[At the end of the project.] Lavish cred

“[At the end of the project.] Lavish credit on anyone and everyone who helped you the least bit.” T Peters

I don’t think I have ever fit well into PMI pants or the Microsoft t-shirt. I have always thought PMI, with its lists, inputs, outputs, certification ribbons and…has been, well, not always very exciting.

Once at the PMI conference in Houston, I was staying in the Four Seasons next to the convention center where we were running a development program in parallel. I jumped in a cab outside the hotel to meet some people for dinner and the driver asked, “You with the conference?” With some hesitation, because of the way he asked the question, I said, “Yes.” “What is with these people?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question. I smiled in reply.

When I think about Microsoft Project, Microsoft Project Server, given the price, given the fact that it is a 100s of millions of dollars in annual sales product line, given the longevity as the owner of the market, should be a heck of a lot more… We shouldn’t have to wrestle – when we sit in front of it, it should…

Both PMI/Microsoft make my backpack heavier. Neither motivate me to be in the project management world.

With over 700,000 PMP certified PMI devotees and millions of MSP and Project Server users – I have to be the exception.

Tom Peters inspires me.

We all work on projects. What if…?

I was just updating our generic PM process. This quote reminded me of how little I think about lavishing credit on anyone and everyone who helped me the least bit.

This idea is worth contemplating. Likely it will change the way we close our projects.

Risk Assessment: Not just what can go wrong, but what is the opportunity?

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

― Marcus Aurelius

The P in PM is as much about ‘people'

The P in PM is as much about ‘people management’ as it is about ‘project management’. - Cornelius Fichtner

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities. ~ Napoleon Hill (Author of the 1st Project Management Book, “Think and Grow Rich”)

In 1991 I was working for Symantec in the product group for TimeLine, the first project management software for the PC. I had recently been working on developing guides for a new product that had just come out called GuideMaker, which was a product that allowed a person to build expert templates that produced project plans for TimeLine and Microsoft Project, that were generated from how the user answered key questions. For instance, let’s say the guide was for building a new residential house, questions the user might answer could be related to square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, materials uses, and if the house was going to have a basement or built on a slab. In this example, a construction manager would run a Guide, answer the question and the product would produce a *.mpp accordingly.

One day I got a call from an editor from Success Magazine. He was a psychologist that believed that personal success was primarily a function of expert planning and deployment. Thus his interest in a product that could build expert plans for a particular purpose based on how users answer questions.

In our conversation, he stated, “Think and Grow Rich” when you take out the psycho-babble out, is essentially a project management book. One of the first self-help books, and the first project management book for the public.

“Think and Grow Rich” was written in 1937 during the Great Depression and has sold over 20 million copies. The philosophy taught in the book is based on the idea that there are tools and techniques that can help people succeed in any line of work, to do and be anything they can imagine.

The Gantt Chart came out in 1917, it was used in the public domain on the high profile Hoover Dam project. Modern project management started to emerge in the 1950s

“In short, they’re (project managers) a bit like a referee at a sporting event: Do a good job and nobody notices; make a mistake and the finger pointing begins.” ― Andrew Longman

I first met Andrew in 1993 and I worked with him on several projects, notably for the Port of Seattle and Sears. When I look back at my career and the people I have worked with in the project management field, there are few people I enjoyed working with more.

I also team taught a couple of four day workshops with Andrew and when a participant asked a question, he would pause, think about the question and then answer. This wasn’t a pause and than an answer, this was a long pause. 10 seconds, 15 seconds or more. If you have ever conducted workshops in a corporate culture, it takes a lot confidence and courage to pause and think for 20 seconds, while 20 people are looking at you.

I remember the first time I saw him do this, I was sitting there wondering, “What is he doing?” “Is he actually thinking?” At first, honestly, I didn’t like it. But the answers were rich so after awhile I started looking forward to the “pause.”

The quote above is from his book, “The Rational Project Manager: A Thinking Team’s Guide to Getting Work Done.” It is not surprising to me that he wrote a book on project management and rational thinking because if I had to describe Andrew with two words, it would be “Rational Thinker.” 

When I would drive by the “The Thinker” outside the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, I often thought the statue reminded me of Andrew.

Andrew passed away last October when I first wrote this.

