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Soft Skills For Project Managers and Teams

Kathy Schwalbe, Ph.D., PMPExpress Scripts PMUG Meeting

February 16, 2005schwalbe@augsburg.eduwww.kathyschwalbe.com

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Speaker Background Associate Professor at Augsburg College,

Dept. of Business Administration, also teach project management at U of M in ME dept.

Author of “Information Technology Project Management,” Fourth Edition out this March (Note: Most figures in this presentation are from my text)

10 years full-time industry experience before entering academia in 1991

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Personal Background Middle child (#3 out of 7) Did not speak until 3 years old “Forced” to write a lot in high school Rarely spoke in classes (until graduate

school) Studied and worked in primarily hi-tech

jobs, but soon learned that… Communications and other “soft” skills are

what help you advance and gain job/life fulfillment

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Presentation Overview Project management framework Job functions and characteristics of

effective project managers Tool and techniques to help project

managers and teams (require hard and soft skills)

Developing soft skills

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Project Management Framework

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Define scope of project Identify stakeholders,

decision-makers, and escalation procedures

Develop detailed task list (work breakdown structures)

Estimate time requirements

Develop initial project management flow chart

Identify required resources and budget

Evaluate project requirements

Identify and evaluate risks Prepare contingency plan Identify interdependencies Identify and track critical

milestones Participate in project phase

review Secure needed resources Manage the change control

process Report project status

Project ManagementJob Functions*

*"Building a Foundation for Tomorrow: Skills Standards for Information Technology," Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies, Belleview, WA, 1999

Mostly “hard” skills?

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Characteristics of EffectiveProject Managers*

Leads by example Visionary Technically competent Decisive Good communicator Good motivator Stands up to upper

management when necessary Supports team members Encourages new ideas

*Zimmerer, Thomas W. and Mahmoud M. Yasin, "A Leadership Profile of American Project Managers,” Project Management Journal, March 1998

Mostly “soft” skills?

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Project ManagementTools and Techniques

Project management tools and techniques assist project managers and their teams in various aspects of project management

Many tools and techniques emphasize “hard” skills, but they require soft skills to get people to use them effectively

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What’s the Most Popular Tool Used by Project Managers?

The Work Breakdown Structure

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WBS for an ITUpgrade Project

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You Need Good Soft Skills to Develop a Good WBS

• The WBS provides a very logical structure, but our minds don’t work that way

• The challenge is getting people to provide good inputs to help develop the structure

• Suggestions for developing a good WBS?

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Try Using a Mind Map toHelp Create a WBS

Can use pictures andcolors, too, in drawingmind maps

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What Are Some Popular Time Management Tools?

Gantt charts Network diagrams

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Gantt Chart for an Intranet Project

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Network Diagram

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You Need Good Soft Skills to Create and Control Project Schedules

Gantt charts and network diagrams are also very logical, useful tools, but…

How do you get good estimates, figure out the dependencies, and get people to focus on completing critical tasks on time?

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Pass the Gorilla…?! A project team at Apple Computer

worked in an area with cubicles, and whoever was in charge of a task currently on the critical path had a big, stuffed gorilla on top of his or her cubicle

Everyone knew that person was under the most time pressure, so they tried not to distract him or her

When a critical task was completed, the person in charge of the next critical task received the gorilla

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What Cost Control Tool Do Many Experts Say is Crucial to Project Management?

Earned Value Management

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Earned Value Chart

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What Do You Need to Implement Earned Value Management?

Top management commitment Team commitment to develop good

estimates and enter “real” actuals Culture that permits mistakes Strong integration between project

budgeting and corporate accounting Good metrics to create better

estimates based on actuals from past projects

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What’s a Popular Tool for Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities for Project Work?

Responsibility assignment matrices RACI charts

Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM)

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Sample RACI Chart

R = responsibility, only one R per taskA = accountabilityC = consultation I = informed

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You Need Soft Skills to Help Clarify Roles and Responsibilities

Do you take the time to clearly define roles and responsibilities on project tasks?

Do you need to convince people that it’s well worth the time and effort?

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Do You Know How Your People are Allocated?

What tool can show you individual and group allocations?

Resource histograms

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What’s Wrong With This Picture?

