There are two big creeps in project management that travel in pairs and always cause trouble: the expansion of the project called Scope Creep, and its traveling companion Schedule Creep, the extension of the project deadline.

Both creeps show up in projects with:

• Incomplete project scope development in the charter.
• Vague requirements from clients or management.
• Unauthorized scope and/or schedule changes and additions after the project’s start.
• Poor communication among the teams.
• Poor planning by team members.
• A lack of project control.

Handling both types of creeps calls for vigilance by the project manager. Diligent monitoring can nip some problems early, and requiring that approved scope changes are accompanied by revised estimates in time and budget can be helpful.

Entrenched issues – like an “impossible” new deadline or no budget for additional staff – need a comprehensive solution. PSI prevents both creeps from trashing projects with a ‘compression” technique; and ‘forward pass scheduling.”   As important, PSI helps maintain the team’s commitment to the project – even through additions or changes.

These techniques, taught in our two day training and described with case histories in The Project Success Method book, manages scope, scheduling and more, so you can enjoy the creeps where they belong – while watching a scary movie.

One expert says we’re in a Golden Age of Procrastination.  For project managers, this is hardly news.  However, if any particular project aspect or team is consistently late, it might be time to look under the hood. What is the procrastination telling you?

Some possible reasons:

• Teams or team members perceive a challenge to their ability
• Teams or team members see the tasks as unwelcome demand on their time
• Team members are pressured by their functional managers to work on other priorities
• Team members are not motivated
• A particular task has hit a bottleneck
• Team members have been drafted into a timetable they consider unrealistic

The Project Success Method offers three integrated management processes that prevent or address these issues with a clearly defined, thoroughly planned, and proactively controlled process during execution.  The linchpin, however, is our proven consensus building approach with the team members that builds real teamwork and –most important – encourages the team’s commitment to the schedule and the project.

Some scientists say we are hard wired for procrastination, but if you want better, faster project results…what are you waiting for?

The appointment of Cisco’s new CEO, Chuck Robbins, has a message for companies and project managers everywhere. Cisco’s announcement stressed that Robbins would ‘move the company faster” when he takes the helm in late July.

If a worldwide leader in IT announces “the pace of change is exponential” it moves “speed” into pole position in corporate strategy for businesses everywhere. (Is it a coincidence that last year’s “People’s Choice” award for best new TV series went to “The Flash?”)

However, mere speed is not enough. What kind of speed is it?

Productive Speed:

• Combines long term thinking with focused short term planning
• Follows a credible schedule using duration-based project planning
• Monitors progress frequently to capture and stop schedule slippage early
• Secures commitment from team members on schedule changes

Toxic Speed

• Underestimates activity durations.
• Shortens non-critical tasks that don’t accelerate completion.
• Compromises on perceived non-critical tasks as the deadline approaches
• Ignores feedback or pushback from activity managers on timing.

Companies and project managers in the newer, faster economy need an updated toolbox and some new approaches in order to stay in the race.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

There’s an interesting message hidden in the offerings at the upcoming Project Management Institute’s World Congress.  Classes in Technical Skills comprised only 18 of the 65 classes listed by “content aim;” the largest individual class category was not about Agile, or Change Management – it was “Leadership Skills for Project Managers, Program Managers and Portfolio Managers.”

It affirms our conviction, backed by a survey quoted by PMI, that people skills are a major factor in a project manager’ career.

Trends in leadership theories abound; Googling “Business Management Leadership Theories” yields nearly two million hits.  It’s easy to get tangled up in Theory Overload –

Management By Walking Around, Emotional Intelligence, and others flourish.  Whatever the theory, though, our years of experience confirm that the best project managers:

-Recognize that the most important element in a project is time

-Earn and maintain the trust of the project teams

-Inspire the team members commitment to the project with mutual support and individual accountability.

Those three points work together and will work with just about any theory, yielding successful projects and successful careers.

Looking at lists of ‘epic product fails” it’s easy to wonder how experts in well-established companies could miss such obvious problems – snacks that cause gastrointestinal distress, for instance, or a complete misstep in brand perception (Yogurt shampoo?)

Now, though, product success could also hinge on identifying and satisfying new ‘must haves” in product attributes. Industries today wrestle with benchmarks unheard of twenty or even ten years ago. The ground rules for product – and project – success are changing to include new “must haves” like:

–sustainability in products and processes.  The Global Development Research Center even created a program for Environmental Assessment as a project management tool.

-confidentiality of personal data.  Three out of four Americans say they won’t use Google Glass because of privacy concerns.

For project managers, this means rethinking project charters with a more expansive collection of stakeholders, and a wider description of constraints, assumptions and risks.  We teach an extensive pre-planning effort (we call it the Project Success FirstStep Process^®) that covers forming the team, doing the ‘pre-work,” creating the charter (via an extensive, in-person process), and getting it approved before starting the planning phase. Everyone has a chance to put their arguments on the table.  The result is a charter, and a clear set of marching orders, that is approved by stakeholders and in line with what the customer wants.

