5 tips to help make changes happen

Bringing change is always a challenge. The human reflex towards changes is pushing-back due to being scared of the unknown it may bring. This constant resistance could bring a halt to even the best of ideas if they are not shared appropriately with other.

From changing software, to changing process, to anything really, changes are a challenge, especially when dealing with a large team.

Here are a few tips to help with that:

1. Explain why

One of the top reasons people are not motivated to change is not knowing why the change is being done in the first place. Not only that, this demotivator is often worsened by giving other limited information because “They don’t need to know everything” which brings frustration and can even damage the trust they have in you.

Changes have reasons, and people who are affected have a right to know why; let them know and you reduce a lot of resistance right at the start.

2. Provide relevant information

First, avoid drowning the others with too much information that they will simply disconnect or run away from whatever you are trying to bring into their lives.

You may be passionate about what it is and the fact that you can make it happen, but giving everyone so much information about it will just scare them, not to mention the waste of time for you since people will probably not listen/read most of it.

Be sure to share relevant information that will be useful to them right away. As for all the detailed information, make it easily available somewhere and invite people to refer to it if needed.

3. Provide easy/accessible support

If the changes will most likely bring up questions or issues, then it is very important to let everyone know how to ask for help. If they have any roadblocks and no one to help them go forward, then they will abandon and your opportunity to make a change will be lost.

Make sure it’s clear for everyone who to reach and how when they need something; and make sure support is extra efficient when the change is recent, this is when people are trying to adapt and the support required will be higher.

4. Ask for feedback

It’s being done more and more; take the App-store for example and how people can post reviews, and the way it’s considered by the developers afterwards into their applications.

Feedback, assuming it’s constructive, is valuable information guiding to ways to improve given away for free but usually, it won’t be given if you don’t ask.

Create surveys, send mails, go talk to people, but go grab the feedback and avoid waiting for it.

5. Continuous improvement

Deploying a change is one thing, but maintaining it is equally important. This is what will keep it going, and will make people love it more and more.

Using the feedback you’ve gathered (see #4), you can analyze the information given and improve from there. In other words, change the change!

To complement #4 here: if the feedback is ignored, it will create more frustration, make sure you use it!

In conclusion

Changes can be very good, but the way it’s brought to others can be very bad. Assess how you bring changes to your team and identify where you can make it easier for others overall, and it will automatically become easier for you too.

Don’t hesitate to share more tips!

4 tips to avoid building a house without a hammer

Source: ronnieb

IT projects have the particularity of having us work with nothing ‘physical’; this opens a whole new world of advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is the illusion of not needing proper tools to manage a project.

For example, you wouldn’t go build a house without proper tools, right? It wouldn’t even be possible. Unfortunately, its possible to manage projects without tools (result being debatable of course), so people go straight into it before they prepare. No matter if you managed to finish a couple of projects without so much pain, here are a couple of tips to prepare yourself before you tackle bigger projects:

1. Find a proper PM tool

A project management tool should be useful to do the following:

• Track project information;
• Create your project’s schedule;
• Help communication between team members.

A ‘proper’ tool is one that can be useful to you, and saves time more than you spend trying to figure out how it works. Out of the many PM tools out there, find one that fits your needs, and avoid using one just because it has every possible functionality, it will add noise and adds a steeper learning curve, but will not necessarily be more useful.

2. Prepare document templates

Documents are used all the time in project management; they have to bring value to your project management, and have to complement your PM tool. Here are various examples of documents that can (and should) be used:

• Estimate document;
• SOW (state of work);
• Meeting agenda;
• Lessons learned;
• Reports;
• etc.

Again, these are but a few examples that should complement your PM tool that may take care of Risk management for example, meaning you wouldn’t need a risk register document. Same goes for many other documents that may be useful for your project.

3. Continuous improvement

The key to have great tools is not just creating/finding them and hoping everything will be perfect after that. Make sure you fine-tune your documents or how you use your tools every chance you get. It could be a simple improvement like adding a column in your Excel used to estimate projects, to completely changing how the team manages it’s tasks with the PM tool to make it clearer for everyone.

A good trick is to always have your templates ready to be opened so that when you have an idea or a project requires something your template didn’t have, you will be more tempted to update it as you go.

