do You Need to Know in Planning and Running Web Conferences?
What’s the Big Trap to Watch Out For?
16 Agile Organization: A Senior Management Briefing
The New Dynamics of Projects
How Top Managers Can Undermine Effective Project Management
The Role of the Project Sponsor
Becoming an Agile Organization: Best and Worst Practices
Landing on Common Ground
Making the Transition
The World Is Only Going to Become More eXtreme
Afterword by Robert K. Wysocki
eXtreme Tools and Techniques
Self-Mastery Tools and Techniques
Interpersonal Tools and Techniques
Facilitation Skills
Project Management Tools
References
Index
End User License Agreement
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Guide
Cover
Contents
Begin Reading
List of Illustrations
Figure I.1
Figure I.2
Figure I.3
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Figure 6.1
Figure 8.1
Figure 8.2
Figure 9.1
Figure 9.2
Figure 9.3
Figure 10.1
Figure 10.2
Figure 10.3
Figure 11.1
Figure 12.1
Figure 12.2
Figure 13.1
Figure 14.1
Figure 14.2
Figure 14.4
Figure 16.1
List of Tables
Table 10.1
Table 4.1
Table 4.2
Table 7.1
Table 7.2
Table 8.1
Table 8.2
Table 15.1
Table 15.2
Praise foreXtreme Project Management
“Revolutionary. Doug DeCarlo’s eXtreme project management framework shows project managers and sponsors how to succeed where they might typically fail. Finally, a refreshing and practical approach for today’s extreme projects.”
—Ravi Mohan, principal, ProjectScape
“Agile, extreme, and adaptive are words that identify a significant new trend in project management. These approaches to project management, such as Doug DeCarlo describes in eXtreme Project Management, need to contain three vital parts—mind-set, a framework, and specific practices. Doug’s book succeeds in all three areas. His description of quantum and Newtonian mind-sets establishes the critical difference between traditional and extreme project management values. His Flexible Project Model, from Visionate to Disseminate, defines a process framework that embodies the quantum mind-set. Finally, specific practices such as the Project Prospectus and 3-sentence Project Skinny will help teams deliver project results with minimal overhead. Great job.”
—Jim Highsmith, director, Agile Project Management Practice, Cutter Consortium; and author, Agile Project Management:Creating Innovative Products
“If change is a constant in your life and on your projects then this book is a must-read. Doug DeCarlo, a veteran of the leading edge, turns standard project management conventions upside down by revealing new insights into the realities of successfully delivering today’s projects.”
—Steven Weidner, PMP, president, Program Navigators, Inc.
“Doug has nailed my world with a practical, insightful book that is also a fun and invigorating read. Project managers frustrated by traditional methods that don’t work on their crazy, people-dominated projects will recognize in eXtreme Project Management a new approach that absolutely resonates with their reality; and like me, they’ll walk away with tools for putting the new mind-set into action.”
—Cinda Voegtli, president, ProjectConnections.com
“All projects I meet today fit Doug’s description of eXtreme. This book is something that we all need to face the current environment with a realistic mind-set and real tools to be successful.”
—K. C. Yelin, Yelin Associates
“Perfect for the project manager looking for alternatives to process-heavy, bureaucratic management. Doug opens the door for new management strategies to deal with the rapid-fire complexity of projects in a constant state of flux.”
—Carl Pritchard, principal, Pritchard Management Associates
“Drawing on his unique combination of project management experience, technical/scientific training, and esoteric studies, Doug has given us a profoundly thoughtful and useful approach to managing the chaotic projects of our time. Easy reading on a complex topic for project executives and managers.”
—Ed Mahler, PMP, president, Project Administration Institute; and president, PMI Westchester, New York, chapter
“Our medical center has greatly benefited from the application of the concepts and principles described in this book in organizing, managing, and successfully completing our most complex and extreme projects. I highly recommend this book to anyone facing similarly challenging projects!”
—Zed Day, CIO, University of Kentucky Medical Center
“Finally, a project management philosophy that actually supports true teamwork! This is an extremely useful book—a quantum leap forward for project teams that want their planning tools to match how they really work!”
—Christopher M. Avery, author, Teamwork Is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility
“At last! Doug has provided us with a way to break from the ‘normal’ waterfall world and given us a look at projects as they really are today. The book is an easy read and a necessary companion for anyone who must tackle today’s fast-paced delivery cycles.”
—Donald Gardner, Gardner Project Integration Group, Ltd.
“The unpredictable is the project manager’s playing field. Doug changes the rules to achieve success in the extreme! He captures the extreme need for forward and creative thinking in project management. It’s an educational quantum leap in the field of project management.”
—Frank P. Saladis, PMP, president, Project Imaginers Inc.
