Pproject Management Black Bag Tricks

1. Terrance Knecht MBA, CISSP, PMP, CGEIT, COBIT, ITIL
tlk@terranceknecht.com

2. Cost ($) Time
Quality
Scope
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3. The trick of
Project Management is
To balance the 3
constraints
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4.  Time is a zero sum game
 Everything is interrelated
 All actions/decisions have an impact forever for the
project
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5.  Everything is a project
 At Wells Fargo I established a Friday luncheon
where each week a different person was
responsible for the luncheon’s organization &
execution – each person’s performance was the
same in their luncheon as in their projects
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6.  Sponsor
 Project Charter
 Project Plan
 Resource Allocation Matrix
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7.  Moral law—Be in accord with the sponsor
 Heaven and earth—Know the environment
 Commander—Does the PM have the virtues of
wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and
strictness?
 Method and discipline—Organize the project
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8.  Absolute defense on what IT is working on and
(more importantly) what IT is not working on
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9.  True record of reality
 The record of hours shows the true investment
 PBS: Business staff thought (deluded themselves)
that IT was working on everything at once
 UIF: Business management felt that reporting
requirements were only temporary
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10. One Picture For One Idea
PROGRAMMING HOURS EXPENDED ON AD HOC REPORTING PER YEAR
3000
2500
2004
2005
2000
2006
2007
2008 Projected
1500
1000
500
0
Annual Fund Blackbaud Telefund Foundation University Alumni Fixed Work
Outputs Outputs Outputs Association
Output
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11.  Pick a sponsor who wants to use the project as a
vehicle to move their career forward
 PBS: The director of development (giving) was the
sponsor of the new development system which we
built. She glossed over the problems until they were
solved
 If the obvious sponsor is unenthusiastic, follow the
food chain
 PBS: Director of video sales did not support the new
system, but the vice president of marketing did
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12.  Have the business side own the project
 Have the business side make the decisions (or at least
think they are)
 Structure the project so that the business side does as
much of the project as possible
 UIF: When the PM for the University of Michigan
visited UIF—he was amazed to the extent that the
business areas ran the fund raising project
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13.  Being the second project manager is often a very
good situation
 Realism has set in for the users
 The bad feelings from the journey to reality are tied
to the drowned first project manager
 Lexi International: I was the third CIO that year, so
when I wanted to tear up the existing infrastructure—
got an OK
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14.  If the project charter does not flow easily from the
sponsor to the written word, then resolve the key
issues before going on—they will not resolve
themselves
 If the project manager is very lucky, everything will
be aligned
 Unresolved issues hinder the organization in reaching
the project objectives
 UP&UP: The scope of Y2K was not resolved
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15.  Charter restrictions are very important and
sometimes more important than the project
 UP&UP: The completion date for the new corporate
HQ needed to be 90 days later for financial reasons
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16.  Training is NOT something outside the project
 Put training on the project’s critical path
 If possible, configure training costs as a base cost for
the obvious participants and an incremental cost for
the less defensible
 Create an interesting chart for training progress
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18.  Get the priority resolved—especially if the project is
a whale. This will make resources available
 If the organizational commitment is of the highest
order, it is more difficult for forces outside the
project to siphon off resources and ask individuals to
do more than reasonable
 UIF: The president announced the fundraising
software project was the most important project
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19.  Make individual tasks as discrete as possible to
insure ownership
 UP&UP: Each program was assigned to an
individual for Y2K (1 million lines of code)
 Brand key steps - especially if they are critical or not
glamorous
 UIF: The tedious, pedantic step of coordinating all
of the paperwork for each 13 design groups was
called the ―Last Chance‖ meeting
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20.  Couple tasks to create a feeling of dependency – do
not let your buddy down
 Crocker Bank: One person did the edit and one did
the update program
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21.  Safest path is the one that if an outside consultant
was called in they would say either ―that is the way I
would do it‖ or ―I would do it differently, but many
others would do it this way‖
 Be creative on how the pieces are put together, not in
selecting the individual pieces
 PBS: I worked with Lucent and IBM to create a new
call center. Then the business management went to
Lucent to ask if it was a good idea
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22.  If you try to save a dollar and something goes
wrong, no one will remember your savings. If it goes
well, you will receive no thanks
 Lexi International: All of the new servers had to be
replaced
 Make sure that ―what you see‖ looks like the value
you paid
 UP&UP: The computer room looked like a million
dollars
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23.  Always look at the true cost of activities. More
importantly, link what the true alternatives are to the
true costs
 PBS: $125 per hour (1991) consultant working on an
AS/400 in storage room with programmer's keyboard
sitting on top of the AS/400 tower
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24.  Sometimes people are not needed to be around
during the actual implementation
 UP&UP: The day that the organization cut over to
the new corporate HQ, a VP took the President for
golf
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25.  Recognition is great for the next project
 Blue Cross: After the successful disaster recovery
test, I flew from one site to another just to hand out
certificates – the best I could find
 Recognition is not always what you think it will be
 UIF: During the flood of 2008, I wrote ―Essential
Person‖ letters which became highly prized artifacts
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26.  Reporting can be vehicle to elicit a demand for change
DESIGN TEAM CURRENT STATUS
CR Blackbaud to resolve 4 critical signoff issues
Campaign Signed Off
DRS Blackbaud to resolve 3 critical signoff issues
PG UIF to set up Final meeting
Athletics Signed Off
AG Blackbaud to resolve 1 critical signoff issue
CFR Signed off
OLC Blackbaud to meet with UIAA on 2/19
E&V Mgt Blackbaud to resolve documentation
Done
Last Phase
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27.  Issues do not go away
 Confront issues directly and early
 Start early beating the drum if business management
will have accept an inconvenient truth
 Blue Cross: Fixing security was something they did
not want to understand. Used EDS and the legal
department to finally succeed. This also allowed me
not to be the one carrying the final message
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28.  Be ready with a story for every occasion
 UIF: Flood (ACT)
 Remember, you are always working for the next
project
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