The Leader in Me: Success Strategies for Project Leadership

by Jane Bryan

Overview

Project leaders are expected to deliver business benefits quickly. Business outcomes occur when project leaders actively engage business partners, establish risk management and cost management, and create highly effective teams.
Imagine being excited to go to work, feeling valued and energized. Then image creating this type of environment for your team. The focus of the book is on developing your leadership skills to create productive, energized teams to deliver expected business benefits on time and on cost. Career opportunity is knocking for project professionals with the right skills. With new positions created each year, organizations have an accelerated need for project professionals. Project leaders can choose opportunities of their choice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982219536
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	01/16/2019
Pages:	130
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Jane has worked in leadership positions with amazing people and companies for over twenty years. With a PhD in organizational psychology from Illinois Institute of Technology, 1990, she has managed international projects, including a software launch in seven countries with hundreds of team members in US, Asia, and Europe. She is a certified executive coach and Six Sigma Green Belt certified.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Building a Foundation for Success (Project Initiation)

YOU HAVE JUST been assigned the project. Where should you start, and what steps should you follow to set it up for success?

In this chapter I give you tools to help you build a foundation for success, to establish yourself as the project leader with the sponsor, stakeholders, and your team, along with guidelines to help you become an amazing communicator. Good communication accounts for 80 percent of project success. All the information covered in this chapter can be used with any project methodology your organization is using as it focuses on leadership, communication, team building, and risk management, which are part of any methodology.

During project initiation, you'll focus primarily on establishing your leadership with the sponsor and stakeholders. The four steps provide detailed information, tools, and resources to help you establish yourself as the leader. Do not become distracted by the overwhelming amount of information you will receive at the start of the project. Instead, focus on these four steps to help your sponsor, stakeholders, and team understand your vision of the project.

Let's briefly look at each step. In step 1 you immediately partner with your sponsor by working one-on-one to identify the high-level scope of the project by developing a project charter together. By involving your sponsor, you close the gap between what the sponsor expects and what the team delivers, thereby increasing project success by 30 percent or more.

In step 2 you establish your leadership ability by presenting the partnership presentation to your sponsor. You seek input from the stakeholders as you develop the first draft of the project scope and identify the risk mitigation process.

These steps help you accomplish three things:

1. the sponsor and your team work to achieve the business goals of the project;

2. you are building high customer satisfaction because you are solving the customer's problem (good risk mitigation solves customers problems and increase their satisfaction by more than 50 percent); and

3. high leader satisfaction is reached with the achievement of the business goals.

In step 3 you identify the project size, which is essential to appropriate planning. Proper planning results in savings of time and money.

In step 4 you prepare for the kickoff and planning session by creating the agenda and planning presentation that allows you to lead the team to success.

Underlying project initiation is the use of project technology to plan and manage your project. New technological resources are changing the project management landscape in amazing and positive ways. By maximizing the use of technology, you can focus on value-added activities such as communication, problem resolution, and leading the team rather than tactical activities. To be seen as a leader, you need to interact with the sponsor, stakeholders, and team members.

Following are long-term benefits of building a foundation for success:

• High sponsor and stakeholders satisfaction gets you noticed for new opportunities;

• Create an award-winning productive team, ensuring positive project results;

• Complete projects faster and on budget; and

• Resolve risks before the problems occur by following an innovative process.

Let's now begin the initiate phase of building a foundation for success. The graph below summarizes the four steps of building a foundation for success. Across from each step are the required deliverables and the optional resources. These are designed to establish you as the leader of the project and to deliver the project successfully.

Each step has a separate section describing what you need to do. The remainder of this chapter will discuss each step in-detail. It might be helpful to refer back to this graphic as you read the chapter. We begin with step 1: the project manager is assigned a project.

At the beginning of each chapter I will showcase David, who is one of the most impressive project leaders I know. Here is his story.

David's Story: Building a Foundation

David is thirty, successful, and looking forward to a promising future in his company. After graduation he found a job in project management, getting a good entry-level job for a major firm. His life is unfolding according to plan. He has a degree in project management and is certified as a project management professional (PMP certification). He would like to work in project management for another year or two and then move into a leadership position.

Two years ago, wanting more opportunities, he accepted a position at his current company, a large manufacturing organization.

"I make very good money, and I get promoted on the fast track," David says. "The price is total dedication, and like many in my company. I spend a minimum of fifty hours at work every week. Frankly, I enjoy this. This is me."

David is quite good at his job. He is always open to new challenges, learning new skills, making new contacts, and attending webinars and classes to stay current in his profession. His career is moving ahead, and he has been getting steady promotions.

