A Project Manager's First Day

If you're a fresh faced PM girl or boy, you've just been born, so young you can still see the 'legs', here are the kind of things you can expect:

-You will feel like a tool - a spare tool to begin with. This is common in most new workplaces.
-Someone will be walking you round introducing you to key people in your area and perhaps in the wider business.
-That person will also be getting your vitals together - like your laptop, your mobile phone....e.g....and showing you where all the documentation is held.
-If you're a graduate, you may be assigned a mentor to begin with. This person will show you where to start, where to hang your bag, show you where to collect your milk at play time (joke)....and things like these.

It is daunting on the first day. You wont know what to do. You will want to ask questions - but you may not be sure of the right ones to ask. Here's a run down of a few you could shoot at your mentor or person showing you the ropes:

-What is the priority of the business?
-How many PMs are there?
-What projects are you currently working on?
-What projects are around the corner?
-What is the average lifetime of a project here?
-Is development encouraged?

Be open minded, have a sense of humour and listen. It helps to take a few notes also.

Pause.........Play

Back to work tommorow so the posts will be coming thick (not in the intellectual sense but more in the way of quantity) and fast. Had a bit of a break but i'm back now.

I'm a Control Freak!!

When you start a new project, you can simply start the project, don't have a care in the world.....whistle your favourite tune....and get on with the project. When things go wrong, when your clients gather all the data they should have done, when a few users are still logged on to that server you're decommisioning, or when you've spent too much....you can simply.....just...continue....

OR.....

You can monitor and control what's happening. Your controls are the documents you use to track whats happening in the project. A simple control would be a project plan. Most people including moi, use a gantt chart for this. If you want to be extra proper....you could go out and by super expensive copy of Microsoft Project. To be honest though....its a waste of time. Just use Excel or if you havent got that use google docs and use the spreadsheet program. Using this, have one column as your task name column and another as your start and end date columns. Dead simple. No messing about.

In addition to that you could have another column called 'duration' and then another column called 'actual duration'. Using that everyday, you can easily and quickly see how long something should have taken and how long it has taken.....allowing you to make decisions.....and 'CONTROL' what happens next in the project.....

i.e do you need to spend more time on a certain task? Have you underestimated the time it will take to do a task? and so on....

It really is beneficial to have some sort of control mechanism. It just depends how in depth you want to make it. At the same time, management may want to see a really high level of control so the example mentioned above may not suffice. You'll need something more.

Management are ALWAYS interested in the money side. They want to know how much money you've got - which they should no anyway.....And how much money you have spent so far.

Watch, monitor and let management know if 1/2 way through the project you are getting close to budget. Dont wait and then let them know. You dont want to get 3/4 of the way through and you have no money left....AND THEN YOU APPROACH MANAGEMENT. Thats not cool.

Comms again?

On occasions, its been my experience that I've wanted a large group of users to do something to fulfill the needs of the project....And they don't! It would be so gratifying if a TPM could be like the guy who owns the canine (do they call them shepherds anymore) from the BBC show 'One man and his dog'.

...Just imagine, you want your last 1000 users to log on to the new domain RETAIL-1.
.....so...you simply raise your hand to your mouth and blow the whistle...in a really weird but 'i know what I'm doing' kind of way.....

...all of sudden 4 dogs start running round the UK rounding users up(1 dog = 250 users)....from wherever they are, start goading them into sites which are closest to them...

...and start coaxing these users to log on to the system to invoke the migration process.

oh yes.....that would be just priceless!

ah well....dreams!

To get a big message out, a big commanding message which people will sit up and take notice of, will have to come out from a higher source, so its good sometimes to get messages of this nature....out through senior management, or even the directorship (depending on the size and the importance of the project).

It can be a bit daunting approaching these managers, but if they appreciate what the project is about, the impact it will have on the business, the savings which can be achieved(that is if there is a financial incentive - if there is, THAT'S A GOOD THING!), and the consequences of the project not reaching completion - the risks, then they'll be agreeable to backing your activity.

The Right Message - Can y'all here me in da back?

Comms to your users
One of things you'll need to do as a TPM is communicate messages out to people. This could be a large group of people, it could be a really small group of people. In either case you will need to do it at some point. For example, you're about to do a hardware refresh on an old system that is mission critical, has about 3000 users logged on in office hours as well as external users who log on at the weekend aswell.



What are you going to do? Obviously for you to do the refresh, you need an outage, how are you going to get all users to stay off the system while you're doing this?

