"Never for me the lowered banner, never the last endeavor"  - Sir Ernest Shackleton

In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton led an expedition to Antarctica that was intended to cross the entire continent through the South Pole. The pole itself had been conquered a few yeas earlier by Amundsen and his team. Shackleton being one of the great polar explorers hoped to increase the knowledge of the area. Unfortunately their ship, the Endurance became ice bound and eventually  crushed resulting in one of the greatest survival stories of all time. Ultimately, all hands were rescued after over 18 months lost on the ice. Many attribute this feat to Shackleton's leadership skills. He was able to manage a team of experts, motivate the crew, maintain discipline, communicate orders, and make critical decisions when needed so that every man would survive a terrible ordeal.

 For the past few weeks I have been discussing project leadership as the next progression of project management. The leadership skills that Shackleton used almost 100 years ago are the very same that project managers need today.

·         Ability to communicate not only status but direction to the team.

·         Discipline in making sure that tasks are assigned and executed per the schedule.
·         Motivation. Many project teams consist of people who do not directly report to the PM and / or work remotely. The PM must be able to motivate the team to contribute to the overall success of the project.
·         Manage a team of experts. PMs must be able to manage a group of experts who have different project roles and different skills.
·         Ability to get obtain input and make critical decisions in a timely manner.

 Today's projects require project managers to be true leaders that manage projects that help move their organizations forward. Take a lesson from Sir Ernest and take the mantle of leadership to heart.

This week's tweets continued looking at project initiation tasks and how to start a project to ensure success. Here are the ten tips:

• The project initiation phase can vary depending on the SDLC to be employed. Thus one of the first tasks should be to confirm the SDLC
• When confirming the SDLC to be used determine if the team will need training or extra support particularly if the SDLC is new.
• As part of project initiation the various plans you use to manage the project should be created.
• The first plan should be the project management plan. This defines how the project is executed, monitored, and controlled.
• The project management plan also helps to define how the other plans, communication, risk management, resource management etc. are created
• During initiation you should start determining how requirements will be gathered and documented. This also depends on the SDLC
• Initiation is a good time to schedule the requirements sessions or interviews. Getting those on people's calendars early is important.
• If the organization has a PMO, meet with them early during initiation to confirm what project management standards apply to the project.
• During initiation get the budget tracking mechanism's in place. If you wait it becomes harder to track expenses correctly.
• During initiation you should create the communications, resource, risk, and budget management plans. Check with the PMO for templates etc.

"Some key questions need to be asked continually throughout a project"

Many times we ask questions early in the project concerning both business and technical issues. If an application is being updated we might ask; "Do we need to load test the application?". If the answer is no the first time can we really assume that it will be no 3 months later? Questions like these need to be asked again because things may change on the project. A change request might occur that will increase the size of a transaction. A new server may be added to balance the load. Not asking the question again may lead to a surprise the night before implementation when you find out that the network team has concerns. Keep asking those questions!

This week my tweets @tprusk1 looked at two important project initiation steps, the kickoff meeting and the initial sponsor meeting. Here is a compilation of all of them in case you missed any.

The initial project sponsor meeting should be the first priority. This should be a one on one meeting between the PM and the sponsor. The number one goal of the sponsor meeting is to understand the sponsors expectations and success factors for the project. Additional topics for the sponsor mtg are: escalation method, freq of mtgs, participation in kickoff and other mtgs & Sponsor's key contact.

If planned well the initial sponsor meeting should take 30 minutes. Future meetings can be 15 - 30 min depending on subject discussed.

The project kick off meeting is your first opportunity to set the right tone and tenor for the project. Do not underestimate its importance. Although it is important to have the kickoff meeting early in the project don't rush it if you are not ready.The project kickoff meeting should be a formal meeting with an agenda and follow ups assigned. Send the agenda out in advance. The kickoff meeting is not the same as a regular status meeting so having a larger audience including business owners, SMEs, managers is ok. Have the sponsor attend and talk about the business value of the project. This sets a great target for the team.

Next week we will discuss additional project initiation tasks. 

"Stick with the basics."

Paul Richards, The Baltimore Orioles Manager from 1955 to 1961 once said about baseball:

"It's just throwing and catching and hitting and running. What's simpler than that?"

Baseball can be complex but the first thing that every player learns is to practice the basics. Projects too can be hard to manage particularly if they are large and complex. You can make your life easier by paying special attention to the basics such as :

·Good risk management

·Keep the stakeholders informed and engaged

·Regular team and stakeholder meetings

·Scope management

·Contingency planning

By paying attention to the basics, you will be in better position to deal with new issues and problems as they arise.

A new year and new projects. Here are things you can do to start a new project on the right track.

#1 - Understand the expectations for the project. This is not just scope but what the sponsor & users really expect.

#2  - Validate the scope. Charters are written to get projects approved. Verify that each scope item is still valid.

#3 - Verify the project is approved to start. This sounds silly but selection and approval to start are different.

#4 - Make sure the budget has been authorized and realeased for the project to start spending.

#5 - Create a two week inititiation plan that includes the kick off mtg, sponsor mtg etc. This could be a punch list

#6 - Identify and begin to fill key project roles. Tech lead, SMEs, QA lead, BA should be among first roles filled.

#7 - Meet with the project sponsor to discuss the project and his / her role throughout the project.

#8 - Do a sanity check on the technology and methodology to be used. Does it make sense? Is it new?

#9 - Identify major dependencies including other projects, technology purchases, and vendor delivery.

#10 - Plan the kick off meeting. Don't just hold the meeting. Have an agenda, key talking points, sponsor statement ready

These 10 steps are in addition to the normal initiation tasks. These are important because they address areas that often negatively impact the project.

"Keep your business owner and sponsor up to date at all times."

 When I perform a project health check, one of the questions I ask the project manager is, how often do they meet with the sponsor or the business owner of the project? If the answer is weekly or bi-weekly, that is an indication that the PM is keeping the sponsor or business owner informed of the project status and progress. When I get answers such as, "The sponsor won't make time to meet with me", I begin to suspect that the sponsor is not fully in the loop. Having an actively involved sponsor or business owner is a critical element for a successful project. When issues arise or a critical decisions are needed, the sponsor or business owner may have to help resolve them. If they are not up to date on the project, they may not be able to react quickly enough to prevent schedule or budget problems from occurring.

A New Year brings new projects. What about the projects you finished in Dec? The following are some tips on doing lessons learned specifically to get ideas on how to improve your new projects.

• As you gear up for the new projects take some time and look at last year's projects. If possible schedule a formal lessons learned session.
• If you are crunched for time schedule lessons learned for projects that have additional phases or are similar to this years projects.
• If you don't have time for a formal lessons learned you can do an informal one with a few people. Try a 30 min phone conf. to save time.
• When you do lessons learned what you want to discover is what techniques worked so that you can continue applying and improving them
• Lessons learned can also be used to uncover things you need to do differently. Be careful to focus on 2 or 3 things to change
• If you make a list of everything that went wrong on projects and try to fix them you will become overwhelmed which makes changes harder.
• To enforce what worked on other projects make copies of sample docs etc and share them with the team
• When trying to improve or change items that did not work create a definitive action plan of how to improve and share with the team.
• When using lessons learned also leverage best practices from outside the organization. Resaerch how others have solved similar issues.

If possible save the lessons learned in the project repository and add keywords so you can search for the data in the future.