4. Emails are not a PM tool

Emails should be used for quick communication; to asking a couple of simple questions, to giving a quick update to a stakeholder. Unfortunately, since people lack proper tools to manage their projects, emails become the PM tool, meaning that all the project’s documentation becomes scattered inside hundreds of mails that are hopefully at least stored in a folder with the project’s name (if not all mixed in the inbox…).

This opens the door to:

• losing information;
• wasting valuable time looking for information;
• A larger quantity of mails that drastically reduce people’s efficiency, not to mention that more people tend to be included in those mails, meaning that the negative effect is spread to more people.

In conclusion

Managing projects can be tough as it is, so why make it harder by not preparing? Get rid of the illusion that everything can be done easily without proper tools just because you are not working with physical elements.

Do you have any more tips to share? Or maybe a story? Share!

5 tips to handoff your project to someone else

Source: Karpati Gabor

Leaving on vacation and need someone to take care of your project? Want to make sure you come back and it’s not wrecked?

It all begins with how you handoff your project; the more you guide your colleague properly, the higher the chance he has of properly maintaining that project.

1. Quality over quantity

If you swarm your colleague with 50 pages of document about EVERYTHING, chances are he will be lost more than useful, or he will take control of your project very slowly, which will affect your project. Don’t forget, he as to pickup an ongoing project in one day, something which you may have gradually learned/planned in 1-2 months.

Guide your colleague with easy “next-step” lists. If documents must be read, guide him towards specific parts of documents, or even better, create a cheat sheet of those documents. For example: “read page 2 and 6 of document X right away”.

In this context, by quality, I also mean accuracy. Guiding your colleague towards a document that’s not updated will result in your colleague not trusting (so not reading) available documents. Or worst, he will read them, and manage your project with outdated information, which could damage your project. So make sure you update documents, or tell your colleague not to read them, and give him the needed information instead.

Result:

• Your colleague picks up your project faster;
• Less “training” time occurs on your project’s budget;
• Fewer errors;
• Sentiment of trust/control from your colleague;
• Overall team stress/moral will be in a better place.

2. Transfer your ‘radar’

In this context, by ‘radar’, I mean, what you know to pay attention to. They may be details, but details that will make a difference in the outcome of your project. For example, it could be a colleague in the team that is always late. It could be a deliverable that has a very important element to verify before sending to client because it was requested as something very important. It could be anything, but it’s probably not written anywhere, or if so, it’s information hard to find.

Even if the information is found or transferred, if it’s not made clear that it must be in your colleague’s radar, then he might not think that it’s as important as it really is.

For example: “Before sending document Y, make sure to verify Jim’s text, he always makes horrible typos and the client hates that regardless of the quality of the document’s content.”.

Result:

• Everything you thought was important will be checked just as if you were there;
• Reduces chances of errors.

3. Clarify expectations

During transitions, there is nothing worst then unclear expectations which results in one person thinking the other will do it while the other thinks the same thing. The result is that no work gets done.

During the transition, chances are the team will communicate to both to make sure the message gets across, by mail for example. For each of those messages, it’s important that you tell your colleague if you’re taking care of it or if you’re trusting your colleague to do it. That way, expectations are clear, and if your colleague doesn’t feel comfortable to take care of the request, he can communicate so, and you can help him in doing so.

Expectations towards the team is important too, as I mentioned, they will probably communicate to both, or even only to you, so it’s important that the team knows they need to communicate to your colleague directly.

Result:

• No request will be left unattended;
• Information will be sent to your colleague and not to you only;

4. Follow-up

Project management can be hard as it is, and no matter what we think, it’s harder when it’s a project handed off to us rather than one we are in control since the beginning. Therefore, it’s important to do a couple of follow-ups if you know a milestone is coming or something specific must be done.

For example: “We’re suppose to be sending document Z tomorrow, was it verified today? Let me know if you need help”.

Result:

• That follow-up may grab something that was going to be forgotten;
• Your colleague will appreciate the backup;
• This can prevent the feeling of projects being “thrown” to your colleague’s face rather than handed off.

5. Be available

Questions will come, and it’s good that you stay available to answer those questions or even help your colleague in the transition. Depending of circumstances or project, it may be good to be available for 1-2 weeks.