Well, you can either:
-Communicate to each user individually
OR
-You can appoint or establish liaisons within the different business communities.

The first suggestion is ok, but a bit awkward because as a TPM, the users may not know you, they'll probably just see you as IT - and the fact is - they dont like IT peeps - That is the truth. They look at us like.................like how alot of people look at 'Big Issue' sellers in your local market place - full of hate and stink (One of these days when i walk into an office i'm going to shout 'Big Issue!').

The second suggestion is a much better approach. Try and get someone on board who will represent that area of users. Usually a Team Leader/Manager or some kind of Change Manager is good for functions like this.

Better still if you have a comms team, get them on board to do your comms for you....BUT BEWARE.....THEY WALK A DIFFERENT PATH...

Before your internal comms people send out anything on your behalf...CHECK IT! Make sure your thoughts have been captured fully and accurately. Dont put your ideas into the comms sausage machine and expect your thoughts to come out accurately at the other end. It WONT! Check it, then get them to send it.

Often time, people will want to respond to comms that have gone out. If you're sending comms out to lots of people (i'd say more than 30) use a seperate mailbox. That way you can keep a track of where you are and not get lost amongst all your other tasks or projects. If this isnt possible, use a seperate folder within your current mailbox and setup a rule to filter on the subject line to that newly created folder.

Whenever someone mails you for info, if you dont have the answer straight away, just send them a really snappy mail anyway to say, "hey, i got your mail, i'm looking into, back to you shortly". There is nothing more annoying than sending a mail off to someone and............................................................................................

...............then a response. That annoys the nut allergy out of me!

What is the choice vehicle of the TPM?

A little daftness.
I'm a Technical Project Manager - but i don't look like one when I'm in my car. I drive a Fiat Punto. For that reason, i look like a PPM - Pitiful Project Manager.
So, what should a TPM drive? Is there a TPM car? Sales reps drive round in Mondeos and Vectras.

I think that question should be split for two groups, experienced and newbie TPMs. An experienced TPM has 2 or more years experience. He should drive:

A 6 series BMW


This car shows the experience and the wisdom of the TPM after 2 years or more.

On the other hand a newbie TPM should drive:


This again shows the level the TPM is at before 2 years has elapsed. He's still at the stage where he cant do en dos properly or other tricks and he's still learning. He's still a spotty teenager. Still in TPM puberty. Turning from a TPM boy to a man. After he's mastered all the tricks, he can leave the bike behind.

My bike should be delivered tommorow!

"I'm a Technical Project Manager"

People sometimes ask, as people do after they see my evil Fiat Punto (which is actually poisonous!!) "Mate what do you do for a living then?"

There are a selection of things i reply with:

There are the, what i like to refer to as the 'well thought out answers:

- "I eat".
- "I sleep".
- "Through a special manafacturing process, I turn children into wine glasses".
- "I work at a wildlife sanctuary with colourful hungry hippos".
- "I'm Tony the Tiger's PA".

and then the other answers:
- "I'm a Technical Project Manager"
- "I look after IT projects"
- "I manage IT Projects".

The first set of responses never lead to anything else. The second set of responses often lead to a quizzical (if its not a fellow IT brethren) "oh right?". At which point i say:

"See me as the conductor in the orchestra, there are lots of instruments that need to be played, but not at the same time, they have to be played at the right time, so that everything sounds beautiful. If they are played at the wrong times, it doesn't sound that great, even terrible. If the saxophonist doesn't get to do his solo....well....that's just totally uncool. So my job is to bring everyone in, all instruments at the right time. Not instruments - But different pieces of technology which come together to solve a business problem.

What do you say? I'd love to hear if you have any good lines.

PRINCE CHARMING.....PRINCE CHARMING...

When people talk to me, been the original, super amazing, hyper fighting, ninja Technical Project Manager DON that I am....(someone moved the slider at the back of my skull to 'dream mode' again)....

...they always always ask...."do you need PRINCE 2?" Do you need PRINCE 2 to be a Technical Project Manager?

Some will say "Yes...definitely." Do i think you need PRINCE 2 to be a Technical Project Manager? Well....yes and no - I don't really like yes and no answers because its on or off, hot or cold. Lukewarm even. Lukewarm isnt good. Its undecided and not refreshing....digressing again.

