Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Frank.Saladis@allpm.com

Does your organization have a coaching and/or mentoring program that is:

a) Informal but effective - 12.63 % (12)
b) Informal and not effective - 14.74 % (14)
c) Formalized and well-utilized - 4.21 % (4)
d) Formalized but less effective than it could be - 21.05 % (20)
e) No such program at all - 47.37 % (45)

Total votes: 95

The June/July poll question is:

How does your company handle changes to business?

a) Managing change is not required - No one does it
b) Business people handle changes - We don’t
c) We just provide any necessary training - We train
d) We identify a change agent -We do it all

If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add your opinion today.

© 2007 allPM.com

Change management is a fundamental part of managing projects. Without a change management process, the project and the team will likely experience a phenomenon that all project managers are aware of – Scope Creep. I have heard other versions of scope creep such as “scope leap” and “scope drift” and even a very unique way of describing scope changes – scope wedgies! I heard that particular term at a PMI® World Congress a few years ago. The speaker was presenting a paper about risk management and introduced that term. She said that that many project managers and teams experience “scope wedgies,” things that creep up on you and are “damn uncomfortable.” I liked the creative way she described what commonly happens to projects that don’t have a change control process or have one that is basically ignored.

Regarding change control and change management, you will find information about it in almost every book written about project management. If you have earned the PMP® credential or are studying for the exam or if you have done any research in the field of project management, you have encountered numerous articles, suggestions, techniques, and processes for managing change. Basically, change management is not a complicated process. During the project kick-off meeting the project manager usually introduces some specific processes for monitoring and controlling the project through the entire life cycle. These processes are discussed among the project team members and other stakeholders and a set of mutually agreed upon project monitoring and control procedures are established and accepted. The basic elements of a change control process are:

© 2007 allPM.com

• “We’ve always been successful doing it this way.”
• “Why would be want to change what works so well?”
• ”We won’t be nearly as good as we were if we give up our current practices.”
• “And, you know projects like this one are doomed to fail, so why chance it?”

• At this stage, the change process is on delicate ground. The change support needed is to provide information, rationale, and motivation only when requested.
• This stage is really about bringing awareness to those who will be changing about the need for change….not making the case for the change, not preparing for the change, or making the change…..just building awareness of the need for it.
• Pushing too hard at this stage can harden resistance to change. Go slowly.
• Be persistent. Be patient.
• Have your explanation, cost/benefit and return on investment information in your back pocket for use at the next stage.

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Jocelyn Davis is the president of Nelson Hart LLC and cofounder with Amanda C E Levy of the Positive Workplace Alliance. Jocelyn’s professional background includes finance; she was the chief financial officer for AARP. She is also trained as an executive coach and trained with and worked for Martin E P Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania through the Authentic Happiness Program. She has served on several boards and currently serves as a director and chairman of the executive committee for the GAVI Fund, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations Fund. Jocelyn is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the Clark School of Engineering, Project Management Program where she teaches Managing Project Teams. Jocelyn’s work focuses on how to create workplaces where individuals flourish. Flourishing individuals yield flourishing teams and organizations. JocelynSDavis@NelsonHartLLC.com

George Pitagorsky’s new book “The Zen Approach™ to Project Management” teaches you how to deal with projects that are often more complex and stressful than they need to be. The Zen approach™ links the essential principles and techniques of managing projects to a “wisdom” approach for working with complex, people-based activities.