In conclusion

Handing off projects to other project managers is not easy, and our initial reaction is to “get rid of it”. Put yourself in your colleague’s shoes, and do it the way you would want it done to you. Your colleague will appreciate it, and the project will not suffer during the transition.

Let me know if you have more tips in the matter! Or you may want to share stories of how you were handed a project.

5 tips for proper time tracking

Source: matei

A while back, I wrote an article that gave several reasons to track time for your personal gain. In this article, I’m referring to the whole team’s time, and want to concentrate on the effect it has on your projects.

First, let me describe what I mean by “Proper time tracking”:

• Reliable: If hours are entered randomly by people, then the numbers are not reliable;
• Updated: Updated information means that all information (so all the time) is available when reporting;
• Indicative: The numbers needs to show what was done, for how much time, and by who.

In general, people are not aware of the importance of time tracking, and see it simply has a way for management to make sure people do their weekly hours. This lack of knowledge towards how the hours are used will affect how the team enters it’s time and will affect the 3 elements mentioned above.

It’s important that proper time tracking is available for you to track your project’s costs, so here are a couple of tips to have that information available:

1. Must be done daily

There are lots of team members who log their time once per week (or worst), this results in:

• Huge amounts of time tracked at once: This can be devastating, if you did your report on Tuesday and reported your project was healthy, and one week later, 150h was added suddenly because 2 team members entered a whole week of work the next day, then your project can go from healthy to under budget quickly.
• Drop in the time’s accuracy: People barely remember what they did at the end of a day, so imagine at the end of the week! Some add inefficiency in all this by noting their time somewhere on a piece of paper or a .txt file, and then they re-enter all their time in the time-tracking tool at the end of the week. It’s faster to simply enter the time at the right place.

Time must be logged daily, so invite people to enter their time at the end of the morning and at the end of the day, it’ll be quick, not to mention fresh in their memories.

2. Must be simple & fast

As any tools used, the simpler/fast it is, the more people will use it regularly. As for time-tracking, as mentioned above, you want it done on daily basis, meaning that the tool must be efficient.

Furthermore, if it’s slow to enter your time, then people will waste time doing this, and the idea behind time-tracking is to be efficient with those numbers, not waste time!

3. All hours must be entered

There are a couple of reasons why people do not enter all their time in the project:

• They don’t enter overtime since it’s not paid;
• They enter their time somewhere else so that the project’s actual costs are reduced (or appear reduce at least).

Both habits reduces the project’s real hours (on paper), and although at first glance, it may seem”okay” for some to do this, not only is it not honest, it can have a devastating effect on your project and on future effects:

• Estimating often uses past Budget past completion as a reference, if those numbers are not reliable, then it can impact estimates using them;
• As you track your project’s action cost, it may seem as if the project is at a better place than it really is, affecting the decisions made by you and your team, which will result in more overage.

So it’s simple, all hours spent on the project should be entered, and “excuses” to log the hours somewhere else should be discarded.

4. Must monitor time-tracking

Unfortunately, people may enter their time in the wrong place, or make errors entering them. For example, 1h on a task can easily become 10h with a simple typo. People may also confuse projects or simply “dump” their hours at the end of day without proper accuracy.

Monitoring hours means looking at hours logged by each member, and assess if it makes sense. If it doesn’t then it should be discussed with the team member, and if an error was made, then it must be corrected.

You’d be surprised how many errors can slide in your project’s actual costs.

5. Time tracked must be indicative

Often, time-tracking tools will offer a “Comment” functionality, which helps PM understand what the team member did specifically. This can also be very useful when working with retainers when reports need to be done. However, this comment needs to show something relevant, otherwise it’s simply a waste of time. Here are examples I’ve seen in the past:

• Time entered under “Client X”, under “Project Z”, for Task “Back-end developing”, the comment was “Programming”.
• Time entered under “Client Y”, under “Project A”, for Task “Front-end developing”, the comment was “I developed for Project A”.

You get the idea!

5 tips to delegate appropriately

Source: Karpati Gabor

Delegating is a skill that can be a very important part of your role, or it can simply be useful when you need help. Regardless, there is different ways to do it, and here are some tips to do it right:

1. Give a heads up

Depending of the environment where you work, people may be busy on a regular basis. They plan their time, and commit to deliveries all the time according to the tasks they have. If you do not give a prior notice, and delegate at the last-minute, they may not be as capable of committing to your request, or they may have to break other commitments.

