Introduction

Successful projects don’t just happen—they are made to happen. You make them happen: Your leadership, your behavior, your expectations, and your guidance set the foundation and pace of what occurs. Of course, you and your project cannot be successful without the contributions of your team, but it is your leadership that sets the course and ensures that the final destination is reached.

Have you ever seen a project made up of members that, individually, have impressive résumés of talent, knowledge, and experience? Most of us have been on such a team. Collectively, a team this seasoned and talented should be able to pull off just about any project. You can’t help but think how, with a crackerjack team like this, the project is bound to be successful. Then the project fails. Schedules slide, budgets overrun, quality suffers, morale plummets, and the client relationship sours.

What happened? Most likely, the leader of the project—the project manager—failed to demonstrate the leadership attributes required to bring the team together and direct it to operate as a deliberate, cohesive unit.

Many of us are quick to blame our ineffectiveness—our failures—on others. Don’t go there. It’s not about the ability of those around you to lead. It’s about your ability to lead, despite what is happening around you.

Let’s look a bit closer at this notion of leadership. Leadership is so important to a project or company that I would argue that a company’s most important asset is its leaders. It’s not its people, profit, products and services, clients, intellectual property, brand, marketing, cash flow, productivity, quality, creativity, or genius. It’s its leadership.

If a company has mediocre leaders and the best employees, it will be a mediocre force in its industry. In contrast, a company with the best leaders and mediocre employees will be a formidable force in its industry. Yes, formidable. It’s all about leadership. Interestingly, companies with the best leaders don’t have mediocre employees. It’s natural for employees to rise to the occasion and become the best while supporting the leaders they believe in.

How does a project manager become an effective leader? The following two steps sound trivial, but, of course, they aren’t:

Know how to behave.

Behave that way.

Know How to Behave

To date, how have you learned how to behave? On the job? Trial and error? Classroom training? Magazines and books? Professional conferences? All of these are valuable ways to learn, but they can be tedious and often unfulfilling investments in gaining the experience and mental tool set necessary for proficiency. What is often lacking in learning venues is twofold: (1) a genuine foundation in the psychology of leadership, and (2) the direct application of this behavior by the great teachers of any craft—the mentors.

What makes a mentor so valuable? A mentor has been there, done that, messed up, learned from the experience, and moved on. A mentor is expected to be an expert in the area that he or she is mentoring. This person should have a broad base of experience in the subject field to be able to promote the most effective techniques. A mentor can save the mentee hours, days, even years in learning lessons that can make all the difference with project success. There is simply no better way to learn the application of a profession—a craft—than with a mentor by your side.

My objective is to offer you mentoring guidance in achieving consistently successful projects. Because I am not able to reach you in person, I am using this book as a means to help mentor you, the reader—to be there with you when you are faced with a problem but are not sure of the next step to take. For those of you reading this who are already highly effective project managers, this book will serve as reinforcement of what you have already learned and practiced. I welcome all of you and trust that the messages will help you achieve your goals.

Many hundreds of people have asked me over the years for the “golden nuggets” of knowledge that lead to successful projects. I have included in this book a plethora of these nuggets that have served me and countless others exceptionally well. Within these pages is a treasure chest of best practices that show you how to behave.

Behave That Way

A project manager becomes an effective leader not just by knowing how to behave, but also by actually behaving that way. What makes a project manager behave a certain way? The answer comes mostly from within each of us. In this book, I attempt to show you that you choose how to think, what to believe, and how to behave. No one chooses for you. This “sense of self” is difficult for some people to accept. But I will remind you throughout this book that it is your choice—and that your choice will make a difference in your success and in your team’s success.

You can play victim and list all the reasons why you are unable to consistently lead successful projects. Although occasionally there are reasons beyond your control, they are so few and far between that it is not a path I want us to take. I want you to focus on what you have influence and control over—which is most things, most times. Look at the people around you that you admire most, people who seem to be able to make things happen. It is not luck or genetics. It’s choice.

Insights

I have been associated with many hundreds of projects over the past 30-plus years. My association has been through directly managing those projects, mentoring others who are managing them, and performing project reviews on them. The projects have varied in size from involving a handful of stakeholders to involving thousands of stakeholders. They have varied in duration from weeks to months to years. Through these projects and the many people I have worked alongside, I have had tremendous numbers of opportunities to experiment, learn, and grow in the project management profession.

I have a big “secret” to share. I have messed up many times over the years, more so in the beginning of my career. I am a work in progress—as we all are. I almost always have an answer, but sometimes there may be a better one. I have a lot of scars. I also have had a lot of successes. I believe the scars have been more valuable to my effectiveness and career than the successes. (My bosses and clients might not agree.)

This book offers you insights and best practices from a veteran project management practitioner, mentor, author, speaker, and instructor. It collects the experiences and wisdom of thousands of people from across hundreds of companies and projects. The lessons will give you a decisive competitive edge in leading projects and working with stakeholders.

What do I mean by best practices? I will reveal the best way to perform in many different situations. A best practice is simply the best way I know based on my many journeys and contacts. I may know other practices that are just as effective as what I promote, but I am not going to give you 10 ways to do something; I’m going to give you my preferred way. Although I do not expect many of these best practices to change significantly, I reserve the right to change my mind next year—and beyond—as I continue to learn and grow and seek out best practices.

