Hal was a new leader over a team of six followers. He committed to his manager that he would be a “learning leader,” and read leadership books to improve his skills. Almost every month in team meetings Hal included a book report on his latest book and the leadership techniques he wanted to put into practice. At first the team was receptive, but after the first few books a pattern emerged. Hal would talk about what he learned and implement the new methods . . . until he read the newest book on his list, making the previous book’s approach yesterday’s news—pushed aside. The team grew exasperated with Hal’s technique du jour only to have it replaced with a newer model. Even worse, the theory stayed just that, theory. Hal evaluated himself based on his knowledge; the team evaluated him based on his actions. Hal ultimately lost his team leader role; all that theory never making its way to reality.

A sad tale of a how a sponsor/PM relationship killed a project...

Exec identifies a need for a project and nominates self as sponsor.  PM gets assigned to project and assembles project team.  Sponsor is vague about problem to be solved other than "we need a new system".  PM can't communicate problem to be solved to the team because he doesn't understand what the problem is.  Sponsor continues to ask for more and more things to be included in project, PM doesn't have courage to say no.  PM treats sponsor as "that person in the corner office" and doesn't know how to ask for help, so he escalates everything.  Sponsor has to make some tough decisions but is unwilling to do so because of the political fallout.  PM provides bad information about decision alternatives so sponsor ignores him.  Due to changing priorities project no longer makes sense to do, but PM lobbies to keep the project going.  Sponsor loses interest because there are bigger fish to fry.  PM and team are disillusioned because sponsor doesn't care.  Project dies a slow death.  R.I.P.

While this is a fictional story, you can undoubtedly relate to most of these things happening on one project or another in your career.  The sponsor/PM partnership on a project is one of those "soft skill" factors that gets frequently overlooked when assessing a PM's skills but is a key determinant in the success or failure of a project.  Under a healthy partnership, the sponsor and PM work as a singular unit to ensure the project gets what it needs to be as successful as possible using only as many resources as absolutely necessary to secure success.  Under a less than healthy relationship the project will undoubtedly cost more in time and money assuming it even gets completed at all. 

Throughout my career I've been both a sponsor and a PM and have first-hand experience in how this relationship needs to work from both sides of the desk. Through my experience, I've locked down on ten truths which I feel are crucial to securing a healthy sponsor/PM partnership.  See if these resonate with you:

Recently I was asked by a journalist how I practiced public speaking.  At this point in my life, getting up in front of an audience is pretty much second nature.  However, it wasn't always so.  I had to work hard at the skill and had to fail A LOT before I found my schtick and was able to get pretty OK at it.   

Here are the highlights from the interview along with six take-aways to help you be a better public speaker.

Patty and I were talking with our son Trevor about some very successful engagements he recently completed: illustrating two books for two different authors. I told Trevor that a major part of my professional focus is to help him be a successful illustrator and graphic artist and to help ensure that AI doesn’t replace him.

Now, quite honestly, I have absolutely no talent when it comes to anything art-related; I can’t draw anything that resembles anything. But, I can help him with his client management skills and profitability, and I can be a voice in the room about AI. When I told him that my primary professional focus was on helping him, he said, “So, what you’re doing is about your legacy, right?”

His observation caught me off guard—in a good way. As I thought about it more, I genuinely want to help Trevor be a successful illustrator and graphic artist. Trevor recognizes my desire to help him, and has told me many times how grateful he is for the help.

He also recognizes that my helping him fulfills something very important to me, which is helping others to help themselves. I not only appreciate his being grateful, I also feel all warm inside about his acknowledgment that I am trying to live my legacy.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com. 

Some time back, I took over a high-risk program from a client project manager. The program had a contractually-fixed due date with a material business impact if the date wasn’t met. There was a minimum-bar scope to which we had to adhere: no subtracting scope or adding to scope.

Budget was not an issue; we (fortunately) didn’t have to worry about how much the program cost. The marching orders were clear: hit the date, manage the scope, and don’t worry about money.

The problem was that there was too much scope to hit the date using conventional waterfall or agile methodologies. We had four months to deliver what in reality was eight schedule months of work. Going back and saying, “It can’t be done” wasn’t an option because of the contractual requirement. So we got creative.

We divided the work into four sprints consisting of one or more baseline meetings, development, integration testing, user acceptance testing, and a go-live meeting with our sponsors at the end of each of the four months.
We not only overlapped the sprints, we also overlapped steps within the sprints. In any given sprint, we had concurrent development and integration testing activities with users participating in integration testing to identify potential user acceptance issues earlier (something I refer to as “canary in the mine” testing).

It was very messy, and not something I would have designed at the outset of a program. But I didn’t have the luxury of designing a “right way to do it” approach. I am confident that if a project auditor did a post-mortem on the approach, I’d get called out as having created and managed a hot mess.

And it was a hot mess—but we got the work done to the minimum-bar scope and the contractually fixed date. Our leadership didn’t give a fig about whether or not we did something the “right” way. We got the job done, hot mess and all.

My purpose for this opening story is not to engage in a waterfall/agile debate. The truth is that we were very hybrid in how we worked. My focus is to talk about something PMs need to avoid in this AI age: long division syndrome. Let me explain.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.