It appears that COVID-19 isn’t going away anytime soon. Most of us have reached that point where we at least know someone who has contracted it or has even become severely affected or died from it. I’ve even read predictions from experts that before we conquer it – if we ever do – at least 60-70% of the population will have contracted the coronavirus. 60-70%. And right now 1 in every 100 in the US has it or has had it. In the US, we are setting records nearly every day for new cases.

We aren’t back on “stay at home” lockdown yet. But businesses are closing back down. One thing that is still being heavily debated and is still in consideration is sending kids back to school next month for the 2020-21 school year. Is it a good idea? What’s the alternative? Online school from home, homeschooling, no schooling? Those are tough options – especially if both parents work outside the home. But one of those may be your reality, depending on how you feel about your 12 year old going back to school and possibly contracting the virus and bringing it home to your household. It’s a crazy world and we are worrying daily about things we never thought we would have to.

Let’s consider the homeschooling option… I’ve been homeworking and homeschooling for many years so it’s a familiar path for me and my family. First, I have 11 kids – 7 adopted, some with some health challenges and one with childhood leukemia that was only diagnosed 4 months ago and is not in remission and he happens to be in the hospital right now. With basically no immune system to speak of, leaving the house or allowing anyone in for absolutely non-essential things (like chemo clinic) is out of the question. It could kill him. There really is no plan B for us.

Let’s look at the homeworking and homeschooling reality and how we could pull it off. It’s not easy but it’s probably not as hard as you might think and certainly can help keep your family safe during this pandemic.

Organization is a must

You could just wing it and work it out along the way – and you may have to. But you have a month and you may already be working from home and I think most of us know that planning ahead greatly increases chances of success. So let’s organize… but how? First off, read and educate. Know the basics. Know something about what you’re getting into. Lean on others for info, tools and advice. Use your past experiences and knowledge and the experience and knowledge of others. There is a wealth of knowledge out there on both topics. Use it. But don’t start out completely disorganized and expect to succeed. It won’t work. You will struggle too much and likely fail. Not trying to scare you – it’s just fact.

You don’t have to be an expert at either

No one said you have to be an expert before you venture out into something new. I wasn’t an expert project manager when I first jumped into the profession. I was just a software developer and the person proposed in the position on a huge government IT project. Then we won the contract and that was that. My wife and I weren’t home schooling experts when our first child was born 33 years ago. But we thought it was the best choice for us and for our first child so we planned and prepared and when he was 3 we started with pre-school and it worked for us (mainly my wife). We always said we were taking it a year at a time… and 30 years later we are still at it and still succeeding… our kids are turning out ok and five have moved out and moved on to adulthood successfully – two are married and one of those is a parent. So we didn’t ruin their lives… they even have said so.

It’s ok to get help – not ok to struggle

You’re not alone. It’s actually ok to struggle to some degree… but not for too long. Projects, kids, families, lives may be depending on your success in these situations so don’t take them lightly. You can’t just try and fail and move on. You have to give it your all and have a plan B (see planning) which may be a completely different route or going back to the old norm. But you have a team, you have a family, you can use tools and groups and articles and social media and groups to get help and plan and gain knowledge and succeed.

Plan or fail

You don’t have to be the best or the greatest at either. And yes, you can “fake it till you make it” to some degree. Not for too long because you need to show you’re excelling at both at some early point or it isn’t worth it. But you can do it if you plan and map out a course and work at it. And, as pointed out above, you’re not alone… there is help out there in your team, your family, social media groups of experts and those going through the same struggles you may be experiencing. The key in project management, business, life and now homeschooling, is planning. Sometimes a lot of planning but always at least some productive planning – and revisiting and adjusting the plan along the way is ok – is a necessary ingredient to success in business and life.

Good health is a good thing but do what’s right for you

With COVID-19 numbers going out of control many are frustrated and some are panicking. Can you work remotely? Yes but it’s not for the disorganized or faint of heart. Can you homeschool? Yes. But it too is not for the disorganized and faint of heart. And this one can be scary. You fail and you’re really failing your children. But you really can’t put a price on being healthy and keeping your kids safe. So if numbers are high and you’re worried… it may be your gut and circumstances saying “try it.” If it doesn’t work out for you and your kids, you can go back to the old norm. But there’s a good chance that it will work out and it may serve you in the interim or it may become your new permanent normal. And you can stay healthy and safe at the same time.