“Project managers and business owners will benefit from the eXtreme project management approach described in Doug DeCarlo’s book. Moving beyond the traditional IT project management approach to an approach that acknowledges the complexity and fluid nature of business change programs—in most cases ‘uncertain journeys to uncertain destinations’—will greatly increase their chances of successfully delivering business value.”
—John Thorp, president, The Thorp Network Inc.; and author, The Information Paradox
“‘Drive along the freeway for exactly one hour, then hang a left . . .’ Instructions like that court disaster, so why do we stubbornly stick to prescriptive project management that does little better? Humankind is exquisitely competent at dealing with complexity, responding to emergent information, and adapting to current reality. So why not just describe the destination and let the competent driver figure out a successful journey? General Patton famously said, ‘Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.’ Doug DeCarlo has captured that vision in this excellent volume: absorb and practice the principles and you will achieve mastery in eXtreme project management.”
—Ralph White, Ph.D., MRPharmS; and director, PPMLD Ltd
“A must-read for all levels of practitioners of project management. Doug provides new insights on the most important success factor for projects: the people and how to manage the relationships.”
—Theresa Kane Musser, senior director, project management, Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
“ It’s refreshing to read a book by a real practitioner of non-traditional project management. Traditional project management often falls short in projects containing a great deal of uncertainty. Doug’s approach, exemplified by the eXtreme methods of iteration and adaptation, fits the world of high-technology, new-product development.”
—Martin Wartenberg, senior consultant, Engineering and Information Technology, University of California
eXtreme Project Management
Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility
Doug DeCarlo
Foreword by James P. Lewis
Afterword by Robert K. Wysocki
Copyright © 2004 by Doug DeCarlo.
Published by Jossey-BassA Wiley Imprint989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DeCarlo, Doug, 1942-
eXtreme project management: using leadership, principles, and tools to deliver value in the face of volatility/by Doug DeCarlo; foreword by James P. Lewis; afterword by Robert K. Wysocki.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(The Jossey-Bass business & management series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7879-7409-9 (alk. paper)
1. Project management. 2. Leadership. 3. Teams in the workplace—Management.
I. Title. II. Series.
HD69.P75D43 2004
658.4'04—dc22 2004015788
The Jossey-BassBusiness & Management Series
To unleashing the power within each of us to make a difference
Foreword
It has been asserted that there are only two things of which we can be certain: death and taxes.
It isn’t true.
The only thing of which we can be certain is that certainty is impossible.
Some quantum physicists have concluded that reality is much stranger than the strangest of science fiction. Fred Alan Wolf, one of Doug DeCarlo’s favorite physicists and authors, says in his book Mind into Matter (2000) that atoms are believed to come into being only when we observe “them”—whatever “them” is.
And it has been known for a very long time that the process of observing atomic particles affects what takes place. If you treat a photon as a particle, it behaves like one. If you treat it as a wave, it behaves like one.
Strange.
But this applies only to those pesky little things at the quantum level, doesn’t it?
No.
The same phenomenon has been found in observing interactions in groups. The observer’s presence, even when the observer is behind a one-way mirror so that the group members are not aware of his or her presence, affects group behavior. Maybe the only reality is quantum, whether it be micro or macro in nature.
The reason this is important is that our worldview determines how we approach things. Human beings would like the world to be a nice, tidy place where everything is deterministic and predictable. We all know this is not the reality, but we behave as if it were, and thereby we get into trouble. In project management, for example, we guess at how long a task will take, then plug these guesses into a scheduling software program, and out comes a critical path schedule that we then treat as deterministic! It is utter nonsense, because the software creates the illusion in the minds of senior managers that we have a precision that does not exist, and these false expectations lead to trouble for all of us in the long run. No matter how you look at it, activity durations are all probabilistic, not deterministic. This is another way of saying that we are living in a quantum project world, one where change and uncertainty are the norm. What is project management like under those circumstances?
There is another thing of which I am certain. Robert Wysocki writes in the Afterword to this book that this is not your father’s project management. In fact, it isn’t even your father’s projects. What I am certain of is that this book will either create huge excitement in the world of project management, or it will be branded heretical. After all, it may well be a paradigm shift, and as Thomas Kuhn has so convincingly shown in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996), new paradigms are usually ridiculed, resisted, and suppressed. Such may be the case with eXtreme Project Management. Not only does DeCarlo open a new paradigm, he provides the model and road map in the form of principles, values, and tools that make it work. For projects that have a high uncertainty factor, he gives a real-world solution to the question: How do I keep the project in control and provide value in the face of volatility?
Whatever the case, you will never be the same after you read this book. No longer can you take solace in your deterministic critical path schedule, so elegant in its illusion of certainty. No longer will you be able to conclude that you know the status of the project because earned value analysis tells you the current state. No longer will you believe that a project can be managed in the sense of your being able to control it so that you can say with certainty that certain milestones will occur on certain dates.
Nope. It all depends on those little quantum gremlins—fuzzy things like information, communication, fields of influence, and other things that go bump in the night and can’t be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled.