I say yes because PRINCE 2 gives you an understanding, a very broad understanding of how a project could be controlled. It shows a very controlled approach to Project Management. Its good to understand how it works and what techniques and processes are included in it - BECAUSE ITS USED WORLDWIDE. In that way when you go for a job, you can say, while you slap your knee "Yep...I am a PRINCE 2 Practitioner."(TOOT TOOT) Just be prepared for when they ask you "oh right, what's does SU stand for?".

I also say yes because, if for example you are looking after a large project, you will need some sort of control. There may be no control or governance whatsoever to begin with. If you're given the task of putting all of this in place (I hope you dont because you're a techy PM and techy PM's do interesting things like mess with new bits of kit and see which developers they can rile up the most.) rather than trying to pull this out of thin air, PRINCE 2 is a fantastic place to begin....and end for that matter.

You will not find an organisation that uses PRINCE 2 in the fullest sense. You just WONT. There's too much of it. If there is an organisation that does, it must be a pretty dreadfully boring place to be a PM. You'd be doing more writing than technical project managing. There is just WAYyyyy too much documentation to go through it all. So most organisations use a 'wiff' of PRINCE 2. Often they'll use the PID, they'll use the issue log, they'll do the project plan and maybe a few more things.

Why would I say no that I dont need PRINCE 2 to be a PM? Well i've mentioned the qualities you need in earlier posts. At the same time to:

- if you have common sense,
- you are going to have some kind of plan for your project,
- you are going to communicate regularly with your customers
- you will be measuring your progress and reporting on it
- and you will be doing what you can to bring things back on track if they deviate.

So really, you dont need PRINCE 2 to be a TPM, but it is a good methodology to have an understanding of.

If you wanna be a universal TPM then get it. In fact, you know? Just get it anyway...Its worth it!

Technical Project Manager Ingredients - Assertive

Some people think of been assertive as having to shout. As a TPM and...well...as anything else...YOU DONT NEED TO SHOUT to be assertive.

What is been assertive? Its NOT been agressive. If you want to be agressive...be a cage fighter or something...or be a celebrity....take lots of drugs...and when the paps come for you....fight them....then you'll appear on the 'Most Agressive Celebrity' show....

...anyways..i digress.

Assertiveness for a TPM. Here we go....

Assertiveness in simple terms is saying what you need or want. But its double sided too. Its protecting yourself from what you dont need or want. Along with that is respecting the rights of other people or groups.

And that is where the skill is needed.

A few tips -
-Use open ended questions. Dont be fobbed off.
-Work out responses to agression. But not with agression.Practice saying "I'm not sure about that.
-Have faith in your own abilities.
-State clearly your means and aims.("As discussed, I will be rolling Office 2007 out to all your PCs on the week commencing the 24th of September.)(I believe i've been missunderstood. The PID is quite clear in showing that laptops are not in scope.)

Remember, just be straight and clear. Leave the agression out. Not needed. It will just make you look like a bully. If you arent getting your point across, escalate.

The BBC have a really good article on Assertiveness - check it out here -

Interesting take on Project Management...

I found this as I was doing my regular youtube trawl...

Technical Project Manager Ingredients - Good Negotiator

You gotta know how to talk....and achieve the 'WW' - The 'Win Win' Situation. As a TPM sometimes you will want/need to do things that the rest of the business WILL DEFINITELY NOT WANT TO DO.

Example:

You have a legacy system that acts as an interface between hand held devices out in the field and the back end corporate SAP system. Absolutely business critical.

The system is hemorhaging money because of old hardware support costs.

You've been commisioned to get the system upgraded.

Downtime is necessary.

You want to do this at night.

The system owner doesnt want to. He wants to do it early in the morning.

You dont want to do it early in the morning because of the lack of support people available.

What are you going to do? You need a win win situation.

You could make arrangements for the weekend. Perhaps on Saturday - in the day time and you could arrange for support people to be available at the weekend. That could work.


You need to negotiate to resolve disputes, to come to agreements. You dont want to be lead by the customer....At the same time too, you do need to consider the customer's environment. It makes no sense forcing techy issues on business minded people with out considering their thoughts. IT JUST WONT WORK. I know i've been there!!! (YOU WILL HAVE THIS NEW ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE - SO THERE!)

Technical Project Manager Ingredients - Creativity

As a TPM, your customer has just told you about a major business problem he has. He's spending too much money on servers every year. New servers means new operating systems. New OS means more money....more money means....the problem gets bigger.

So what do you do? Do you suggest the first thing that comes into your head? Well...you could do!

