Oh the project client who always wants the latest and greatest status. Asking for more info like you're holding something back. The same is true for your senior leadership. Either they just don't believe your reporting or they are too lazy to read anything and want to hear it from you...which may be the case - especially if they have an agenda and some questions in their head that they must get answered.


In the long run, of course, it's best to always have almost up to the minute accuracy in the project status report. I realize that's nearly impossible - and completely impractical. But what we can do is make sure that the status report - and project schedule - is updated every week and that both contain as much accurate and up to date detail as possible when we walk into that weekly project status meeting with those two things in hand ready to drive the meeting forward.


How do we do that? Well, it's simple, but not always easy. And there are a couple of ways to do it depending on how well your project team members communicate and how much you can trust their accuracy without asking some detailed questions to drill down to a more specific or accurate status update from them.


Option 1 - the revised status report and schedule


This is likely your easiest option - if you can trust your team to actually make status updates or revise their own tasks in a commonly accessed collaborative project scheduling tool. I did this once on a very large government project that contained nearly 8,000 tasks. And to get to the point of that fully detailed, 8,000 task project schedule it took some serious work on the part of me and my staff and the use of mind mapping software with several peer managers on the program to get us there. It was really more like a large program – ongoing for three years – and I required updates by peer managers (who could delegate to their team if they wanted, but they were still responsible for their updates). It worked pretty well – they couldn’t all be trusted all the time, but I knew who to regularly follow-up on and who’s input my team had to closely check up on and verify.


If this approach works, great. Just send out an editable copy of last week's status report and have them send back their revisions one day before the weekly status call with the project customer. And do the same with the project schedule - have them make their own task progress updates and get them to you a day before the customer meeting so that you can finalize everything, ask any follow up questions you might have, and then send the revised status report and schedule off to all stakeholders for the weekly status call.


Option 2 - the internal weekly meeting


This is the option that I almost always resort to. I call the other one easier because in a perfect world, if your team does a great job of putting in their updates, you should just have to do a quick check and send it. Sure. Just like my kids don’t take care of the house quite as well as I do because they don’t own it – I do. Yes, the PM owns the schedule, the status report and everything about the project. So, if you want to make sure that you’re sending out the latest and greatest status information right before the weekly status call with that very demanding project customer, then this is the way you’ll likely want to go.


Every week I conduct an internals status meeting/call with my team. Usually it’s the day before the customer call. I use this opportunity to verify where I think everything stands and to go around the table and get updates, issues and concerns from everyone. Then, that evening I make sure that the project status report, the project schedule, the resource forecast, the issues and risks lists, and the budget forecast shows everything as up to date through that day. That’s the best I can do and all anyone can really ask for. And, when speaking in reality, this is the easiest option – at least for me. Again, because no one truly owns it like the project manager and no one cares about it nearly as much.


Summary


Our project clients deserve up to date project information. Some are demanding and some are pretty disengaged. But at least when we sit down with them on a weekly basis we should be able to guarantee that the information we are reviewing is 99% accurate to that moment in time. It makes for more productive meetings, increased customer confidence and participation, and far fewer ‘takeaway tasks’ from the project status call than if you walk in with many outdated piece to the project status puzzle.

What if you never dropped the ball as a team or project leader?

What if you could have every base covered? Wouldn't that be amazing? You have all the information you need to make great decisions. All information and status updates you need to have the best and most accurate status reports and the most interesting and productive meetings possible?

Even though this seems to sound like it is focused on project managers, it is not. I am going to direct this at business analysts. One - because it's my article and I often handle both roles and can do what I want AND Two - because business analysts in certain projects actually perform the more communicative and facilitator role than the more figurehead project manager. It depends on the project. But there are always those pitfalls. Those behaviors that can be detrimental to the project and we may not even know we are doing things wrong. Consider these five and then let me know what you think...

Micro Managing Resources

Micromanaging is a huge mistake! You probably know that already and may just not realize you're doing it. It serves no good purpose. Stop the oppressive behavior in your leadership style. You won't be a respected and followed leader of projects and teams if the behavior continues. Your team members are in place because they are experts at what they do. Trust them until they have done something to break that trust. Expect the best and you'll probably get the best. Help - don't hinder - team progress, forward thinking, and innovation...