Project management becomes a metaphor for how we can live our lives and, if we follow the wisdom traditions, the way we live our lives becomes a metaphor for how to manage projects. The book guides readers in exploring how to:

• Remove unnecessary stress and complexity from your projects
• Apply mindfulness and open mindedness to cut through the barriers to personal self-actualization
• Manage expectations to ensure that people get what they need, when they need it and for the cost they expected to pay and that they accept what they get
• Manage performance to cut through interpersonal and intrapersonal issues that get in the way of excellence
• Break free of self-imposed barriers to creative thinking, conflict resolution and problem solving
• Remain calm and energetic while being active and effective in the face of chaos, fear, resistance to change, unrealistic demands, conflict and the other aspects of project life that cause stress

Many people in the project management profession believe that project management hasn’t really changed much since the pyramids were built thousands of years ago. Plans are required, resources must be acquired, and someone has to keep the schedule on track, watch the costs, and meet the customer expectations. It seems that the basic principles of project management really haven’t changed much. That being said, there have been many changes in how projects are managed. New techniques have been developed to facilitate the entire planning process and technology keeps improving. Many of the activities that were performed with pencil and paper have been completely automated and it won’t be long before the forward pass is associated only with football. (For those non PMPs or project management novices, the forward pass is a technique used to determine the early start and early finish of project activities in a network diagram).

Future generations of project managers will wonder why anyone would actually take the time to calculate an early start or early finish. Those terms will probably be used only when talking about the work day or a day on a golf course. We will have computers for just about every activity and maybe one that manages the project also. We will work in an environment that is completely automated and High Definition. But today we still need project managers who possess a variety of skills and have the ability to lead their teams to success.

To stay on top of the issues, manage the changes in technology, meet customer expectations and the demands of management and the organizations that sponsor projects, we need High Definition Project Management™. High definition technology seems to have everyone’s attention these days. HD television images are remarkably clear and HD radio produces incredibly pure tones. You don’t miss much with this technology. So why not apply the HD principle to project management and project leadership? High Definition Project Management and Leadership may be the next big thing in the evolution of project management.

© 2007 allPM.com

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Frank P. Saladis (PMP) is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation Review Process (PERP). He is the recipient of the 2006 PMI Linn Stuckenbruck person of the year award.

Q. - Harry, how can I communicate the status and direction of my project more effectively and persuasively?

Are you one of the lucky ones that has worked on a really well run project before? A project that was smooth, made sense, and just seemed easy, most likely because the team leader or project manager was competent, perhaps even excellent. He or she knew what he was doing; he was calm, cool and collective. The guy probably had it together and instilled confidence in everyone associated with the project. On the other hand, who hasn’t had the misfortune of being associated with one of those projects that, in a word, was nothing less than “brutal?” The kind of project you knew was doomed from the very start. Many times it boils down to an ineffective or incompetent team lead. We’ve all been there. It’s fairly simple really. A good project manager can make even the most difficult project seem easy while a horrible project manager does more damage than good on even the simplest project. We all know the “Project Damager” type and we avoid him or her at all costs. No one wants to work with a project damager and no project manager wants that label. So what can help a project manager become more effective? What specific tool or technique can help a project manager continue his or her rise to a confident, experienced and “in control” team leader? There are obvious criteria to project management greatness: knowledge and expertise in the field of project management, an innate ability to motivate, inspire, and lead people, and having the confidence and unique ability to facilitate a group of stakeholders to a common objective. Perhaps the most important characteristic of any successful project manager is his or her ability to communicate effectively, to persuade others. Effective communication requires a clear and logical message that is believable and easy for the recipient to follow. Communicating effectively with data strengthens a project manager’s position, takes the emotion out of decision making, and helps move a project forward quickly and efficiently. I recommend a simple, yet surprisingly effective approach of communicating with data; the “triple threat” approach to status updates. In the game of basketball, when a player has the ball and is in athletic position (legs bent, ball off to one side) he or she is a “triple threat”. They can either shoot, dribble, or pass. This is a great position to be in and gives the offensive player the advantage. In much the same way, the triple threat approach to communicating gives the project manager the advantage of delivering a clear, fact based message.