A better approach is to be creative. Sit down, be creative. Examine different ideas and approaches. For this particular example the question could be asked from the outset:

-Why are new servers been acquired so regularly?
-Is it necessary?
-Could a single server be purchased with sufficient capacity for the next five years?
-Could a virtual environment be considered?
-Is a server even needed?
-Could company data be hosted by an external provider (Application Service Provider) or a hosting company?

These are just a few ideas for the example mentioned above. it does help though in any project when looking at a solution, to have lots and lots of ideas and approaches.

Be creative, study the Internet, read Computing newspapers and magazines....read blogs...brainstorm....join groups online....but get creative. See what the latest trends are.

But be creative...

More Technical Project Manager Ingredients....

Medium - Sharp Thinking
What do you think of when you think of a sharp thinker? What do you think a sharp thinker is? When I think of sharp thinking - I think of one person....


Carol V is sharp. You fling her some numbers and letters....and she will cook you a 3course dinner, and give you a knife and a fork and a dictionary to go with it!

As a TPM....you dont have to have super human...bruce lee, lennox lewis, incredible hulk mental agility to be able to do your job...but you do need to be able to catch things quite quickly.

Ever been in that situation when someone is talking to you quite rapidly about their thoughts or perhaps something they want you to do? They'll often ask you at the end "did you get all of that?". And you almost always reply "yes". In actual fact...you havent got it. In TPM...make sure you've got it. Dont gloss over things you dont understand.

Use a notepad and pen, or if you're posh, use a blackberry or some other PDA to take note of the MAIN POINTS. You dont need War and Peace. Just listen keenly....Concentrate.....zero in on the subject that your client is talking about.

Some (like me) have found that it helps to draw pictures to catch the main points of whats going on and show how each idea links to the other to make a whole.

For example, i was talking to a customer today who wants to modernise some of his architecture. It currently consists of :

-15 workstations that are running NT4 and
-a server running NT4 server software.

This particular customer doesnt talk fast, but his thoughts come out quickly - and sometimes he deviates, not really knowing what he wants. For me to capture his requirements quickly without spending loads of time trying to workout what is what and getting mixed in the cocophony that is....his head...i mapped out his main ideas using a Mind Mapping tool. At the end i was confident I had captured his ideas fully. I ran my capture back to him and he was confident that i had fully understood what he was after.

As it turns out his server will be virtualised using VMWARE Server software and his clients will also be virtualised using VMWare also. The client workstations will each run a VMWARE Player which will play a virtualised client image. This client image will 'talk' to the virtualised server. Sounds deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. This is quite a simple solution.

So.....Sharp thinking...Yes...necessary....not to Carol V's level but definitely required. Needed because you need to understand your customers requirements. Needed because your customer will sometimes deviate, but you need to be able to stay on track...to reach the goal...or as i like to say..."cut through the chaff, keep on the path". This applies to the idea for the chosen solution, for the kind of project team you need, for the different parts of the project...and so on....
So....dont deviate...concentrate...

...and to use a modern street colloquiallism...."Stay Sharp".

Along with sharp thinking you need creativity. Have you got a good imagination?

Logical Thinker

You need to be able to think like this...
1,2,3,4,5,6. Not 1,4,6,2....That could work in some cases. But most of the time, and especially in IT projects where you are messing about with lots of LOVELY technology, you HAVE to absolutely do things in the right order.

You may not be the most logical person at the minute so what can you do to improve this?

The trick is to start practicing logical thinking in normal life. You're making a cup of tea. Now, this is one of them things that you just do without thinking. So...next time you start to make one...just stop and think....'what do i do first?'. The sequence will probably look like this:

-Select best mug.
-Turn the cold water tap on and let it run for a while(10 secs for a winning cup of chaaa)
-Fill the kettle from the cold water tap.
-Turn the kettle on.
-Put a teabag into the mug.

and so on. Obviously there will be variations on this. There might be a more logical way.

This is just one exercise. Start doing this, develop it, you will need it OR if you are already an IT PM...You NEED IT. The reason?

Well, you get a message from the board saying you need to get your 10,000 users, split across the country on 40 sites, all working different hours, upgraded to MS Office 2007...

...You've sat down...you've done the brainstorming to gather requirements.....you have a list of things.....the question is...WHERE DO YOU START?

How about just picking a site at random and starting some installs there?

Daft eh?

...and that is why you need logical thinking. To help you with this use tools like Mind Maps and Rich Pictures....We'll talk more about tools in later posts.