​Keep reading!!

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.

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.

However, there are some new developments in IT of course and in project management related to project security and we need to be paying attention. Hacking and cyber crime is on the rise. It's changing technology, it's changing the landscape of the data and sensitive information on the projects we are leading and it should definitely be changing the way we plan for and approach these projects we are managing. Getting hacked isn't just something that happens to someone else anymore. It's happened to more than 40% of my project and consulting clients to some degree over the past 2-3 years and that number will only go up.

Here are four areas where I see cyber risks affecting our organizations, project management infrastructures and the actual projects we are managing starting right now.

Fingerprint Security And Hacking.
Not a lot has been said about what happens if a large or national or critical database full of fingerprints gets hacked. Our identity being in danger as customers of a big retail store that gets hacked is one thing. It's inconvenient, we get a new credit card, maybe wait for FDIC insured dollars to be restored to us or our credit reports to get fixed. But our fingerprints? We can't get new ones of those. I predict a huge fingerprint database hack in the next 12-24 months. It could affect office places and computer equipment that use fingerprints as security access, and it could also affect court cases and forensic evidence. Next those hacked fingerprints will be used on special gloves by the bad guys to frame innocent people when they break into stores, homes and workplaces or even commit murders. Scary stuff...

My background is primarily information technology and project management. What I've learned from my experiences in those areas and from attendance at the last five Black Hat digital security conferences and from everything I've read and studied everywhere is this...everything can be hacked. Everything. Does that have to be me and my projects? Maybe. Does that have to be you and your organization and your projects? Maybe. I've done a personal assessment of my clients over the past year and found that about 1 in 4 had experienced some sort of data breech. That matched up pretty well with other predictions and surveys I have read recently.

What can we do about it? We can't fully eliminate the possibility of a hack or identity theft or major data breech. Hackers are always a step ahead of all of us. If full prevention and avoidance is basically out of the question, then we need to focus on risk identification, mitigation and response. There are many amazing organizations coming up with software tools and services to help organizations realize safer environments today and tomorrow.

This is not an endorsement of any one service or solution or a ranking by any means. Rather it is a beginning presentation of a few of the enormous amounts of really good solutions and services that are waiting out there to help us prepare for this potential onslaught of hacking, data breeches, and targeted cyberattacks. What I'd like to do today is present a few of those we should all possibly start to consider...

Securonix

SNYPRwww.securonix.com/ is a security analytics platform that transforms big data into actionable security intelligence. Developed by Securonix, the market leader in user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) for cyber security, SNYPR delivers the proven power of Securonix analytics with the speed, scale, and affordable, long-term storage of Hadoop in a single, out-of-the box solution. Put simply, SNYPR is the most sophisticated big data security analytics platform ever built.

What does SNYPR mean for enterprise security?

• A holistic enterprise security analytics platform that marries best-of-breed big data and analytics technologies
• Real-time detection the most sophisticated ad#advanced persistent threats, insider threats, hard-to see and “low and slow” attacks over extended periods of time
• All historical, security-relevant data is available for investigation

With SNYPR, organizations become more effective by infusing actionable security intelligence into their existing security management practices, allowing them to see more and do more with fewer resources, lower costs, and to gain a completely new perspective on information security threats and risks in their business.

Varonis

Varonis provides software solutions that protect company data from insider threats and cyberattacks. Varonis specializes in unstructured data -- file and email systems that store valuable spreadsheets, word processing documents, presentations, audio and video files, emails, and text. This rapidly growing data often contains an enterprise's financial information, product plans, strategic initiatives, intellectual property, and confidential employee, customer or patient records. It is the data that companies tend to have the most of and know the least about in terms of insight into who has access, who does access and when they access those files.