When we buy a house, we expect things like the plumbing, gas and electric to work flawlessly. When they don’t – it is a big deal. Things get urgent in a hurry. It is the same with a project in many ways, we expect the project to be on schedule, within budget and that we are going to get exactly what we want.

When things go wrong, all figures point toward the project manager. Most of us can handle that, it is part of the job. We have tools, techniques and communication strategies to deal effectively with problems.

But we are all human too. As a project manager we are in front of all of the stakeholders. One thing for sure, about being a project manager, is it is a lot like being an referee, make a mistake and it is going to get noticed.

When I lived in Philadelphia, I never did go into the Rodin Museum. I was always in a hurry. I think that that is one of the primary reasons we utilize project management tools and techniques, they help us do better thinking. They get us to slow down and think.

One reviewer of Andrew’s book, wrote this, “I am now retired, but I wish that during my 27-year career as a university librarian I had had a guide like The Rational Project Manager to see me through the many complex projects I was responsible for carrying out. When moving special collections or setting up a preservation lab, my team and I would have benefited enormously from having a clear, easy to follow process for managing important projects.”

“Unless estimates are partially derived with proven technique they are nothing less than a WAG” – Ray Coker

If you are an expert and you know, you know. But on a lot of our project activities or work packages, we don’t “know” the cost, effort or duration so we estimate. If we estimate based on our experience and or memory, regardless of how expert we might actually be, it typically is nothing more than WAG – a Wild-Ass Guess.

And as a side note, there is nothing wrong with saying ass in a blog, even in the Old Testament, “Judah got on is ass and rode away.”

Most people put a S in front of WAG to form SWAG. The S can refer to what ever makes sense in your situation, it could be Scientific, Statistical, Stupid, Simple, Silly, Sophisticated, etc.

Wikipedia says this about the use of SWAG:

SWAG is used to describe an estimate derived from a combination of factors including past experience, general impressions, and heuristic or approximate calculations rather than an exhaustive search, proof, or rigorous calculation. The SWAG is an educated guess but is not regarded as the best or most accurate estimate.[2] The SWAG is not computed or proven rigorously, but the proponent asserts his or her own judgement suffices to rationalize the estimate; and it may, in time, be viable to produce a rigorous forecast of increased precision.

Years ago the Army web site told the history of popular military acronyms. WAG is an old military term, the website claimed, and it goes all the way back to when two armies would face off against each other on the battlefield. The evening before the big battle, the story goes, the general of the army is walking among the troops and comes across a private preparing himself for what he thinks he needs to do before battle and the general, almost absently asks the private, “Son, how strong is the enemy going to be tomorrow?” The private thinks to himself, “How the hell would I know, they have been keeping that a secret.” But he is under a lot of pressure to respond because he is being asked to provide an estimate by a very powerful person. The Army website then stated, “It is not recommended to use WAG with senior officers.” The why was not provided because it is obvious that WAG can lead to disastrous consequences.

Don't give a senior officer wag....it doesn't work in the military, it doesn't work on projects

WAG doesn’t work in the military and it doesn’t work in project management. See blog post on:  Estimating is what you do when you don’t know. ~ Sherman Kent

What was the rationale for the Iraq War? Some experts claim the Bush administration fabricated reasons for a war it wanted, this may or may not be true, but at the very least, the invasion was based on WAG. Even Colin Powell, long after his presentation to the United Nations Security Counsel, stated that he was at the Pentagon every day and no one told him the information he was presented with wasn’t factual. Frontline states in an article called, “Colin Powell: U.N. Speech ‘Was a Great Intelligence Failure'” that Powells’s speech…

…to the United Nations, laying out the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq, is a “blot” on his record. The speech set out to detail Iraq’s weapons program, but as the intelligence would later confirm, that program was nonexistent.

“Blot on his record.” What an understatement. Thousand of US personnel killed, and an estimate by university researchers in the United States, Canada and Baghdad in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Health suggests the Iraqi death toll is as high as 500,000. Not including all of the lives ruined, the injured and all of the suffering. 

In addition, the financial cost of the Iraq War is 1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in war veteran benefits that could grow to $6, trillion in the next 40 years.

WAG – simply avoid it, it doesn’t provide value and it can lead to serious consequences in any context.

Huge cost to the American tax paper and huge loss of life