Now that he's thirty, he pays closer attention to exercise — he jogs regularly and watches his weight, two things that hadn't really been part of his lifestyle in his twenties. He is married to Marla, whom he describes as smart and funny and beautiful; she works in the financial sector. They have a one-year-old son.

David says, "We make a great team."

When he came to work last week, his manager called him into his office to ask him to handle a high-profile project, an international project involving end-of-lease contracts for servers. (The company leases more than a thousand servers for more than ten different applications.)

The initial contracts are reviewed by business leaders and signed off by the legal department. The challenge the company is facing is that the renewal dates are often missed, resulting in millions of dollars in fines. When contracts become past due, the vendors stop providing support, which impacts not only company revenue but that of customers using the servers. The company is constantly updating their technology to use cutting-edge technology and misses due dates because new technology overlaps the old technology for a few months. Each application is handled by eight different departments responsible for different processes, and there is a lack of positive communication between the departments, with frequent blaming occurring.

The sponsor, Ted, based in Europe, is highly demanding and quick to criticize. The stakeholders are based in Europe, Asia, and the United States. The overall purpose of the project is to develop a process to reduce the number of missed renewal dates and to identify the root cause of the communication difficulties among the departments. His manager tells him he was selected to lead the project because of his skills in processing and problem solving. Because of the different time zones involved, he will need to either work early or late to accommodate the needs of the team. David has never worked with the sponsor before but has worked successfully on other projects with many of the stakeholders. David will not need to travel and can work with his team through electronic face-to-face meetings. David agreed to take the project, and his manager communicated to the sponsor and stakeholders that he would be handling the project.

The next day David sent an email to Ted, the project sponsor, introducing himself and scheduling a half hour meeting to discuss the one-page project charter. The next day Ted and David met face-to-face via an electronic meeting to discuss the charter. Ted was appreciative that David reached out to him on his vision for the project. David finalized the project charter and sent it to Ted. David also accessed the electronic tracking tool and created the project by entering the title, sponsor, stakeholders, and himself as the project manager. To prepare himself for the next steps, he reviewed the checklist for project initiation.

David was extremely busy during the next few weeks, setting up the foundation for the project. During the initial meeting to discuss the charter, David had told Ted he would be scheduling a half hour meeting to review the methodology.

David spends three hours preparing the presentation. He includes the work that is completed during project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, control, and project close. He includes information on sponsor responsibilities, team responsibilities, project manager responsibilities, quality reviews of the project, and project update frequency with Ted. He then spends an hour practicing the presentation until he can complete it easily within half an hour.

During the meeting, Ted is actively involved and asks many questions. He listens carefully as David explained the sponsor's (Ted's) responsibilities and added a few more ways he could help make the project a success. It was an extremely positive meeting, and Ted expressed his confidence in having David manage the project. It was the first time a project manager had made this type of presentation to Ted, and it significantly increased his confidence in a successful outcome. At the end of the meeting, David and Ted discussed the process to select project team members. David would contact the managers and supervisors in the fifteen departments in order to identify team members.

After the meeting, David sent an email to the managers and supervisors regarding team selection and asked for their recommendations. They identified team members and their role on the project, and David then sent an email to each team member selected. David, the managers, and the supervisor then sent a joint email notifying each team member they had been selected, their role in the project, and that they would receive additional information in the next few days. David then sent an invitation to each team member and Ted to attend the kickoff and planning meeting. He asked Ted to attend for the first fifteen minutes to discuss the importance of the project to the team and to answer any questions.

Next, in preparation for completing the detailed scope, Ted arranged short half hour meetings with the four stakeholders individually, allowing him to focus on their answers and expectations. He used the sponsor/stakeholder interview form to ensure consistency. Using the information he gathered, David then developed the detailed scope and began identifying risks and the mitigation process.

Part of planning a project appropriately is understanding its impact on the organization. David completed the project sizing tool and determined it was a midsized project based on the criteria of his organization. He was now ready to develop the agenda and then the kickoff and planning presentation to be used during that meeting. It took him about two hours to complete the agenda and presentation because he kept adding graphics and streamlining it. He is now ready to facilitate the meeting.

To summarize, David has established himself as a strong leader with Ted, his sponsor, and has created a foundation for the success of his project through his partnership with the sponsor and stakeholders. He has clearly communicated with the team members on their roles in the project.

Step 1: Project Leader Is Assigned Project

Required deliverables for step 1 are

• project charter

• placeholder created in tracking tool

The optional deliverable is

• checklist: project initiation

Your organization has decided to move forward with the project and you have been assigned the project manager. It is best to establish yourself as the project leader immediately because your actions are the critical success factors. All the tools and processes are designed to help you further develop your leadership skills. Project Initiation, the process of creating a foundation for success, is time intensive and requires a significant amount of work. If this work is skipped or ignored, it is almost impossible to bring the project to a successful conclusion and or go back and make revisions. Although these steps may appear elementary, the actual skills demonstrating leadership, communication, creating high performing teams and utilizing technology appropriately can expedite a career. Do not underestimate the importance of demonstrating these skills from the beginning of the project. It may be impossible to be seen as a leader if you have not demonstrated these qualities from the beginning.

