I can’t say personally that I have always viewed project management as a customer service oriented career path.  I saw it as a more methodical, mechanical process of managing schedules, tasks, and team members and reporting…oh yes…lots of reporting…of project status to anyone and everyone who mattered. 

The reality of it though, is that it truly is very customer service oriented.  And I am glad that it is…even though I didn’t really see myself as a customer service type person.  Am I really nice enough and tolerant enough to be that type of person?  Well, I guess 20+ years in the field says that yes, I am.  But at least we don’t have to take too much abuse…its not that type of customer service.  But it is about making the customer happy and keeping them that way…because that is a key element to project success.

I will be the first to state that I very much like to work independently. And that is the beauty of project management. Much of what we do we do independently. I realize that all depends on the actual makeup of your organization and your project management infrastructure. But I can say from my experience…that most of the organizations I have worked in have given their project managers fairly free rein to succeed or fail. Yes, there has been structure, but in terms of the daily management of our projects, we have been able to engage customers, make decisions, and manage tasks on our own – always knowing we can reach out if necessary, of course. Sound ideal? It is. But it can also alienate some individuals and leave some project managers feeling a bit like an island rather than part of a group. It’s all about personal preference and your ability to manage your own time and thoughts and to make the big boy decisions when they need to be made (and to know when to make them as well).

What are your biggest frustrations as a project manager?

Can be customer related, team related, senior management related, financial, schedule, etc.

Some that come to mind for me:

- Lack of adequate funding

- Poorly managed PMO

- Poor customer requirements or vision heading into the project

- unrealistic deadline for finishing the project

What are yours. Please give me at least your top 3 if you can (order doesn't matter), but no more than 5.  Thanks!  I will compile the results and get back to everyone in a March article or post.

How important is the organization, security and usability of the electronic information   in your organization.  Your projects and IT initiatives generate huge amounts of documentation that often require review and approval by colleagues?  If you are like every organization that I have ever been a part of in my 28 years of IT experience the automation of these processes is often overlooked, information gets lost, projects are delayed and cost overruns are experienced.

We have business proposals, government proposals, dozens – sometimes hundreds – of documents on each project we manage and all need to be written, reviewed, shared, updated, referenced and collaborated on by many key stakeholders.  A reliable and full-featured  document management system  which includes electronic review and approval can be critical to the organization – and to your individual projects.  An electronic approval system for documents you are originating, storing accessing, reviewing, approving, and delivering that includes an audit trail of alerts and reminders to all participants will keep your project on track.  FileHold’s document management system provides a thorough workflow and approval process which is detailed below – and it now offers a mobile version allowing you to handle workflow and approvals on the go.  Better yet, it removes the paper aspect from the process.

Electronic Document Workflow and approval

Document management software is made even more productive by the addition of a document workflow and approval system to eliminate the paper processes.  Workers save time and money by electronically moving documents around the workplace for review and approval – skipping the normal paper…or email…approval process altogether making everyone work more efficiently.

Organizations typically have a number of internal processes for time sensitive tasks such as order processing, purchase requests, travel expenses, and so on. FileHold’s workflow software module brings order to these independent processes in a transparent, dynamic, and robust fashion making it a key part of the document lifecycle.

The workflow engine streamlines the review and approval process of documents as they proceed through their lifecycle. In collaborative work environments, this labor intensive growth stage of the document is where the most time savings can be realized through the use of workflow.

The flexibility of the workflow software allows users to make their workflow processes as straightforward or as complex as needed. Workflow templates can be configured with set rules or can be made informal (ad-hoc) where end users can define all the aspects of the workflow process.

Workflow templates consist of two task types: review tasks and approval tasks. Review tasks facilitate the collection of comments and feedback on documents from other users. Approval tasks facilitate the formal collection of signatures on documents. When completing an approval tasks, documents can be approved, not approved, or the approval can be postponed for a later date.

Workflows can be triggered (initiated) manually by a user or can be done automatically based on the document type. Workflows can also be initiated on a single document or multiple documents. Multiple document workflows can contain both main documents and supplemental documents where main documents are those that are being reviewed and/or approved and supplemental documents are there to only assist in the review and/or approval process.

Once a workflow is initiated, the workflow process starts and the first activity set in the workflow template starts. All participants in the first activity will receive notifications in the document management software via an email notification. Tasks are displayed in the FileHold calendar feature. The workflow template can be set up so that one or all of the users assigned the first task must complete the task. Once the task is completed, the workflow moves through the rest of the activities defined in the workflow template.

Documents can be checked out, updated, and checked back in during the workflow process. Metadata can also be updated while documents are under a workflow. This allows for the workflow process to continue if updates are needed to the documents instead of canceling or not approving documents. Workflows can also be restarted if necessary.

Perhaps most important to ensure workflows are completed on schedule is the complete audit trail of the workflow process the software provides. The status of the workflows can be monitored by the users participating in the workflow, any observers watching the workflow and can be overseen by Library Administrators in the workflow status report to ensure that all workflow are progressing. Reminders are sent to participents who are not completed their scheduled review or approval tasks.The workflow history of each version of a document is also recorded and can be used to review the record of approvals.

Mobile FileHold – Document Review and Approval While on the Go

Don’t leave your workflow tasks unattended while out of the office. With Mobile FileHold, the easiest mobile document management software you’ll ever use, review and approval tasks can be completed on your mobile device. While on the go, you can add comments and feedback to your tasks as well as view the documents and metadata associated with the workflow.