IT and business personnel deploy Varonis software for a variety of use cases, including data security, governance and compliance, user behavior analytics, alerting, archiving, search, and file synchronization and sharing. With the rise in ransomware and other malware threats, Varonis solutions protect organizations by ensuring only the right people have access to the right files, monitoring access and flagging potential abuses. So if a user’s files begin encrypting from a ransomware breach, Varonis is able to alert and notify IT in time to prevent or limit the damage.

Mimecast

Mimecast's targeted threat protection with impersonation protection can protect employees from the new breed of email cyberattack. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whaling email scams alone were up 270 percent from January to August 2015. The FBI also reported business losses due to whaling of more than $1.2 billion in little over two years, and an additional $800 million in the six months since August 2015.

Whaling attacks are real. And, cybercriminals are becoming more inventive and creative when it comes to compromising organizations. Whaling attacks seek to fraudulently trick employees into making wire or data transfers to the cybercriminal as a way of generating income for organized crime. With Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection with Impersonation Protect, organizations can protect their employees and financial assets from this type of fraud. Impersonation Protect provides instant and complete protection against this new breed of cyberattack by email, which is often malware-less and based entirely on social engineering, thereby able to pass through traditional gateway checks.

Thycotic

Thycotic Secret Server delivers a comprehensive Privileged Account Management solution set to protect your most valuable information assets from cyberattacks and insider threats. Thycotic Secret Server, Application Control, Local Security and Security Analytics solutions protect privileged accounts and enables organizations to enforce least privilege policies for business and administrative users, as well as control applications to reduce the attack surface without halting productivity.

The solution helps organizations revoke everyday local administrator privileges from business users while seamlessly elevating privileges when required by trusted applications. Complementing these privilege controls, the solution also delivers application controls, which are designed to manage and control which applications are permitted to run on endpoints and servers and prevent malicious applications from penetrating the environment.

Trustlook

Trustlook is a global leader in next-generation mobile device security with solutions that find more vulnerabilities sooner than any other to provide the industry's smallest vulnerability window. Trustlook's solutions protect users from both known and zero-day threats by examining over 20,000 new and updated applications every day for malware and malicious behavior.

The innovative Trustlook Antivirus & Mobile Security app available on Google Play protects your Android phone or tablet against malware, harmful viruses, spyware, trojans, phishing attempts and unsafe web browsing. In also includes additional features such as data backup and restore, speed boost, find my device and Identity Check, bringing you a fully featured security solution for Android mobile devices and platforms.

Summary / call for input

Cybersecurity concerns are big and real and are here today and everyday going forward. If you you're a CTO, CIO, CEO, project manager or other and your organization is involved in the tech industry anywhere or in any space or if you are taking on data sensitive projects or initiatives, you need to be aware. Anything and everything can be hacked...it only takes one visit to the Black Hat conference to realize that. I'm not saying that these organizations presented here can solve your problems. Hackers are already working on their next data breech...you can't stop that. But you can take steps – and it starts with organizations, software and services like these presented here. Look to this space for more cyber security options and more cyber crime prevention services to come.

"I Want Be Man" is a 1982 song by Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Cheap Trick about a robot being sick of his robot body and his yearning to be in a human body...

"I'd rather be a man
Instead of a machine
Flesh and blood life and death
It's a mystery
Nothing to be programmed
Nothing is for sure
And least there's a reason
A reason for my life
I want be man
You want be me
I want to live in your body"

and so now we have this...​

When China's Top Artificial Intelligence Guru Lee Kai-Fu has discussed how AI is changing the shape of the world, people listen. And he assumes big changes in a short time.

People pay attention to what Dr. Lee Kai-Fu says. In China, fifty million people follow him on social media, which means that he has more fans than the Revolutionary guy and Mars Visionary Elon Musk.

Dr. Kai-Fu believes that "AI is giving new look to the world as we know". But beyond the flickering turn of the phrase, the 57-year-old has heavyweight credentials.

He was the founding president of Google China from 2005 to 2009. And in his early times, he had worked at Microsoft and Apple as a Vice President.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls Dr. Lee’s book on the New York Times bestseller list- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and New World.