In a way that’s reminiscent of Margaret Wheatley’s classic business management book, Leadership and the New Science, this book dispels many of the commonly held myths about what it takes to succeed on today’s change-ridden, volatile projects.
Ilya Prigogine (1997) wrote a book entitled The End of Certainty. Maybe this book should be titled The Death of Project Certainty—but, then, was there ever any certainty in the first place? Or perhaps we should call it The Death of Project Management As We Know It.
Vinton, Virginia
James P. Lewis
August 2004
President
The Lewis Institute
Preface: Out of the Darkness
This is a book about a new way to understand and manage the kind of projects that the world is throwing at us today. It is the result of an eight-year journey through frustration, failure, and discovery. Until 1996, I had been preaching the gospel according to TPM (traditional project management) as I knew it, and it wasn’t working. I had been so busy teaching and consulting that it had not dawned on me that the world of projects had changed and I hadn’t kept up.
A New Breed of Project
At the time, I was running into more and more projects that didn’t fit the mold I was brought up in. These new projects were chaotic. They featured high change, high speed, and high stress. They were expected to adjust continually to sudden competitive threats, new technologies, changes in government regulations, or late-breaking information about customer needs. Sometimes the project sponsor simply had a provocative idea that would require going back to the drawing boards (but wouldn’t allow the schedule to change).
The stakes were high for many of these projects. They would have an important impact on how the organization did business—for instance, moving a line of financial products into a Web environment in order to give customers and prospects direct access.
Many of these new breed projects were also politically charged: jobs would change or be eliminated, or sacred cows would be slain. They tended to create winners and losers. Not only were such projects organizationally complex, they were often technically complex as well, being built around new technologies.
On top of all this, more and more projects I encountered were dependent on geographically dispersed teams, making communication difficult and loyalty to the project a major challenge. Within this setting, I was confronted with client organizations that practiced project du jour, launching more projects than could ever be staffed. People were spread thin, and project managers were left in the lurch.
Adding fuel to the fire, many projects did not have a strong business rationale behind them or a strong business sponsor who would champion the project and eliminate barriers. It is no wonder I saw project managers leading lives that vacillated between quiet and frantic desperation. The impact of all this was high risk, high failure rates, chronic crunch time, and poor quality of life both on and off the job.
Why would anybody want to live this way?
More of the Same Doesn’t Work
Under these circumstances, how does one succeed? I thought the answer was to promote more and better planning, so that’s what I preached and taught. Yet, no matter how well thought out the plan, it would be obsolete as soon as the client hit the Print key. I learned that Microsoft Project and other such packages were excellent scheduling tools for writing fiction.
In a desperate attempt to control the uncontrollable, I had jumped on the bandwagon and became a big proponent of putting in place more robust project management methodology. I advocated the use of more templates, more control procedures and policies, and conformance to strict standards, all in the hopes of getting a grip on these difficult projects. But as I found out, all this bureaucracy backfired. It simply added more documentation and paperwork and effectively put an already energy-starved project in a straitjacket, if not a coma.
I wasn’t alone in this lunacy. I witnessed project offices that would, with the best of intentions, bring in new methods, templates, and software tools in their effort to bring order to chaos. Bureaucracy and monumental methodologies abounded in a futile attempt to gain control over chaos, but they served only to stifle innovation and adaptability. Things were getting worse instead of better.
Organizations realized something still wasn’t working. The answer that they came up with usually turned out to be project management training. People would be sent off en masse to training and certificate programs in the hopes of teaching them how to corral these renegade projects. This made little impact as far as I could see.
Despite the chaos and uncertainty surrounding these projects, management wanted to be able to turn on a dime and at the same time demanded that project managers provide accurate projections. While all this was happening, everybody was losing sight of the bottom line. Projects that were brought in by the due date either missed the intended customer need or if they did meet it, there was no way the project would give a satisfactory return on the investment. In the panic to deliver something, people had lost sight of the main idea: the purpose of a project is to make money.
In the process, people were working fifty- to sixty-hour weeks, burning out. A better quality of life seemed inconceivable.
I had been conditioned by traditional project management dogma and therefore kept looking at the world through the wrong lens: I was trying to force-fit projects and the world into my passé paradigm. It was an insurmountable task. Looking back, I can see the face of reality watching in amusement and at times even laughing hysterically at our futile attempts to get it to obey our grandiose plans and elaborate control procedures.
I had failed to notice that a new breed of projects had been born: eXtreme projects. These eXtreme projects disobeyed the classical TPM model whether I liked it or not.
Searching for New Answers
I began to discuss my observations with clients and colleagues. The breakthrough came when I finished reading Ralph Stacey’s book, Managing the Unknowable (1992). A week later, I had a series of catalytic insights, revelations that would change everything:
Traditional project management is about managing the known, but eXtreme project management is about managing the unknown.
