The Garrison Report #2003-3

Improved Project Effectiveness

“Throw away all your computers! They do more harm than good!”

I made this statement in a recent seminar, and the project managers cheered. However, if you attempt to take away my computer, I will break your arm because I couldn’t do my work without it. I made the statement as a joke, but there is definitely some truth in it because too often we use computers as a way to micromanage our projects. While I had hoped for a smile, I was amazed at the project managers’ enthusiastic response. When I explored the reason, I was even more shocked. Several project managers told me they spend up to two hours a day updating their project schedules. They also complained about the additional time necessary to update other reports that must be sent to senior management or the customer.

My question is, “Are project managers there to manage the project, or are they there to do reports?” This condition would have been bad enough if we had more people on the site and the project manager could delegate many of these tasks to someone else. Micromanagement is never good, but tying up your project manager like this is a disaster. It’s impossible to justify project managers’ spending more than 25 percent of their time doing reports. I hear the senior management complaining, “But we need those reports to know what’s going on.” The problem is project managers have more important tasks.

FMI confirmed my view in their annual report when they wrote, “Many firms today are aware that their project management performance is below where it should be, but few have demonstrated a willingness to take serious action. It has been clearly demonstrated that effective project management can increase a firm’s bottom line performance by as much as 25% to 50%, but most project managers are too busy ‘putting out fires’ to properly plan projects or to take action to improve their project management skills.”

Keep in mind that middle managers’ (project managers are middle managers) primary role is to solve problems and implement change. I would also add today’s project manager must spend more time with the customer to better address the customer’s issues. Project managers must be working on the Strategic GoalÓ, which is defined as a project outcome that is mutually agreed on and creates a win-win environment for all stakeholders. This is more productivity and financially rewarding than doing reports. I don’t suggest all reports should be eliminated, but they should be limited to only what’s absolutely needed.

Part of the problem is how senior management perceives its role in the process. The five most important management functions are listed here in reverse order of importance:

5.         Controlling

4.         Directing

3.         Staffing

2.         Organizing

1.         Planning

Because senior managers and business owners feel a strong need to know what is going on, they focus on controlling, which is least important. This is understandable from their perspective; they are responsible and it might even be their money at risk. Therefore, to increase their comfort level, they demand extensive reports instead of training project managers and identifying only the most critical elements that need to be tracked.

Scheduling

First, let’s examine scheduling. Scheduling is for planning, not for execution. If you proceed under the belief that schedules are for planning, then there is no need for all the detail (number of items) so common in most project schedules. This greater detail only consumes time to schedule with little or no effect on the completion date. This is because most of the effort is spent just moving things around within the schedule, not really doing anything of significance.

One complaint I get from senior executives in construction is that their superintendents don’t look at the schedule. I laugh because that makes my point. I respond by asking, “If your superintendent must look at the schedule to determine what needs to be done today, do you think you have a bigger problem?” The response is a nervous laugh. The reason is you don’t need a schedule to run a job on a day-to-day basis; you need a schedule to plan for future activities, such as ordering of materials, and equipment and scheduling other trades. But this is a planning process, not an execution issue. Ask yourself, “What could have changed in a one day that requires two hours of effort to correct the schedule?” The answer is too much detail!

We also need to reconsider the attorneys that advise the need for all this detail to protect the company from claims. If you have read some of my earlier newsletters, you know I think this is nonsense. If you expect to have claims on a project, don’t enter into the contract. If you are trying to serve the customer, your goal should be make sure there are no claims. If you spend your time defining claims instead of building the project, you will have claims. Instead, think of your customer as a partner, not an adversary.

 

Slack Time

Tom DeMarco wrote an interesting book titled Slack. In it, he discusses at length the extreme cost to a company when they bury their managers (in our case, project managers) and eliminate slack time, which is necessary to deal with change and problems. These companies stop dealing with change, and more and more things fall through the cracks. I suggest everyone read DeMarco’s book.

The best project managers have an entrepreneurial spirit. Excessive controls frustrate that spirit. We need to encourage it, especially if the industry wants to attract the best people. For the past few years, Fortune magazine has listed the Beck Group, a Dallas contractor, as one of the top 100 companies to work for in the United States. When Fortune interviewed one of their project managers and asked, “Why?” the PM responded, “It’s because they let us run our projects like we are the CEO of the company.”

 

Let Go!

It’s time to let go! While it might be scary, it’s still the best path to improved performance. If your project managers aren’t ready, invest in their development instead of new controls. Empowerment and true leadership create the path of increased productivity and improved bottom lines. So take a deep breath and let go because improved effectiveness is about doing the right things, not just doing things right.

 

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