Let them know before that you will have a request for them, and give them a high level idea of the request or time required so they can add this to their list of tasks.

2. Avoid barking orders

Delegating may very well be expected of you because of your role, or it might be because you need help. No matter the reason, respecting your colleague by asking them nicely is simple, and makes all the difference in the world for your colleague’s moral. A higher moral will raise motivation which also raises chances that your request is done properly in time.

So instead of “Do this!”, how about a “Could you please do this?”. And no reason not to add a smile on top of that 🙂

3. Explain why it should be done

There is nothing that de-motivates more than not knowing why you are doing something. You question the request, you complain about it, you slow down or switch to another task, and it will probably not get done properly.

When you send someone a request, how about a simple explanation of why it needs to be done, and why it’s urgent, or important!

If you send your request saying it may be a good chance to obtain a new contract with a client, they will take it more seriously than just sending them “Do this report”.

4. Give clear expectations

This is important in all the communication you have at work, but when delegating, if you want to raise chances of receiving what you need, then it is important that your expectations are clear. If your colleague is guessing what needs to be done, chances are you will not receive what you needed.

For example, if you ask for a “maintenance report” for the client, well you may receive an Excel spreadsheet with hours per role (designer, developer, etc.). However, it’s not what you wanted to send, you wanted to send a PDF file listing tasks with hours spent for each. Well, simply state it, it doesn’t take much more time to tell, and will prevent wasted time from your colleague, and even yours.

5. Give a due date

Give a measurable due date, is it in 3 hours? Is it for tomorrow end of morning or tomorrow first thing in the morning?

By the way, ASAP is not a due date! Everything should be done ASAP, it’s like saying everything is ‘high priority’ which means that nothing is high priority.

If you don’t give due dates, don’t expect to have it done exactly when you need it. Furthermore, the team will have a hard time prioritizing all their tasks and confusion may rise.

In conclusion

If you delegate properly, you raise the chance of receiving what you need, so there is no excuse not to do it, and people will respect you for doing it properly.

Do you have any more tips to share?

5 tips when resources disappear

Source: KellyP42

Resources come and go, whether it’s just for a day when you need to get work done for tomorrow, or a week because people are switched to another project, or permanently because they leave the company, you will have to find a Plan B, even C or D!

Here are some general tips that can help various situations when resources wave goodbye!

1. Manage client expectations appropriately

If resources are switched, or even temporarily absent, chances are, your project will slow down. This means that you may not be able to meet a set deadline. Your client must know this right away, and you may not know when the deadline can be met.

In these cases, do not commit to a specific time and give yourself more time than you think you will need. Instead of “next Monday”, commit to “mid next-week” where you will have some flexibility.

Also, except if it’s a very small “set-back”, you may want to avoid spilling out the reality like “your resource got fired” or “somebody’s sick and we don’t know when he’ll be back”; that will only worry the client and bring absolutely nothing constructive so simply state that you need more time.

2. Switch resources around pro-activaly

If you need someone right away and ask who’s available, chances are everybody will be busy, and those available may not be able to take the task you need done. So you cannot surrender right away, there is often a solution when you move things around taking several projects into consideration. This means different things depending of the situation:

• Check if other projects have more flexibility, and can lend a resource, even if that project as to postpone a delivery; or
• Trade resources between projects so one can free another that could do your specific task;

You may have to use diplomacy, but avoid simply asking around “Do you have time?”, start with that, but if it doesn’t work, start trading!

3. Prepare a backup plan in advance

One thing you can do to plan ahead is use the “Hit by a bus syndrome“, I invite you to read my article on the subject.

4. Have your documentation simple & updated

If you are going to switch to a new resource at the last-minute, you want that resource to be up and running very fast. This means that the information you will give him must get to the point and must be reliable. Every minute may make a difference.

Avoid piling up 30 pages to read, give him only what he needs to know, go right to the point.

5. Stay positive

If you start to whine or panic, you are not going to get anything accomplish, nor are you going to be diplomatic when trying to deal resources, so stay positive and go forward.