You don’t manage the unknown the same way you manage the known.
No matter what I did, I wasn’t going to change the circumstances surrounding the new breed of projects. Nobody was going to. Reality rules.
To succeed,
I
had to adapt.
As my eyes opened, I began to see reality for what it was. I soon found that I wasn’t alone. I just thought I was. I learned that reality was also whispering in the ears of many others, and they too were beginning to awaken. I used my workshops and keynote speeches in the United States and Canada to search out project managers who were looking for new answers. Here and there I found project managers who were gaining the courage to start throwing out the old rules and tools. They worked in a wide variety of industries (pharmaceutical, biotech, manufacturing, federal and state government, insurance, finance, health care, food and beverage, construction, entertainment) and were applying eXtreme project management principles to many types of projects (software development, e-commerce, process reengineering, new product development, business mergers, information technology rollouts, telecommunications installations, sales generation and organizational change initiatives).
Reality was also whispering to members of the project management establishment, gurus such as Jim Lewis and Bob Wysocki, who were beginning to question the effectiveness of traditional methods applied to new breed projects. Harvey Levine, a renowned expert in the use of project management tools and former president of the Project Management Institute, sent me an e-mail in which he admitted to throwing up his hands. “I’m engaged in mental gymnastics about what to do about project environments that do not allow for the highly structured approaches of traditional project management.” Levine then went on to address this quandary in his recent book: Practical Project Management: Tactics, Tips, and Tools (2002), where he describes methods of applying traditional project management concepts in simplified ways that cut to the chase and do not require a full-blown project management culture and infrastructure.
No, I wasn’t alone. The Cutter Consortium, a prestigious information and consulting firm for information technology professionals, invited me to join what is now known as their Agile Project Management practice. The practice consists of luminaries in software development who, under the leadership of Jim Highsmith, have joined together to reinvent project management practices to meet the challenges of today’s change-driven, fast-paced information systems projects.
Even the construction industry, the bastion of traditional project management, was getting the word. In “Reforming Project Management: The Role of Lean Construction,” authors Gregory Howell and Lauri Koskela hold nothing back. They open their paper with these words: “Project management as taught by professional societies and applied in current practice must be reformed because it is inadequate today and its performance will continue to decline as projects become more uncertain, complex and pressed for speed. Project management is failing because of flawed assumptions and idealized theory. . .”
Encouraged by the turning of the tide, if not a sea change, I turned my journey to reinvent project management into a problem to be solved: keeping an eXtreme project in control and delivering bottom-line results in the face of volatility and maintain an acceptable quality of life on and off the job. This book shows you how to do this.
In solving the problem, my workshops and clients became my laboratory. Both venues enabled me to test new approaches and get instant feedback. I fine-tuned the lessons learned from one engagement for the next one and introduced them into my workshops as well. Like an eXtreme project, my model, set out in this book, was undergoing constant change. It still is. After all, in the world of extreme projects, nothing stands still.
What You Can Expect
In this book you will find proven approaches for succeeding with the new breed of eXtreme projects. These are projects that feature two or more of these dynamics:
High stakes: failure is not an option.
Deadlines are short.
Innovation is paramount.
Success is to be measured in bottom-line results.
Bureaucracy can’t be tolerated.
Quality of life is important.
This book is not about another panacea methodology and flowchart. Rather, it presents a holistic framework built on an integrated set of principles and shared values and practices. It includes tools that accelerate performance on all three levels essential for success on very demanding projects: self-leadership, project leadership, and organizational agility. The holistic model, people centered, reality based, and business focused, takes the form of the following overall framework:
The 4 Accelerators (principles for unleashing motivation and innovation)
The 10 Shared Values (for building trust and confidence)
The 4 Business Questions (for ensuring that customers receive value early and often)
The 5 Critical Success Factors (that provide the practices, tools, and infrastructure to succeed)
eXtreme project management encompasses both hard and soft skills. Project management can no longer separate people from projects. The book combines the essential soft (interpersonal) skills with the critical eXtreme project management hard skills.
eXtreme project management is adaptable. To use it successfully, it is important that you apply the overall framework I outlined above. Then, take the element as far as it makes sense.
The Audience for This Book
eXtreme project management is for everyone. Its principles and practices can be used on any project because it strips away all nonessential project management ceremony. I have been gratified to learn that more and more people have been applying the principles and tools covered in this book to manage traditional projects that have been overburdened with excess methodology and documentation.
eXtreme projects level the playing field. This book is written for everyone who touches an eXtreme project. Everyday-business managers are now finding themselves leading, sponsoring, or participating on eXtreme projects. Projects are becoming part of their real job. And project management is becoming a survival skill. That’s why I’ve written eXtreme Project Management in plain English and not in project management technobabble. Besides, those terms wouldn’t apply to eXtreme project management anyway. It’s a new game.