IT Project Manager - What are the ingredients?

Well....Here goes....
1. Well Organised.
2. Logical Thinker.
3. Medium to sharp thinker.
4. Creative.
5. Good Negotiator
6. Assertive

Well Organised.
The very nature of an IT PMs work is organisation. So it stands to reason that he or she (lets be PC) needs to be well organised. You sit and agree with a customer that you will move all of his shared data from a legacy server to a brand new ‘hyper fighting – bar edition’ bad boy on the 8Th of September. You don’t write this information down though. You then go to one of your techie boys and ask them to move the data on the 10Th. The data is moved on the 10Th, right in the middle of the day while 1000 users are trying to get at the said data at its old location.

a. Agree dates with customers and have them in writing.

b. Communicate your plans to customers and all who will be involved OR ensure that all concerned know ONE WAY OR THE OTHER exactly what is taking place and when.

c. Always have an escape route – What if all goes bad? Following a famous phrase from an 80s film, “Who ya gonna call?” For an IT PM that should sound more like “Wotcha gonna do” to get these users back up and running with no data loss. HAVE A BACK OUT PLAN READY!

I use the example of migrating a large amount of data because its actually a real life example. I'm running a massive project to reorganise and migrate 3 TBs(Yep...Terrabytes) of data from one server to another! Oh it hurts...But its nearly done and it will be....ohhhhh so good at the end!!!!!
Next time i'll tell you about the need for logical thinking...! Scattered thinking...Or "A....G.......1........B" thinking makes been an IT PM tricky!!! Logical is the way to go....Like i said I'll tell you tommorow.

What is a Project?

Well according to Wikipedia a project is...in business and science is a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim

I describe a project as...

an assignment in which a number of activities are required to achieve a goal or purpose.

A project could be...rolling out a new version of MS Office for example. You'd need to consider
-How many users this needs to go to.
-How long have you got to roll it out? When do you need to have it out by?
-How are you going to hit everyone?
-Have you got special cases you need to consider or does everyone work at a desk in an office?
-What will you do for communications?
-Is any testing required? Will rolling this out affect any of your other apps you have out in the workforce?
-Who are the stakeholders(the important people) in this project?
-What does a successful rollout look like (Quality)? How will you measure this?
-what are the risks? How will you mitigate these?
-Can you afford to to do this? Does it make business sense?

For a rollout project, these and perhaps more questions would be considered and would be used to formulate a plan to work to.

When people ask what is the difference between Project Management and Programmme Management i usually say...

A programme is a collection of projects. The different projects contribute to the goal of the programme. Say for example, you have a large multinational company, thousands of users, thousands of different types of computers, different operating systems, different pieces of software, different processes, different services....different 3rd party service contracts.....different different different. The programme is called "G-1" - GATHER-1. The goal of the programme is to reduce IT costs. This will be achieved by consolodating all computers to a single type, all service contracts to a single provider (or may be just a handle or even a couple)...a single operating system for all computer....and so on.

As you can imagine, you couldnt simply do this as just one FAT project. You'd break all of these down into smaller chunks. So one project would be "workstation consolidation", another would be perhaps UHD...Universal Help Desk...and so on.... All of these sum up to the objects of the programme. You would have one person at the top - The Programme Manager looking after this, making sure things are running in the right direction....but he would have a number of Project Managers underneath him running these different workstreams.

The Start - why?

I'm a Technical Project Manager. I work for a large utilities business. I've been project managing for a while now. Before this it was, pretty much, mini project management. This involved coordinating and managing the deployment of software to upwards of 200 users...all the way up to 6000 users.

Moving up to real....full on........Technical Project Management proved to be a challenge. It was like the stuff i'd done previously...but on steroids....

....More documents.
....More people.
....More technology to mess with.
....More responsibility.

So here i am now.....a Technical Project Manager looking after some massive projects covering a large number of people, utilising a wide range of technologies and techniques, with large budgets (trying to use as little as possible),along with trying to do that to TIME and QUALITY.

This blog is going to be all about Project Management....and useful techniques and 'moves' in running a successful I.T project. I've been doing Technical Project Management for a while and there are a few things i've picked up along the way. This information will be useful to experienced Project Managers, less experienced project managers, graduates, trainees and people who, not necessarily been Project managers, may need to install some sort of 'I.T'.

My focus is....
Use Common Sense!
Get the job done!
Make it look good!
Do it quickly!
Dont overspend.

More to come over....!