Transferring projects to new managers: First things to be done early in the game

One old friend of mine asked me what should be done at first preparing a project for transfer to another project-manager. He was curious to get a check list to follow and to be assured that a new project manager would get all necessary information to refrain both high project quality and good team performance. 

Hence, I tried to pull my wits together and here I came up with a few steps I always follow picking up or handing over my projects. This to-do list is composed based on my experience only and should not be treated as a final say. Moreover, I would greatly appreciate any discussion on different cases that might be helpful for my future experience. 

Undoubtedly, the most important for a new project manager is to understand a business case and related domain of the project. In my humble opinion, an excellent project manager should be a subject matter expert as well. However, this is a rare and very specific case, so let's skip aspect in this review. But keep in mind - business case is 100% clear, a new project manager is aware what benefits come along with the product. 

Where my PM day goes

From time to time I try to track my productivity to get a clue what tasks my work time is spent on. Project Manager usually has a lot to do during the business day and sometimes analysis of the workload is good to avoid non-management activities. You know what I mean... Not to forget delegating tasks that are not inherent in PM's schedule like operational routine. 

I decided to do this after I caught myself updating some manual for a new version of some software instead of diving into a scope planning of the delayed but vital project. 

As my Company requires the employees to report their tasks daily in a special time-tracking system it was not a big deal to retrieve data and visualize my recent week in a pie chart. And here is what I got:

To have better understanding of my tasks I also use a free time-capture tool RescueTime that lets me keep track of the time I spend on various activities, so I can have an accurate idea of where my day goes :). 

Building The Team by Making Sushi Rolls

This post was inspired by my team lead's affection towards sushi rolls that has become a strong tradition for the part of our large team. We usually have a team-building session at our office kitchen every two months. I would say that was the place where I tried to make sushi roll by myself for the first time. 

Actually, sushi has become one of my favorite tool to develop my project teams. This allowed me - who was managing 3 different teams simultaneously at that time - to look at teams' players from a new perspective.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, my professional arenas before the IT-industry were insurance industry, sales and teaching activities in the university. All my previous team-building workshops contained some standard for Ukrainian market items: bowling, outings with a few team games. They were efficient enough increasing team's performance for some time, but it always was a big headache to get $400-500 from the top-management to organize that. No, they were not greedy for money, not a jot :). This is how the things always go in most Ukrainian companies whether they are in sales or in engineering industries. 

Processes Flowchart: Rita Mulcahy vs. PMI PMBOK 5. Project Initiating

Here is a short comparison of two popular charts of project management processes. One flowchart was taken from Rita Mulcahy - a recognized expert in PMP studies. The second comes from the latest PMI PMBOK 5th Edition. 

I know that "every man to his taste", but at the same time this comparison helped me to memorize all inputs, tools and techniques and output for each process. 

Many certified project managers confirm that memorizing and understandings of these charts are the keys to the successful PMP exam pass. At least 70% of all questions are within the processes flowchart. 

What Project Manger should know to accomplish projects

Six traits of a good project manager

Once I was lucky to get through the professional assessment by one of my previous employers. This hadn't happened to me for quite some time. Moreover, I had been evaluating others on my own for the last 4 years before I got a project-management position. So, that was a quite interesting experience to for me to feel myself an examination "victim". 

Besides a formal calculation based on some "points" for the completed projects an assessment of personality traits was applied through a tête-à-tête meeting with the examiner. That's why I can't help but share my observations and after-thoughts on that very raw evaluating "matrix". Here is a full list of criteria used to evaluate character traits that comes along with my comments describing why I am a bit far to support such subjective scoring. 

1.Results-oriented

As a rule, main project goals are to accomplish the approved scope and to get paid for the work done. Oh, yes, including schedules, quality metrics and within the approved budget. So, can "goal orientation" be measured other than having a satisfied customer and successfully completed projects? Is this a subjective criterion or can be interpreted in another way?

However, as it turned out the company scale also contained such points as number of team building activities, new future projects from the customer and team's professional skills development. In my opinion if a company requires some additional project goals, a project manager should be notified about this during the project initiation not at the closure or audit. All these internal objectives should be listed and detailed in some internal project charter. And ideally a project manager should be motivated to such goals accomplishment. Naturally, an additional budget must be assigned for team development. You must admit that it is almost impossible to develop your team having $0.00 for this. 

2.Acumen

I am serious. This metric was applied to measure how a project manager is fast in decision-making. In my humble opinion, speed is good in blood-suckers catching, but project managing. Project manager is neither a hockey-player nor a Formula-1 pilot. PM "class" does not depend on a flash-like speed. I think a timely decision is better than a quick one. 

3.Responsibility

A cowboy cannot accomplish projects. Hence, there are no other criteria except described in paragraph #1. 

4.Self-dependence

If a project manager is smart enough to make somebody pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him, then his or her managers should follow suit delegating authority and thinking of their professional aptitude. Yes, the statement sounds a bit rough notwithstanding honest enough at the same time. 

5.Stress resistance

Are you able to appraise such person's trait not having passed through the mill with him or her in "Survivor" show or being hostages by Somali pirates?  

6.Wavelengthmanship

Over the last decade of my "manager" status that was only once when I met a project manager who was afraid to give a ring to his customer. Do you know any formal procedures that are not subjective and that can appraise inter-personal skills? There are no such tools. All of them provide results that should be interpreted through the personal paradigm. 

Therefore, let's look at the first paragraph again as the exclusive criteria and metrics of true project manager qualification.