1 great tip to maximize email efficiency with your tools

As many know, emails make people unproductive. So what happens? When people use online tools that have notifications functionalities, they either ignore all the mails they receive, or they deactivate everything.

Although it is great in the sense that they don’t want to be encumbered by mails, they cannot use the online tool to their full potential. So what to do?

Use “rules”

Your mail manager (GMail, Outlook, etc.) can organize those mails for you. Once your rules are set up, it’ll be a great help. So here’s what you need to do:

• Identify what’s important to receive: It is important to know what you do want to receive. For example, you may want to receive team comments/messages, and any tasks set to “complete”;
• Have your tool send you initial mails: You want to identify the keywords that you will use for your rules, so have your tool receive each mail you identified above;
• Prepare mail folders: You want to separate those mails according to what they will require of you. For example, “task complete” mails may need to be verified, so having them put aside in a “To verify” folder will make going through them very easy.Also, if you are using a tool like Outlook, you will be able to set folder properties so that it displays the number of mails it contains rather than unread mails, that way you can quickly see how many mails are there and not forget some you may have read;
• Set your rules: Set each appropriate rule so that each type of mails are put aside in appropriate folders;
• Clean up the folder: Make sure once the mail is not useful anymore (you verified the task, you read the comment, etc.), delete the mail as any information may (or should) be easily found inside your tool, so no need to pile up mails.

In conclusion

Rules are underrated, and they become very valuable when they team up with your tools, so try different rules, and adjust them or your folders as you go forward.

5 tips to reduce your workload

Source: Aron123

If you read my previous article “5 signs your workload is too much“, and you recognized yourself while reading, then maybe these little tips will help you:

1. Delegate/Ask for help

Depending of your role within a team, you may or may not be able to delegate, but asking for help can do the trick. We often feel bad about asking for help, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

What’s important to remember from this tip is that chances are, you are not alone, and others can make your life easier.

2. Say no

It’s important to know when to say “no”, find out more by reading my previous article: Learn to say ‘no’

3. Negotiate delivery dates

Most of the time, people will ask for something at the last-minute, so they will feel stressed, and will try to ‘force’ a task to you. It may be justified, and it may be very important, so use your judgement, but keep in mind that it’s absolutely alright to propose an alternate time to have the work done.

Other circumstances will be that people will want to make sure to receive something before a specific date, so they will shortened the delay when asking you to do it. Again, it’s perfectly alright to propose to have it done later.

4. Track time, estimate task time, plan consequently

Sometimes, you think you have more time than you actually have, which is why you may tend to accept too much work. What can be useful, even if at first it may seem like adding more work to your plate, is to start paying attention to the time you spend on tasks, and plan your days accordingly.

Depending of your role, or your work environment, you may encounter lots or surprises or be disturbed, so always plan to have some free time, it’ll probably fill itself up. In a previous job, I used to leave half my day free because I was getting disturbed so much. It may seem horrible at first (and it was) but it made me realize the very little time I had left each day to do my work, and I was able to plan accordingly.

5. Change job

This is the last resort, but maybe where you work just isn’t right for you, or they are overworking you. It happens, and people even become sick. The more you wait, the harder it will be to change.

In conclusion

If your workload is too much, you will feel stressed or tired, you will become less productive, work will pile up even more, and you will spiral down into a vicious cycle. Be careful, take care of yourself!

Ever lived a very tough moment? Share!

4 tips on how to make the project manager shut up

Source: chilombiano

This article is intended to be usable by project managers so that they can send it to their team members, in hopes that it will help communication! Also, bear with me when I write about shutting up PMs, I’m a PM myself 😉

Project managers are perceived differently depending of where you work, what’s the work environment, and also what’s the project management maturity of the company. How the project manager or the team members act on a daily basis also has a great influence. But it’s not unlikely that they are seen as these little irritating creatures that sneak up on you, and are always asking questions or telling others what to do.

Well guess what? It’s their job, can you blame them? Now, how do we get them to shut up knowing all too well that they are trying to get things accomplished, and they can’t just ‘stop’? Here are some quick tips:

1. Have your work done

One thing that ‘forces’ PM to poke around with follow-ups is the fact that they want to make sure the work gets done. So, if they know the work will get done, they will simply wait to receive it.