Both beginners in project management and seasoned practitioners attend my eXtreme Project Management workshops: all are looking for a better way. These include core team members as well as other stakeholders from business functions whose livelihood and departmental objectives depend on successful projects. All of them want to become more project savvy.
There is much in this book for project sponsors who will use it to gain a new understanding of their special role when sponsoring an eXtreme project and how they can best contribute to success. Program managers and heads of project offices will find material they can use to expand their project management offerings to their customer community. And the final chapter is written in the form of a briefing for senior management. As it outlines practices for becoming an agile organization, it addresses one of management’s most burning questions: How can we accommodate high change and still have predictability? Senior managers who are ready to eliminate counterproductive organizational practices and replace them with a project environment that is change tolerant and adaptable to all types of projects, from traditional to extreme, will find the final chapter particularly compelling.
If you decide that eXtreme project management is for you, then this book will become your guide. A lot of it will remind you of what you already know. It will enable you to express and extend your natural talents and skills in a way that will have an even greater impact on the lives and projects of those around you. It will help you make heroes and heroines of yourself and others.
In a large sense, this book is intuitive. It is organized common sense, and that’s why it works. Unlike traditional project management, eXtreme project management is built around how people are naturally motivated to work instead of being built around a sterile methodology and then trying to force people to conform.
What’s Ahead
This book has four parts. Part One describes the reality we face today and explains in greater detail why this reality requires a new mind-set based on the premise that radical change and uncertainty are the norm, not the exception. Part Two focuses on the leadership skills that are critical to success on eXtreme projects, including self-leadership. The job of the eXtreme project manager is to gain and sustain the commitment of others. The successful project manager is able to unleash motivation and innovation, establish the trust and confidence to succeed, and ensure that the customer receives value each step of the way. All of these critical outcomes call for leadership. When eXtreme projects fail, it is most often due to a lack of leadership or poor leadership skills.
Part Three provides a thorough grounding in the flexible project model for eXtreme projects, covering project start-up to project turnover. The model provides just enough discipline to allow people the freedom to innovate and to get work done. The model is iterative and consists of four cycles: Visionate, Speculate, Innovate, Reevaluate, and one final element, Disseminate.
Part Four provides practical guidance on managing the project environment. Communication is critical on eXtreme projects, which require that information be available at any time to anyone who needs it. eXtreme projects also require an agile organization, that is, a change-tolerant, project-friendly culture that recognizes and supports the special needs of different projects from traditional to eXtreme.
The eXtreme Tools and Techniques section at the end of the book is a collection of tools and techniques for use with eXtreme projects. Most of them focus on the essential soft skills of eXtreme project management for improving self-mastery, interpersonal skills, and team leadership and facilitation skills.
No Excuses Project Management
To succeed on today’s extreme projects, you can’t wait for the organization to get sane, become project friendly, and make your life easer. That would be insane to think so. If you don’t believe me, try explaining to your sponsor or customer that the project failed because they doubled the scope, cut the time line in half, and continually made changes to the plan.
This book will help you succeed under any circumstances, even if it means that you decide you have to walk away from an impossible project. What greater success than to be true to yourself?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after being around projects for thirty-five years, and in particular the past eight years, eXtreme project management boils down to just one word: courage. Courage to do things right. And courage to do the right things.
The principles and tools in this book will get you up to speed. But only you can get up the courage to use them. You don’t need permission from anybody to begin to apply this approach and to make a difference.
Doug DeCarlo
Burnsville, North CarolinaAugust 2004
Acknowledgments
Many people contributed to this book both directly and indirectly. A handful of people influenced me at the most fundamental level through their writings or in our conversations. They were willing to question current dogma and provided a forum that enabled me to open my mind to new possibilities. My heartfelt thanks go to friends Tobi and Bruce Andrews and my late great friend and business partner, Bob Forest. I’m indebted to Byron Katie for teaching me to cooperate with reality and to “love what is”; Meg Wheatley for her groundbreaking book, Leadership and the New Science; Ralph Stacey for his provocative book, Managing the Unknowable; Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee for writing Primal Leadership, which helped me to further understand the profound importance of the leader’s role in managing the emotional well-being of the organization; Gerald Weinberg for his relentlessly insightful writings; Marianne Williamson’s book, A Return to Love, which taught me that the real meaning of a miracle is a change in one’s perception of any situation; and Viktor Frankel for his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, for reminding me that the ultimate freedom is our ability to choose our attitude in any situation.
I thank KC Yelin, founder of ICS Group, and Ron Yelin for hiring me into their project management consulting and training firm, giving me my first job in the profession. KC turned out to be my de facto mentor and role model and brought me to the realization that good project management is organized common sense.