I think we are diverted from the Question. Let's back to our main topic

The point of concern is that Dr. Lee is not involved in human-robot marriages because when small people can consider robots as human beings, most of us - even children - know the difference between a toy or a pet and a human relationship.

Giving them (the elderly) primitive, fake and inanimate non-emotional robots to connect is a cruel thing that we should not do in the form of human beings.

He acknowledged that AI can be used for worldly activities, such as reminding us to take our medicine or to monitor safety. But for this AI specialist, the human warmth part is paramount.

Dr. Lee Says "My mother was in dementia, and when she had lived for the past 15 years, it was her child who probably had spent 5 to 10 hours a day with her, which kept her dementia from worsening." From this, you can say that a robot can never do this.

Dr. Lee predicts that AI will make countless jobs in a short time. He sees 40 percent - which is thousands of millions of jobs - disappearing in only 15 years. Ya, there are disadvantages of AI but there are more advantages that will help the world towards the next step of the future revolution...

​Risk management is one of those tasks that we all say we need to dedicate a significant amount of time to up front in the project – and throughout – when, in reality, we often don’t. Like conducting lessons learned sessions at the end of the project, few ever really take the necessary time and resources to properly identify risks and lay out plans with their project teams and the customer on how best to either mitigate or avoid those risks.


Risk management is not just a beginning-of-the-project activity. To truly do it right it needs to be a living, breathing thing. It needs to be something you review and revisit regularly throughout the project. In fact, I’m a big proponent of creating a combined Issues/Risks list that gets reviewed every week with the customer as part of the project schedule and project status review. That way, you have your issues and risks in front of every key member of the project every week and nothing can ever get too far out of hand.


That said, I’m making it sound like I do a great job of always managing risks on my projects. I don’t. I try…but I don’t. Sure, the very highly visible projects get significant risk attention. So do the ones where the customers are concerned about risks and want the time spent on the activities surrounding risk management. But often customers are hesitant to spend a lot of money on project management and related activities – and risk management is one of those ‘related’ activities.


So, when you’re working on one of those less visible projects and you feel like you don’t have the time, dollars, or customer interest to really track risks in detail and the way they should be identified and managed, what do you do? I’ve always felt that – in those types of situations – they key is to focus on those critical threats that have a higher probability to occur and pose a real threat to the engagement.  Spend less time on those issues that are unlikely to occur.


Determining impact thresholds


What that means is that you still have to sit down with your customer and your project team and identify risks up front. But what you’re really going to concern yourselves with are the risks that fall above some pre-determined threshold of likelihood to occur. Say, 50%. You and your team and your customer need to determine, as you go through the risks, what the likelihood that risk is to occur and impact your project. If it’s above 50%, document it. If it’s below 50%, toss it out.


You can even take it several steps further – by looking at it in terms of timeframe and budget impact. Let’s say you don’t care if a risk occurs as long as it won’t set the project back more than two weeks. Granted all of these assignments are arbitrary guesses by your team but the key is that you all agree on them and track them accordingly. So, any risk you identify that is more than 50% likely to occur and will impact your project by more than two weeks in terms of timeframe, track it. Next, consider budget. For example, will the total impact be greater than $10,000 (resources, equipment, etc.)? Now you’re only concerned with risks that are more than 50% likely to occur, will impact the project by more than two weeks, and will impact the project budget by more than $10,000.


Summary


This is one suggestion of a way to avoid tracking every single risk throughout the project if you feel overwhelmed or don’t have the time. The thresholds you set must be ones you set in complete agreement with the customer and your project team. Otherwise, there will still be finger pointing if and when one of the ignored risks jumps up to bite you. But it’s one way to minimize the amount of the budget and planning time spent on risk management if your resources are limited.


I invite our readers to share creative ways they go about managing risks on projects where it’s less than top priority to the paying customer or you simply don’t have the resources and time to spend tracking every single risk.

I’ve pondered this topic several times before and I’ve come up with certain characteristics that I feel the project manager must possess in order to increase his chances at success. I’ve read studies on the subject as well – some agree with my initial thoughts and some don’t. What I’m going to present here is sort of a collaboration of thinking between the two – the studies and articles I’ve read and my own perception.