That way, their projects or products can stay ahead of the Next Big Thing…instead of getting run over by it.

Although it’s Spring, the No Pants Festival has nothing to do with Spring Break and everything to do with an evolving management trend – the remote management of digital nomads. I call this type of workplace management “Radical Flexibility.”

The newest take on Radical Flexibility is ROWE (Results Only Work Environment).  The ideal ROWE workplace eliminates office norms: no set hours, no required meetings or office hours unless required to do your job.  The only measure of value is the results.

More accountability and less micromanaging are Project Success Method bywords, and some studies suggest positive impacts…but the underlying assumptions are less promising:

• you could get so much more work done if you didn’t have to bother with other people

• structure is a cage

A collaborative environment needs some structure – how can people work as a team without set hours? – and a meaningful team can’t be formed with people only known to each other as an email address.

The Project Success Method offers a better, hybrid alternative.  Our techniques encourage in-person meetings to strengthen mutual support, collaboration and commitment to projects – but individuals are free to decide whatever pace or solutions work best. The Method has worked for small new product launches and large-scale, mission critical, time-sensitive, cross functional projects across an entire enterprise – while combining accountability and freedom for individuals, teams and managers.

Now that’s what I call Radical.  But no, it’s not pants optional.

A survey of 32,000 employees revealed that people who met with their managers up to six hours a week were more inspired, engaged and innovative at work. That confirms PSI’s preference for in-person, biweekly team status meetings to shift the Worry Curve.

We know it’s difficult to make time, coordinate schedules, and reserve the room. However, consider the pitfalls of relying solely on electronic status reports – for project managers and teams:

• It encourages procrastination:  Emailed status reports and updates sit in an inbox with other email – easy to overlook or put off. It doesn’t command the attention a meeting would.

• It discourages group problem solving:  Electronic reporting deprives the project of the collective insight and support of the entire team when problems arise.

• It hinders accountability: The biggest problem electronic reporting creates is enabling team members to avoid public accountability for their tasks by hiding behind email.

In-person meetings create team commitment to the project, to each other and to their own roles in the project, while project managers find it easier to monitor progress, see deviations from the plan and tap the insights of the whole group to find solutions.  Being in a room together drives accountability, results, and a sense of community.

It’s a lot better than hiding behind an email.

Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, is launching an incubator for innovators…and it reminds me of a familiar mindset.

His Playground Global LLC will provide support and advice to tech startups making devices for consumers or businesses. This “studio” lets inventors do the fun stuff (creating new products). Playground handles the operations – the scut work, so to speak.

I think “scut work” needs an image overhaul. It’s how Things Get Done. Improving how Things Get Done is a worthwhile investment – but you wouldn’t know from some responses project managers tell me they get when pitching Project Success Method training to senior management:

“It’s just more overhead”

“We bought software to handle that”

“How much can anyone learn in just two days?”

“It’s micromanagement”

It’s like the joke about making politics and making sausage – but it’s the “scut work” that takes a new product from a blank screen to a sales floor. Improving that process is a worthwhile investment that’s paid off for our clients in time and money again and again – and saved weeks of panic-driven overtime by team members caught in a time crunch.

Suppose your car needs an oil change. You visit two garages on Monday looking for estimates. Garage One quotes $50; Garage Two quotes $50. Both say it takes two hours.

You leave your car at Garage One, go to a movie, and return two hours later to pay and drive away. Three months later you try Garage Two. You return from the movie. There’s an oil pan under your car. The mechanic is working the register.

“I need my car,” you say.

“It took an hour to prep and drain the oil,” the mechanic says as he rings up someone. “Now I’m on the register for the rest of the week. I’m not sure when I’ll get to the remaining hour.”

No one would accept this scheduling for a car. Why accept it in a project?

Relying on resource hours over task duration is one of my project management pet peeves. Methodologies that rely solely on resource hours don’t adequately predict when things will actually get done.

Managers and teams that go through our training get practical experience in the kind of scheduling that tells them when they can take the next step and when the job will be done – ahead of schedule, too. In project management, as in life, knowing how long a task takes – even a simple oil change – is insufficient. You need to know when you can drive your car.   It’s the only way to get anywhere, on the road or in your career.

“Paralysis by Analysis,” “Information Overload,” “TMI.”

If the key to a successful project is controlling time, one timewaster to eliminate is over-reporting. Some managers spend too much time tracking too many activities at too low a level of detail.

Luckily, reporting doesn’t have to be like doing your taxes, if you have some guidelines on how much detail is enough:

Each activity should produce a deliverable or change in product status with just enough information to indicate a change in status.

• Subdivide long-term activities into tasks of about a month, so you can track and monitor progress reliably.
• As a rule of thumb, a good level of detail is between three and fifteen working days.

Of course, some large, complex projects – just like large, complex tax returns – need some outside help. Our hands-on course in Control Methods & Practices with Microsoft Project streamlines controlling the performance of projects characterized by complexity and dynamic change.

A concise reporting strategy lets everyone spend their time on the project and not on reporting. Whoever said “the Devil is in the details” was likely a project manager.