Summary / call for input
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The bottom line is 2020 is a new road for us. A scary road. Uncharted territory for many. There isn’t a single person in the world who hasn’t been affected in some way. Our success – and the success of many around us including our business colleagues, teams and family – depend to some degree on our own success. That can be a huge stressful burden. Or we can grab it by the horns and take it on. Go ahead, take it on. You can do it.
Readers – what are your thoughts? Are you working remotely? What advice do you have for others? Are you homeschooling or thinking about it as the potentially dangerous school year approaches? What are you planning to do? Comment and let’s discuss.

1. Coronavirus

More than 150,000 people in the US have now died of Covid-19, and global cases have topped 15 million. The US has the most cases, with nearly 4.5 million, followed by Brazil (2.5 million) and India (1.6 million). Australia and Japan recorded their highest single-day case numbers yet, and places like Italy, which were hit hard at the beginning of the pandemic, are extending emergency measures into the next few months. The medical community has also expressed concern about the state of African countries. The International Rescue Committee says cases there are much higher than official numbers suggest, due to lack of testing, stigma, and damaged medical infrastructure. The World Health Organization has also warned that there has been an acceleration of cases in sub-Saharan Africa, an area initially thought to be spared from the worst of the pandemic.

2. Police

The Justice Department is sending more federal agents and investigators to Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee as part of an initiative aimed at helping local and state authorities tackle a spike in violent crime. Past administrations have done the same thing, and it typically isn't controversial. But given the Trump administration's stance on current nationwide unrest, and the President's renewed "law and order" persona, local and state leaders have been pushing back on his deployment of federal efforts. The administration just reached an agreement with Oregon to withdraw federal officers from parts of Portland after they were sent there earlier this month to allegedly protect federal assets amid prolonged protests for racial justice and police accountability.

3. Stimulus

Congress has doled out trillions in coronavirus relief aid, but a new report from the Treasury Department finds states and localities have used less than 25% of that money so far. That number underscores a common complaint -- that the money has come with so many restrictions and has been distributed so slowly that local leaders can barely use it. It also could complicate the next round of relief. House Democrats want to send an additional $1 trillion in support to states, while the Republican plan contains no additional funding, but changes the flexibility of existing relief rules. By the way, Congress is reportedly no closer to agreeing on a final deal, and the clock is running out on the $600 weekly unemployment enhancement. Some economists say that extra boost is helping keep the economy afloat, and when it expires at the end of the month, unemployed Americans won't be the only ones in trouble.

4. Hong Kong

Four Hong Kong student activists have been arrested for their social media posts under the city's sweeping new national security law imposed by China at the beginning of the month. The students, ages 16 to 21, are being investigated under a part of the law that deals with secession. The arrests have incensed human rights activists, who have vehemently opposed the national security law. There are also concerns that wider crackdowns may be coming now that the city's legislative elections are right around the corner in September. However, given the recent spike in coronavirus cases in Hong Kong, the elections may ultimately be postponed.

5. Germany

The US will withdraw nearly 12,000 troops from Germany, making good on a controversial Trump administration plan that will cost billions of dollars over the next few years to execute. The withdrawal has been criticized by bipartisan US leaders and international allies, since many think the move will weaken the US' strategic position regarding Russia and undermine relations with Germany, NATO and Europe. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney even said the move was "a gift to Russia." The President has justified the decision by saying Germany doesn't spend enough on defense. The NATO target for defense spending is 2% of a member country's GDP. Germany spends about 1.38%, and the US spends about 3.4%. However, a 2019 NATO report revealed only seven of its 29 member countries were meeting the 2% threshold.

Content from CNN daily top 5

Though most organizations now have some form of formal project management office (PMO), there is still no guarantee of project success or even PMO success. Indeed, a recent report from PM Solutions indicated that 87% of surveyed organizations have a project management office in place compared to only 47% in a similar study performed in 2000. Yet PMI reported in a study that as many as 68% of all projects fail to some degree. And as for PMOs, I have personally worked in or lead PMOs for four different organizations. One company experienced utter PMO failure…twice…another kept turning over their PMO directors in a never-ending quest for some project management ‘better’ practices, and a third floundered miserably. The only one that didn’t fail was the one I was leading, though unfortunately it was short-lived as the organization itself closed up shop.


Through all of this chaos and turnover and failure I’ve learned a few things about what not to do and what should be done in order to create a successful PMO. Here are my top 3 items – I’ll call them ingredients – for a successful project management office:


Buy-in from the top


Nothing says you’re in it for the long haul like being the baby of someone high up. Of course you need to perform as well. But if your PMO has the buy-in from the leaders at the top of your organization, then the likelihood that it will be well funded and well stocked with competent, seasoned project managers is much higher. You need for important projects to be thrown to the PMO right from inception and that will only happen if you have buy-in for the PMO infrastructure from the leaders of the company.


