RECOMMENDED READING

A continuously updated list and short review of books, periodicals, web-based resources, and other materials I have found useful in the context of PM. I'm a bookstore hound, whether its Powell's here in Portland (what a great place!), airport bookstores, B&N/Borders, or Amazon.com.

A search for "project management" today on Amazon yields 176,041 titles, and the majority are obscure, dated, or just plain crap. More mainstream, general business titles on management are also useful depending on your needs and tastes.

GENERAL BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT TITLES

It's All Politics - Winning in a World Where Hard Work and Talent Aren't Enough, Kathleen Kelley Reardon, Currency Doubleday, 2005. The title snagged me in an airport bookstore browsing before a long flight back to Portland. Reardon's premise that one's talent and hard work is not enough, you have to be politcally savvy in the workplace to succeed and she shows you what to say, how to say it, and to whom and when. PMs should take note that being politcally-savvy at work doesn't mean being devious, nasty, or unethical. But there's a game being played every day in the workplace, and refusing to play doesn't mean that the games aren't being played on you, to your detriement. Highly recommended.

All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin, Portfolio, 2005. A master marketer talks a lot about, well, marketing...but he does it in the context where you can insert just about anything as a replacement for marketing, such as project management and resume'. The essence of its message boils down to how well we tell stories to customers and stakeholders, and what they believe based upon their view of the world. Must reading for insights on how to deal with sponsors and stakeholders effectively.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT-SPECIFIC TITLES

Update soon

OTHER RESOURCES

Update soon

OFFSHORING LABOR COSTS

I've had more than one client make serious and costly errors regarding labor costs on projects (or major portions) that were offshored, primarily to India. This post isn't a slam on offshoring or Indian or Chinese or Eastern European labor. It's more a post about how labor costs should be treated in project regardless of where the labor originates from or where the services are performed.

The big problem? Only focusing on what the labor costs and not how much of it is used. More than one client goes crazy about $10-15 per hour labor costs in an offshore situation (compared to $30-45 per here in the US), signs up, then gets a bill for about 2-to-3-times the hours it would have taken to have the work performed locally. Some deal, eh?

These clients forgot or ignored that all labor costs are, at a minimum, two-dimensional: Labor Rate X Hours of Work Performed. As such, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to engage cheap labor that requires many more hours to perform tasks than more expensive labor that may be geographically closer. The additional management costs involved when engaging offshored resources is not accounted for here, but should be.

Offshored labor resources have a definite place on projects, but engaging them solely on the basis of per-hour costs is a mistake; the entire labor cost projection has to be made to get the real costs to projects.

GLOSSARY - Updated December 26, 2005

This post is a continuously updated list of definitions, TLAs, and other jargon I use in my writings.

JDI - "Just Do It" - refers to line managers, project sponsors, or major stakeholders who ignore, deliberately or otherwise, the constraints imposed on projects by time, project scope, and available resources. A JDI typically ignores constraints when requesting scope changes to projects, or believes a project can be executed within a certain timeframe or at a specific cost arbitrarily without analysis or other thought processes before proceeding. Successful project managers either educate JDIs on project management (to the extent possible) or avoid working with or for them because unchecked JDIs have shown to be primary drivers of project failures.

PMBOK - Project Management Body of Knowledge published by the Project Management Institute. The definitive manual for process-based (or "traditional") project management. If one desires a PMP certification from PMI, they need to know this work verbetim.

PM - Project Management or Project Manager, depending on context

PMI - Project Management Institute. The professional organization for project management and project managers. Further information here.

PMP - Project Management Professional. A certification conferred by the Project Management Institute obtained by a combination of experience, continuing education, and the passing of an examination.

REP - Registered Education Provider. An academic insitution or for-profit training firm that is authorized by PMI to offer PM courses that count as continuing education credit for PMP certification or to maintain the certification.

TLA - Three Letter Acronym

TWO-DIMENSIONAL COSTING - Knowing (or coming to the realization) that some project costs are multi-dimensional, such as labor (hours X hourly rate). Only treating these costs as single-dimension is usually an error that leaves one over-budget during project execution.

UNFUNDED MANDATE - Projects (and work on such projects) that are not officially recognized, much less formally funded by an organization. Actually, this definition is a misnomer because if one performs work on projects that are 'unfunded,' you theoretically should not be paid. Since nobody works for free in most cases, the unfunded mandate is, in reality, funded - secretly from the budgets of projects recognized and formally budgeted by an organization.

VACATION

I'm taking the Christmas holidays off to be with family & friends, so I won't be updating again until after December 26th. I wish all of you and your loved ones a safe and happy holiday season!

Bob McIlree

New System Integration Blog

I started a new blog focusing on system integration from the perspective of the intersections between project management, enterprise architecture, and business process/analysis/strategy. Check it out (it started today) and let me kow what you think!

Have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

PROJECT PLANS: A Plan to Plan, or Execute?

I've reviewed hundreds of project plans in my career. About 20% of them were well thought-out and assembled. The rest range from middling to truly awful. The reasons why a good percentage were truly awful are legion, but the middling ones are salvagable and share an attribute that, when fixed, propels the plan into the top-tier of usable, complete project documentation.

The difference? Excellent project plans are those that project teams can execute projects from. The rest can be simply categorized as "plans centered around more planning," which are generally useless to executing project teams.

The key to indentifying project documents like this is to examine the language and phrases used througout. Good plans concentrate on operations and execution, not strategy. Strategizing should come before, not during or after execution, so the plan must be explicit it how the project will accomplished as opposed to why it will be done.

For example, if continung statements of need are present, such as "...we need a comprehensive claims processing workflow definition..." or "...it is necessary to get the Business Operations Board to decide which network platform to buy," you're not receiving an operational plan or guidence to execute, you're simply getting strategizing or at worst, wishful thinking.

The project plan is the wrong place to do things like this. It must come well before a project ever gets close to the end of the planning process and into execution. If it doesn't, your project is behind the eight-ball before it even gets out of the gate.

If you're having trouble getting the plan into an operational form executable by the project team, it best to start by answering these questions:

1. Do we know what we're supposed to accomplish?
2. If we know the answer to (1), how are we going to accomplish it?

Excellent plans focus almost exclusively on how, and why or what the project addressed should have been answered well before the plan was put together.