There is a cadre of thought leaders to whom I am indebted. At the top is Jim Highsmith, who carries high the banner of agile project management and is an endless font of ideas and insights. As one of the founders of the Agile Alliance and as director of the Cutter Consortium’s practice in agile project management, Jim is a thought leader who has played a leading role in reshaping how the world practices project management—not only in the arena of software development but for just about any kind of project. Jim is also the prime mover behind the Agile Project Management Group, which is dedicated to supporting and promoting the agile project management movement. His work has influenced me from the inside out.
I am indebted to the Cutter Consortium for providing a forum for leading-edge thinkers and practitioners of agile project management. Those whose philosophy and work have especially filtered into my bloodstream include Kent Beck, Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco, Ken Schwaber, Rob Thomsett, and Ed Yourdon.
I am indebted to Jim Lewis and Bob Wysocki for encouraging me to write this book. Both are leaders in the world of traditional project management, yet willing to question current practices and foster new thinking.
I’m very grateful for those who have stepped out of the box and had the courage to provide me with an audience for my writings, conference presentations, and keynote speeches on the subject of eXtreme project management: Eric Welsh and Carina Kuhl of ProjectWorld USA; David Barrett of ProjectWorld Canada along with AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals); the many PMI (Project Management Institute) chapters as well their e-project management and information systems special interest groups; DIA (Drug Information Association); HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society); and ProjectConnections.com, Villanova University, through Chuck Arnao.
Special thanks to friends, clients, and colleagues who encouraged me, provided feedback, and helped me refine my ideas: Mike Aucoin, Wes Balakian, DeAnna Burghart, Omer Bakkalbasi, Victoria Bradley, Zed Day, Randy Englund, Gary Heerkens, Bill Jacobson, Michael Kaplan, Joan Knutson, Mignon Lawless, Harvey Levine, Jim McDonough, Sara McKenzie, Sharon MacLaughlin, Ravi Mohan, Theresa Musser, Marina Spence, Frank Saladis, John Turanin, Witold Urbanowicz, Cinda Voegtli, Marty Wartenberg, Ralph White, and Steve Weidner.
Several people collaborated directly with me by contributing content for this book. I thank Avon D’Cunha, Deborah Duarte and Carl Pritchard for their expert contributions on the vital subjects of virtual teams and real-time communication. Scott Edgett’s help was invaluable in reviewing my early drafts on calculating return on investment, as were John Thorp’s comments regarding how to map project benefits.
In preparing the final manuscript, I was blessed to have been assigned a very talented editor, Alan Shrader. Alan made significant improvements to the organization and flow of the material I first drafted, and was relentless in getting me to question, refine, and fill in the blanks in my eXtreme project management model so that readers could get the full picture and be better able to understand and apply the principles, values, and tools that make up this book. Mary Garrett and Beverly H. Miller deserve a round of thanks for their attention to quality and detail and for keeping this project on track, never letting it turn into one of those eXtreme projects.
Last and far from least, I thank my life partner, Radavie Riom, for encouraging me every step of the way down to the finish line, for acting as a sounding board day and night, and for willingly giving up weekend after weekend after weekend as I wrote this book. Her presence has helped me to explore and expand in all directions.
The Author
Doug DeCarlo is principal of the Doug DeCarlo Group (www.dougdecarlo.com). He works with organizations that undertake projects in demanding environments: settings that feature high speed, high change, and high uncertainty, where the mind-set and bureaucratic approaches of traditional project management often stifle performance and morale.
His work has earned him international recognition as a consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, coach, facilitator, and columnist. He helps clients to produce immediate and sustainable results by applying proven practices in self-mastery, project management, team leadership, and grassroots organizational change. His approach to project management and self-mastery is set out in Chapter Seven in the landmark The World Class Project Manager: A Professional Development Guide, by James Lewis and Robert Wysocki.
DeCarlo is also a senior consultant on agile project management for the Cutter Consortium and an advisory board member and columnist for projectconnections.com, and he has served on the advisory board of ProjectWorld as well as being a member of the project management advisory group for George Washington University.
DeCarlo is noted for his innovative, motivational, and entertaining keynote speeches in which he plays live percussion instruments to illustrate the dynamics of today’s eXtreme projects.
eXtreme Project Management
IntroductionInto the Light
The world of project management has changed radically, totally, and irreversibly. It is not just that today’s projects don’t share even a family resemblance with yesterday’s. It is that the world in which projects are managed has changed irrevocably. To explain what I mean, let’s consider two brief examples of projects: a traditional project and what I call an eXtreme project.
Here is an example of a traditional project. As it happens, it was completed over the course of several months in 2002, but it would have looked pretty much the same in 1982 or 1972.
The food technology department of a consumer snack food company had just concluded its annual survey of its manufacturing plants. Based on the survey, senior management determined that the Miami facility would need to replace one of its manufacturing lines in order to meet capacity requirements for the Asian market and accommodate two new consumer products. This was to be the third major upgrade that the plant experienced in five years. The two previous upgrades had required an average of four months from start to full production.