A good PMO director


A PMO that is headed in the right direction has an experienced leader at the helm. This person should have both a project management and resource management background, but this person should only be directing going forward. It is not wise to put a director in charge who will also be leading projects. This stretches that individual too thin – they will find that they are not available for PMO issues at key times and staff development and engagement will suffer in the long run. Indeed, the PMO will suffer greatly and it will likely be doomed to fail.


A good methodology


The PMO will grow stronger with even better processes created and followed as it becomes more mature. But it has to start with something – and that needs to be some proven, repeatable processes, some useable and easily adaptable templates, a PM scheduling tool that everyone is using in the PMO, and some policies in place that everyone is following. You need experienced PMs with their own opinions and ways of handling projects, but you also need to build consistency in how projects are delivered. Create good processes (or steal them from another organization with a good PMO), and mold them along the way. But start with something good and have everyone use it from Day One.


Summary


These are my top three. I have more, but most vary depending on the size of the organization and the complexity of the projects that are being managed. Start with these three and your project management office will definitely be headed in the right direction.

The motivated team is the more productive team. That's a fairly well established fact. As the project manager or PMO director how do you get there? How do you make sure your project teams are as motivated and engaged as possible every time out on every project?


As usual, I have some thoughts and opinions - coming from experience, logic and observation - that result in my personal list of six key tips to keep your project teams focused on the end goal...


Pay them well and timely

This may apply more to consulting situations but consultants are people, too. Your PM staffs and supporting team members - pay them well. Trust me, keeping the good ones around - and you know who they are and they know who they are - is very important to the success of your projects, the satisfaction of your project clients and the financial viability of your company. Don't let or force the good ones to leave. It's expensive to acquire and onboard good new talent and your projects and customers are important.


Engage them as early as possible

You want an accountable and motivated project team? Get them assigned as early as possible to the projects. They can assist the project manager in early project planning and even take part in project kickoff. And the sooner the customer sees a full team the better. Your full team project engagement will be better if the team is involved in planning and the customer sees the teams as a well-oiled productive and collaborative unit as early in the project as possible. Yes, that can and will add expenses to the project so make that part of the sales culture and process to plan that in to the price of the projects overall. It is important if you can do it.


Use their proper skill set

Use your team members well for the skills you know they have as well as the skills they want to acquire. But don't try to fit a square peg into a round hole. it will only frustrate them and make them fail. You want them to own the project and their tasks and be accountable. Misusing them won't make that happen. So know your team well, know the team members' skills as well as their limitations and use them as wisely as possible throughout the project. Help them to always succeed. The best leaders do that well. Make that you.


Don't favor the most experienced

Don't favor or always rely on the most experienced or the most skilled. It's easy to rely on the most reliable. But that burns out the best and leaves the rest feeling resentful and underutilized. They will also feel less and less ownership of tasks and accountability to the project. Your goal is to keep everyone equally motivated, accountable and engaged.


Let them learn new skills and leadership

Just as you want to use your team members' skill sets accurately and wisely, don't squash their interests in taking on new roles and acquiring new skills. Do you have a team member that wants to be a project manager in the next 6-12 months? Help them by mentoring them and letting them take a stronger leadership role in the weekly formal call with the project customer. Do you have a business analyst that wants to be the data guy going forward (database, data integration, data security, etc.), look for ways to hand them related tasks or have them shadow resources you've already brought onto the team for those tasks. Your future teams will be even stronger for it.


Give them exposure

Finally, give them good, positive exposure. Let them earn and receive the recognition they deserve by giving them presentation opportunities to the customer and senior management. Call them out for outstanding service in front of the customer and senior management. Trust me, it will highly motivate them. Send out periodic email updates to all stakeholders and senior company management – maybe even company wide updates – where you identify team members by name and note outstanding service to the customer and project. It will go miles toward motivation, accountability and productivity.


Summary / call for input


The well focused and well informed team will be the most motivated and ready to work on productively on your projects. Money helps, too. And that translates into more successful project engagements.


Readers - please share your thoughts on this list. Based on your own experiences leading projects, what would you add or change?

You’re an IT director or CIO and you are responsible for your healthcare organization’s IT infrastructure. This includes responsibility for the safety and well-being of millions of records of healthcare information for individuals nationwide…possibly worldwide. But don’t worry…no need to be concerned. Because you are prepared. Your organization is up to the task of managing this data and ensuring it is protected, available, and accessible. Ready? Maybe, maybe not.