Here are four key traits that should help the project manager be more successful in his profession:


Be honest and have high integrity. Although obvious virtues, these traits are worthy of specific mention. Whenever studies are performed on the traits that people most admire or desire in leaders, honesty and integrity always rise to the top. One of the best behavioral traits for a project manager is to be known as doing what you say you’ll do. The project manager who practices this will be easier to follow and much easier to take direction from as you move through the engagement. Closely related is the issue of integrity, having a reputation as someone who will follow principles, even in the face of adversity or temptation. Your project team members are watching you and if they consistently see you displaying these characteristics, they’ll likely follow you anywhere.


Think like a generalist. Project managers must always be thinking in terms of the big picture. This can be a challenge for those who are accustomed to focusing more narrowly. The project manager certainly must possess broad knowledge in different areas, but it is crucial is that you must pay attention and care about everything and everybody. The project manager can’t focus on all of the minute details, but he needs to be touching everything and be in solid communication with everyone on the project. To lose touch is to lose control. The project manager can’t let that happen


Have a high tolerance for ambiguity. This competency will be particularly challenging if the project manager is technically oriented. The project manager will often receive mixed signals or possibly even contradictory data. The project manager needs to develop processes for finding truth and narrowing down inputs without getting overly frustrated. If you’re detailed oriented, this can be difficult.


Have a high tolerance for uncertainty. As with ambiguity, this is particularly challenging if the resource entering project management from the technical arena. Most technically oriented people are accustomed to precision, detail and lots of information. Things are well planned out – well laid out. That isn’t always the case for the project manager. There are many risks, many assumptions that have to be made, and key decisions that have to be made with less than sufficient data. As a project manager, it is often the norm to have to make many decisions on the engagement with less information than you feel you need. You must condition yourself to making decisions that are only acceptable, not perfect.


Closing


In reality, a solid combination of hard skills, soft skills, functional competencies, and personal traits compose the raw material for your overall capability as a project manager. I’d like to hear thoughts on these and possibly other key traits from our project management readers. Please feel free to start a discussion.

College career centers used to prepare students for job interviews by helping them learn how to dress appropriately or write a standout cover letter. These days, they're also trying to brace students for a stark new reality: They may be vetted for jobs in part by artificial intelligence.

At schools such as Duke University, Purdue University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, career counselors are now working to find out which companies use AI and also speaking candidly with students about what, if anything, they can do to win over the algorithms. This shift in preparations comes as more businesses interested in filling internships and entry-level positions that may see a glut of applicants turn to outside companies such as HireVue to help them quickly conduct vast numbers of video interviews.

With HireVue, businesses can pose pre-determined questions — often recorded by a hiring manager — that candidates answer on camera through a laptop or smartphone. Increasingly, those videos are then pored over by algorithms analyzing details such as words and grammar, facial expressions and the tonality of the job applicant's voice, trying to determine what kinds of attributes a person may have. Based on this analysis, the algorithms will conclude whether the candidate is tenacious, resilient, or good at working on a team, for instance...

We all hit the wall at some point. Projects go awry, issues mount and we need to take action. The pressure mounts and tests our ability to make good sound decisions for our projects and for our project customers. What’s your point? At what point do you feel like you might be ready to pull all of your hair out and literally lose control? We all – at some time or another – reach that point where we just can’t take it anymore. And what it is depends on us. It may be too much distraction. It may be too much interruption. It may be too much stupidness (you’re resisting the very real temptation to slap someone upside the head – you know what I mean). Or it may be too much pressure. How we handle hitting that breaking point may say a lot about who we are and it may have a big impact on how we’re managing our projects and it may even have a big impact on our careers if the stressor or issue is big enough.


In our line of work – as the PM of the engagement – it is critical that we actually stay in charge and maintain the perception of remaining in control. Especially in stressful or critical situations. If the customer senses that we’re losing control of our team, or the project, or the situation as a whole, then they are going to become frustrated and uncomfortable. And, at that point of discomfort, they will certainly question our leadership. They should. That’s why we must remain in control. But how? When the walls are caving in, how do we remain calm? How do we maintain balance and control? Fake it? For me it comes down to three main concepts or steps: Avoiding taking too drastic of an action that you might regret, over communicate, stick to best practices, and document everything. Let’s examine each of these...