© 2007 allPM.com

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Harry Rever is Director of Six Sigma for International Institute for Learning. He is a dynamic presenter and practitioner of Six Sigma and Project Management with an innate ability to teach the concepts of quality improvement in an understandable and more importantly, applicable manner. With over sixteen years as a project manager, process improvement consultant and trainer, Harry has numerous examples of what works (and what doesn’t) when managing projects and applying statistical process improvement concepts. He has experience leading people including supervising project managers, quality analysts, and sales teams. Harry has trained thousands of employees on Six Sigma, process improvement, and project management and he frequently presents at conferences and seminars. He has certifications as a Six Sigma Black Belt, Quality Manager, Quality Consultant and Project Management Professional (PMP). Harry earned his MBA from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas and has Bachelors degrees in Marketing and Management from Texas Tech University. harry.rever@iil.com (972) 335-7208

When using Excel, there are often times when you want to extend or expand some data you have. For example, you might want to set up a schedule and you can enter 9:00 AM in one cell, 9:30 in the cell below, then select both and use the fill handle to create a series of half-hour time increments. The fill handle comes in quite handily for these tasks. But sometimes there are some more odd sequences you might want to create, like instead of filling dates, perhaps you want to skip weekends, or using the same data you may want to increment by months or years, not just days. Or perhaps you have an interesting format in one cell and a different format in the cell below and you’d like to extend that alternating pattern of formats but not fill the data (just the formats). Well, using the fill-handle with the Right-mouse offers these kinds of features, as this article describes.
Right-click drag the Fill Handle for several options
If you use the fill handle and drag with the right-mouse down, you will be presented with a dialog containing several options when you let go:

© 2007 IIL Publishing, New York

‘Reprinted from the upcoming Second Edition (Fall, 2007) of This Isn’t Excel, It’s Magic! with the permission of IIL Publishing, New York, a division of International Institute for Learning, Inc.

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Bob Umlas has been a Microsoft® Excel MVP since 1995. He has been a beta tester for new versions of Microsoft Excel since version 1.5 (on the Macintosh)! He has led several sessions at Microsoft's Tech-Ed: Maximizing Excel development using Array Formulas, and Excel Tips and Tricks. He is also the author of “This isn’t Excel, it’s Magic!”

Risk is defined in two dimensions: uncertainty and effect on objectives. It is common to use the terms “probability” and “impact” to describe these two dimensions, and assessing the significance of any given risk means considering both. It is relatively simple to assess effect on objectives, since this merely requires defining the situation after the risk has occurred, and then imagining what happens: “If this risk occurred, what would the effect be?” Probability is not so easy however. Risk practitioners and project teams alike experience repeated difficulty in assessing the probability that a given risk might occur. There are a number of reasons for this.

• Language. In English, different words are often used interchangeably to describe the uncertainty dimension of a risk, such as “probability”, “frequency”, “likelihood” or “chance”. In fact these do not mean the same thing, and confusion can arise if the terms are misused. For example “frequency” describes how often an event or set of circumstances is expected to occur based on previous experience, either in a period of time (e.g. once per year) or in a number of trials (e.g. seven times out of ten). So frequency really applies to repeatable events. This is not the same as “probability” which is a statistical term describing how likely a single uncertain event or set of circumstances is to occur. One solution is to use a more general term such as “likelihood”, and recognise two variants called “probability” (for single events) and “frequency” (for repeatable events).


• Format. The uncertainty dimension of a risk can be expressed in several ways, including both numerical and textual formats, such as: 35%, “once per month”, 2:7, “unlikely”, “one in six times”, 10-4, “low probability”, 0.2, and so on. Most people have problems interpreting different numerical formats, and even the textual phrases can mean different things. This problem can best be overcome by education, as well as using a set of agreed definitions which everyone understands.

David is an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and was a founder member of its Risk Management Specific Interest Group. He received the PMI Distinguished Contribution Award for his work in developing risk management over many years. He is a Fellow of the UK Association for Project Management (APM) and past chairman of its Risk Management Specific Interest Group.  David is also a Fellow of the UK Institute of Risk Management (IRM), a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), and a member of the Chartered Management Institute.

David can be contacted at david@risk-doctor.com

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© 2007 allPM.com

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