One of my column readers recently sent in this question: One of our senior project managers left abruptly in the middle of a 3 year million $ contract. What experience and education would you consider in promoting a replacement? 

Ooh, good meaty problem.  Not so simple a solution.

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:

On the 1980s HBO show Not Necessarily the News, comedian Rich Hall created Sniglets, which dictionary.com defines as “any word coined for something that has no specific name. Words like Jokesult (When someone insults you, you call them on it, and they say, "It was just a joke.”) and Chwads (discarded gum found beneath tables and countertops) were born to humorously explain commonplace things or actions. I’ve created 20 of my own project management and leadership sniglets; some made up words, others repurposed words or phrases. I hope they resonate with you and put a bit of humor in your day.

Some time back I was in a meeting with a project manager who presented the status on his troubled project to the project sponsor and other executive stakeholders. This project was of high interest to the sponsor and stakeholders as they were depending on its successful completion to make some major changes in their respective organizations. The project sponsor asked the project manager a very straightforward question:

Why is the project slipping?

The project manager went into a long, meandering monologue. The sponsor interrupted and asked the question again. More meandering from the project manager. Seeing the sponsor and other stakeholders’ growing frustration, the project manager’s boss stepped in and said they needed to do more homework and would come back the next day better prepared. The next day, the project manager’s boss presented the status and answered questions--along with a new project manager.

Several years ago, I invested in a business with someone who was my best friend at the time. It all started with a lot of excitement and dreams of how we were going to change the world together.

As time progressed, reality set in. The idea was great, but the financial return wasn’t there. My best friend worked incredibly hard but just didn’t have the right skill set the business demanded. We weren’t aligned on my engagement, particularly as I saw the financial demands of the business exceed my willingness to provide. I ended up shutting off funding, the business failed, and I lost a friend.

Ah, the naivete.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com. 

Bill was a newly appointed project manager over a mission-critical systems development initiative. Ann, Bill’s boss, trusted Bill to lead the initiative and gave him the latitude he needed to execute without getting in his way. While the two worked well together, they did struggle in one area: decision-making. They had several instances where Ann was surprised by key decisions Bill made but didn’t inform Ann. Bill also didn’t benefit from Ann’s experience on several issues and made uninformed decisions that hurt the project. Ann asked Bill to include her more on decisions, but Bill took that as him needing to come to her on decisions he could have made on his own. Bill grew frustrated with his perception of Ann micromanaging him, whereas Ann just wanted to ensure she was in the loop on key decisions. The project ultimately got done, but not without a lot of friction between the two.

Friction that could have been avoided.

In The Clarity PM: 6 Areas to Improve, I talk about six attributes of a what I call a Clarity PM, as follows:

1. Clarity of purpose
2. Clarity of done
3. Clarity of constraints
4. Clarity of what/who/when
5. Clarity of external dependencies
6. Clarity of communication

I’ve certainly been burned by not doing each of the attributes well. Number 5, clarity of external dependencies, has brought unwanted surprises that created ugly fire drills. It has caused me to be more mindful of those dependencies and how I unearth and manage them, making me better at intentional external dependency management.

Given so, I’d like to share some lessons learned to help you avoid getting bit by an external dependency. Here are six external groups that can carry dependencies that can have a material impact on both your work and the external group’s work:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Recently, Harvard Business Review published an article about what the next generation of project management will look like. The article highlighted 10 next-generation skills:

1. Organizational awareness
2. Data acumen
3. Cross-functional collaboration
4. Decision-making
5. Willingness to explore and adopt new technology
6. Financial acumen
7. Process and framework expertise (i.e., business process improvement, agile, organizational change management, risk)
8. Growth mindset
9. The ability to coach and motivate teams
10. Customer centricity

Now, these are all good skills for today’s project manager to focus on to be relevant tomorrow. There is one item on the list that piqued my interest the most.

Read More at ProjectManagement.com .

In Part 1 of The 4 Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence (EI), I focus on knowing thyself. A key aspect of knowing thyself is developing an action plan based on improvement opportunities identified from a 360-feedback evaluation. The nuggets you get from a 360 are crucial in helping you become a better-rounded PM.

There is another great source to help you in your learning journey: your stakeholder’s values. Before we get in too deep, here is a level-set of who I include in the stakeholder universe:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

It was one of my earlier projects as a project manager.

I spent a lot of time planning the work out, calculating the critical path through the project, and getting everything ticked and tied prior to kickoff. The kickoff meeting went well with the exec sponsors. I set high expectations on my ability to deliver. The team was largely silent during the kickoff meeting, letting me do my thing.

The first few weeks in, I reported that we were on schedule and budget, and within scope; we were on our way to a stellar delivery.

At week four, a few of the tasks started slipping. “No problem, we can make it up,” I thought to myself. I reported that we were still on schedule.

The next few weeks saw more slippage, and some team members began expressing concern about our ability to meet dates. I reported that things were still okay, and we were working through a couple of minor issues.

After a couple more weeks, the concerns continued to crescendo, and one of the exec sponsors caught wind that there might be some problems on the project. He set up a meeting with me and some of my leads to deep-dive on what was going on. It was one of my most uncomfortable meetings at that point in my young career. I was the last one in the room to acknowledge there were problems.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.