This mobile process has personally saved me on more than one project when either myself or a critical reviewing/approving member of my team has been stuck out in the field.  It has meant the difference for me between on time document delivery to the customer and one day late for a key deliverable…which can quickly put you at risk for customer satisfaction. 

You can also initiate a workflow while adding new documents or search for documents based on the approval status. With Mobile FileHold, you’re always able to access your documents when you need them.

For more information about FileHold’s document management software, check out their site at www.FileHold.com.  For specific information this topic, check out their Mobile Workflow and Approval process.

If interested, you can signup for one of their upcoming free document management software webinars, signup for a workflow trial on their demonstration server or a full trial installation on your server, or take a video tour of the product.

I realize that living an error-free life, running an error-free project, or conducting an error-free business or consulting practice is just not in the cards.  Perfection is nice to strive for, but it is extremely hard to achieve. Over the 135 years of Major League Baseball history, and well over 300,000 games played, there have been only 23 official perfect games.  That means that when a pitcher in the major leagues takes the mound - all other things being equal (ability, fielding skills of teammates, etc.) - there is less than a 0.008% chance of him throwing a perfect game.  And that means if you are in attendance, there is less than a .016% chance of you witnessing a perfect game from either team.  There have been spans of as many as 33 years between perfect games.  Using the numbers above, on average, there is only one thrown about every 6 years.

Back to business and project management.  Perfection…the perfect project…it just doesn’t happen.  But we want to strive for that, right?  But in reality, we often can’t remember to always send attachments with our emails when we say, “See attached,” so it is understandable how hard it is to do things perfectly over the course of the long project. I think I could personally make a small fortune by creating an app that would pop up and say, “Are you sure?” after you hit the send key giving you one more time to proof that important email.

I am usually very energized by a new project. After all, there is a customer out there who is waiting to get started, eager to meet with me, and may have already left a couple of voice mails for me before I ever get the project officially handed off to me. I had one – US Airlines to be exact – who wanted a finish date for a software implementation I was going to be doing for them before we even met by phone so that they could put it in some airline industry publication. Talk about enthused. Or at least being pushed by someone higher up to look and act enthused.

When you are used to that type of anticipation from the customer – or something close to that – it’s no wonder we can become frustrated when the indecisiveness – or lack of availability from a project sponsor gets in the way of forward momentum on an engagement…or even just getting it kicked off. When that indecision is coming from your direct customer, it cannot only be frustrating, but also very detrimental to the project. Every project manager knows all too well that delays caused by waiting on key decisions and input can cost time and money – two things that few projects have extra of.

What skill must every project manager possess in order to be successful? Communication. Good, effective, efficient communication. Going into any engagement who the project manager will be communicating with is a question mark because the project itself can be more far reaching than originally imagined. And even if it isn’t much of who will actually be involved – in terms of stakeholders – will get finalized during the kickoff session (although more will usually be added along the way). At a minimum, that communication will be with the project manager’s project team, his senior management, the customer sponsor, the customer project team, possible senior leadership at the customer site, and possibly third party vendors. There even may be more stakeholders than what’s included – they do tend to get added along the way. They may even come and go throughout the project. The constant, though, is that those communication skills must be there and remain engaged throughout the project.

In order to achieve success on our highly technical, very detailed oriented projects, it’s imperative  we have highly effective teams.  Problematic project resources on our teams can be dealt with…though not without issues, setbacks, budget hits, and timeframe concerns.  Oh, and customer questions…forgot about that one.

But when most or all of our team is ineffective – unable to productively work together and collaborate on an a successful end solution – that’s a major problem and it’s extremely hard to deal with.  In this two part series, I’d like to cover some of the major signs of ineffective teams.  They may not be recognizable early on enough to stop the cancer they can cause on the project, but having a list (feel free to add your own thoughts, of course) may help us avoid project failures in the future.

Most of us think about project managers as existing members of the organization – possibly part of an organized group of project managers in a project management office (PMO) or individuals periodically filling the PM role as project needs arise.  But what about this scenario - consultants coming in as project managers to an organization with PM leadership needs?  Coming in as a project management consultant versus already being in the role of a project manager within the organization definitely has its differences.  The PM consultant is viewed differently, people interact and respond to this individual differently, some give true respect and some respect is superficial, and top management in the organization views you differently as well.  I know…because I have been there.  Sometimes even how much control you have over the project and project outcomes can be very dependent on your internal vs. external status in the organization…in both good ways and in bad ways.

When you are hired as a project management consultant you often encounter a unique set of challenges that you are not necessarily faced with as an existing project manager in the organization. I also feel that there are some unique benefits of being in this type of situation as well.  Lets consider…

Control. It drives professionals to success or an early grave…depending on the individual and the obsession. But there is no question that some of the most successful project managers thrive on it. Let’s face it – there is a lot to manage on a project – including some big egos – so it’s imperative that a project manager be able to maintain control of the project and those egos if they want (hope?) to realize success.

And what about turning over control? It’s hard for that project manager to turn over some power and decision-making responsibility to the project team that they’ve assembled. However, in order to be effective on the project (and other projects we’re managing at the same time) and in order to use our time efficiently, it’s often absolutely necessary. I’ve had several projects – especially in situations where other projects are in turmoil or at critical stages – turning over some power to my project team members has been the only way for me to keep my head above water.