So it’s simple, gain PM trust by making sure your work always gets done. If you are in a situation where it is impossible for you to finish what is asked of you, flag them as soon as possible (not at the last-minute!). Once that trust is gained, they will know there is no point in doing a follow-up since you will communicate with them when the time is right.

This also applies to anything you committed you would do, whether it’s simply answering an email or anything else.

2. Answer

Believe it or not, if they email you or Skype you, and you never (or rarely) answer, they will have to send you even more follow-ups, call you, or go see you in person. So if you don’t answer because you think they are irritating or ‘you don’t have time’, you’ll end up with even more noise!

If answering requires you to check something or do something before, at least give them a heads up of when you’ll get back to them, and they will stop pestering you.

3. Ask questions

Too often, when team members are missing elements, or have questions, they switch to another task (or project), and if they are asked a status of their task, only then will they flag they need something. So what happens in these cases? Well PM will make a mental note to always ask resources if they need anything because they want to avoid people skipping some tasks without flagging.

The tip is simple: if you need anything or have a question, ask! The PM will know that if you are not asking him anything, it means you don’t need anything, and he will stop pestering you.

4. Send needed info

Typical follow-ups or request for information turn around schedule, budget, scope. Meaning PM will ask you if you are on time, how much effort (hours) is still required, and if you have any questions or if anything is missing. So it’s simple, they won’t ask if they already know, so depending of the tools used within the team: update your tasks’ % complete, send them a little “I have everything I need”, communicate proactively and the PM won’t have to ask you anything.

In conclusion

It’s a PM’s job to make sure communication happens, if it doesn’t, they’ll make it happen. So communicate, and they’ll bug you a lot less!

Have any other tips you want to share?

4 tips to reduce reluctance with change

Source: xenia

Changes are part of life, we live them in our personal life, and in our professional life. If you work in IT, changes are ongoing, and if you don’t adapt quickly, you fall behind within months. Unfortunately, the human nature is to be reluctant to changes, so here are a few tips that will hopefully help you make changes happen:

1. Make it simple for them

No matter the change, whether it’s a new technology, a new process, a new methodology, etc., the steeper the learning curve, the fewer people will be onboard.

So how can you make it simpler? There are a couple of ways:

• Build tutorials: Any guide whatsoever will simplify the learning curve. It can be very simple to more elaborate depending of the size of the change. Avoid anything long or boring. Go with quick and easy, like cheatsheets, or something interactive.
• Available help: Let people know that you (or someone else) is available to help them. Obviously, make sure it’s true, and appropriate help is given when needed.
• Plan the change: If the change is structured and iterative, people will be introduced step-by-step to the change instead of forced into all at once. That will greatly reduce the fact that people are generally scared of changes since it’s not moving too fast.

2. Show how it’s helping THEM

This tip may not apply for all the changes we want to execute, but amongst other types of changes, let’s say you would want to change a tool that a team uses for projects: The initial reaction would be that it’s either “just another tool added with the others” or “why are we doing this?” or something to that effect.

You want to make sure that people are aware of how the changes are good for THEM, not you or management, THEM. In my example above, you could tell them it’s going to make their overall work easier by having a faster tool, or that this tool has a great set of notifications that will greatly reduce the number of things forgotten.

By focusing on that when you brief the others, they will also focus on that while they are juggling their emotions towards the change. As they fight the reluctance, they can remind themselves how it’s helping them, and it will reduce complaining.

3. Ask “why?”

This tip can be applied once reluctance is being detected. It’s easy to insist on something, or even to force it on people, but by simply asking why they are reluctant, you may find out that it’s because of silly reasons, or justified ones. Once that is identified, you can work towards eliminating those reasons. You may even find out that your idea is not as good as you thought and it’s you who may have to change!

By asking why, you’ll receive valuable feedback as long as it’s constructive, which is always something you want to encourage inside your team.

4. Don’t give up

Stay positive, and keep it up. Don’t quit at the first “no” that is thrown at you. If one strategy doesn’t work, try another approach. Only stop once justified reasons have come up, then adjust yourself, and try something else!

In conclusion

Changes everywhere; some like them, some hate them, and some make them happen. No matter what, there will always be reluctance, so do your best to fight it.

Share your tips and stories! I’m certain a lot of you are facing challenges with changes inside your teams.