Asking Better Questions

The questions you ask determine the quality of answers you receive. Project managers should care about this more than most, because getting early information on how things are really progressing is the lifeblood of project management. It’s good to avoid leading or biasing questions by removing anything that assumes a particularly positive or negative answer from how you phrase the question. Even better is to use a question style that remains neutral and encourages comparison and reflection – for example by asking how the project is going relative to other project of a similar nature or at the same point from completion.

Top 5 Post of 2010

This time of year is a good time to look back and take stock. These are the most popular posts of 2010 on this blog in terms of number of readers, thanks to the powerful analytics that my blogging tool (WordPress) offers.

The Failure Of The FBI’s Virtual Case File Project – an analysis of what went wrong when the FBI took on an ambitious plan to integrate disparate IT systems.

The Failure of Denver International Airport’s Automated Baggage System – an examination of what happened when Denver tried to implement an idea that was innovative, but unproven.

BP’s Project Management of the Deepwater Disaster – An early assessment of how BP reacted to the Deepwater crisis from a project management perspective.

Project Management Salaries – Are You Paid Enough? – An analysis of what determine’s salaries for project managers.

The Myth of the Triple Constraint – An examination of one of the core tenets of project management and its shortcomings.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to a great 2011. If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ll remember that goals are important, so now’s a good time to set some for 2011 on both a professional and personal level.

Three Tips For Better Post-Mortems

As I’ve mentioned before, post-mortems are a critically important mechanism for driving continual improvement. Below are three tips for improving post-mortems themselves:

Assign ownership – when areas for improvement come out of improvement, assign ownership of them. Of course, you may not know the exact next steps required, but clear ownership empowers the owner to take the required actions.

Don’t truncate the list – it can be tempting to focus on the major items coming out of a post-mortem, but this can mean overlooking some ‘low-hanging fruit’ and demoralizing those who submitted ideas that didn’t make the cut. Go as far down the list as you can.

Be transparent – post-mortems are a tricky topic, sometimes they find errors, and certainly things that could have gone better. However, this is best addressed by openness and transparency.

The Triple Constraint

Nothing in life is free. Sadly, the same is true of projects. If you want to finish sooner, something has to give, whether reducing the amount of work (scope) or increasing the amount of resources (people and/or money). If you cut the size of the project team or its budget, either the finish data gets pushed out or the scope of work has to be shrink. Finally, if you want to increase the scope of work, you’ll need either more people/money or more time.

So it’s up to you. You can always adjust the deadline, resources or scope one at a time. But whenever you do so, think of the impact on the other two aspects. Interestingly, many executives don’t understand this principle, thinking it’s something sufficient carrots and sticks can overcome, yet it is a mathematical rule.

Note – some variants of the triple constraint take it further and include as ‘quality’ as a forth variable. Here I include it as part of scope.