How Do You Know the Status of Your Project? Project Monitoring and Controlling

1. How Do You Know the Status of Your Project?Project Monitoring and Controlling Kristine A. Hayes Munson, MBA, PMP, CIA State Street

2. Learning Goals • You will be able to apply systems thinking to monitoring and controlling after: • Reviewing PMBOK® Guide basics • Selecting key performance indicators (KPI) • Knowing when to implement change or when to leave a project “as is” • Determining whether or not proposed changes will positively or negatively impact the project

3. Why This Topic? • Managed an user acceptance testing project to onboard a client to a major system within firm • Project went from greenish-amber to red in less than a week with no major fires • SVP comment on the project: • The team is working frantically • The team is not working hard enough

4. “There is no such thing as a fact concerning an empirical observation. Any two people may have different ideas about what is important to know about any event. Get the facts!”—W. Edward Deming

5. Agenda • PMBOK® Guide Basics Review • Key Performance Indicators • Why Change? • Special Cause and Common Cause Variation • The Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle • Seeing is Understanding • Deming’s Red Bead Experiment • Deming’s Funnel Experiment • Understanding My Project

6. Definition – Monitoring and Controlling • Those processes required to: • Track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project • Identify any areas in which changes to the plan are required • Initiate the corresponding changes

7. What are we monitoring and controlling? (Hint 9) Missing = Human Resources Scope Schedule Cost Quality Communications Risk Procurement Stakeholder Management Integrated Project

8. Monitoring and Controlling Activities Comparing planned results with actual results Reporting performance Determining if action is needed, and what the right action is Ensuring deliverables are correct Acquiring sign-off on deliverables Assessing overall project performance Managing risks Managing contracts and vendors

9. What are our results?

10. Monitoring & Controlling Restated • Translate project execution data from information into knowledge • Make the right management decisions and take the right action • Implement appropriate, planned changes • Allow the project to function “as is”

11. Focus on the Key Few • Select 3-5 key performance indicators (KPI) • Ask stakeholders what is most important • Identify the impact of not completing the project • Make KPIs “SMART” • Remember may need to be “bad” at some things in order to be “good” • Ensure project team knows and understands

12. Take Action • Think about a project that you are currently managing. • Identify what are the 3-5 KPIs? • What are you going to be intentionally bad at?

13. Why are we trying to “change,” “fix” or “improve” something? • We observe variation from our expectations

14. Questions • How do we decide whether or not to “change,” “fix” or “improve” something? • How do we determine if a change will positively and/or negatively impact a project?

15. Life is Variation • CommonCause • Fall inside the control limits • Special Cause • Something that is special, not part of the system of common causes • Fall outside the control limits

16. Two Mistakes • Mistake 1 • To react to an outcome as if it came from a special cause, when actually it came from common causes of variation. • Mistake 2 • To treat an outcome as if it came from common causes of variation, when actually it came from a special cause

17. Dakota Indian Tribal Wisdom When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In many companies more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: Reclassifying the dead horse as ‘living impaired’ Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the mission of the organization than do some other horses Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses… Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed Changing riders Appointing a committee to study the horse Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance

18. Causality

19. Deming’s PDCA Cycle Adopt the change, or abandon it or run through the cycle again Plan a change or a test, aimed at improvement–Which option to test? – What is anticipated result? Beware of Unintended Consequences Study the results. What did we learn? What went wrong? Carry out the change or test (preferably on a small scale)

20. The Red Bead Experiment (Sort Of) • Help Wanted • 3 willing project team members (must be brave) • 3 QA lead (must be able to count) • 1 project manager (must be able to add & use PowerPoint) • 1 senior manager (sets the rules – me)

21. The Red Bead Experiment (Sort Of)

22. Deming’s Lessons Learned • Wrong to rank people • Demoralizing • Really ranking the effect of the process on people • Futility of pay for performance; rewarding and punishing the process • Display of bad management; procedures were rigid • No basis to assume that best team member would be the best in the future

23. The Funnel(Sort of) • Help Wanted • 1 will project team member (must be able to hold funnel) • 1 project manager (must be able to use a marker) • 1 senior manager (sets the rules – me) No one gets fired in this experiment.

24. Deming’s Lessons Learned • Avoid management tampering • Taking action based on the belief that a common cause is a special cause • Overreacting • Causes losses – management by results • Increases variation • Sometimes the process should just be left alone

25. Take ActionProject Team Discussion • What is the most important decision we face on our project right now because we observed variation? • What long-term consequence do the short-term issues have? • How does this decision relate to the project’s 3-5 KPIs? • How will we determine if this variation is a special cause or a common cause variation? • How does this knowledge impact your decision? • How will you test your decision?

26. Learning Goals • You will be able to apply systems thinking to monitoring and controlling after: • Reviewing PMBOK® Guide basics • Selecting key performance indicators (KPI) • Knowing when to implement change or when to leave a project “as is” • Determining whether or not proposed changes will positively or negatively impact the project

27. “The truth is often buried deeper than where your intuition can reach. Uncovering it starts with the willingness to stop treating your beliefs as facts.”— Frances Frei and Anne Morriss “Learning the word ‘no’ is the hardest lesson for many project managers.”— Jim Johnson

28. Sources

29. Contact Information Kristine A. Hayes Munson, MBA, PMP, CIA kahayesmunson@statestreet.com +949-932-1476