Before we begin, congratulate yourself on accepting the assignment. Being a project leader requires you to have a wide range of skills and good judgement to determine how to manage the project effectively, consider the complexity and scope of the project, the best methodology to use and how to customize it to the project and the culture of the organization to support project management practices. And if that is not challenging enough, the project management landscape is always changing and you need to find time to stay current with the changes. Becoming a successful project leader prepares you for future roles.

Let's begin by looking at the required deliverables and how and why you use them to clearly identify yourself as the project leader. As the project leader you are responsible for planning and delivering business results. A project sponsor has been assigned with overall accountability for the project to ensure the project delivers the agreed business benefits. Only by partnering with the sponsor can you provide the leadership needed to deliver the agreed business benefits.

Your partnership with the sponsor begins with the project charter, a one-page description of the project that you and the sponsor create together, giving you both a better understanding of the agreed business benefits.

The form is used to

• formally recognize the project;

• describe the project (in one page).

It is completed jointly by the sponsor and project manager and is divided into six sections, including

1. Business case (two to three sentence description);

2. Opportunity statement (identify the opportunity, what needs to be changed or improved, etc.);

3. Goal statement (state the overall goal and then the steps to complete the goal);

4. Project scope in summary form (identify what is in and out of the scope of the project);

5. Estimated project plan (identify milestones and target dates); and

6. Team members (list sponsor, stakeholders, project manager, subject matter experts, etc.).

The project charter is usually completed within the first week after you are assigned the project. Below is an example of a project charter. You can adjust this form to the needs of the organization.

After you and the sponsor have completed the one-page, high-level project charter, you then have some basic information to begin drafting the detailed scope document, which is discussed in chapter 2, project planning.

The other required deliverable in step 1 is to create a placeholder for your project in the project management software tool your organization is using. First let's talk briefly about the benefits of using an electronic project tracking tool.

Enhanced technology improves project management by

• Utilizing data storage and backup: It is now possible to store data on cloud computing or on secure drives, thus allowing the team to access and share files as needed, ensuring that your project will not fail because of data loss.

• Online collaboration and communication: Instant communication can include instant messaging, email, telephone, video call, WebEx, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Project teams can work in any location and still be connected.

• Managing deadlines: With new software, the team can stay on schedule and complete tasks per the project plan. The team is aware of the deadlines and the connections between all the tasks that need to be completed and in what sequence.

• Creating a project budget: There are many excellent project management software programs that have simplified managing the budget because it is built into the program.

• Spending time on tasks: New project management software is available that help you track the time spent on each task and the project.

• Creating a project snapshot: New project software provides fast and accurate project information to the team and sponsors. Many also allow a view of the progress from start to finish.

Project tracking tools help increase project efficiency, allowing the project leader to focus on the value add and important components of leading the team and communication. This creates a winning project. It is impossible to manage projects effectively without software.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Leader in Me"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Jane Bryan.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction, ix,
Project Leadership, ix,
Career Growth Opportunities, xi,
Path to Becoming a Professional Project Leader, xiii,
General Guidelines on Developing Your Leadership, xiv,
Chapter 1: Building a Foundation for Success (Project Initiation), 1,
Step 1: Project Leader Is Assigned Project, 7,
Step 2: Obtain Sponsor/Stakeholder Input, 12,
Step 3: Identify Project Sizing, 26,
Step 4: Prepare for Planning Session, 28,
Chapter 2: Creating Amazing Teams (Project Planning), 36,
Step 1: Conduct Planning Meeting, 42,
Step 2: Identify Risk and Communication Plan, 60,
Step 3: Refine Documents and Project Schedule, 65,
Step 4: Conduct Project (Gate) Review, 66,
Chapter 3: Delivering Project Success (Execute, Monitor, Control), 73,
Step 1: Provide Status Reports, 76,
Step 2: Update Sponsor and Stakeholders, 82,
Step 3: Execute Scope, Communication, Risk Management, 85,
Steps 1–4: Execute Project Schedule, 91,
Chapter 4: Celebrating Success (Project Close), 95,
Step 1: Organize Final Documentation, 97,
Step 2: Conduct Project Close Meeting, 99,
Step 3: Communicate Project Close, 101,
Step 4: Project Closed, 102,
Chapter 5: Accelerating Your Career, 104,
Leadership, 104,
Communication, 107,
Career, 110,
About the Author, 113,