The Miami plant manager appointed Harry Galt as the project manager responsible for installing the new line and gave him the blueprint for the new system. Galt had participated in the two previous projects and quickly assembled a team. Since there was little turnover of personnel at the plant, he was able to recruit six people who had participated on the two previous projects to join his eight-person team. Galt was also pleased that five members of the project team would be available full time since the project would take place during the slow season. In the kickoff meetings, which went smoothly, the team realized that the current project was similar to the earlier projects and they could use most of the documentation from the earlier projects, which included a project plan broken into phases and with three levels of detail. The team was also confident about the technology and the vendor, which were tried and true from the two earlier projects. The contract was for a fixed price and was basically a boilerplate of the previous two, requiring no negotiation. The third installation was scheduled for a six-month start-to-finish time frame, even though the earlier projects took four months to complete.
As the project progressed, Galt’s team received a request to improve throughput by 20 percent to accommodate that latest sales forecast. The request came well in advance of installation and was easily accommodated with no impact on the schedule, which had a two-month buffer built in.
This is the kind of project that traditional project management (TPM) evolved to deal with. The project manager received a clear statement from the customer as to what was wanted, when it was wanted, and how much the customer was willing to pay for it. The i’s were all dotted and the t’s were all crossed. All the correct forms were filed and all the boxes filled with the information requested. Moreover, the customer did not change his mind halfway through the process. And the methods for achieving the results were proven and well understood. No new technology was involved. And the world it was dealing with experienced change as incremental—not always smooth and not always predictable, but taking small baby steps.
Now let’s look at a recent project that was characterized by speed, uncertainty, rapidly changing requirements, and high stakes:
A large financial services company was steadily losing its position among upscale customers: individuals with a high net worth of $1 million and above. The organization had slipped from third to fifth place in market share in two years and would drop to number six within months at the current rate. The Wall Street Journal had even run a feature story on the organization’s plight.
Senior management decided to revamp the entire portfolio of financial offerings for the high-net-worth market. A critical project in the new program was to upgrade the company’s e-commerce capability in order to improve the customer experience, reported to be significantly below par according to third-party research. Sarah Niebel, an experienced manager in the information technology department, was appointed to head a project to upgrade the organization’s e-commerce capability. Her assignment was to create a revamped Web site to improve the customer experience in four months, about half the time it would normally take. (Marketing was already starting to promote the new portfolio and the new customer-friendly e-commerce site.)
Realizing she had been handed a fuzzy goal—What exactly did “improve the customer experience” mean?—Niebel tried to get clarification. As she worked to set up meetings and get clear guidelines, she realized that the project had no clear-cut sponsor. Marketing, sales, and information technology all wanted a voice in the project but didn’t seem to want responsibility. As a result, Niebel was left at the mercy of conflicting interests. She had no one to go to for funding or needed staff resources, or to prioritize and sign off on requirements for the new e-commerce capability. She also realized that to get the revamped site up and running would represent a quantum leap in new technology. She managed to assemble a team, but the project seemed to rank low on everyone’s list of priorities. (Her team members were spread among several projects and working upwards of fifty to sixty hours per week.)
As she worked to push the project forward, the requirements came under constant change and debate in response to newly discovered customer needs, new competitive offerings, and the latest government regulations. Management needed a win, but marketing, sales, and finance couldn’t agree on the product mix. After sixty days, nearly half of the project team had either been assigned to other projects or had left the organization. The four-month deadline came and went as the project limped along, with each week’s delay costing the organization an estimated $1.5 million in lost business in addition to possible bad press.
This is a clear example of an eXtreme project:
Requirements changed overnight.
The project involved new technology and new methods that no one had tried before.
The deadline was half the normal time.
Quality of life during the project was likely to be nonexistent.
Halfway through the project, the customer suddenly decided he wants something else.
The environment surrounding the project was chaotic and unpredictable, and it was changing discontinuously.
Under these conditions, innovation is at a premium. And this environment is becoming the norm. Sara J. McKenzie, senior program director at Sepracor, says, “This is the kind of project management reality that I am engaged in, and the very reason that I have drifted away from Project Management Institute with their base in traditional approaches.”
How eXtreme Projects Are Different
TPM is about managing the known. eXtreme project management is about managing the unknown. Traditional projects are slow and stable and lend themselves to orderly planning. eXtreme projects are chaotic, messy, and unpredictable; speed and innovation are critical, and planning is chaotic and just-in-time.
eXtreme Projects Require Managing the Unknown
A major difference between a traditional project and an eXtreme project has to do with the level of predictability surrounding the undertaking. Since eXtreme projects live in turbulent environments that feature high change and high uncertainty, the project requirements are constantly shifting throughout the venture in response to internal as well as external factors, such as competitive moves, new technology, shifts in customer needs, changes in regulatory requirements, and general economic and political conditions. Not only is change the norm, change is the project.
