image by clagnut, flickr artist

project management can be described succinctly in two words: “be prepared to stop.”  [looks skyward...]

yes.

i’ve talked before about adding wiggle-room into your project schedules in order to handle setbacks, changes in scope, changes in requirements, and more.. this, however, is not that post.

no, this post talks about what to do when you run out of wiggle room.

you can only prevent bad things from happening to a certain extent, and wiggle room will only carry you so far.  some things are just entirely out of your control.  it could be something as ‘trivial’ as paperwork to get access to a system being held up, or as large as a massive power outage bringing down your servers for three days.  these kinds of risks are generally categorized as “known unknowns” or “unknown unknowns.”  some you know can happen, like a POC being out of the office on vacation unannounced, but you cannot predict when they might occur.  some, however, are entirely unthought of — like litigation being launched against your firm or organization which causes you to halt all progress.

when these types of situations hit, depending on your critical path, your progress can come to a complete stop.  you need to have a plan.  that plan should include some or all of the following:

include burn work

it’s good to keep certain tasks or kinds of work on the side as work that you can burn.  periodic reviews on work already performed, meetings to gather lessons learned to date, administrative work like gardening your team’s wiki or other collaborative spaces — these are all things that you can do that will both benefit the project by adding quality control, and keep you and your people busy.  when you can’t make progress on the project itself, there should still be some unscheduled work that you can burn.

take very good notes

perhaps you’re only on the first build of many on a system for a client.  you may be working on a program or providing a service that will be sold to a completely new client at the completion of the current project.  whatever the case may be, the most important thing you can do when work is halted is take notes.  look at what’s going on currently, and try to project similar situations out onto future projects.  learn from what you have encountered in order to create better plans for the future.

be transparent with your leadership

have a process in place where you can talk openly with your leadership about what problems are causing your progress to come to a screeching halt.  the temptation to lie about your progress to leadership is going to be amazingly high.  you don’t want to look bad to your peers… and you certainly don’t want leadership to think you’re incapable of effectively managing a project.  so you might think about saying, “we’ve hit a snag, but we’re still on track to meet our goals.”  you might think about hiding the “snag” altogether and just say, “our progress is around where we expected to be at this point in time.”  but don’t do these things!  be open and transparent with your leadership.  they might have the muscle you need to move those road blocks out of your way.

sometimes in project management, you can’t yield and be safe; it’s not enough to tap your brakes.  in some cases, you need to be prepared to stop.

it’s a simple phrase, “where’s your flowchart, baby,” but it’s an important one. it’s important because a picture is worth a thousand words. flowcharts can help you in so many ways.  here are just a couple…

flowcharts are a decision making tool
you can use flowcharts to help you in your decision making. if you have a process that is repeatable, you can set up a flowchart to help direct that process to an end goal. if for each data dump you receive from the client, you need to classify it as belonging to one of two or more categories, a flowchart can help you place it in the right bucket. “does this have personally identifiable data? if yes then a, if no then b.” you can walk that tree all the way down to your final buckets: “this belongs in the transactional database.” or “this belongs in the data warehouse.” — etc.

more after the jump!

flowcharts are a programmer’s friend
you can build a chart to show the expected path of logic through your application. and i’m not just talking large, multi-million line of C# code desktop or server-based programs. one of the most common ways we use programming now is with microsoft office. wether it’s through VBA or common excel formulas, you may have programmed before. it’s interesting how many people will say, “i’m about an 8 or 9 out of 10″ in reference to the question “how good are you at using excel?” and have never used macros before. in enterprise, excel files can become massive undertakings. through the use of macros and form controls, a simple workbook is turned into a data crunching application.  flowcharts can help you identify: (1) where data needs to come from, (2) what needs to happen to it, (3) where the outputs go, and (4) at what point you scream at your computer “excel was never meant to be a database! we should have used access for this!”

flowcharts give you a hammer
one thing that our project team has struggled with lately is keeping an eye on our goals. because of that, some of our primary requirements have begun to slip. this is common in any project and has probably happened to you many times in the past as well. because some things don’t get done, other things have to slip and your schedule starts to creep. by building a flowchart of your important requirements and the expected schedule/release version each is supposed to happen in, you’ve given yourself the ability to track those requirements in a way that easily makes sense. now the next time someone says they can’t get a requirement in, or that some ancillary change the client is requesting has to be done instead, you can drop the hammer and stop those schedule and scope creeps from happening by showing exactly which requirements will be affected and where the cascading effects go.

flowcharts are more than just pictures
as you’ve seen, flowcharts are more than just pictures with fancy gradient fills (love those gradient fills!); among many things, flowcharts are a magic 8-ball, a friend, and a hammer. they take some of the guess-work out of your day. they organize your thoughts. they show you where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re heading.

so open up ms visio, or OmniGraffle, or any open source alternatives, and start using these charts to your advantage. and check out the bone-crunching hits below!

(watch for terry’s signature line at 0:54!)