Who Will Benefit from This Book

This book is geared primarily toward project managers, and is written as much for seasoned veterans as for rookies. However, the book also targets project leaders, program managers, project sponsors, product managers, resource managers, functional managers, senior managers and executives, quality control personnel, and anyone and everyone else who aspires to become a consistently effective project manager or leader. In fact, the book has a wealth of information—including life skills—for all members of a project or organization that will help them become more valuable employees.

Helpful Information to Know before You Read This Book

The book was designed so that it does not need to be read from beginning to end. Many people will read the chapters of the book that they have the most immediate interest in and will briefly acquaint themselves with what’s available in the remaining portions. As the need arises, the book can be revisited as a reference as well as for personal reinforcement and encouragement. If you wish that you had a mentor readily available and could walk down the hallway or pick up a phone for advice and support whenever needed, then my objective is for this book to help you through many of those moments. Even if you have a mentor, it can be useful to reference the book before a discussion with your mentor.

Many lessons are revealed throughout each chapter, with the key lessons highlighted by a shaded box. This technique allows you to focus quickly on the most notable points being made.

Chapters end with a question-and-answer section. The questions are those commonly asked of me by members of workshops, during consulting engagements, and when mentoring about these concepts and how to apply them. These questions are not already answered in the main body of the text.

This book brings together some of my previous writings and articles in addition to presenting new areas of information. For example, some topics discussed in this book have been excerpted from one or more of my other books in an abridged format. Moreover, I sometimes refer you to those books if they offer more detail on a topic. Those books and publishers are:

The EnterPrize Organization: Organizing Software Projects for Accountability and Success, by Neal Whitten. Copyright © 2000 by Project Management Institute, Inc. Copyright and all rights reserved. Material from this publication has been reproduced with the permission of PMI(r).

Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success, Second Edition, by Neal Whitten. Copyright (c) 1995 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

To gain the most benefit from this book, I ask that you read it with an open mind. I believe in the worthiness and benefit of every concept, behavior, action, and technique that I have included. These ideas have worked for me and for hundreds of others that I have worked closely with or mentored. However, some of my ideas go against today’s conventional wisdoms; moreover, some people may not easily accept some of the ideas because they may feel that their circumstances are unique. In rare cases, that may be true. However, these ideas can work almost all the time—if you maintain an open mind and apply them appropriately.

How This Book Is Organized

The book is presented in eight parts consisting of multiple chapters, each of which is relatively short for easy reading and quick reference. The Project Management Institute’s (PMI(r)) five process groups (initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing) are represented by Parts Three through Six.

Part One: Leadership, Soft Skills, and You. The effectiveness of a project manager—a leader—is about the mastery of both hard and soft skills. Hard skills are mostly process- and procedure-oriented, such as the mechanics of planning, tracking, and risk assessment. Hard skills are easier for most people to learn and apply than soft skills.

Soft skills are more people- and behavior-oriented, such as leading, directing, nurturing, enabling, communicating, negotiating, mitigating—in other words, making things happen. It is the soft skills that are so critical for a leader in getting things done through people. They are the skills that will motivate a team to succeed, that will inspire dedication and drive. Fittingly, this book begins by focusing on the very valuable and necessary soft side of leadership.

Part Two: Roles and Responsibilities. The roles and responsibilities of the project manager, resource manager, and project sponsor—three huge power players on the project scene—are defined. Also, an age-old question is answered: “How technical must a project manager be?”

Part Three: Project Initiation. Part Three shows you how to learn from past project mistakes and apply those lessons going forward. It also describes how culture training classes are key in promoting an effective project culture.

Part Four: Project Planning. Part Four reveals several best practices for the planning phase of a project, including the importance of providing clients what they need rather than what they want, the effect of multitasking on productivity, the application of the contingency buffer, and the truth about scope creep.

Part Five: Project Execution and Control. Part Five offers best practices for the execution and control phases of a project. Key topics include: how to set control points, monitor project performance/variance, and manage problems that are heading out of control; how to manage to a project’s top three problems; how to treat project members who have different perspectives and points of view; how to determine what you expect from others; how to escalate issues to closure; and how to capitalize on the value of planning with the “S-shape curve 50/70 rule.”

Part Six: Project Closeout. Part Six discusses how to perform post-project reviews —an activity of enormous benefit but one that is frequently overlooked or weakly conducted.

Part Seven: Promoting the Advancement of Project Management beyond Your Projects Up to this point, this book focuses on how project managers —and related leaders —can be far more effective in their day-to-day activities. Part Seven shows project managers what they can do outside of their primary domains of responsibility to promote the advancement of project management across their organizations.

Part Eight: Some Final Thoughts I believe that everyone has the capacity to be a consistently successful project manager. All the attributes of a successful project manager can be learned and practiced if you choose to do so. Believe you can make a difference … and you will!

Glossary A glossary of terms defines key concepts.

As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you are right.” I can open the gate for you, but I cannot pass through it for you. I can share thoughts and ideas, but I cannot receive and process them for you. You—and only you—have control over your belief system and whether and how you choose to modify it. This book has been written for you. I hope it serves you well!