Heed the words of Frank Saladis, former president of the New York City chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Frank and I were doing a joint presentation on the subject of extreme projects at ProjectWorld, a leading conference and trade show for project managers and their teams. Frank stood up to speak and boiled it down to the essence: “Extreme projects are about planning, deplanning, and replanning.”
eXtreme Projects Are Chaotic and Messy
An eXtreme project is messy. That’s reality. Reality happens while plans are being made, and it can’t be changed. It has a mind of its own. Reality rules. All we can change is how we respond to it. This is so fundamental and essential to remember that if you are in charge of an eXtreme project, I strongly suggest that you tattoo the phrase “Reality Rules” on your forehead and do so in reverse letters. That way in the morning, when you are shaving or putting on your makeup, you have an indelible reminder of this lifesaving, guiding principle for eXtreme project managers.
eXtreme Projects Require Speed and Innovation
With constantly changing requirements, rapidly evolving technology, and a competitive landscape that shifts daily, eXtreme projects move forward at high speed. They typically involve time lines that seem impossible to meet. If you take the time to plan each step of the way carefully, the project will usually be irrelevant by the time you are done. The problem or opportunity it addressed will have morphed into a new, perhaps unrecognizable, shape. For an eXtreme project, since change is constant (and stability is the exception), yesterday’s plan is about as fresh as last month’s tunafish sandwich. An eXtreme project is like a car with the throttle stuck down and no brakes.
Innovation is critical in eXtreme projects. In fact, it is more than critical; innovation is what eXtreme projects are all about. In the extreme sense of the word, innovation means more than coming up with new or breakthrough products and services. It also includes coming up with innovative processes and methods to manage the projects that turn out those winning products and services. You can’t cut a twelve-month time line in half by working twice as hard. That’s the outmoded worldview. In eXtreme project management, innovation is both the means and the end.
eXtreme Projects Require Just-In-Time Planning
An eXtreme project is a process of discovering what is truly wanted through trial and error. It’s not unlike a heat-seeking missile in search of a moving target. The eXtreme project is self-correcting because you don’t have time to run every decision up the hierarchy. And even if you did, the people upstairs are not often in touch. Team members need to make frequent and on-the-spot decisions and in the light of rapidly changing requirements or circumstances.
In contrast, the goal of traditional projects is to produce the planned result and do so with efficiency by minimizing variances to the original plan. Optimization and efficiency are the goal. The project team drives toward the planned result by following prescribed procedures and policies. Elaborate control measures are often put in place so that the project does not deviate excessively from the approved baseline of cost, quality, or schedule. Rigorous change management practices are enforced in order to achieve efficiency and be true to the original baseline. When applied to an eXtreme project, the traditional approach is the equivalent of attempting to drive full speed ahead on an expressway by navigating through the rear-view mirror.
In the case of an eXtreme project, which by nature is messy, we are focused not on efficiency but on effectiveness. We want to produce the desired result, which may bear little resemblance to the original target. The iron triangle of traditional project management—bring it in on time, on quality, and on budget—is not relevant under extreme conditions. Why? Because the definition of on-time, quality, and budget typically change many times throughout the project.
Ready, Fire, Aim
A traditional project looks like a waterfall, representing neatly cascading, sequentially flowing Gantt charts with eight levels of detail (Figure I.1). Waterfall project management works well under conditions of relatively low speed and low uncertainty. It is well suited for traditional construction and engineering projects and others that have a well-defined, concrete goal and a proven path to get there. The shutdown process for a nuclear power plant and the project to put up a new McDonald’s restaurant are well represented by the waterfall model (Figure I.1).
In contrast, eXtreme projects, characterized by changing requirements, dead ends, unpredictability, messiness, speed, and innovation, do not fit the waterfall model. An extreme project looks more like a despondent strand of overcooked spaghetti (Figure I.2).
Figure I.1. Traditional Project Mental Model
Figure I.2. eXtreme Project Mental Model
If you want a definition of an extreme project, here’s the one I use with clients.
An extreme project is a complex, high-speed,self-correcting venture during which people interactin search of a desirable result under conditions ofhigh uncertainty, high change, and high stress.
Traditional projects follow the classic model of ready, aim, fire. In contrast, on eXtreme projects, we shoot the gun and then attempt to redirect the bullet. This is the reality that business managers, project managers, and their teams of professionals face. The bureaucracy, rules, and mechanistic practices that are characteristic of traditional projects backfire on eXtreme projects, where uncertainty, improvisation, and spontaneity replace predictability, command, and control. This suggests that we apply a different approach to planning and managing an eXtreme project, one that is change tolerant and adaptable, or, as some pundits like to say, agile.
How eXtreme Project Management Is Different
In eXtreme project management, we recognize that the plan has to change to fit the world as we know it right now. Chances are the world will be different tomorrow, and so will the plan. Change is the norm. Uncertainty is certain. Stability is an aberration.