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Are People Afraid to Let You Know When They’re Under Allocated?

Most people let you know when they’re too busy, but are they really too busy?

Are they working on the right things?

Is it “safe” to say you can handle more work or that some tasks you’re supposed to do aren’t worth doing?

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Which Project Management Knowledge Area is Least Mature? Project Risk Management What simple tool can you use to

help identify and prioritize project risks that’s very low tech and high touch?

A probability/impact matrix (using sticky notes works fine), and then…

Discussing strategies for managing high and medium risks, both positive and negative, and documenting them in a risk register

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Sample Probability/Impact Matrix

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Sample Risk RegisterNo

.Ran

kRis

kDescripti

onCatego

ryRootCaus

e

Triggers

PotentialRespons

es

RiskOwne

r

Probability

Impact

Status

R44

1

R21

2

R7 3

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What Are Some Important Project Communications Management Tools?

Stakeholder analysis Stakeholder analysis for

communications Status/progress reports

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Sample Stakeholder Analysis

Key StakeholersAhmed Susan Erik Mark David

Organizationinternal senior mgt. Project team Project team Hardware vendor

Project Manager for other internal project

Role on projectsponsor of project and one of company's founders

DNA sequencing expert Lead programmerSupplies some instrument hardware

Competing for company resources

Unique factsdemanding, likes details, business focus, Stanford MBA

very smart, Ph.D. in biology, easy to work with, has a toddler

best programmer I know, weird sense of humor

start-up company, he knows we can make him rich if this works

Nice guy, one of oldest people at company

Level of interest very high very high high very high low - medium

Level of influencevery high - can call the shots

subject matter expert - critical to success

high - hard to replace

low - other vendors available

low - medium

Suggestions on managing relationship

keep informed, let him lead conversations, do as he says and quickly

make sure she reviews specs and leads testing, can do some work from home

keep him happy so he stays, emphasize stock options, likes Mexican food

just give him enough lead time to deliver hardware

he knows his project takes a back seat to this one, but I can learn from him

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Sample Stakeholder Analysisfor Project Communications

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What Do People Write/Say On Status/Project Reports?

Are people encouraged to bring up issues?

Are too many reports done in writing instead of verbally?

Do managers and team members provide helpful suggestions during review meetings?

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Individual Versus Organizational Issues

Every individual can improve his/her soft skills

Organizations must also strive to provide a culture conducive to good project management

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Organizational Culture Organizational culture is a set of

shared assumptions, values, and behaviors that characterize the functioning of an organization

Many experts believe the underlying causes of many companies’ problems are not the structure or staff, but the culture

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Ten Characteristics ofOrganizational Culture

Member identity* Group emphasis* People focus Unit integration* Control

Risk tolerance* Reward criteria* Conflict

tolerance* Means-ends

orientation Open-systems

focus**Project work is most successful in an organizational culture where these items are strong/high and other items are balanced.

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Developing Soft Skills

Many tools, techniques, and courses in project management emphasize “hard” skills, and it is important to learn them

It is also crucial to develop “soft” skills to be effective, such as following the ABCs of communicating building rapport listening empathically team building, motivating, negotiating, etc.

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ABCs of Communicating* Aim for a specific result or series

of outcomes from your communications

Be positive See, hear, and feel sensory data Dovetail desires Entertain long- and short-term

objectives*Laborde, Genie, Influencing with Integrity, Syntony Publishing, 1987

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Building Rapport When rapport is not present, it

becomes top priority in communication

A process called mirroring or pacing works well to gain rapport

Many sales people use mirroring, then stroking, then go for the sale

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Listening Empathically Empathic listening means listening

with the intent to understand “Seek first to understand, then to

be understood,” as Covey puts it You can learn to put yourself in

another’s shoes and focus on understanding them before trying to get them to understand you

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Team Building, Motivating, Negotiating, etc Many soft skills take time and

practice to develop, but most people are capable of improving them

Role playing is a good technique before testing new skills in a real-world setting

Working with a mentor/expert also helps build these skills

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Ideas for Developing Soft Skills at ESI?

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Questions/Comments?

Note: You can access lots of great, free PM info from my Web site at www.kathyschwalbe.com.