I’ve identified four key areas that any healthcare IT leader should be concerned about. You can never be too careful or too concerned. You are tasked with managing this data and these four concepts should be high on your list of key concerns for the data you handling on a daily basis…

Sometimes you run into an impossible situation with the project schedule and it must be adjusted. It can be for a number of reasons, but the two main reasons usually come down to these: resource usage or conflicts and the need to meet a forced deadline.


Adjusting the schedule for resource needs or loading


If you find yourself stuck resource-wise and you must make schedule adjustments as a result, there are few options you have and a few things to take into consideration.

• Change the scope of the project or add resources. You can possibly change the size of the project (up or down) and/or add project resources – but keep in mind that more resources always mean more cost. Approval from above will be required.

 

• Add time to a task. Give a task more time or spilt it in two, modifying resource utilization to make the process work. You can also adjust the basic finish-to-start precedence relationships (if appropriate) by adding lead or lag time to tasks that enable some of the work to occur in parallel.

 

• Move tasks around to when resources are available. Move a task to a time when more resources are free. This will mean calculating the entire schedule again to make sure the moved task doesn’t impact the critical path of the project.

 

• Outsource the work. Remember that outsourcing work, while reducing work done by the implementation team, also adds new tasks for vendor management and it can also increase the cost of the task and therefore negatively impact the project budget.

 

• Negotiate additional time. Negotiate additional time in the schedule with a later completion date and a budget increase. Stakeholder agreement will be needed in order for this to happen and avoid negotiation the time required to complete the tasks because these should be good estimates at this point in the project.

 

• Reprioritize the goals and scope of the project. Possibly reduce the number of project deliverables and goals for the project as a whole. This is a long shot and will require review and approval of the key project stakeholders.

 

• Use a phased approach. This is my go to solution for key scheduling issues. Work with the project customer to negotiate delivering components of the project in a phased approach, thereby extending the total project schedule but still giving the customer acceptable products or services.

 

• Find resources that may be a better fit. This one will be difficult as we usually can’t get resources switched out on our projects – at least not without a lot of give and take. Plus, this option may increase the budget, so be careful even if it is something you can pursue.

Adjusting the schedule to meet a deadline


Many projects have a forced or dictated deadline. A customer may need a project completed by a specific date, someone in your organization may have published a date in a trade journal when an output of the project will be ready (this one happened to me), or it may be a government project and the end delivery date just isn’t negotiable – at least not without considerable liquidated damages or fines as a result…which is usually not something your senior management will be ok with.


Such a project should start as early as possible in case unforeseen delays slow completion. If your careful scheduling shows that a project due date is impossible, you have three alternatives:


Reduce the scope of the project. Good luck – but you may be able to negotiate this if you can truly show that it’s never going to work but the key functionality can be delivered on time if you the scope is reduced.


Add additional resources. This is always a costly option, but it may be the only option if it absolutely must be done by ‘x’.


Work out a due date extension. Work out some way to extend the completion date (not always possible). I realize we said this isn’t an option, but never say never. You can always try.


If it isn’t possible to make adjustments to realign the tasks to the schedule, you’ll need to renegotiate the cost-schedule-results equilibrium with the key stakeholders. This is not the fun part of project management, but is the necessary next step for the project manager.

Project management doesn't really change that much.

New project management software comes out from new or existing providers and the Project Management Institute (PMI) revises the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) every so often.
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And new PM consulting services and resources and training organizations are formed. But for the most part, project management as a profession stays rather static. PM best practices are logical best steps to reporting on, effectively and successfully leading and efficiently deploying projects and end solutions. They may differ a bit from project manager to project manager and from organization to organization, but they are what they are...logical best steps to PM success...

​Can you really start a project without requirements? I know I certainly don’t feel comfortable – even for a short project – starting a project and trying to manage scope without detailed requirements in place for the project.

Requirements are key – they are the lifeblood of the project. If you try to build an end solution with only high-level requirements, it won’t work. If you try to deliver something to the end user with knowing what they really need the system to perform – what they require of this solution you are providing the with – you may be delivering something they can’t even use.

​If you haven’t worked with the customer’s subject matter experts (SMEs) and end users to know what the problem is and what they need, then you have no scope to start from…everything is really just a best guess. And that’s a bad situation – for everyone – but mostly for the project manager and team who will be on the hook to deliver a workable end solution. And it just won’t happen.

60 Second PM is my series of 1-2 minute weekly PM videos that hopefully will help us all to manage our projects better.  This is the first in the series...Try these tips to better manage your projects, teams and customers.