Don’t take too drastic of an action


Avoid taking unnecessary risks during times like this – you will probably live to regret it. Sometimes, when we are stressed or under great pressure, we may have a tendency to divert from our normal routine or normal decision-making and take certain risks that we would not otherwise take. Please avoid this at all costs. Seriously, unless the project calls for some drastic measures, don’t go crazy. Taking unnecessary risks or drastic measures can kill the project budget, cause concern among team members and the customer and usually is somewhat detrimental to the forward progress of the project.


Communicate, communicate, communicate


During times of critical issues on the project, when things seem stressful, you may have a tendency to huddle frequently with the project team. Do not leave the customer out in the cold. Over communicate, don’t under communicate. The customer needs to know what’s going on. A customer who is out of the loop will feel like you’re not telling them everything, they’ll think you’re being deceitful, they’ll become frustrated, and they’ll likely be on the phone with your CEO – which is not good.


Stick to the basics


Remember, best practices is usually your best bet. Never abandon the basics. Even if you feel you have to take some drastic measures in contradiction to my point above, you must still stick to the project basics and best practices. Continue with the regular status meetings, keep producing the project status report and delivering it with pinpoint regularity. Stay up on the project schedule and keep your team and customer up on the project schedule. This is particularly important during problematic times on the project so that you don’t add to customer frustration and dissatisfaction.


Document everything


Just as this is not the time to decrease communication it is also not the time to skimp on documentation on the project. When we are running in emergency mode sometimes we think the fundamentals can take a backseat and everything will be ok. I say that this is exactly the time that we need to document everything. When there are problems on the project, if the worst case scenarios become a reality and you end up being – heaven forbid – sued by your client, having the proper documentation in place showing due diligence on the project will definitely work in your favor. And even if we’re not talking about a situation that dire, it’s still best in the name of good project management and good customer relations to continue to provide and produce appropriate documentation for deliverables and status situations on the engagement.


Summary


The bottom line is this – act and act quickly. But also act wisely. What you do doesn’t really change – but you may need to over emphasize, become hyper vigilant.


What about our readers – how do you react to extreme pressure on your projects? What happens when your project is in duress and you need to turn it up a notch? Let’s discuss.

The title of this article is a bit tongue in cheek as I am definitely an old school not by the book project manager. I believe in real world project management and it has helped me lead successful projects in the tech industry for years while other colleagues have struggled trying hard to always fit projects into PMBOK guidelines or company guidelines at any cost. The bottom line is this ... you want to lead a successful project and customer satisfaction plays a huge factor in that. And, since my motto is always "You're only as successful as your last customer thinks you are..." well, I am usually going to lead my project in a way that best fits the needs of my team and the project AND the preferences of the project client.

If this is you - or you are intrigued with this real world approach and want to experience more project successes than failures, then you need my latest book... "A Real World Project Manager's Guide to the Successful Project." It will be the best few dollars you've ever spent! I promise!... but then again I'm a bit biased. 

This book covers...

• From the Beginning
• Document Processes and Requirements
• Execute the Project
• Review with the Client and Gain Final Approval
• Communication is Everything
• Are Lessons Learned Important?
• How to Run the Perfect Project Meeting
• Risks are Real... Plan for Them

Need some convincing?  Here are some testimonials from readers including a nice favorable review...

"Best direction I've received - a must read for logical PM steps to successful delivery"

"Great takeaways - highly recommend"

"Must reading for all PMOs, Brad's info is spot-on"

"5 stars! Thanks for sharing your straightforward project management knowledge and style... keep up the great work!"

“just like your articles, always something great to take away. Thanks for the advice... well worth the money. Keep writing!!”

Book review: http://www.bradegeland.com/blog/book-review-a-real-world-project-managers-guide-to-the-successful-project